Fall Garden

It didn't freeze last night.  It didn't even nip the plants.  In the last few weeks we've had forecasts for 40F and had light frost.  Last night with a forecast for 30F, we had nothing.  I was just thinking of the benefits we have in modern weather forecasting.  I'm reminded it's not as helpful as it sounds.

I have never grown a fall garden before.  I've read about it, but by August I was so worn out of gardening.  This year, we braved the August heat and put some seeds out.  One of my daughters volunteered to plant a row of turnips.  To my surprise, they germinated in that 100F sun and have grown well.  Many are already four and five inches in diameter.  We'll eat some, but most of them will go to the cows over the winter.  We'll throw some leaves on the plants when it gets really cold, but leave them in the ground. 

Last spring we tilled up a big section of our front yard.  It was all grass and we needed the extra garden space.  This fall that same area sports a large pumpkin patch.  I didn't even think of how good it would look at Halloween, but it sure does.  It would look better with those vines knocked down by a hard frost and the pumpkins sitting there like God had casually sprinkled them around.  Oh well.

My children are heavy into Halloween decorating, a good portion of which is handmade.  I love that my children value their own handmade things.  So much of modern culture devalues anything that isn't store-bought and I'm reassured that they haven't taken that all in.  My nine-year-old made this "witches broom" from sticks she found in the backyard.  I think she did a good job.

After a full morning of homeschooling yesterday, we spent the rest of the day with apples.  Two batches of apple sauce yielded ten quarts of sauce and five packages of apple pulp.  We also got five packages of apples in the freezer for pie.  One-and-a-half bushels done. 

Paralyzed by Rain

It's rainy and cold.  Being from a place with average rainfall of only 12 inches a year, rain drives me inside.  I have a friend who grew up on the Oregon coast and he once commented about how people here are paralyzed by the rain.  It's true!  I'm paralyzed!  We just stay inside and wait for it to dry out.

Except that we can't sit inside!  The first frost is predicted for this evening so we are bringing in the last of the tender harvest — tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and okra. 

The garage is getting fuller and fuller of stuff that needs attention but we're spending all our time getting stuff into the garage and not any further.  The piles of squash I set out to dry in the sun have been rained on, so we brought them in to dry off.

Because we are from such a dry climate, we call all liquid precipitation rain.  My nine-year-olds commented that we can tell from the chickens how hard it's raining.  They will stay out digging around in drizzle, but when it really starts coming down, they congregate under the coop. Even the chickies know to stay out of the rain!

The apples we have left to can are getting softer and softer.  I'm not yet recovered from last week's canning day, but we have to get going.  Today we started another batch.  It's a lot of work, but we love all things apples — fresh apples, applesauce, apple butter, dried apples, apple pie.  We're going to need more.

This working when I don't want to is part of normal life.  I've been an adult long enough to just plow through it.  It reminds me of God's presence in the everyday, even without the high emotions of mountain-top experiences.  It's easy to sense God in the midst of an intense retreat or an inspiring conference.  But in everyday life, the low emotions of valley experiences, God is just as present.  In these times of working just because it needs to be done not because I want to, I remember how God is with me whether I know it or not.  God is with me whether I want God or not.  God is just with me because of what God wants.

Making Applesauce

We had seven bushels of apples in the garage needing attention.  We got through about two-and-a-half of them yesterday making applesauce.  It was a long day — from 9am to 7:30pm with no break.  Even in my working life, I canned applesauce because the flavor is so much better, but it is a lot of work.

We have lots of Cameo apples because that's what they had at the U-Pick place, but they are bland.  We added McIntosh for flavor.

Everybody pitched in — washing apples and running the apple-peeler-corer and food mill.  We sliced up enough apples to fill the four-gallon stock pot and cooked the apples down.  It took about 30 minutes to bring them up to a boil and another 30 to cook down, stirring every two or three minutes. 

After running the cooked apples through the food mill, we filled quart jars with sauce.  The jars boiled in the water-both canner for 25 minutes.  Each batch made seven quarts.  The left-over pulp went into freezer containers for applesauce cake.

After four batches, at about 4:30pm, we had 28 quarts of applesauce and 9 containers of apple pulp.

As she was spinning the handle, one of the twins asked me how people made applesauce before food mills. I had no idea, but I suggested that back then they didn't can in jars either, so everything was different. It got me to thinking about the lives of women who had to do these hug jobs by themselves over a wood stove. I had two or three people helping all day and it was still overwhelming.  It's old fashioned and quaint to us, but I'm so grateful for food mills.

Still able to stand, we made one more batch for apple butter.  After running it through the food mill, I added cinnamon, cloves and allspice and cooked it down for another two hours, stirring every two minutes. The smell of spices and apples in the house was a preview of the holidays.  Tomorrow we'll have some on toast.

Before breaking things down and cleaning up, the twins offered to make pie crust if we'd do some more for apple pie.  It was an easy offer to accept.  At the end of the day with aching legs, back, and arms, two beautiful pies came out of the oven.  One of the twins jumped up to do the serving and I had a piece of pie presented to me on the prettiest place she could find.

These were apples from our area, but not grown on our land.  Next year will be different.  We planted fruit trees that have grown a lot already.  Each of the four apple trees are expected to produce 3-5 bushels when they mature in the next year or two.  Whereas now we are dealing with seven bushels, then we'll have a dozen or more.  I'll put more in the root cellar for fresh eating in the winter.  We'll build a bigger dehydrator and dry more.  I guess we'll have more apple canning days.

But this morning, as jars cool on the counter and containers sit in the freezer, we're not working on apples.   We ate my favorite breakfast, a recipe from my favorite cookbook that requires applesauce — Baked Oatmeal from Simply in Season.  The kids were quiet while it quickly disappeared.  Today I will do Pilates to loosen up my back, attempt some power-rest, and schedule the next canning day.  There are over four bushels out there still.