It's the time of year when we have to begin to keep up with the harvest. Unfortunately for us, the college season begins before the harvest season ends. Before it even really gets going.
Rather poor planning, that.
That really makes life in the beginning of September pretty busy. There's been a small hiatus of sorts these last three weeks, with weather too rainy to work outdoors every day, and no harvest work yet. Aimee and I have kept busy getting ready for the college term. We're not officially on the payroll until next week, but every judiciously spent hour now in prep time is an hour of time later for farm work, an hour we don't have to be at school.
Today I didn't bother with college. The garden is starting to produce, and we need to keep up with it pretty much daily for the next few weeks until it's all in. I hiked with Haggis in the rain on Mount Harris, moved the MOFGA sheep to a nice patch of clover, again in the rain, cleaned up the MOFGA operation a bit, and then came home to harvest. Todays haul was about eight pounds of broccoli, two red cabbages which are not pictured because they're drying off on a rack in the garage prior to being refrigerated, a couple of pounds of tomatoes. Also pictured are red potatoes and cucumbers from yesterday.
About 20 pounds of veggies.
In order to make room in the freezers and fridges for this stuff, I cleaned out. This is me making lard out of that last of our pigs from two years ago. I like to keep the fatback for this and other country cookin' purposes. I grew the poor old pig -- Braeburn was his name because he liked apples -- he died for my carnivorous sins, and I'm going to eat as much of him as I can to redeem myself. The lard will keep in the fridge, and save me a bit of freezer space. I also made three quarts of dill pickle slices, and one lonely half-pint of pickled Hungarian wax pepper slices, which are canning right now in the water bath canner.
Actually, if I look I probably have a picture of good old Braeburn. Yup. There he is. In his prime. A very good pig, was he.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Welcome to our Farm Blog.
The purpose of this blog is for Aimee and I to communicate with friends and family, with those of our students, and other folks in general who are interested in homesteading and farming activities.
The earliest posts, at the very end of the blog, tell the story of the Great Farm, our purchase of a fragment of that farm, the renovation of the homestead and its populating with people and animals. Go all the way to the last post in the archive and read backwards from there to get it in chronological order.
After getting tired of spam comments (up to a dozen or more per day), I required commentators to be Google "registered users". You can write me at mwomersley@unity.edu if you have a serious comment or question and are not a registered user.
Spammers -- don't bother writing -- there's no way I will post your spam to my blog. Just go away.