October 2011

I think Jeanne might be really happy about this beet!

One of the first firings of our new cob oven.  Lesson learned – if you put too much wood in it, the flames can get a little intense.  Good thing we’ve got a little metal on the underside of the roof.

And here are a few things ready to go into that oven.  Roast veggies, veggie and goat cheese pizza.

One problem with eating outside is everyone thinks you should share.

Our first pizzas from the new cob oven!  Basil pesto, garden veggies, goat cheese.  Delicious!

After the pizzas, we baked two loaves of bread, two pumpkin pies, a pan of roast veggies, and a chicken.  All of this cooked on one two hour firing of the oven.

Down the road, we noticed several trees full of wild plums.  The owner of the trees didn’t want anything to do with them, having had her share over the years, I guess. On several occasions over the next few weeks, we’d stop the car and fill a couple of buckets of plums, ending up with about 60 lbs.  What to do with them, they all had these big, hard pits, way too fiddly to cut them out by hand.  Linc had the idea of borrowing a cherry pitter.  It worked so well that we bought a second one so that we could both be pitting at the same time.  A little messy, but well worth it.  We ended up canning a few jars, eating some for breakfast, and drying several gallon bags full for winter.

The field peas grew really well, and we ended up hand harvesting a couple gallons worth to throw back out on a larger portion of the field next spring (after coating them with a legume inoculants this time) in hopes that they’ll grow into a nice big crop of nitrogen fixing field peas, helping restore the soil.

We also managed to get both end walls of the greenhouse in filled with light straw-clay, then a rough coat of plaster over the east wall, a bit of finish plaster on that wall, and the inside of the greenhouse all finish plastered.  It is coming out nice, and (as it turned out when I wrote this in December), made a big difference in keeping the greenhouse and the cabin both much warmer in the middle of winter.

The October garden.  We ended up harvesting a total of $2900 worth of produce from the garden this year (had to keep track anyway for an irrigation grant we’re working on).  The goats gave us another $1900 worth of milk, yogurt and cheese, and the chickens, about $400 worth of eggs and meat.  Towards fall you start feeling really thankful and appreciative of abundance on a farm.  We still have a long way to go before we’re able to grow all of our own food, but we’re headed in that direction, and it shouldn’t be long before we’re at least growing enough extra of those things that we can grow that we can use the surplus to barter, or sell for cash, to buy those things we can’t grow here.  That’s the goal anyway!

Sun dried tomatoes anybody?

Went for a hike up Mt. Lamborn across the valley with Holden, who interned next door at the High Desert School for Sustainable Studies.  Didn’t quite make it to the top, but it was nice to get up high.

Then it was apple season.  We ended up buying this antique cider press that weighed about 400 lbs and needed a lot of repair.  We got it more or less functional, and our neighbors Hillary and Art offered to let us pick some of the apples in Art’s orchard in exchange for some cider.  Friends Zoe and Colin came over to help run the grinder and press.  We developed a good working team, with Zoe cranking on the grinder, Jeanne feeding apples, Colin cranking on the press, and Linc, well, what was Linc doing.  Taking pictures, yeah that’s it!  And testing the cider…

Just before the first big frost, we ran out in the dark with headlamps and wheelbarrows, and harvested 250 lbs of pumpkins and winter squash.  Those are Hubbard Squash on the lower level, left.  Some weighed close to 20 lbs each!  We stored them upstairs in the “office”.

After drinking cider and giving cider away, we took the remainder, bottled it, put cheesecloth on it to let it breathe, and left it to turn into raw apple cider vinegar.  As I write this in December, it’s just starting to taste like it’s ready to be capped and stored.  Great stuff.

We kept picking apples after cleaning up the cider press for the year, and started to make applesauce, then spread a bunch on dehydrator racks in the greenhouse.