You sure have been busy Bunkie! Those blue tomato's look very interesting...do they have a great flavor? Pete sure is demanding
hey stewbies! i'm back...sort of! got a PM from sjoerd scolding (not really) me for being tardy here! i have been so buzy with harvesting and preserving. we finally got a couple hard frosts last week and the toms and peppers and warm crops are done. the broccoli and brussel sprouts and fruit are all still going strong....but...they mentioned the 's' word (snow) on the weather yesterday, coming in soon, so i guess we better hurry up and start picking everything we can in sight! picked our last blackberries in mid-October! amazing! we also dug up all our potatoes...great harvest. our huge cosmos plant is still blossoming after all this frost. i got most of our garlic planted yesterday. it was really a delight to plant in the sun and in real dirt, not the usual cold and mud! whelp, that's it for now. i do have more pics to post, but have to download them. and yup, they'll be some of the duckies. they're 19 weeks old this week! eggs should be coming on very soon. oh, and pete, got more pics of 'pete shinnanigans'. will post all soon, promise! got to go checkup on the posts...500 plus of them, wow! hope all your harvests were great this year. hugs to you all!
Good to see you back on here. The "S" word has been spoken there as well, eh? Oh dear. Well, I hope that you can get the rest of your harvesting in before that stuff blankets everything in sight there. Will be looking forward to your piccies.
thanks sjoerd, and thanks so much for PMing me. i keep meaning to get back here, but then there's the toms to can, or the peppers to be dried. you all know the drill, i'm sure! it's pouring rain here this morning. i guess we're in for quite a bit of rain the next couple of days. managed to get our garlic in and mulched yesterday. i can't believe that 55F feels so warm now! i worked mulching the garlic till the sun set yesterday. pete was no help at all. i'd make a hole, put the garlic clove in, and then he'd come over and take it out with his mouth! finally he got bored and went over to the huge mulch bale, climbed on top of it and proceeded to watch the sun set. poor guy. as i started pulling the straw out and putting it in the wheelbarrow, the bale kind of got loose, and over went pete and a bunch of straw! i called him several times worried he'd hit his head and no sign of him. i finally started digging for him, when he suddenly leaped out of the pile and headed for the cabin! darn, no camera with me!
right on droopy...never boring with a cat named pete! more pics of life here...and pete's doings... OSU Blue tomato sliced... canning our plums... some big toms 2010... drying banana chips...hopefully our container plants will procude in the next couple of years.... ed working on the woodpile... pete helping with the woodpile... sample of our brussel sprouts...waiting for a good haard frost or snow to harvest... sample of our carrots... apples on one of our 80 plus year old trees... pears on or 80 plus year old trees... pete in bushel basket, ready to go pick apples and pears... pete insists on riding in the tubtrug... louise looking for an apple, but thinks the bucket's pretty tasty too... pete found an apple... pete resting in one of the apple trees... pete posing on the other apple tree. this is the one i posted a pics of all the apples in it earlier. it has 3 different types of apples (grafted), and split maybe ten years ago and yet produces wonderfully... pete decides, FINALLY, to help me, and climbs in with the apples and starts knocking them off the tree with his paws... pete, once again, resting with the apples picked... onto the pears...pete found some... thelma and louise found some pears, too... even lizzie got into the pear action... start of 2010 apple and pear harvest, with pete checking for mice invaders... tux stayed at home and catnapped...
Pete really is the helpful sort, isnt' he? Wish mine would help out like Pete does. All they help out with is keeping the thrushes out of the elderberries. Your tomatoes and carrots look very tempting, I must say. Good thing I'm not living any nearer to you.
Such helpful animal friends you have bunkie Your fruit trees look wonderful! I have apple trees about that age and they produce, but my pear trees have been in 4 years and still haven't produced a single pear. I hope I don't have to wait 80 years!
i don't think you'll have to wait 80 years netty! when we moved here, we had apples when they were 60 years old! hmmm...i wonder if pete would like to be wrapped???! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm3dm5J5 ... r_embedded
it's 9F here and the wind is furious and it's snowing like crazy. a true blizzard. never seen the wind suck the fire and heat right out of the woodstove before. pete's in ed's lap under a blanket, and our little dog curly is curled up in my chair. wicked storm. i think this is supposed to stop around 6 this morning...can't wait!
Hopefully no damage done. Sounds like you guys were all cozy waiting it out. I loved the pics of your goings-on in the post just before the last one, Bunkie. You have a lot of helpful, and entertaining animals! Hope you're having a good day after the storm
Good grief Bunkie, it's really stoeming there. I hope that your gardens are all winterized already. The way that you described things, gave me a little shudder of chilling.
sjoerd, that's what i'm doing is shuddering right now! i have two big sweaters on and a blanket and i'm looking for the hat i knit. working on some hot cocoa. it's just one of those storms that the cold finds every leak in the cabin walls, if you know what i mean. i thought we had all those plugged up?! the gardens are all sleeping right now. we have a basement full of bushel baskets of potatoes, carrots, apples and pears that i need to preserve. i clened out the rest of our plants in the greenhouse yesterday between the snowflakes. it was 18F night before this one and it stayed above freezing in the greenhouse. but now we're going into the single digits and maybe below zero today tonight and tomorrow, i figured the temps might drop in there and freeze my olive tree, fig tree, herbs, greens, etc... so now i have a mess in the loft...amongst a few more toms to can! we love abundance! hubby and i take turns on nights like this to keep the woodstoves going. it does sound like the wind is subsiding a little....finally! can't wait for it to get light out. pete and i will take some pics for you all! daisybeans, i don't expect any damage, just some big snowdrifts with all this wind. the one good thing about the snow is it will insulate us and make it feel warmer. sad thing is...that it's a dry snow, so pete and i won't be able to make any snowpersons...yet!
heh heh heh...I know what you mean about plugging the holes. When I lived in Alsaka, I lived in less than modern dwellings and in the winter heat was a problem...and leaks. One cabin that I lived in had reasonable insulation, but on one wall, there was a problem and the cold could get through...and made two small ice circles. I called it my "thermometer"...and I gauged the coldness with these. It got so cold there that people had to plug their cars in to keep the oil pan and battery warm. I have pics showing of me throwing up a container of wasm water outsider...it came down as ice crystal powder! Really. It was in the village of North Pole, and it got to -40°F, -50°F for days at the time. Yeah, living in Alaska was fun, but it was a challenge.
