This moment, these brisk autumn days, it is time to pay attention. And this is what I see; a wooly bear wiggling across soil, its middle orange band an inch wide. Spiders invading the far corners of the house. I'll leave them to weave their winter homes. For now. I see a teenager, nearly a man, reading in a hay loft. I see a boy plowing roads in a sandbox and begging his momma to remove the leaves that have littered his roadway.
I am getting dirty in a good way. I am feeling garden muscles. I am soaking up that vitamin D for all its worth. The days grow short. There is a promise of snow. And we work towards our own hibernation.
Plant: winter rye, garlic, egyptian onions, transplanted blue hollyhocks, yarrow.
Harvested: last of the leeks, rutabaga, last of the onions, kale
Preserved: dehydrated leeks, dill, hubby made a batch of beer.
Manage reserves/ prepared: stacked wood, hay up in the hay loft, unpacked games and picture books. Knitting for Christmas; this has been a week for hats of all sorts. Something nice about circular knitting...round and round and then you have a hat. I am planning on a bulk food order this week.
Local foods: Well, we've kinda blew it with apple season. One week we were too early for picking another week we were too late. We did manage another case of apples ( at a higher price) and I may try another orchard for end of season apples. Hubby is going to pursue a local pork package out in Farmington to put in our freezer. I went to farmers market for local chicken.
Waste not: mucked out goat pen and put it in compost bin, I will try to give it a good turn before the freeze and hope to have it ready for the spring.
Eat the food: Vegetable soup, enchiladas made from local chicken left overs, local chicken dinner with brussel sprouts hubby got a farmer's market. Yum!
2 comments:
Are those Egyptian onions the ones that grow all winter? Last year after searching for them I managed to find some on Ebay but they arrived at the wrong time of year for me to plant and I ended up losing them :(
Egyptian onions are a perennial onion. They grow sets off of their flower and then fall down and grow another onion. Walking onions is another name for them. Because we have short growing seasons here, we can plant the sets in the fall, plant under mulch and they will come up in the spring. Then next year I will plant the sets again. This is the first year that I have had a number of sets saved to plant.
You could also plant the sets in spring. But I have another variety I grow also and so this save time in the spring and gives them a jump start growing.
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