Week #36 & #37: Squash & Sweet Corn & Sauerkraut...YEAH!

Happy Fall everyone! Well, according to the calendar, fall doesn't start for another week, but in nature the season is well underway with birds migrating south, while in our area wagons full of field tomatoes are a common sight as they make their way to Heinz and other processing plants.  Elsewhere in the county, apples are now weighing down their trees, and grapes are ready to be picked for wine along the Lake Erie north shore.

Here at home we cut all of our Acorn and Butternut Squash off the vines.  Some of the Butternut Squash we discovered had gummy stem blight, while some of the Acorn Squash had a lot of squash bugs on them.  The squash bugs are just a nuisance and we brush then off, however the gummy stem blight gives our butternut squash reptilian like skin. The blight can be carried over in the seed and our squash seeds are from last year when Marianne's Gramma and Mom had squash, but they said there was no sign of blight.  Perhaps, like the late blight in the tomatoes, the wet summer created the perfect conditions.

Some of this year's harvest of Acorn and Butternut Squash.

 



Gummy Stem Blight on Butternut Squash

 



Speaking of the late blight, we removed the old tomato vines and burned them as it is not recommended to turn them over in the soil as the blight can survive overwinter.  Regardless, we will not be planting tomatoes or potatoes in that plot anyway in 2014.

We picked some sweet corn and BBQ it.  The texture is dense but it tastes very good. It probably would have tasted better a week ago when it was younger, but we were hoping the corn would keep growing bigger as the ears were really small.  This was not the case.

 Nothing says "SUMMER" better than sweet corn with salt and butter. YUMMY!

We finally ate some eggs this week.  They taste absolutely incredible and are a lot better than store bought eggs. We are starting to get seven a day now! 

The sauerkraut that has been sitting in the basement for over a month now has now been placed in jars and pressure canned.  It is a nice side to have with sausages.

Things are starting to slow down more as we approach the middle of September.  Once the corn is done, we just have the rutabaga, along with the occasional pepper and carrots left to pick.  Oh, wait...There is one more thing out there that we forgot to mention for the last few weeks. At the beginning of the season we planted edename (edible soybean)plants and we noticed that out of the 25 seeds we planted, only 3 plants came up.  What ever happened to those plants?

Week #34 and #35: The Good and the Bad...But mostly good :)

We always thought it might happen in the back of our minds, disease or predation, with our chickens being able to fly out over their fence and into the yard, but it was just that, a"what if". However, when Aaron came home one day and found a chicken that appeared to have been shaken by the neck, there was no doubt that something got it.  Three other chickens were MIA, just three conspicuous piles of feathers, and never found.  Even when we leave the gate closed, the height of the fence isn't enough to keep them in.  We stapled some wire to raise the fence up a little bit, but they jump up, land on the flimsy wire and hop out.  So for now, we are locking them up in the coop during the day while we are at work, and let them out when we are home, and on weekends.  With four chickens gone, we lost a quarter of our flock.

One of the chickens found dead outside the run.  The other three were never found, just the occasional pile of feathers around the property were located.

There is a little bit of a silver lining to this tragedy, as the remaining hens are beginning to lay eggs.  Not necessarily where we want them to in the coop (not in the nest box, but in a corner near their waterer) but at least they are laying them in the coop and not outside under bushes and trees.  The eggs are all different sizes and different shades of brown.

Eggs from our chickens. Notice the that they are not washed.  It is recommended that you do not wash them as the eggshell is permeable. Not sure how they taste yet.  We haven't had the chance to try one!

Aaron also decided to run electricity to the shed and the chicken coop so they can stay warm when it eventually gets too cold.

We also grabbed Gramma's sink and some old recycled picnic tables and plan to hook it up to the rain barrels later.

Chicken coop is now wired with two 100 watt incandescent bulbs. Two thirds of the glass has been painted over black, so they still radiate heat but not be so glaring to the chickens.

 

Reclaimed sink next to the rain barrels.  When eventually hooked up to the barrels, the small amounts of water draining out of the sink will land on the pine cones that act as a filter where the water will catch and evaporate.

With our tomatoes getting blight, we picked the best ones and tomato sauce and soup was created and pressure canned.  the tomatoes were lacking some of their natural sweetness this year, probably due to that blight.  Hot water baths are not recommended for canning tomatoes with blight  as the ph might bot be as low as it needs to be for safe water bath canning, which runs the risk of botulism.  That's enough of a reason to use our pressure canner as a fail safe.

The only crops left in the gardens are tomatoes with blight, rutabaga, carrots, acorn and butternut squash, a second planting of peas, our peppers, and our sweet corn.  Our sweet corn is getting corn smut, and although it is apparently edible for human consumption, we just give it to our chickens who love it.

Corn Smut is......yummy?

Our onions are now drying in the garage.

Aaron braided the dried leaves together and hung them in the garage.

Next week we are already into the month of September.  The nights are noticeably cooler now, and though we still have the occasional hot and humid day, the winds of autumn are definitely upon us.