End of Season One

Hard as it is to leave Hardrock when the days are sunny and glorious (where is that gray and drizzle we constantly complain about?), we are closing up shop and heading to Bisbee. Not sure of the best thing to do with the vegetable garden, but we decided to follow Ruth Stout's advice, and mulch with lotsa hay. Maybe some of the veggies will be edible, or start growing again, in the spring. So that's the Season One cliffhanger...will the garlic survive? The leeks? And what will the cauliflower look like?

Our van refrigerator, as you may know, is not much more than a single cubic foot. Today was Road Food Prep Day. From our garden, quart-sized bags of carrots, salad mix, braising mix, turnips, and green beans. From the kitchen, roasted piggie, potato salad with lemon and pesto (thanks again, Konnie), and baba ganoush made from kabocha winter squash. I picked a few tiny summer squash and left those tiny yellow green beans on the vine.

 

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Maritime climate

In warmer areas, it wouldn't be possible to still have tender, leafy greens this time of year. Here, you can pretty much grow them year round. Lucky us. Our garden still has lettuce, spinach, arugula, kale, chard, mizuna and endive.

Did you know you can eat the flowers, leaves AND the seed pods from nasturtiums? All have a nice, peppery flavor. Some people pickle the seed pods and use them like capers.

 

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Mo hay today

Someone can't resist a bargain.

 

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The frost is on the pumpkin

We don't actually have any pumpkins, and fortunately it hasn't yet been a "killer frost" (however that is defined), but to me it meant it was time to do some serious harvesting. I know frost probably won't do much damage to the root vegetables, but we'll be leaving soon for Arizona, so better to take some extra for the road. I'm leaving some in the ground, in hopes they'll be good when we return.

The beans, well, there are still oodles of the yellow variety on the vines, but I'm pretty sure they're not going to get much bigger despite the phenomenal October sunshine we are seeing each and every day.

The oblong knobby potatoes are Ozettes, a tasty local variety I planted from a grocery store potato.

 

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More inside stuff

We built the barn in the summer of 2000 but had never finished off the upstairs, known as "Carol's Playroom." This summer, we felt like we needed the space. It's a fairly gigantic 800 square feet, with a 14 foot peaked ceiling. Husband had installed the drywall several years ago, but we hadn't finished the taping and mudding. We also had quite a mold problem, evident on the upper sheetrock, so we installed a dehumidifier and a heater. After a coat of zinser to seal off the mold, I tried my hand at applying some mud on a few of the joints and almost immediately cried "uncle." The 14 foot ceiling did not make it easier and I'm a little wobbly on scaffolding as well as generally lacking in patience, so $700 and 4 days later, Ralph's Drywall had it all taped, mudded and coated smooth.

Then it was time to paint. I let Husband do the scaffold part and I worked from the floor with a long-handled roller. After three coats of paint on the ceiling and end walls, it was looking pretty good. Next we tackled the floor. If we had wanted a perfect floor, we should have sprung for a notch above CDX. I suggested we do minimal prep work (my impatience again), and just paint it with a porch-type paint, so that is what we did - a coat of primer, then three coats of the special paint. Still looks like plywood, except it's clean and purdy.

Final items to complete next spring: window trim, base molding and some work on the doors. Pretty cool, right?

 

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