Archive for October, 2010

Garden Notes

10 October 2010

Yesterday Madison had a record high temp of 85. Today is about the same.

Mowed the gardens today. The weeds really won this year; better luck next year.

Harvested the rest of the sunflowers today. I should have harvested them all when I got that first bunch around mid-September — some of them have either dropped half their seeds, or something has been eating them.

The popcorn is dry enough to pop after two weeks in the greenhouse and warm weather, so the boys and I proceeded to getting it off the cobs:

very tough job, almost wore a hole in my gloves (need to buy or invent a tool for this):

There was just enough breeze for winnowing:

Ended up with almost five quarts of popcorn:

I was very happy with the way the boys helped me. They really stuck with it to the end and were interested and not whiny the whole time. And now they know a little more about where food comes from and the amount of work it takes to produce.

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Wheat

6 October 2010

Stored another 100 lbs of hard red wheat today.

100 lbs of wheat fits into three 5-gallon buckets.

Used resealable Mylar bags in the buckets with 3 500ml oxygen absorbers in each. Closed each bucket with a gamma lid. Should stay good for a long time.

M got the buckets from her work. They were used for pickles — most of the smell is out of them and with the Mylar bags in between, I’m not worried about that smell getting into the wheat.

We have about  350 lbs of wheat stored right now. My informal goal is to keep two adults and two children alive for a year without external inputs, and I think we’re somewhere near there. I’m assuming we’ll have a growing season in that year to grow as much food as we possibly can.

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Garden Notes

4 October 2010

The Saturday night frost was pretty light, and most of the tomatoes survived. Sunday (last) night’s frost killed them all. Our thermometer said 29 when I looked at it this morning. It also got all the squash and peppers. The kale, collards, swiss chard, and beets are of course fine.

The most satisfying, exciting thing in the world for me to do is build topsoil. I have no idea why. I dug 5 gallons of kitchen scraps  and about 16 gallons of coffee grounds into the trenches in the west bed today.

UPS delivered another 100 lbs of hard red winter wheat today. I’m happy that we found a good way to use that (pancakes), and grateful that we’re well-off enough to be able to buy good food for storage.

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Stove Maintenance

3 October 2010

Today I swept the chimney, removed the insect screen at the top, replaced the catalytic converter, got the rust off the cook surface and oiled it, and filled the pail of water that sits next to it all winter. It’s ready to go.

And just in time, too. We had a frost last night, it only got up to 58 or so today, and we expect another frost tonight. So I’ll probably light the inaugural fire of the season tonight or tomorrow morning. It’s supposed to warm up again in the next few days. [Update: Yes, I lit the first fire tonight.]

We haven’t turned on the furnace yet, but I’m not planning to be a Nazi about it like I was last year. Besides, there’s no way we’ll make it to December again.

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First Freeze

2 October 2010

They tell us that we’ll have a freeze tonight, so this afternoon we harvested all 22 butternut squash, and some other large, orange squashes that are probably worthless but we’ll give them a try. I’m guessing they’re volunteer crosses between pumpkin and summer squash and probably worthless, but we don’t have much to lose by finding out how they cook up.

Last weekend I made two quarts of pickled beets that came out great — very pickley! I didn’t process them, so they’re in the refrigerator. If I have time this weekend, I’d like to make another four quarts and can them properly.

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