Harvesting and Processing; Final Fall activities

One of the last garden chores
was digging potatoes.

Finally, time to put my feet up for a couple of minutes, and post. Our CSA has had it's last delivery, the gardens are put to sleep. Any "putting up" for winter is done. Bags of beans, peppers, sliced apples, cubed pumpkin, and more were put into bags and frozen. I hot-water canned jars of apple butter, pickles and peach chutney. I have in no way processed everything we'd need until asparagus, lettuce and spinach starts popping up, but I did what I could in between a busy work and family schedule and other chores. As much as I'd like to claim local self-sufficiency, it won't be this year.

Our fall CSA shares were full of squashes, turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables that keep well in cool conditions. I loaded a couple of largestorage bins with veggies, punched a few holes for ventilation, and put them in the crawl space under our mud room in a make-shift root-cellar. I've noticed already that leafy greens and apples keep much, much better this way than in the refrigerator.

The first weekend in November was auspicious as that was the last day the horses were at the farm. They get boarded out to a couple of friends for the winter. That meant my husband needed to take action on the goat. He had purchased a billy goat in the spring. The timing was that the goat would be a companion for Mack, our older horse, when he was alone on our property. But Doug's intention was always to fatten up the goat to butcher at the end of the year. Well, the end of the year had arrived, and it was time for that task. One of the local hunters put Doug in touch with a farmer who processed his deer. The farmer came out, butchered the goat right on the property. Doug went back with him and helped him process the goat. Being a yogi, there's constant discussion about the ethics of eating meat. My family does eat meat, and it's important to me that the meat be raised and butchered humanely. I can testify that this goat had a very cushy life, and according to Doug, was completely unaware of his fate as his head was deep in a bucket of grain in his final moment. We've already had a stew and some breakfast sausage from this little guy.

That brings me to the final step in the harvesting and preserving process. The four day Thanksgiving weekend gave me a chunk of time to organize. After a big Thanksgiving dinner featuring a 23 pound, locally raised turkey, Doug and I loaded all the produce, meat and bread from my freezer into coolers and pulled the plug. Several hours later, I wiped the last of the defrosted ice off the shelves and started carefully cataloging and arranging the food back on the shelves. I was thrilled not to find very many "mystery" packages, and only a couple that I think had reached their first birthday. A well-organized freezer is a thing of beauty. I feel good about our efforts this season.