A walk to the orchard

Earlier this evening, I took a walk to the orchard to lay out where some new raspberry plants will go.

One of my friends at work has some fruit plants at her property near DC.  She also gardens. 

One day a week or two I shared that we had just planted the purple raspberry starters in the orchard.  She remarked that she had some sort of raspberry bushes that had spread quite a bit.  I gathered that she doesn't often get around to trimming them and the tendrils (branches?) that went to ground ended up taking root.  Anyway, she said she'd dig up some of the new plants.  She needed to clean up that stuff and would be happy to help me in the process.

Sure enough, she had a present of 6 small pots with raspberry plants for me yesterday at work.

I had some "minor" surgery on my back late last week and I can't do any major lifting for two weeks.  That means Wifey will be planting the bushes sometime soon. 

With my trip to the orchard, I marked (with a spray can of marking paint) the location where posts will go to hold up support lines and marked where I intend to plant two more of the purple raspberry bushes that I hope to get in the Spring.  From there I marked off spots for 8 of my friend's raspberry plants.

While on my way back I enjoyed watching a few bats dart and swoop erratically as they collected their evening's meal.  The soundtrack on my way back to the front door was a few insects, the odd jet flying over, and the slap of my flip flops on the road.

I love living in the country.

Final pear harvest for the year

The pear tree has been a success this year.  Although we only harvested a total of about a dozen pears, I'm happy given it's the first year.  It also beats the apple tree harvest where they suffered greatly from deer and Japanese beetle damage.

Below is a picture of the main harvest (the others came in ones and twos) from earlier today.  I sliced everything up to go in the food dehydrator a little bit ago.

Making some beefaroni for lunches

I won't post the recipe right now (otherwise occupied), but I wanted to post that we are still harvesting herbs around the property.

I got some still-great-looking basil from the garden (companion planting!) and some fresh oregano from the front permaculture bed to go in my batch of beefaroni.

I also used one of Wifey's quarts of canned tomatoes (seen below before adding the herbs).

I hope to be able to do a similar post next year that would include home-grown onions, peppers, and garlic.  Unfortunately, none of that stuff did very well this year.

Harvest - tomatoes

In what will surely be one of the last summer harvests this year, I picked a number of tomatoes this afternoon and a few snow peas.

In working on this post, I'm also realizing that I need to scrub down the kids' plastic basket.  Yuck.

Drying out beans

Yesterday afternoon Wifey and the big kids picked a bunch of the dried bean pods from the pole bean runners with the idea of reusing them for next year's crop.  Unfortunately, we've had some rain lately and the pods (and the beans inside) were a little damp still.

I husked the beans and put them in the oven at 120 degrees for about 20 minutes to dry them out somewhat.

I doubt it was long enough to actually damage the beans.  It's sure better for them than rotting in a bag between now and early May.

Somebody got to the hickory nuts

Something happened with the nuts.  At first, I thought thought the squirrels got to them, but on second thought, I have serious doubts that they would have done such a complete job of removing the nuts from the husks.

In retrospect, I think The Boy got bored.

More walnuts and hickory nuts

After work today the big kids and I took a bit of a walk across the property.  We made a game out of finding walnuts and hickory nuts. 

The kids were pretty successful, I'd say.