I don’t know about you but this year I am looking forward to winter. I am ready to tuck the animals into their winter pastures, tidy up the garden and close up shop until spring. The shorter days and cooler weather are just what I need and I am so ready to move our attention indoors and practice hibernating for a while. I know, I know- feel free to remind me of all of this in February when I am complaining about hauling another bale of hay or unfreezing another hose, all while wading through two feet of snow in below zero temperatures.
In the vegetable garden we only have the hardy crops left. Cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, collard greens, carrots, celery, beets, a couple of spaghetti squash and a few rows of tubers waiting to be unearthed. We lost our tomatoes (late blight?) but only after processing gallons of paste and dehydrating quarts upon quarts of cherry and pear tomatoes. I hope to harvest a few rows of carrots now and leave the rest in the ground, under cover of straw and mulch throughout winter, so we can pull them as needed. I am also contemplating doing the same with a few rows of beets as an experiment. The rest will be harvested and stored in our garage, layered between sand in metal garbage cans with the greens loped off. The remaining purple cabbage will be pulled out by the roots and hung, upside down, from our fruit cellar’s ceiling. The kale and Brussels sprouts will stay out until a nice hard frost to sweeten up and then brought in- the kale frozen for smoothies or beans and greens while the sprouts will be roasted and devoured immediately.
As far as berries and fruit go, we are still picking a few ever-bearing strawberries for a quick snack as we run past the patch and the littles continue to eat all the ripe raspberries before any can be picked and brought it into the house. I, myself, am most excited about our much anticipated apple harvest, we have stolen a few here and there as snacks and they are delicious. My Aunt and Uncle were kind enough to supplement our fruit harvest this year while we wait for our little trees, bushes and vines to grow up. They brought me apples from their garden to add to ours for sauce, juice and pies along with a crate full of grapes which I made into juice and canned right away.
Other than the goats, there won’t be much breeding going on this fall and the last of the pigs have been butchered, a huge relief as they were the hardest to overwinter. Over the next few months we will also be butchering some of the non-breeding sheep for meat, which will help get the herd number down to a more manageable number as we have not been able to sell anymore breeding stock.
Soon the fall routine will be in full swing, Kevin and Dad will spend more time in the woods as deer season will have begun, apple and pumpkin everything will be consumed, canned, dried and frozen. We will continue with a huge amount of celebrations, one birthday after another, sprinkled with a few anniversaries and, of course, all those autumn holidays yet to come. I hope to occupy myself with a lot of knitting, homemade chia and snuggling on the couch under cozy blanks, possibly in front of the fire, and waiting for winter’s arrival…a welcomed break after a particularly crazy year.
Are you looking forward to winter? What are your plans and must dos for autumn?
Filed under: birthdays, celebrations, family, farming, food storage, garden, grass-fed pork, homesteading, pigs, sheep, sustainability, winter
