Fruit Flies No More

You have probably seen or heard of how to get rid of fruit flies in the kitchen, but in case you haven't, here is a foolproof way!  Get a small bowl (like a cereal or dessert bowl), and put into it a few tablespoons of red wine vinegar.   Drop one or two drops of Dawn dish soap on top and swirl around.   Cover with plastic wrap, tightly, and poke some holes in it with a fork or screwdriver.   That's it.  Place where the fruit flies are.  Or where they used to be.  This time of year with tomatoes and apples and melons and pears in the kitchen, they seem to abound.  Here is a fruit fly trap I have on my counter.   After a day of working with tomatoes, it seemed like they were everywhere - but no more!   I used to use apple cider vinegar (and it works good), but I discovered that red wine vinegar works better.

"There Shall Be Showers of Blessing"

Just like the lyrics in the old hymn "There Shall Be Showers of Blessing", we have been more than showered with garden blessings this year!  Today we harvested the rest of the pumpkins and winter squash.   We have already picked and sold and given away at least 25 winter squash and pumpkins, and this is what is left.   Tomorrow is the last market day, and then I will use/give away/store what is remaining.   Every year I always worry that my garden won't be good, but I should have more faith!  The Lord always provides us with more than we could ever hope for.

Load number 1 of pumpkins and squash.

Load number 2 of the harvest.

The whole load today!

Thumb Meets Blade

I was in the process of making kraut today, and shortly after I started I somehow managed to cut my thumb badly on the sharp blades of the kraut cutter!  Oh my did it bleed!  I tried not to panic.  Harold was gone to Fargo for the day, my neighbor who is a nurse was not home, Harold took the car to Fargo anyway, and other neighbors weren't home either.   I thought about trying to drive the big pick-up to the doc, but I needed both hands to apply pressure, and didn't think I could drive that way.    After what seemed like an eternity, and blood all over the place (like a scene from the movie Psycho), I managed to wrap it up in gauze and tape with my good hand.  One of my neighbors called back and then came over to help me re-bandage the thumb.   We didn't think it needed stitches ( it was a semicircular cut about 3/4 inch long and 1/4 inch deep, but the skin was not completely cut off), and the bleeding was down to a minimum.   Harold came home later in the day and helped me finish the kraut and re-bandage my thumb.   I guess I won't be working with tomatoes or doing any canning for several days!  Hopefully it won't take too long to heal - I have work to do! And you know, I was SO careful with the kraut cutter, but a piece of the cabbage slipped off and I lost my grip just as I was sliding the 1/2 head across the blades.   Sigh.............well, I will certainly remember this year's sauerkraut making!!

Honey B Farm As of Today......

It's been a while since I posted anything on here.  Sixteen days to be exact.   We've been so busy!  This time of year is especially crowded with things to work on.  So far I have canned up the following:  peaches, pears, chokecherry jelly, raspberry cherry jelly, chokecherry syrup, dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, red pepper relish, cuke relish, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, potatoes, applesauce, plain tomatoes, seasoned tomatoes (with peppers, onions and celery), and green beans.  I've also put cabbage, corn, carrots, peas and turnips in the freezer, and dried 14 quart bags of apples, and jars of basil, oregano and parsley.   We also harvested all the dry beans and they are drying in trays in the bay window and sunshine.  I still need to make more spaghetti sauce, and can up some tomato juice, and dry more herbs.   Today I am slicing up winter cabbage to put in the crock for sauerkraut:

Eight heads of Danish Ballhead cabbage ready to go into the crock for kraut.   You need a firm, white winter cabbage for successful sauerkraut making.   The kraut cutter is a vintage one I got at an antique store.

The fall colors are really pretty up here now, but they won't last long.  We are already past peak colors, and it's all downhill from here.

A gorgeous maple.

What the yard looks like this morning.

On the windy side of the place, the trees are already past peak.

I took a walk around the yard and took some photos just to show how things are as of today.  Let me bore you with a few show and tell pictures!

We have already had some frosty mornings, so it's time to get the pumpkins in.  I grow Winter Luxury pumpkins, which are excellent for pies.   They are small pumpkins, about 4 or 5 lbs each, with wonderful sweet flesh for the best pies ever!

Uh-oh.....time to get the butternut squash in because the deer are eating them!   This one is already half eaten by those pesty critters!

All my beautiful petunias are dead - time to snip off the seed pods and save the seed for next year. 

The beeyard is quiet now.  Only a little Canadian thistle, and sweet and red clover for them to feed on now.   We harvested close to 500 lbs of excellent light colored honey this year!

I still have a ton of tomatoes in the garden - plenty will probably just go to waste.  Want to come and pick some?

Remember the photo of my new lettuce in the last post?  It's all grown and ready now and we will be eating salads all week long!   A crop of new spinach is next to it. 

Looks like fall on the back porch.  Plenty of great winter squash to eat. 

All these tomatoes will be made into spaghetti sauce tomorrow!

This summer we did manage to paint the porch siding and get the porch ceiling on, and some trim.  We still need to get soffit material on.

All of our workhorse machinery!  My lawn mower (which is pretty good size) next to our brush hog mower, next to the big tractor loader.   We're prepared for just about every job!

And now for some "cute"...............

Un-named white kitten on a mission for some food, since all the food trays are empty!

FlufferDuff with her new little grey kitten and another older kitten.   Poor Fluffer broke her nose and upper jaw tangling with a coyote this summer.   But she is OK now, just a little off center in the face!

Another kitten and one of our Mama cats (not her kitten, though)

What's this???  "Climber" the kitten took a selfie???  Now, how did he do that?

And that's pretty much the way it is out here in the quiet countryside.  We're all busy getting ready for winter.  Harold is cutting wood, I'm still working with produce and food, and we are watching the leaves go fast off the trees.    Pretty soon the bees will go to California for the winter and we'll be cleaning up the yard and garden and getting things tilled up.  I'm anxious to see how long I can continue to grow things in the greenhouse - maybe another month or a few more weeks?

Full of Beans!

I have started harvesting my dry bean crop.   For several days now Harold and I have been picking and podding out dry bean pods.  Every year I grow several varieties of beans, and this year I grew Mexican red beans, Topaz pintos, navy beans, Jacob's Cattle beans, Hidalca (a type of heirloom bean), Yin Yang beans (a black and white bean), and Vermont Cranberry.   All these different bean types have different tastes and textures.   People always ask me how come I grow dry beans "when you can buy them at the store cheap".  Well, you can't buy all these beans at the store!  Sure, you can buy navy beans and pintos and red kidney beans, but you can't buy the other varieties.  And besides, homegrown dry beans have a much better flavor than beans that have been stored in a warehouse someplace for a couple years.   My dry beans cook quicker and have a fresher taste.
     We eat plenty of beans.   We like them just as is, cooked and maybe some pepper relish stirred in, along with cornbread made from scratch.   We also like beans and rice, beans with pasta, bean soups, baked beans, burritos and tacos and refried beans,  and beans with couscous.  When winter snows have us snowbound (we are the last in line for the snow plowing guy), I know that we will have plenty to eat from the pantry.
     It's very relaxing for us to sit and pod out the beans.  Harold and I put on some music and sit at the table talking and working with the dry pods.  Better than any TV show, I can tell you that.   I usually dry the beans in trays until sometime in October, then put the beans in jars.   They stay good that way for several years.   Every year I try to grow 3 or 4 different types of beans, so I always have plenty of variety to choose from.   Dry beans are easy to grow - basically put them in the ground, then let them grow and forget about them until fall.   When the pods are dry and crisp, they are ready to harvest!  Beans are a great source of protein, inexpensive, and good for you.

We picked several five gallon buckets of beans today.   I already picked a couple buckets last week, and there are still a few more buckets left to pick out in the garden. 

One must be diligent about harvesting the beans, though.  Once the pods become dry and start to open slightly, you must pick them as they are ready, and before the rain.  Once the dry pods crack open and moisture gets in, the beans are ruined because they will sprout.   I always grow non hybrid beans and especially heirloom varieties.   By saving the seeds from one year to the next, I can always have a supply of beans to grow.  The Hidalca and Yin Yang beans I received from a seed saver group at the local tribal college.   There are lots of seed saver organizations that welcome new types of seeds and exchanges.   Next year I hope to grow some of the heirloom Native American beans, Maine Yellow Eyes, and a couple varieties of Mexican beans.   There is a difference in the tastes of each one, and they have different textures when cooked.   Oh - I am also drying some of my lima beans this year, too.   Dried limas are a good addition to soups and hamburger/bean hot dishes.

I have started to dry some of the varieties already.   By the time all is harvested, I should end up with about 6 or 7 quart jars full of dry beans.  Perhaps more, as it is hard to tell.

The Greenhouse Keeps Producing!

 Here are a few views of things in the greenhouse.  I am up to my ears in tomatoes, and I'm on my third crop of spinach and lettuce and herbs.   The tomato plants are a good 11 ft tall.   I've never had to stand on a ladder to harvest tomatoes before!!

Beautiful tomatoes all the way up the 11 foot vine!

Third crop of lettuce growing nicely.

Tomatoes up to the ceiling, peppers waiting to be picked waist high.   No bending to harvest!

Cornhusking on Great Fall Day!

Today we harvested corn to put into the freezer.  It was great to be outside this morning in the cool air - nice and sunny and not too hot.  A good day for husking corn by the dozens!

Harold begins the job of husking all the ears.  The tailgate of one of the pick-ups works great for a table. 

We grow Golden Bantam corn.  It is an open pollinated, non-sugar enhanced, non-GMO, heirloom corn.   It freezes well, and has a good old fashioned corn taste.   We do not care for the ultra sugary sweet corn.   Golden Bantam is just good plain corn!  We save the seeds for next year, too.

Walking through the corn patch to harvest the ears is one of my favorite garden tasks.   It's really neat in there, I think!  A fun job!

About 100 ears to put in the freezer!   We had two rows left to harvest, but we will keep those for eating and for seed.

The trees are already beginning to turn colors up here.

Beautiful early fall days like this are precious up here in the north country.   We know that winter is not far away.   We have already had a morning with frost, but we had the sprinkler going on the tomatoes, and covered some of the tender crops.   Nothing got hit, so we lucked out there.

We Sure Know How to Make Work for Ourselves!

This time of year there is so much to do!  Since we are really into growing our own food and homesteading, harvest time means a lot of work.   It seems like everything comes at once.  And there are plenty of other chores besides food related stuff to do too! But we sure do enjoy being self sufficient - it brings a level of satisfaction that is hard to describe.  It's the old-timey kind of lifestyle that we truly enjoy.  Today's world is getting just a little too crazy for our taste.
     For the last couple weeks, Harold has been working on tilling up the pasture.  When we had horses, the pasture was as smooth as a putting green, as they kept the weeds and grasses trimmed to the ground.  Since the horses have been gone for almost 2 years now, the pasture started to look like this:

The pasture was getting to be tall weeds, big clumps, young trees and a big mess.

Eventually it would be impossible to get into.   So Harold decided to cut and till it, so that if we wanted to plant something we could.   We don't need any more woodland.  The pastureland is too precious to waste on weeds!  Our goal is to plant a few more apple trees there, and also some chokecherry trees and Nanking cherry bushes.   Harold might even plant some corn here.   If I was 30 years younger, I would start an orchard and have a U-Pick apple business.   But we're too old for that......
     So here's what he did:

And Harold did it all with his tractor and this vintage 1940's 3 bottom plow, that we borrowed from a local farmer.

Here's Harold at work:

Plowing up sod.

So he is almost done.

The garden is really producing now.  This spring I carefully planted winter squash and pumpkins and cucumbers about 20-25 feet apart, thinking that would surely be enough room for them to expand!   Well, maybe not.  Check out this mish-mash of growth.

I guess 25 feet apart is not enough space to grow vining stuff!  Somewhere in all this mess is a bunch of cukes, pumpkins, and 3 kinds of winter squash!  What fun trying to find all of it!

The greenhouse is starting to give me plenty of tomatoes.

In another week I will have tomatoes coming out of my ears!

I've been so busy canning.  I already did peaches, pears and green beans and two kinds of pickles and potatoes.   I still need to can more potatoes, salsa, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, applesauce and make a couple more jelly varieties.   Pretty soon corn is going to be ready and that will go into the freezer.   I need to dig out carrots, and onions and leeks.

Gradually filling up the pantry. 

We had to pick all the apples from our tree, as they were starting to fall on the ground and the deer were eating them.  No way was I going to let the deer have our apples!  This year our tree gave us a huge harvest:

All of this from our tree!  I already dried plenty of them, and filled up 12 quart bags with dried apple slices.  This photo is what's left AFTER I filled up the 12 bags!

The other day I dug up onions from the greenhouse.   I still have sweet onions to dig up out there, as well as about 100 feet of garden row in the regular garden to dig up.  I planted yellow, white, red and sweet onions.

Two boxes of onions just from the greenhouse. 

Today a friend from church gave me two big boxes of apples, both large ones for pies, and smaller ones for applesauce.  Another fellow at our church gave me a bag full of big pie apples.  So I guess during my spare time this week I will be making and canning applesauce.
And of course, we are in the process of extracting honey.  We pulled about 12 supers on Friday, and we have about 15 more to pull.  All week long we will be processing honey.  We'll probably have our big honey party this weekend.  The other day Harold filled up the pick up with honey supers, which are now sitting in my kitchen.

After all the honey is done, I will be also picking dry beans and podding them out.  I planted 3 kinds of dry beans this year - pinto, red Mexican, and navy beans.  It's kind of relaxing to pod them out in the evenings.  Then there's garden clean up, more grass cutting, putting things in the freezer, market day preparation every Thursday, plus the usual house chores.   Also need to dry herbs.  Then Harold will be working with the sugar beet harvest.
     Like I say, we can sure think up plenty of work for ourselves to do!!  No boring times here!
Now, if I could just relax like my cats around here.   Here's a photo of a couple Mama cats and a couple kittens relaxing in the cool shade of tall weeds.   What a life!   Well......... they have been working hard lately getting mice! 

Taking it easy, living the good life.

And this gets you up to speed on what's going on here at Honey B Farm!