First Frost

The first frost descended upon us.  At 6pm I saw the forecast for freezing temperatures.  With only an hour of daylight left, we all went out to the garden and started picking.  We picked every pepper and cucumber and then got as many tomatoes as we could before it got too dark.

This morning we had buckets all over the garage. We dropped everything to pay attention to these vegetables.  I've learned that sitting in buckets in the garage does nothing to improve vegetables. 

The tomatoes were separated into ripe, almost ripe, and green.  They will continue to ripen in the house.  The ripe cherry tomatoes went to the table. Next week those orange ones will probably be ready, and maybe another week for the green ones. 

The canning tomatoes were also separated.  The ripe ones went into the blender and crock pot, just filling it.  After a full day of reducing, they'll be canned.  The rest will go when they are ready.

Even the peppers got separated.  The red ones will go into the dehydrator while we wait for the green ones to finish ripening.

In the midst of it all, we kept the apples going.  A friend lent us her food strainer.  She said it handles peels so we wanted to try it.  We sliced the apples up with a corer/wedger and filled the stock pot. I think it only took 15 minutes to wash, shove the thing down, and throw the apples into the pot.  After almost two hours of stewing, we ran them through this food mill.  Out one side came beautiful applesauce and pulp came out the other side.  My daughters took turns cranking the handle and I was shocked when it was done in less than 10 minutes.  Wow!

With the frost, we are full into harvest, but we have also started back to homeschooling.  God's abundance is mighty.  We laborers will try to keep up.