Harvest Season

This is a very busy time of year on the farm. Everything is ripening at once, needs to be picked, cleaned, chopped, cooked, canned, sliced, frozen, dehydrated, or pickled! We love this time of year. The days are full as the sun starts to get lower in the sky. The past two days have been very hot in Southern Oregon and both days were nearly 100 degrees. Over the last two weeks we have been harvesting daily meals and meals for the rest of the year!

The harvest baskets, bushel baskets, and buckets are ready for a day full of harvesting!

Gala apples and Golden Delicious apples here. Others include Gravenstein, Fuji, Macintosh, and others.

Sweet Italian peppers, banana peppers, jalapenos, sweet bell peppers, and hot Thai peppers.

We like both the globe eggplant and the Japanese eggplant and use it for so many things including eggplant Parmesan, Spaghetti/garden sauce, roasted vegie pizzas, ratatouille and more!

The tomatoes this year have been especially sweet! The pineapple tomato is wonderful, so is the Cherokee purple tomato. We also planted Fourth of July, Medford, Early Girl, Amish Roma tomato, and Sungold cherry tomatoes. We make soup, salsa, sauce, and eat them fresh, canned, or frozen!

Roasting peppers, tomatoes and onions for several recipes.

These are delicious with the wood smoke flavor.

The fire keeper! We use madrona for our winter heat source and it also makes wonderful smokey flavor on anything we cook over the madrona.

A surprise clutch of eggs were found just below the corn. These eggs were not good to keep and eat, but it is always fun to come across a secret treasure.

Peeling back the shucks so that the popcorn can finish drying.

The first round of ears that are dry enough to harvest and shuck. We planted both Smoke Signals and Blood Red varieties. The Smoke Signals is a smaller ear of corn, but many of the kernels are well formed. Blood Red is a much larger ear and needs longer to dry.

We were surprised to find a couple of the ears of corn had already popped on the stalk! Like I said, it has been 100 degrees here in the Rogue  Valley.

Galeux d'eysines is a French variety of pumpkin. It has warts on the outside formed from the sugar content. It has also been called a bumpkin among other names. It is known for its rick, creamy,smooth flesh and for the beautiful markings and color.

Turks Turban winter squash has so much flare and festivity!

Sugar pie pumpkins are perfect for breads, muffins, pies,etc.  These little pumpkins are easily cut in half, laid on a baking tray with 1/4 inch of water and baked at 350 for about 45 minutes.  Pack the softened flesh in two cup increments and it makes it very easy to use every bit of this wonderful little sugar pumkin!

Butternut squash grew abundantly this year. We will used them for stir fry, sauce, soup, and casseroles!

The beans have been drying on the vine. These are called Hidatsa beans from the Missouri River Valley of North Dakota, Cannellini Beans are a bigger thicker bean and especially good in soups like Minestrone soup!

Digging potates. Ugh, hard work and we had a poor harvest this year.  The tell tale sign of moles and gophers were abundant down the entire row of potatoes.  We hope for more next year.

Filling baskets full of dried beans.  

The sunflowers are drooping in the garden now, but there are so full of seeds that will be fed to the  chickens and turkeys.

More apples are ripening. We have made apple syrup, apple butter, dehydrated apples, apple sauce, apple crisp and apple pie! 

Winter provisions! I guess the squash needs to be used before we bun through the other wood!

The great squash harvest included Hubbard Squash, Kabocha/buttercup squash, galeax d'eysines, butternut and pumpkin. 

Fruits and vegetables that will help feed us all winter long.

We are thankful for every day and each and every fruit or vegetable that we can harvest.
How does your garden grow?

Fall Gardening

There is so much to do on the farm in the fall. We were so fortunate to have a long, warm, dry October. The apples were late to ripen, but so, so sweet and ready for sauce, drying, and syrup. The walnuts are dropping and dropping like an erratic hail storm and with the nights freezing and temperatures dropping into the 20's, they will begin to fall with great enthusiasm. The summer garden harvest was completed and the squash, pumpkin and some spicy peppers have some time to cure or dry. The winter garden is planted with broccoli, cauliflower, Swiss chard, onions, spinach, cabbage, and bok choy. There was one more row that didn't get included in the picture. Now that the rain has started, we will gather in as many walnuts as we can by the end of the month ~

Acorn Squash!

Yum! Acorn squash is one of the garden treats that feels like and tastes like dessert! Don't let its decorative look fool you. Cut it open and start cooking!
Here is the acorn squash freshly sliced open. You do have to use a little muscle, just be patient.


Once it is open, scrape out the seeds and save them for drying for next year's garden or you can rinse, salt and roast just like a pumpkin seed! Back to the baking. Rub a little olive oil on the inside flesh to keep the squash from drying out.


Place it face side down in the pan and add some water to the bottom to keep it from scorching. Roast at 350 degrees for about 1 hour.


Remove from the oven and see the wonderful sweetness browning in the bottom of the pan? That is from the natural sugar in the squash.


The outer shell will become quite stiff from roasting. Scrape out the soft, yellow inside.


Once both shells are scraped out and the squash is placed in a bowl, add a dab of butter, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and a handful of raisins. Mix well with a spoon and serve with dinner!