Everything is going in for the winter

October has been that kinda of month, closing the garden, collecting all the apples, putting in all the garlic and getting ready for the snowy weather, which doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon in these parts... but we are all waiting for it with excitement anyway.

Harvesting our potatoes to put in the clod storage on a beautiful early October day

Our first ever Cidering Off party (the name was inspired by a short story in Robert Kimber's book Upcountry, a must read) was held the second weekend of October.  In order to save as much of the sweetness and flavors that nature has been storing inside our apples all season, we were joined by a few good friends in making enough fresh and hard cider to hopefully last a few months.

Everyone gathers round for the first drops :)

For the occasion, a good man lent us his press (and we thank you!!!), and also shared with us the idea of using a leaf shredder to crush the apples.  This turned out to be a life saver as we had done a mock cidering day with our family a month prior to our official day of production with the desire to test out how easy or demanding this cidering business would be, and those little hand powered crushers are sure exhuasting! :)

The leaf shredder gave us instant apple sauce, which meant we had plenty of time to sit around the big bath tub chatting away while thoroughly selecting, cleaning and cutting our cider apples (a very important step if you want your mom to drink your cider! Just as important as sterilizing all your equipment...).  This first cleaning step was definitely the most labor intensive (if I can call it that :)) and then we just had to press the apple sludge through the cheese cloth in the press and drink the elixir :) 

Sorting, cleaning and cutting out the parts that don't look so good.

our quality assurance crew keeping a look out from a distance :)

Everyone left with some cider for their family and we ended up with approximately 5 gallons of fresh cider which we froze immediately and 10 gallons that we turned into hard cider (separate post to come).

It is unbelievable to imagine that October 25 I was still harvesting eggplants, cherry tomatoes and peppers! I knew a killing frost was going to pass through that night, so I finally surrendered, and pulled out all the sensitive vegetables I had left out there.

Can you say Babaganoush!  And I was so proud to find those two fluke cauliflowers who made it just in time!

What else can you do with peppers!?! I have never had such prolific peppers, I don't know what to do with them!

Because of sheer excitement, we also decided to start bringing in some hardier vegetables into our very first cold storage: carrots, potatoes and beets were tucked away in boxes filled with sand, cabbage was either turned into saurkraut or stored in the refrigerator until the temperatures drop a little more in the summer dining room (it's the unheated side of the house so it will feel like a refrigerator soon enough), and squash and tomatoes are already laid out in the summer dining room awaiting there time to be used in the kitchen.  In hindsight, it might have been a little too early to bring them in as the cold storage was not cold yet, but they still seem to have made it through the transition.  Maybe we'll wait longer next year.

Beautiful straight carrots from the double dug bed that our wwoofer had prepared, Thank you Jon!

Tomatillos turned into salsa

Cabbage into saurkraut: first you cut into very thin slivers and mix with salt, 3 tbsp per 5 lbs of cabbage and let it sit to sweat for a bit.

Then you pack it in a clean crock pot and find a plate that will be snug enough to cover and press the cabbage down into the brine

Then place a large weight over the plate (we filled this syrup gallon with water) and wait for about 2 weeks, always keeping an eye out for mold and scum on the surface (not a big deal, just remove it as you see it) and to make sure your brine doesn't evaporate too much

Voilà! Saurkraut! Once it's ready, after a few weeks, you can put it in sealed jars, making sure the cabbage is still covered by the brine, and either store these in your refrigerator or in your cold storage.  Enjoy!

With the cold coming, it seems like the gears are shifting, the energy of the wood stove is drawing us closer to the comforts of the living room, and we must put the garden to rest, bring in the bounty, bring in all of our tools, the irrigation, and empty our rain barrels before their contents turn to ice.  But it is also time to start preparing for next year and putting into the ground the hibernating garlic bulbs that will hopefully survive the winter under their cover of soil, hay, leaves and snow, to give us some of the first green shoots come the arrival of spring. We planted our garlic in the ground this last week.

But even if the killer frost has arrived, there is still some food that is not ready to go in just yet.  More cold hardy vegetables like kale, cabbage, onions, leeks and horse radish are all said to survive hard frost and to actually improve in taste afterwards. 

The morning after the hard frost, the eggplants are freezer burnt but the kale, cauliflower and leeks look great!

We started pulling out the horse radish because we don't really want to fight with the soil once the frost starts making it hard to get to the roots.  Maybe we'll leave the rest to recolonize next year, but we have to be careful... that stuff is really prolific (others would use the word invasive, but how can you use that word for something that taste so good? Just keep harvesting it at the right rate and you'll always keep it in check and have as much as you want to eat and share :))

And finally another source of food we cannot forget, and actually should emphasize further, is the world around us.  As I walked to the end of the driveway this morning I was happy to make my yearly encounter with our delicious resident Oyster mushroom that lives in our dead poplar, and grows around these cold autumn days every year.  I harvested so much of it I couldn't even fit it all in the dehydrator, I also made wild mushroom risotto and I still have a good chunk left for 3 or 4 more fresh meals.

Today's harvest of Oyster Mushrooms from our dead poplar

I am thankful for the bounty this year has provided and continues to offer.  It has been a great year, filled still with more firsts; first cider, first chicken moat, our first own fire wood, first cold storage.  Everyday we realize more and more that We live to live, to learn, to choose... we choose to live life as fully as we can, and to give and to share as much of it as we can, to improve upon our own experience every year and to use those experiences to give back to our community big and small and especially to our beautiful and generous world... so we can always make it a better place than what it was when it was given to us.

And boy are we having fun doing it all!

Alex, Léo and I biking in Acadia during the furlough... wat are ya gonna do eh?

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Til next time,
Be well