October has arrived, along with the Bug-of-the-Month, the Japanese beetle. Thousands of them spent the first week of the month crawling up the sunny sides of the house, trying to get inside. A certain number were successful at that, but a few minutes with the vacuum cleaner took care of them.
We had to pick buckets of green tomatoes before an early freeze, and have been waiting for them to ripen enough to can. They finally got to the point where we could work with them, so Mom and I have spent several days canning and drying tomatoes.
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| Mom's salsa, which I've already sampled--it's great! |
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| Cherry (left) and grape (right) tomatoes ready for the dehydrator |
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| We thought this crab apple looked like an old man smoking a cigar. |
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| Mom's crab apple jelly, which also tastes terrific! |
We still have a few things to take care of. I just finished dehydrating some Roma tomatoes and we want to experiment with dehydrating some apple slices:
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| There are plenty of apples to share with the barn people. |
And Dick next door traded a box full of his good potatoes and a couple butternut squash for a couple of loads of manure. We certainly had enough to spare!
Indian summer is over, now and the colder weather is setting in. Time to put in hay (we used over 200 bales last year!) and make sure all the hatches are battened, so to speak. It's a busy time of year but one that I really love. Getting everything set up so that everyone is warm and dry for the winter makes me feel all warm and maternal. It's one of my favorite pastimes.
So we've been busy but happy Little Old Ladies in the Big Woods!
