Week #38, #39 and #40: Camping and Cleanup

It is finally Fall and everything seems to being slowing down rapidly here on the farm.  During the last three weeks we ripped out the rest of our corn and fed it to the chickens, rototilled and planted a cover crop of peas and oats in another garden plot, and actually managed to get away for a week of backcountry camping and canoeing in Algonquin Provincial Park. 

Campsite at Philip Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park.  We left from the Brent launch onto Cedar Lake on September 22nd and spent the nights on Catfish Lake, Burntroot Lake, Hogan Lake, Philip Lake, Radiant Lake and Cedar Lake. The trip was a lot of fun!

Our chickens are now laying 10 per day no problem.  Aaron knows a few people at his work place that will buy them so hopefully that will cover the cost of their food.

With our last remaining peppers (habaneros and Hungarian Hot Wax) we made hot sauce, along with a hot pepper powder. The habaneros are very very hot!  We also saved the seeds for next year.  Aaron also acquired some ghost peppers complete with seeds for next year.   Ghost peppers are 500% hotter than habeneros!  It will not take much to spice our meals next year if we can grow these crazy ghost peppers.

After skimming the skins and seeds from the top of the pot that we made our hot sauce in, we dehydrated it and used a Mortar and Pestel to crush the habanero/Hungarian wax pepper remains into a fine powder that is in this shaker.



We have a few remaining projects to hopefully get to in the last 12 weeks of the year which includes harvesting our last carrots and rutabaga, finishing the rest of the cover crop, making the fencing around the chicken run higher, and maybe building a cold store in the basement.

Next weekend we are celebrating our harvest by hosting Thanksgiving dinner that will feature many of the delectable delights that we have been blessed with this year from our hard work.  We were thinking about having one of our chickens instead of Turkey, but we decided with our busy schedules there wouldn't be enough time.  We just bought a large precooked ham instead.