'Maters in the window sill. The Black Crims and Black Sea Man tomatoes (both "Russian" in origin) have outdone themselves for us this year! Tomato sandwiches and salads galore. It seems that the recipe for success in the Pacific Northwest is to grow a variety of tomato, melon, etc. that was designed to survive in Canada, Minnesota or Russia. 😄
....or onions, however you prefer to say it. This year, we've got 'em.
We had to harvest our onions and shallots earlier than planned this year, primarily because we have some very hungry bunnies who have infiltrated our garden and have completely destroyed the carrots, peas, beets and beans, nibbled the potatoes down to a nub and might have claimed our precious onions next. Sure, people say that they won't eat alliums (garlic, onions, chives, etc.), but let me just tell you, these bunnies will! In fact, they slayed my first planting of garlic chives (and my hostas, pineapple sage, parsley) before I replanted them in a very tall pot that they cannot access. I am being undone by 4-ounce fluff balls, and that is annoying.
So today I started processing some of our onions and shallots. Whoa, Nelly! My house smells.... pungent.
Half of the onions are getting chopped and frozen, just under half are being dehydrated for seasoning and soup bases, likewise the shallots. The funk coming out of my dehydrator right now is eye-watering.
Up next, Padron peppers! I don't especially look forward to the resultant air quality that their processing will produce either, but there are bigger issues here - the "spicy hands". If you've ever prepared hot peppers at home, I know you know what I'm talking about. The capsaicin gets on your hands and anything you touch with your hands - eyeballs, nose - not mention when you visit the bathroom. IT IS BAD NEWS.
Gloves are an absolute must to avoid the spicy hands because no amount of soap & water, baking soda, milk, yogurt, vinegar or anything else will completely remove the oils. My hands were so fiery last time I processed Anaheim peppers (which aren't even that dang spicy) that I literally couldn't sleep.
So, learn from my fail and proceed with caution, fellow kitchen garden geeks! Happy harvest!
It has been another strange Summer here in Western Washington. We've had a few 90+ degree days, quite a few 80+ degree days, and as of late, a lot of meh 70ish-degree days with overcast skies and relatively high humidity. The garden is as confused as I am.
We've been fairly fortunate so far this season, in terms of wildfires and the resultant smoke and pollution. They have been fewer and smaller in our state this year, which is a huge relief to everybody.
So the air quality is decent, but the humidity/heat/rainfall has been all over the map. Add to that that we've had a massive wild rabbit boom this year, and the sad state of my garden and it's output are thus explained. Even the zucchinis are under-performing this year. What the....???
The plants that are providing for us this year are our two remaining apple trees (two were lost in "snowmageddon"), our pear tree, the Himalayan blackberries that have enveloped the chicken yard, the pumpkins, the rhubarb, my porch-pot herbs (assorted thyme, chives, oregano, rosemary and pineapple sage) and the weeds, both good and bad.
Scabby Apples, variety unknown
A *volunteer* rhubarb!
The nettle harvest was decent, and made a good dozen jars of nettle pesto for the freezer. The broad-leaf plantain has also given plenty of itself for use in our soaps. The not-so-helpful weeds have been working overtime to try and take over the pasture - Canada thistle, tansy ragwort, and, my frenemy, the Himalayan blackberry, are trying the hubs' patience and doing a number on his scythe.
We've been getting about a five gallon bucket's worth of apples daily in the form of windfalls alone. The piggos are very much enjoying the bounty. Just the thought of trying to process those apples into something like juice, cider or jam wears me out, so I've more been more than happy to pass them along to the pigs, who will magically transform them in to bacon and chops for me instead.
Kevin Bacon, Hereford/Berkshire, 220ish #
Jimmy Dean, Gloucester Old Spots, 190ish #
Both approx 7 mos.
Kev-Kev and Jimbo scarfing some apples
Our neighboring blueberry farms are having a great season, and I need to stock up before they're done for the year, but I just haven't mustered the energy to get myself down there yet. I know the window of opportunity on nabbing a lot of these fleeting harvesting and foraging opportunities is closing, so I need to hustle my bustle and get those goods socked away before this Summer officially peters out.
Major drama in the chicken yard a few nights past - Spiderman vs Batman (seriously). Batman is our mellow old black Cochin roo (pictured below) and Spiderman is our newest roo, who seems determined to climb the pecking order by any means necessary, up to and including the beating-down of his brother birds.
Our sweet Batty-boy
Why on earth would you have two roos? you say. Actually, we have four roosters! Darth Vader (a Black-laced Red Wyandotte/Australorp mix) is the king of the chicken yard, followed by the sweet and humble Batman, and lastly, Godzilla, a young Cuckoo Marans. Everyone got along just fine until Spiderman entered the mix.
Spiderman came along with four hand-me-down hennies that were gifted to us. Being that we'd had multiple roos already who managed to live relatively drama-free, we thought we'd attempt to gently work Spiderman into the mix. We're a few weeks in, and thought that things were progressing slowly but well in the right direction, until the other night.
When it was time to lock the chickens up for the night, Scarlet came upon a rattled, bloodied Batman cowering in a corner of the coop, not willing or able to hop up to his usual roost. He wasn't badly hurt - just his comb - but it was enough to get our attention. At that time, however, we didn't know who had done the damage - a fellow roo or an incompetent predator. The answer came the next morning, when Scarlet interrupted Spiderman trying it on again with poor Batty. Scarlet shooed Spiderman away and closed Batman up in the coop for his own safety, until we could figure out our game plan for restoring peace to the chicken yard.
Having got his little butt whooped twice in less than 24 hours, Batman was pretty traumatized, though, thankfully, not seriously hurt. We set him and his main laydie, Louise, up in a extra large pet carrier inside the coop.
It has been my experience that injured/shocked/recovering critters - especially poultry - feel better, heal better and plain-ol' survive better if they have a buddy with them during their convalescence. I also decided to keep the "private room" as it were in the coop and around the other birds (but out of reach of would-be attackers) to further lessen the trauma of the change. Two days later, Batman & Weezer are right as rain and back in the mix with the rest of the flock. Spiderman was swiftly removed to freezer camp, and all was made right again in the Yard.
The poppy seed harvest (such as it is) is now in, and the results are underwhelming, to say the least.
The borage took over the pollinator/botanical beds this year and squeezed out all but 4 poppy plants. I should have knocked the borage back a peg - or five - but just didn't have the heart to do it since our honeybees LOVE the stuff.
Our pollinator bed - borage, poppies, calendula and bachelor buttons.
It's a trade off, I guess.
Sorry, Ukrainian Grammies. I wanted to attempt makivynkthis Christmas with all homegrown poppy seeds, but it was not to be. While the recipe calls for a staggering three cups(!) of poppy seeds, I managed to grow just a scant half cup this year.
I *might* be able to eek a lemon poppy seed loaf or two out of this, with a dash leftover to throw in a batch of soap (poppy seeds are the best exfoliants ever), but the makivynk - she will have to wait a while longer.
On the plus side, other Ukrainian favorites grew well this year - beets, cabbage, tomatillos... ok, well pretty much just beets and cabbage. Borshch and holubtsi for everyone!
Our predictably unpredictable end-of-Summer weather here in Western Washington is wigging me out.
One day it's 80's and deep-south humid, the next it's 60 degrees and straight downpour. It's Summer, it's Fall - no wait - it's still Summer. Hows about some hot rain to go with that 90% humidity? My brain has slipped into Fall mode - sleep in, bake bread, wear pjs all day, read, read, read. Meanwhile the copious sweating and 5 pound zucchinis snap me back to my reality - it's the end of Summer push.
I have already put up 50ish pounds of our squash, dozens of pounds of beets, assorted flavors/colors of homemade egg noodles and my puercos will soon be in the freezer as well; we're in no danger of starving. And yet, as tired as I am of picking and processing our produce incessantly, I can't stop. There is a MST of stuff still be done before I can laze about with a clear conscience.
This coming weekend is the 4th (5th?) annual Jam-o-Rama with my homegirl, Jen. Next weekend will be apple juicin' fest, and the week after that, probably tomato sauce and salsa time. I'm kinda tired just thinking about it...
Even if I don't make epic strides each day, as long as I can/dehydrate/freeze something, I feel like I'm making at least a little dent.
"Italian veg" going in the freezer - yellow squash, zucchini, scarlet runner beans and basil.
Our trio of piglets, Baykin, Proscuitto and Porkchop (aka Chopz), are rapidly approaching their date with the abattoir. I find myself eager, relieved and a little sad too, but mostly, relieved.
Back when they were still cuteish.
These three little piggies joined the Boggy Hollow crew back in mid-March, just eight weeks old and weighing in at about 30 pounds each. Ever since that moment, it seems to have been their primary mission in life to eat us out of house and home. We have no real way of knowing what they weigh now until the deed is done and their hanging weight is pronounced, but if they're not at least 200-pounds each, I'm a monkey's uncle. Specifically, asad, angry, idiot-who-spent-her-last-dime-on-pig-food, variety of monkey's uncle.
The ideal weight and age for harvesting a hog is 225-270 pounds, more or less, and at around 6 months of age. These three are nearly 8 months old, and hopefully 225 or better each, so the time has most definitely arrived for them to move on.
Even if they're short on weight, there are others issues in play that make this the right time to harvest. At the top of our list is that Winter is coming.
Can I get a what-what for my Game of Thrones peeps?
More specifically, mud season is on it's way back, and slogging 40+ pounds of feed per day through shin-deep liquid clay mud has limited appeal.
Secondly, the pigs are eating an outrageous amount of food these days. Their rations have been increased to one 40# bag of rolled barley per day, all of our (and our friends') windfall apples (5ish pounds more or less per day?) and anything coming out of the garden that is past it's prime/less than perfect, such as blimp-sized zucchini, mouse-nibbled cantaloupe, corn stovers and aphid-ravaged kale, plus their daily ration of our fresh, raw, goats milk. In the past, we've supplemented their rations with bakery outlet bread products, but the failure of many grain crops this year and last has made laying hands on previously unwanted leftovers nearly impossible most months.
I'm competing with cattle ranchers, chicken farmers and food banks for the day-old and otherwise not-fit-for-sale (often utterly perfect), increasingly scarce calories, and so, with "terminal" stock that is near harvest anyway, I gladly bow out of the fray.
Lastly - flavorful, clean, humanely raised pork (and all meat for that matter) is expensive. Our family of four eats about one pound of meat/protein per evening meal, at an average cost of $8 per pound. That figure factors in that we've been eating a fair amount of grass-finished ground beef (at around 5.99/lb) and occasionally a nicer cut of beef, lamb or pork (up to 10.99/lb or so) with our own wild-caught seafood (salmon, crab) sprinkled in the mix to spread things out. Conservatively, that puts our monthly meat budget at around $240 per month, for just a single 4-ounce serving per person, per day. The pigs are presently eating one $13 bag of barley per day. Alas, the time to pay the piper has arrived.
At 7 1/2 months old, they still look kinda cute, right? After you nearly lose a few fingers to their eager maws, maybe not so much. Their charm fades pretty quickly after that...
The bottom line is, it's time for us to stop feeding the pigs, and time for them to start feeding us.
With any luck, our 1 piggy (the other 2 are going to our Mamas) will yield us enough pork to put beautiful, high quality meat on our table until this time next year. Whether or not we'll find ourselves raising and harvesting our own pigs at this time next year depends completely on how this pork tastes, and how the numbers shake out when all is said and done.
I do offer my thanks to these odd little (huge) critters for the nutrition and sustenance that they will provide for my family, and for the experience that we've had with them this Spring and Summer. Our critters help us grow as farmers and as people. They teach us so much.
Many thanks, mis puercos. Update 9/21/13 - The butcher shop called, the piggies' hanging weights were 170, 170 & 207 pounds. Using my marginal math skills, at a total cost of about $1300 (initial purchase price, feed, kill fee), divided by the estimated final "wrapped" weight (70% of hanging weight - 547 x .7= 383lbs) equals roughly 3.39/pound. Not a huge win, financially, but when compared to the average cost of the cheapest cut per pound of organic/non-CAFO pork that is commercially available, (which is usually the ground, unseasoned pork), we'll enjoy a savings of about $3.40 per pound. On the "nicer" cuts, the savings go up.
Speaking strictly financially, this was a worthwhile endeavor for us. We'll be keeping just one of the pigs for ourselves, the 207-pounder. The other two are destined for the freezers of our parental units.
So, based upon my voodoo math - 207lbs x .7 = 144.9 (the "wrapped weight"), times our cost of $3.39/lb = $491.21. Our year's supply of pork will have cost us $491 instead of $983 - a $492 savings. :)
I've been running around today trying to put the finishing touches on my crafts, produce and what-not before getting up bright and early tomorrow to sell my wares at the annual Love our Local Fest here in Olympia.
I somehow got the bright idea to make a bunch of my homemade egg noodles, using our eggs and our produce, as if I wasn't busy enough. Now I'm looking at pulling late-nighter/all-nighter #3 in order to get all of this pasta rolled, cut, dried and packaged. Oof! But on the up side, isn't it pretty?
Egg noodles made with our Cylindra beets
As much as I look forward to going to and spending the day at the market, I gotta admit, I'll be a little relieved (and probably sleep for 24 hours straight) once it's done. August is already so busy around here, it'll be nice to get in quick breather before the school year starts up again.
This morning I woke up to a fiery-hot pain in my shoulder. In fact, my entire right arm feels fit to fall right off. I think I've managed to figure out why...
...I've been knitting. A LOT.
...picking, washing chopping, slicing and grating dozens of pounds of squash.
...cutting and trimming up fifty-bajillion bars of soap.
...hand wrapping and labeling those same fifty-bajillion bars of soap.
Yes, my house is in ruins right now, but aren't my knits and soaps purty?! That 40ish pounds of squash that I put into the freezer last night is a different kind of purty. I feel very pleased with my level of productivity, but madre, my arm! :\
Blueberry season has finally arrived, coinciding with King and Pink salmon seasons, and our family's perennial favorite, crabbing season. That's a whole lot of seasoning.
Because we live at the base of a peninsula that is home to umpteen blueberry farms and salt-water boat launches, we get quite a bit of traffic whizzing past the house each day. And we're looking to capitalize on that. :)
We had a very quiet little grand opening for our bitty little Farm Stand this past Sunday. We didn't make a killing - by a long shot - but we did send some of our beautiful eggs and blackberries off to new homes, and hopefully got our name out there just a little as well. We intend to do the Farm Stand at least a few days per week, as long as the garden and chickens do their bit to supply us.
I'm also plotting a mega-grande garage sale to purge the odds and ends that we just don't need or use anymore. My girls have decided to let their Care Bear sheets and American Girl dolls go to some other lucky little girls. : \ So now it's up to me and Bill to do our bit, which entails sorting through bookshelves, drawers and closets, and those two dozen or so pesky boxes that have sat in the basement waiting patiently to be unpacked for, oh, three years. *gulp*
But I figure that if we can get our crizzap together quick enough to get this garage sale put together in time to take advantage of the blueberry and fishing traffic, and we manage to have the farm stand open for the day as well, we could do a fair bit of business. The staggering amount of sorting, and shifting and re-folding and moving... uhg. I'd rather not dwell too heavily on that aspect of the run-up to the sale of the century.
I'll post our plans for the sale/stand-a-palooza just as soon as we figure it all out. In the meantime, if you find yourself in North Olympia and in need of zucchinis or beets....
I really need to weed our front yard. Seriously - it's looking rough. I mentioned my plans to head out there and start pulling the hawksbeard that is running riot through my pitiful flower beds to Billy, our resident bee-man, to which he said said "Awww... leave it for the bees!"
Well, dang. If you insist...
Bill's "buzzers", coming and going
By chance, would forgoing doing the laundry benefit the bees in any way? ;)
Our pair of purty Midget White Turkeys came today!
Cindy, the lady that we got them from, said that she isn't 100% sure of their gender, but she suspects that we may have two toms. This should be interesting...
So far, they seem mostly curious, with a side of intermittent, mild panic. One of the two was initially pretty agro toward the Turken hen and her babies who live in the neighboring run, jumping and attempting to square off with her through the chicken wire. Vulture, the mama hen next door, was utterly nonplussed by this bizarre display, and eventually turkey-lurkey gave up the macho show cooled his jets.
As you may have noticed, Livy, our resident bird nerd, got a touch snap-happy with the camera, following the arrival of her new charges. These photos are 4 of 25 that she took in the space of about 3 minutes. Girl loves her some birds!
We've have both read and been told by experienced turkey-folk, that the poults should stay in their run for a few days, to get a sense of home, before being allowed out to mingle with the rest of the flock. Eventually, they'll be given free reign of the chicken yard, and will hopefully, by then, be happy enough in their new home that they don't immediately head for the hills and/or fly straight into the mouth of a coyote. Turkeys are notoriously, shall we say, not geniuses.
I'm just hoping that having two birds, and both of them being so well started, practically insures that we'll end up with at least one finished bird for our holiday table. *KNOCKING ON WOOD NOW*
Our little farm was just accepted as a vendor at the Love Our Local street fair here in Olympia. It's a one-day event, August 25th from 1-9, so it's going to be a long, hot day, but we're totally up for it! we're going to be selling our farm produce and my crafty swag too, so this will be a very interesting bellwether for our future farm, bazaar and market endeavors.
I anticipate that we'll have a boatload of produce on offer, if the size and staggering growth rate of the zucchini, tomato and corn plants are any kind of indication... :) Now I just need to look through my knits and other assorted crafty goods to see what I have on hand that looks like it will jive at a peak-of-Summertime sale. In other words, no scarves. My wheels are turning. It'll be nice to have a "bazaar" that isn't smack in the middle of the holiday crush for a change.
For more info on the when and where of the Love Our Local market, visit loveourlocalfest.org
The girls and I spent part of the morning putting on the first coat of paint. Then it got hot, so we decided to retreat indoors for a while under the pretense of letting the first coat really, really dry. Here we have what shall eventually be known as, before:
After will happen when the sun lets up a little.
In a wild, recklessly optimistic fit of hopefulness, I went ahead and added eight pounds of organic lemons and limes to our CSA produce order, in the hope that we'll have a splashy grand opening this weekend, featuring lots of fresh garden greens, herbs, fresh flower bouquets (maybe), eggs and delectable marionberry and lavender lemonades, hand squeezed by these two little enormous rascals -
The monkeys (Primatus Gigantis Boggy Hollowi) at the helm, eager to fix you up a tall, frosty lemonade!
So if you're in our neck the woods this week or next, stop by and say hi! And while you're not looking, a few pounds of kale *might* just show up in your car...
Not having been raised in a farming family, I've had to glean little morsels of folksy, hand-me-down farm wisdom wherever I could. Things like:
-Tomato plants go in the ground on Mother's Day weekend -Don't cut hay before the 4th of July -Fresh cream won't whip unless it's at least 3 days old -Turkey poults are constantly on the lookout for new, more exciting ways to die -Foxes and coyotes are at their murderous peak during the full moon
And maybe the most apropos bit of wisdom re: a Western Washington garden - if it isn't planted out and well established by mid-July, your crop ain't happening.
Our Summers are short here and typically have just two weeks or a month of any kind of heat, which is not always enough to make many garden favorites happen. I've learned the hard way that, short of using a greenhouse; hot peppers, watermelon and anything else that takes more than 90 days to grow or a month's worth of heat to ripen, isn't meant to grow here.
There are exceptions, of course, a few of which are merrily growing away in my garden right now. My short-season corn is looking amazing, and well after I'd already resigned myself to the fact that in the land of mold and hungry raccoons, there would be no homegrown corn for us, ever. Behold the beauty (and note that the tassels cometh!) -
Yukon Chief Corn, day 37 (direct sown on 5-30-13)
Minnesota Midget Melons (Cantaloupe), day 70 (started indoors 4-27-13)
These melons are supposed to only take 70 days from seed to fruit (hence their appeal), but were held up on account of my delay getting them out in the ground, and their very rough (nearly fatal) transition from indoors to out. I'd love to see our first melon harvested before July is out, but I guess we'll get what we get when we get it.
Toma Verde Tomatillos, day 70 (started indoors 4-27-13)
Giant Greystripe and Miriam Edible Sunflowers, day 42 (direct sown 5/24/13)
It may not look like much, and honestly, it's not, but to me... how do I put it? I get a sense of pride and nervous excitement when I think about my little garden, and all of the stuff that is growing beautifully there in spite of it a) being grown in soggy/unsunny/unpredictable western Washington, and b) being grown by a lady who is still learning to speak and understand the language of plants. So far I haven't screwed this up. Suffice it to say I'm pleased.
In addition to all of the up and coming beauty and bounty in the garden, there are a few other foodie delights coming our way shortly - wild blackberries and the opening of crabbing season in the Puget Sound. Happy days are here again!
If you're interested in learning more about any of the varieties of seeds/plants that I've mentioned here, you can read more and/or purchase some of these same seeds through Victory Seed Company and Seeds of Change. By the way, this is not a sponsored post - just one farm nerdess gushing about her garden. :)
According to a handy-dandy little chart on Wikipedia, any chicken egg larger than 2.5 ounces (70+ grams) is considered "Jumbo". Well, they might need to invent a new category for some of our laydies' eggs. Check it out -
Booyah!
Can you read the bitty numbers on my scale? That there egg is a quarter pounder! Curiosity had me googling average duck egg sizes and even they don't typically get this big. Dear hen that laid this - thank you and also, I'm sorry. Maybe we should cut back your protein a tad? :-\
Now that I've brought this egg in, the girls are suddenly keen to have eggs for dinner. They're dying to see how many yolks might be inside this badboy. My guess is at least two. We'll let you know!
It's been just over a month since we got the very first few starts and seeds in our garden - radishes, kale, lettuces and peas - most of which started off on such rocky footing that I wondered if we'd started too late, chosen the wrong varieties, or otherwise blown it again this year.
In spite of my concerns, we kept plugging still more seeds and starts into the garden beds and watering everything each evening just before heading in for the night. It's a really nice "chore" when compared to some of our other glorious options, like feeding the pigs. In the garden, you get to calmly walk amongst little green things and flowers, doing a mental inventory of any changes that have occurred in the past 24 hours, or any that will need to be made in the next 24. All the while, swallows and robins swoop and dart overhead, catching mosquitoes and gnats. It's extremely peaceful.
Even being that connected with a place, you don't always really notice the very small daily changes. It's sort of like raising kids - you take your eye off of them for a minute, and suddenly they're huge. Our garden pulled just this sort of presto-change-o on me this weekend. We left town for just 3 nights, only to come back to our very own greenery jungle.
Everything grew appreciably in just those few days. The beet tops have grown by inches and they're starting to put on some root as well. The lettuces and kale need a good, heavy-handed trim, lest they go to seed, and the peas, finally recovered from the trauma of transplantation, have started blooming like crazy and setting pods. But the runaway success, the beast in my garden are the radishes. Behold -
A 2-ounce Cherry Belle and a 3-ounce French Breakfast radish.
These beauties were planted from seed just 35 days ago. Gotta love that fast turnaround! We still have several dozen in the ground that urgently need picking, so it looks like our little pipe dream of a small, roadside farm stand could be just a day or two away from becoming a reality. We won't have much variety - just the radishes, kale, lettuces, oregano, lavender and some eggs - but boy, what a long time in coming this little project has been! Farmer Chelle is one happy little camper right now. :)
We have 20 pounds of these mystery variety pears, which for a week after picking, sat in a cool back room to finish ripening and are now spot-on, perfect. The clock is ticking on these babies, and I'm stumped about how to best use them.
We have TONS of jam already, but then again, I do give a lot of it away. Hard cider sounds delicious, buy I feel like that isn't fully capitalizing on these pears' potential. Chutney? Pear sauce, a la applesauce? HELP!
I know of one way that we'll definitely be eating them - I just made a fresh batch of chevre last night. :)
Over the course of the past week or so, it has become increasingly clear to us that the apples and pears were ready to come down. In fact, Scarlet and I would go and gather the windfalls each evening to add to our goats' rations, and were noticing a definite increase in the amount of apples committing hara-kiri each day. Picking time was nigh.
But picking apples from our non-dwarf, very old apples trees is not a task to be undertaken lightly. This is no picturesque, Pinterest-photo op. This is a bark-chunks-to-the-eye, ladder-teetering, crinked-neck, farmer versus tree, battle royale.
Apple to the cheekbone - coming up!
Our tallest apple tree is in excess of 15 feet high. And in the torturous way of many fruit trees, seems to grow it's biggest, most perfects fruits in the unreachable branches located 15 feet up, dead center. Basically, they're completely inaccessible, which isn't to say that we ever learn to just leave those apples alone. Nope, our cider-greed blinds us to the futility of our pursuit.
This year, we judiciously decided to throw in the towel (for now) after managing to pick and knock down 140+ pounds of cider and sauce-worthy apples, leaving another frustratingly impossible to reach 30-50 pounds still in the trees.
We also managed to collect another 13 pounds of smooshed, bug chomped or otherwise "imperfect" apples to share with our goats.
The goaties' share of the goods.
Our share! :)
As if our epic apple haul weren't enough, we also finally had a pear crop. Granted, at just 20 pounds, it wasn't huge, but when measured against our previous best-ever crop of one lonely little pear, we counted ourselves exceedingly lucky to end up so flush with fruit.
Aren't they purty?!?
With the picking being done, we now enter phase two of the fruit-a-palooza; washing, peeling and juicing. Hooboy!
With 160+ pounds of apples and pears that will need dealing with, I predict a busy week, filled with intense paring knife, apple peeler and steam juicer usage. I'll have to keep my eye on the prize - that first pint of ice cold homemade cider.
Like last weekend's jam-o-rama, this fruit-a-palooza may require a little external motivation to get through. Cue the motivational montage!
