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.

 

Posted with Blogsy

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?

 

Posted with Blogsy

Hey, hay!

We're getting the hang of this. We posted an ad on Craigslist, "Wanted: spoiled hay for mulch." Lo and behold we got a reply the next day saying there were 70 bales for the taking in a field less than 5 miles from here. Husband somehow managed to load 17 of them in his Toyota pickup and claims he got home with all of them. Ruby is counting.

 

Posted with Blogsy

September bounty

The weather is holding up . Warm (by which I mean it hit 70) and sunny again today. It feels like a miracle.

Today's harvest included some pole beans, finally. The green ones were there all along, just not as easy to spot as the yellow:

 

These squash are small, but I'm still having trouble with rot, so I didn't want to risk leaving them too long:

 

Posted with Blogsy

In other news

I made these drapes all by myself. For our tenant in "dad's house" because the old ones didn't dry-clean well and needed to go. It wasn't all that easy, but I got them done and they look great. Thank goodness for Husband's curtain rod construction and hanging abilities.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Herb drying

Herbs are fun to grow because they are far less picky than veggies - in general, they like to be ignored and they like bad soil. We also love to use them in the kitchen. Today, I harvested mint, tarragon and savory, and put them up to dry. We mainly use the dried mint for tea.

I'll have to think about trying other herbs next summer. One of my very favorites is rosemary but I don't usually bother to dry any because it is winter hardy here (well, usually) and can picked from the garden year-round as needed. We did get several oregano plants and one sage plant started and those will be harvestable next year. It's worth doing.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

What we need

If we get one or two more weeks of warm-ish weather, our harvest this year will be pretty impressive. Well, impressive to us. We are not about to win any awards or anything. However, if we don't get some more sunshine, the frost will be here before these little yellow beans (French Gold Pole Filet) ever come close to having their advertised 7 to 9 inch pods. Look at all these tiny little beans:

 

We've got lots of tiny summer squash now, too, just needing a few days of warm weather. Hope nobody is doing the rain dance quite yet.


 

Posted with Blogsy