The Work

I know I haven't blogged about food much lately. But yes indeed we've been harvesting from the garden and putting things up for the winter. Yesterday I madeand froze just a couple of quarts of applesauce from the apples that were starting to go bad in their storage boxes. We had found a bushel of Haralsons at the Farmer's Market for just $20, and I had bought a 1/2 bushel of Honeycrisps for $23 at a local orchard. With about 20 pounds of them I made and canned two double-batches of apple butter which turned out yummy! I found the best way to cook down apple butter is in a roaster or dutch oven in the oven at 325 deg. overnight. That worked better than the batch I put in the crock pot overnight, where it burned just a bit. The rest of the apples I stored. We got apple boxes from the Co-op (any grocery would do) that have pads with little apple-shaped dents in them to put between your layers of apples so they don't touch each other. We had been storing them in the garage which was cold enough but soon getting too cold probably. So I decided to fill the refrigerator bin to the top with all the best apples and make applesauce with the rest. Some were going quite bad already so it is good to check on your storage regularly! Below is Rose helping with the apple butter, same process as applesauce, pushing the cooked apple quarters through a food mill. Not the most fun...I also made sauerkraut just before we left for vacation, October 15. Then this weekend I took it out of the crock and put it into quart jars which I have in the fridge. Cold storage would work, but we don't have anywhere in the house below 50 degrees, except for the porches which may be too cold already as the temps are in the teens and twenties lately.Above I am shredding the cabbage in my wonderful mandoline. Below I am packing it into the Harsch crock, getting the juices flowing by punching it down with a meat hammer and my hands. I love my Harsch crock! It did the job so well and looks so cool. The Healthy Traders website is the cheapest place I've found to order one from, but I bought mine at my co-op with my employee discount when I worked there. For the kraut, I used the slow kraut recipe in Jessica Prentice's Full Moon Feast cookbook. I added the caraway seeds and we like the flavor.Our garden didn't produce loads of food this year, so we stocked up at the Farmer's Market, mainly from one particular farmer who uses no chemicals and who had some great buys at the end of the season. We bought a bag of six large butternut squashes for $20 (edit: no, not $20, $10) and a bunch more of various squashes like acorn and delicata for around $2 each. We bought a large heavy bag of keeping onions for just $25. We had all that in the garage, but now that it's colder our closets--all walk-ins and all on outside walls and unheated--are the perfect temp (50 deg. or so) for storing the squashes and onions. This year George and Elijah made room in their shared closet. Last year we had them in Rose's larger closet, but this year it's such a disaster of toys and stuff that we didn't even bother. Besides, with all she crams into her closet, a squash or two got lost and wasn't found until this summer, moldy and dried out!We got a decent amount of potatoes from our lasagna bed-style garden (pictured above, just starting out last spring), maybe 15 pounds of russets. The stacked tire potato method was disappointing, however. I've only dug out one of the two stacks of four tires, but that one stack yielded exacly 16 yukon gold potatoes! They're lovely, but they were only on the bottom layer and the top three layers had nothing. We're thinking the soil was too heavy for the rootlets to grow. The greens coming out the top of the tires were fabulously large, but no potatoes until the very bottom of the pile. Oh well. We'll probably try the wire cage method next year, with a circle of garden fencing and using a mix of compost and straw for building up instead of the too-heavy soil/peat/manure mix we tried this year. Don't the potato tops look healthy? A disappointment, however.

And here's a photo of the Hearthstone woodstove we found on Craig's List for $100 (!). We are so gratful to our neighbors Greg, John, Chuck and Kevin for helping us move this 500 pound beast, and to Chuck for the truck and trailer to haul it. It's sitting in the garage. It needs a little patching in the interior, and I have the name of a guy who can do that but he's an hour away so we'll see what we can work out. I'm hoping he'll make a house call, but doubtful that he can. Gotta call him up! If nothing else, maybe he knows someone more local that can help us. That will hopefully not cost much, but since a new one of these is $3000 we're willing to spend a little money. We'll then make a hearth pad for the living room corner and buy the chimney parts and install it. Not sure when we'll do that, maybe not this year but for sure by next.

George did clean out the chicken coop last night and put a deep layer of fresh straw down. He's put an electric light in there for warmth and to mimic daylight so hopefully they'll start laying eggs soon. None so far! But they came of age at just the time the light started decreasing, which affects their laying. We'll see if the light helps. I think that first egg will feel just like your child's first steps! We're trying to figure out a way to put a food dish and water in the little tiny coop because they're spending most of the time inside now that it's so cold. Any ideas?

Winter is here in Minnesota. It's cold, there's a little snow on the collards and broccoli still out in the garden, and we've moved most tasks indoors. I'm knitting a lot, just finished a hat and scarf for myself and am sneaking in knitting some Christmas gifts for the kids whenever I can. I like the darkness and more relaxed pace at this time of year, but I do need to try and get out for a walk every day to stave off the winter blues that affect so many of us in northern climates. I better get going on that...