Work and More Work

Now that the temperatures are not so bad, Tom and I have been busy, busy, busy trying to make up for lost work time.  Tom's garden has produced enough for me to get at least mustard greens, some green beans, and collards canned. His rutabegas are looking good, and so is his winter squash.  No beets or carrots though from either of our gardens.  I will be making the trek out to my garden in a day or so to take stock of things.  Sooner or later I'll have to brave checking out my potato patch. The hot peppers and tomatoes grew well in the greenhouse despite my having to put up a shade screen to keep everything from getting sunscald; this was probably the only year we didn't need to have a greenhouse!  Anyway, we gobbled up all the tomatoes as they came in so I am looking for a bushel of tomatoes, carrots, and beets to can.

We've also started working with my sister and her husband to get Dad's firewood cut, split, and stacked.  Making firewood is a job!  I keep the DMSO and arnica handy for when we creak back home.

And yesterday and today we made the sauerkraut.  This year we got about 12 1/2 gallons.  The temperatures are on the warm side so I expect the kraut will finish in about a month.  This year I'm using one of my reader's recommendations of using a filled water bag as a weight to seal the kraut below the brine.  I'm really looking forward to seeing how that works.  Tom thinks we should get another 5 gallon crock.

He also wants me to make some horseradish so maybe that would be a good blog entry.

I'm down to 10 chickens so I went ahead and ordered another 15 pullets and 2 roosters.  They should be feathered out by the time the cold settles in and they can all work out the pecking order on their own.  The exercise should keep them warm enough, at least until I get the solar window heater built for the coop.  That project should only take me a day to finish.  I'm worried about the cost of feed so I plan to buy some bags of various whole grains and mix and coarsely grind the feed as I need it.  Since I don't have that many chickens I figure this is something I can do.

Fence work is ongoing and coming along.  Well, you do what you can do when you can do it, right?  

I'll try to get some pictures for you soon. Until later then, Be Safe and Blessings to you all!