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Some of this, some of that

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I really look forward to when we can let the bigger kittens out. Once or twice during the night, they all wake up and the bigger ones spend about an hour going insane all over the place. Even the littles – except for the newest, tiniest one – try to get in on the action. This morning, I discovered they somehow managed to remove the liner on one of my steel toe shoes. I hadn’t picked up insoles for them yet, so this was the permanent inner part! Thankfully I was able to fit it back in, but there was a sort of padded layer in between has mostly disappeared. I only discovered there was something missing because bits of it, deepest into the toe, were still there.

I never found the bits they pulled out.

On the plus side, they are very cuddly when they sleep. When I woke this morning, I had one kitten on a hip, and another cuddled against my back. Except it turned out to be three of them cuddled against my back, including the tiny new baby I brought in.

It still needs a name.

So… sleep is a precious and rare commodity right now.

I did try leaving my door open once. The bigger kittens sure liked it, but the little ones were not at all happy about strange adult cats coming over to sniff them. Then Tissue decided to pick fights with some of the bigger kittens, and that was the end of that. For now, at least.

Anyhow.

My husband was a sweetheart and fed the outside cats for me, earlier on. While checking on the garden beds, it seems that one of the hot pepper plants in the grow bags may have been more frost damaged than it looked at first. I still have hope for the melons, though.

The wattle weave bed in the old kitchen garden seems to have really lived up to what I hoped it would be. The second frost did in most of the luffa – at least the parts climbing up the lilac bush – but all the peppers, strawberries and herbs look completely free of frost damage. I’m really impressed by this…

The Classic Eggplant is still blooming!

A lot of the peppers are still blooming, too, but only one Classic Eggplant started indoors survived to be transplanted.

It has been raining off and on since yesterday, so not a lot of outside work is going to get done today. I’ll be heading out this afternoon to pick up a parcel in the mail, and will be likely heading into town after that. My daughter treated us to take out yesterday, but the Chinese food place turned out to be closed, and we got fried chicken, instead. Which was good, but now we’re all craving Chinese food. So she’s treating us again! We had been in town yesterday for my husband’s medical appointment, so we didn’t phone ahead. This time, we have no other reason to go into town, so I’ll call first to make sure they’re open, and then place the order if they are. If they’re still closed, we’ll try again tomorrow.

In other things, my daughter’s house sitting is going well. She made a trip to the grocery store yesterday, which involved driving over in one of my brother’s two mobility scooters (they got them for my mother, who refuses to take one, while also complaining about not being able to go far with her walker because her knees are so bad). It was funny, because when she got to there and parked it before walking into the store, a guy passing by complimented her on her sweet ride! 😄

Meanwhile, my brother and his wife are having the time of their lives, and have managed to take in several countries so far. What a way to celebrate their 40th anniversary! I’m so glad they were able to do this.

Well, time to see if I can get anything productive done today.

What I’d really like to do is go for a good, long nap!

Without kittens.

The Re-Farmer

Another step forward, and don’t eat THESE berries!

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First, some adorableness!

When I came out to feed the outside cats this morning, I spotted these three. The tabby was curled up and asleep when I came over. I reached in to pet them, and the other two started purring before I even touched them! I got to pet the tabby while it was asleep, but once it woke up, it would not tolerate pets and ran off – though I did manage to pet him more while he was trying to get out of the bin and onto the shelf above!

As I was finishing my morning rounds, I decided to pick the potato berries from the large volunteer potato plant from last year’s potato patch. The frost has killed the plant off completely, which is interesting, because the potato plants in the grow bags are still undamaged by frost and barely dying off for the end of their growing season.

Potato berries are toxic, but these all should be full of potato seeds. I will do a bit more research on what to do with them, but during one brief search, I read that the seeds need to be fermented, much like tomato seeds. Which makes sense, since they are related.

For now, though, they are tucked away in the cat proof living room.

This morning, my husband had his meet and greet medical appointment with a new doctor. That went better than he expected, and he now officially has a new primary care doctor. The paperwork to transfer his medical files have been signed, and he’ll need to update the pharmacy and disability insurance company.

Some of the medications my husband is on are not at all familiar to her, so she’s going to be doing some research. We will probably do a follow up appointment with her in the near future, if only because some of the blood test results from yesterday are not in yet.

My husband was happy with her. More so than the interim doctor, that’s for sure. I had my issues. The first being, she was the only person I saw all day wearing one of those useless masks. After years of being surrounded by mask nazis, being treated like trash, and having an ever shortening list of places I could go without risk of being physically or verbally assaulted, either by customers or staff, spending so much time around a faceless person is still something that triggers anxiety. That we still have medical professionals, who should know about the mountains of data and research showing how wearing them are more harmful than beneficial, also immediately lowers my opinion of their competency. There were a few other things that came up when I asked questions about medication that are red flags for me, such as her response on my husband being on statins (he should not be on statins) or Ozempic (the side effects can be very… messy), neither of which have actually done anything to improve his health. But, this is a first time visit, and beggars can’t be choosers.

After the appointment, I did ask at the desk about any other doctors taking patients, which my mother in mind. It turns out that no, even this doctor we just saw is already closed to new patients. My husband is basically the last one. Not that I would ever make an appointment with her for my mother. She has a hard enough time with a doctor that is black (and has an accent strong enough to make it difficult for my mother to understand what she’s saying). This doctor may be the “right” colour but, in a passing comment, she mentioned her wife, and that would just be too much for my mother to handle!

The receptionist suggested I ask again in a few months about doctors taking new patients. Which is much the same situation in the other clinic. As much as I’d like to have the same doctor as my husband, since I go to all his appointments, anyhow, I’ll see if I can have the same doctor as my mother for the same reason. It’s just convenient to have the same doctor.

After the appointment, we were going to try and get my husband’s photo ID, since he has no up to date photo ID right now. Unfortunately, there’s a public sector union strike going on right now, so he decided against it. Even if we got the ball rolling locally, who knows when the processing will actually happen. So he decided to skip that – though I think the state of the streets might have had something to do with his decision. They are rougher to drive on than our gravel roads, and his back feels every bump!

Our daughter was a sweetheart and send money for take out. We were going to get Chinese food, but the place was closed today, so we ended up getting a whole lot of fried chicken, instead. It’s good, but we got less food for her money with that. Ah, well. It was still delicoius food that someone else cooked for us!

After we got home, I found a couple of messages from the financing company. I called her back and she told me everything is proceeding well. We have a conditional approval, and there are two banks vying for our file. She will choose the one that gives us the best deal, then negotiate the best contract for us. Meanwhile, we’re at the stage where we have to send in our ID, income confirmation, etc. She had tried to email us already, but the emails bounced back. Turns out she misheard part of mine, and had the wrong language spelling on my husband’s – pretty common problems with our emails, to be honest! 😄

One thing I’ve never heard of before is that they want an “ID selfie”. Basically, a photo of ourselves holding our photo ID next to our face. Which does make sense, with everything being done electronically, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of that being requested.

I mentioned that my husband does not have current photo ID, which may be a problem. He does have his old driver’s license, which is expired, but still a government approved photo ID. He also has his Metis card from when we lived in this province before. That has no expiry date, but I don’t think it counts as government approved. So for him, we got pictures of the fronts and backs of 4 different IDs, when only 2 are needed, plus a picture of him holding both his old photo IDs next to his face. I had to get one of those for myself, too. Then there’s the proof of income, which was his annual letter from the insurance company saying “yes, you’re still disabled, yes, we’re still paying you!” , etc.

So that’s all sent in. Hopefully, it’ll be enough. One bit of info I did include was that the vehicle will be in my name only; with all his medications and pain levels, my husband simply doesn’t drive. Even when he still had his license, he voluntarily stopped driving, long ago. That might also make a difference. It did with a previous company, and my husband’s name was removed from the application completely.

Either way, we’re one step closer to approval, and getting a replacement van.

Which we really, really need. The check engine light on my mother’s car has turned on again, plus I had to pull over at a gas station to top up the air in one tire. It might have a slow leak, and will need to be checked. I did a cursory check, myself, but could see nothing. I’m so paranoid about tires. We’ve had way too many problems with tires, on three different vehicles, over the years!

The Re-Farmer

Caught… and settled in

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My computer was misbehaving, and I think I discovered the cause. There was an operating system update waiting for me to power down the computer.

So while that’s doing it’s thing, I’ll just use my phone to share this bit of adorableness.

Can you spot the new face?

There are now 8 kittens in there. I managed to snag the tiniest outside kitten. This is one of the 8 that were born in the barrel, almost 2 months ago. Some of them are really tiny, still. We now have 3 of them indoors.

I was able to catch Pom Pom only because of a dislocated arm that, thankfully, reset itself.

I had been able to catch and hold Soot Sprite before, so he was a bit more used to human contact. He adjusted to indoors faster than Pom Pom.

The new baby (in the top middle) was a providential catch. I managed it shortly after I headed outside to get some work done, so it was just a quick drop off in my room.

It almost immediately found the food bowls.

When I came in again later, all 8 kittens were curled up in a pile on my bed. It took a while before I could get a picture.

Not only was the new kitten immediately absorbed into the creche, when I walk past, it allows me to pet it, along with the other kittens, as I go by!

They are all solidly asleep right now. Which likely means another sleepless night of mayhem and destruction by the older kittens, while the Littles watch in stunned disbelief!

There are at least 2 more really tiny kittens that need to come in. In time, I will take photos of all of them to pass on to the Cat Lady to share among her contacts for adoption.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: No warning

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When I woke this morning and checked my weather app, just before it refreshed itself, I saw something I did not want to see!

2C/36F

Considering the time of that reading, it was entirely possible we had frost last night.

We had no frost warnings at all before I went to bed.

Not that we could have done much about it. All those support poles and trellises are great, but make it impossible to cover the plants. At least not with the material we have. The squash patch is just too big.

When I first started my rounds after feeding the outside cats (I tried for a head count and saw 26 or 27. I may have double counted one) and headed towards the gate cam, I was somewhat encouraged. Usually, even if we have a light frost, I would still see signs of it in the shaded areas along the driveway long after it melted elsewhere. I saw only dew.

Then I started checking the south garden beds. Everything looked fine as I made my way through. Even the Little Finger eggplant in the concrete blocks, and the Caveman’s Club gourd, seemed unchanged.

Then I saw the squash growing in the compost pile.

All the leaves were drooping.

Still, this area is a lot more shaded than others, especially in the mornings. The nearby beds of onions, carrots and the popcorn cobs drying on their stalks are frost hardy, so they were fine.

Going to the sign cam, I pass the Crespo squash patch. That spot doesn’t get shade until the sun is at its lowest in the winter, so even this time of year it gets the full morning sun.

The leaves were all drooping, and I think I might even have seen the remains of frost glittering on some stems. It’s done.

When I got to the main garden area, I was a bit more encouraged. The plants supported on trellises seemed to fair better. The melons did show some cold damage in areas, while others looked just fine. Even the tomato plants seemed mostly all right. Much to my surprise, all the pepper plants in their grow bags looked absolutely fine!

The squash patch, unfortunately, was completely done in. Half the patch gets more shade than the other. In the heat of the summer, the plants that got more shade were doing better than the ones that got more sun but, right now, it’s the rows that get more sun that are looking less damaged than the others.

I’ll leave them alone for now, and see what happens over the next couple of days.

The old kitchen garden, much to my surprise, was fine. Even the luffa! The peppers here also showed no signs of cold damage, the Classic eggplant and all the transplanted tomatoes in their plastic shields seem completely unaffected. Even the Spoon tomatoes looked undamaged, and I was able to pick a bunch of them.

What’s frustrating is that there were NO frost warnings. I found a site that gives temperatures for the past 24 hours, and I did find it dipped to -2C/28F at around 6am – in the city! When I did a search for our area, plus the areas north and east of us, where I know there are weather stations, the lowest recorded temperature was 5C/41F Yet, my own app showed we were at 4C/40F at a time when the past weather chart was showing 7C/45F.

Today, we’re looking at a high of 17C/63F, with an overnight low of 6C/43F Those overnight lows have been consistently wrong on the high side. Which means that we’re not getting any of the frost warnings that would normally be set off, once the temperatures are expected to drop low enough, even as the real temperatures drop below that warning threshold.

Again, there’s not much we could have done, but we would have at least picked all the remaining tomatoes and brought them inside. Including the mostly green tomatoes still out on screens under the market tent.

As things warm up today, I’ll head back out and reassess the damage.

I’m not sure what to do about the winter squash. All those big, beautiful Pink Banana and candy roasters! They are not fully ripe, but if we leave them out and the vines die back, will they continue to ripen? We certainly won’t be able to store them for the winter, but I don’t even know how edible they are at this stage.

Well, I just found the answer to my own question.

So, in theory, we can bring them inside and lay them out to continue to ripen. Since they won’t store for the winter at this stage, we could cook them and freeze them, instead.

I don’t think that will work with the melons as well, but those plants might survive.

Unless we get another frost with no warning again.

We really need a polytunnel.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: September garden tour (video)

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Last night was our average first frost night, and there was no frost. The garden survives another night!

Check it out. 😊

May the frost hold off at least as long as predicted. Cooler night means things are slowing down, so if we’re going to get to harvest things, we need as much time as possible for it to fully mature.

The Re-Farmer

It’s a trap!

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Well. Sort of.

This is set up across from our driveway now.

It took forever to go through the trail cam video files this morning! There was a constant stream of activity triggering the motion sensor – and that’s just the stuff that it catches. There was clearly more activity, beyond the range of the motion sensor, that I could see happening in the background when something closer triggered the camera.

I was chatting with the Cat Lady this morning, and mentioned how all this activity would be driving away our missing cats. It probably isn’t helping bring that dog home, either. I was able to identify two pick up trucks, two minivans and a car, all involved in the search. She told me that it’s being shared all over Facebook right now. I haven’t seen anything, but I’m not in the groups it was being shared in. She sent me a screen cap. The group was a missing pet group for the city! That’s an hour’s drive away. Her thought was that the dog was probably stolen and taken up north. Apparently, that’s a common thing. I was able to let her know that the dog has been sighted here, so not stolen, at least.

I also shared with her my experiences with the owner, who was nice to my face, but not so nice behind my back. It probably never occurred to him that anyone would hear what he said about me, but all sounds from that direction really carry to the house, and the windows facing that way! My daughters hear way more than they would like.

I ended up sending an email to my brother that lives across from us through his wife (he doesn’t do tech very well. LOL), just in case they didn’t know what was going on. Their main driveway is a quarter mile up the road. The driveway across from us is just to the field, and they wouldn’t necessarily see or hear. I also mentioned our own lost cats, in the off chance they show up at their place. They are the closest home that’s occupied, and have plenty of their own yard cats. Butterscotch would remember their place. Maybe even Nosencrantz. It’s Marlee that would be completely out of her element, and we haven’t see any sign of her at all.

While talking about cats…

TTT has been at the small window in my room, squeaking away (what a strange, quiet meow she has!), wanting out. I’ve been trying to let her out of the room, but the kittens try for the door, instead. She’s so high strung, she backs off rather than goes through.

This morning, she was on my bed and accepting pets. Sort of. She spins and moves around so much, it’s really hard to pet her! However, I was able to pick her up and, while the kittens were distracted, take her out of the room. She’s been out before, but not for very long. It went rather well, so I just put her down and watched for a bit.

She’s still out.

We’ll see if she wants to stay out for good! I may be down to just the kittens in my room.

While doing my rounds this morning, I took some footage for a garden tour video, so that will be my project for today.

What I really want to do, though, is go for a nap. The kittens are actually sleeping right now. I might be able to get some sleep for a change!

Nah. Too much work to do!

The Re-Farmer

Apparently, I’m a “stupid fat f***g b****”.

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But only behind my back.

We’ve been hearing a lot of commotion on the roads lately. Some of it is expected. It’s harvest time and the renter’s corn is being done, so they’re big equipment and trucks are going by. Other farmers are bringing in their hay bales, or just plant going back and forth between home and fields.

On the trail cams, however, I’m also seeing a lot of regular vehicle traffic doing strange things. We’ve also been hearing lots of voices and shouting. The gate cam is set to record stills and video, so I’m seeing vehicles drive slowly, then reversing, then going forward again, etc. During some night time shots, a vehicle driving by triggered the camera and, in the background, I could see people walking around my brother’s field (the younger of my brothers) with flashlights. If I hadn’t also seen my brother’s wife in some of the images, I would have been more concerned.

It does mean I’ve got a lot of files to go through when I switch out the memory cards!

Late this morning, I was having an early lunch before heading outside to get some work done when I got a phone call from my mother. She was struggling, physically, today and wanted to know if I could come over and help her with some house work that was getting too much for her.

So of course, my plans changed.

As I was getting ready to head out, I walked over to open the gate before opening the garage, so I would only have to get out of the car once, to close the gate behind me.

Which is when I saw a guy set up in my brother’s driveway into his field, across from ours. That driveway is rarely used, so it’s quite overgrown. The guy was in one of those folding chairs with a canopy, half hidden in the tall grass, with stuff that looked like blankets on the ground beside him, and a gorgeous Great Pyrenees at his side.

As soon as the dog saw me reach the gate, it got up, all excited to see another human, and started barking.

This did not go over well with the guy, who started trying to shush the dog.

I started to call out and ask if everything was all right, but he started trying to shush both me and the dog at the same time, and asked me to back away. Then he saw something down the road and started talking into this phone (I’m amazed he had enough signal to use it!), saying things like “I see him! He’s right there!” and telling someone they should be able to “see him” right at that moment. The someone turned out to be his dad, and I was not impressed when he started swearing at his dad for not seeing what I figured out was another dog, and telling his dad he needed to come get the dog because someone (me) had come out, the dog started barking, and the other dog got scared away.

While that was going on, I opened the gate as quietly as I could. I even tried to open the garage door as quietly as possible, and that thing gives off metallic screams, squeals and squeaks like nobody’s business!

Then, of course, I had to drive out and close the gate, which I tried to do quickly, so as not to scare off this other dog, if at all possible. Thankfully, I needed to go the opposite direction from where he’d seen his dog.

When I stopped at the intersection, I saw a new sign not far from our own, so I took a picture.

I removed the phone number, of course.

The next time I stopped, before getting on the highway, I sent the photo to the family and let them know what was going on, then continued on to my mother’s.

When I got there, I checked my messages.

My family was not sympathetic to the guy with the lost dog.

It seems there was a lot of shouting after I left, loud enough for my daughter to hear me being referred to as a “stupid fat f*****g b****”. Apparently for using my own driveway and scaring off an already scared dog.

I wonder what he thought about the big harvest trucks, trailers and combines that had to go down that road to the fields the dog was hiding in!

The shouting they heard was enough for my daughter to warn me to be careful when I got home, and for my husband – my broken husband! – told me to let him know I was on the way, so he could meet me at the gate.

Things apparently calmed down by the time I was done at my mother’s. The guy was no longer set up across from our gate, and they weren’t hearing shouting anymore.

As I turned the corner to get home, though, I did see a truck parked on the side of the road, not far from our driveway. As I drove past it, I could see an older gentleman in the driver’s seat, but there were too many reflections on the glass to see if someone was with him. About a quarter mile down the road, though, I could see the canopy on the folding chair set up.

After I opened the gate and started back to the car, though, guess who came out of the truck?

Yup. It was the same guy, coming over to talk to me.

He was quite polite to my face!

Turns out his 8 month old Great Pyreneese that he recently acquired broke out of their house, along with the other one I’d seen earlier. That one, they caught quick enough, but the other was apparently quite happy to be running around outside, and not wanting anyone to come close. They’ve seen him eat the food they left out for him, but still wouldn’t let them come close, disappearing into the corn field, instead.

He mentioned my cameras and asked about them. I let him know that the motion sensors are set on the gate and the sign, so while I can see things on the road, it’s limited. He asked if he could set up cameras, indicating the easement between our fence and the road, and I told him to go right ahead; that areas is public land, anyhow. I did say he could use a fence post or something, if he wanted to.

He also mentioned where he lived, should we happen to see the dog. Turns out he’s right in the middle of our little hamlet, a littler more than 3 miles away. Which makes me wonder about his dog being out here!

Since they were all over the place, looking for the dog, I mentioned we had 3 lost cats and described them. So far, though, he’s only seen a black and white one – likely Adam – crossing the road. Unfortunately, their being all over the place looking for the dog, they are likely scaring the missing cats away completely.

Turns out he’s a cat person, as well as a dog person. He asked me if I knew someone, who turned out to be the guy that found Potato Beetle, last winter! It turns out they are great friends, so I asked him to extend my greetings, and let him know that Potato Beetle is now an indoor cat. 😁

So it was quite a friendly exchange we had.

Not bad, considering I’m such a stupid, fat f*****g b****.

No, I’m not angry or anything like that. More amused than anything else!

The Re-Farmer

Count the kitties!

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Well, the little Soot Sprite is definitely settling in!

Can you find it?

There are seven kittens in the photo. 😊

I’m happy to say that I’ve not had a single mess on my bed in quite a while, though I did just catch TTT about to take a dump on it. I got her off in time, but she couldn’t stop herself from making a mess on the floor. She just happened to be over plastic take out lid that I’ve been using as a kibble container, so at least it was an easy clean up.

However.

For some reason, there are kittens that insist on using the puppy pads. They use the litter boxes. All of them. However, for some reason, they’ve started to use two spots under my desk, too. Right next to the litter box!

With the tinies in the room, I’ve got the small, low pan that fit in Baby Jail when the kittens were all in there. I ended up putting it on top of one spot by the litter box. There is no space around it for them to use instead, so that is working. The other spot, however, is one I can’t put something on top of, because it’s right next to where I put my feet. If I put something there, I’d be constantly kicking it or dropping a foot in it.

I could understand it if was the tinies, as they haven’t been using a litter for long, but it’s not. I’ve actually caught one of the bigger kittens as it just finished making a mess on the puppy pad next to the litter box – then go into the litter box to pee! It doesn’t matter if the litter has just been changed, either.

I’m at a loss for ideas on what to use to convince the kittens to go into the litter boxes, not make a mess t next to them. The only thing I haven’t tried yet is cayenne pepper, and I don’t want to actually hurt them.

At least it’s an easy clean up.

The Re-Farmer

Tomato sauce is done!

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It took a while, and I had to pause part way through to do other things, but it’s finally done!

Here are photos of the process. I didn’t really follow a recipe, but rather used a number of different recipes I found online to use as a guide.

After selecting the ripest Roma VF tomatoes, I gave them a wash and left them in the water while working on the onions and garlic. I wanted those on the bottom of the roasting pans to make sure they would get completely immersed in any liquid released by the tomatoes. I wanted them to cook until they were so soft, they’d disappear into the sauce.

When it came time to process the tomatoes, things went a lot faster than fighting with those little onions and garlic! I was going to leave the skins on, so I only needed to cut the stem ends off (and any damaged bits), then give them a squeeze. With the shape of the Roma, it was easy to do it sort of assembly line style, cutting the ends off and lining them up on the cutting board, cut side down, until the board was mostly full, then squeezing the seeds out into a bucket for the compost.

A handy tip to make things easier: place a cutting board inside a baking pan with low sides. I have a whole bunch of 9×13 baking pans that are perfect for this. They are large enough to fit a cutting board with room to spare to catch liquids or keep items handy, and the sides are low enough to not get in the way of my hand or the knife as I cut.

All the recipes I found had the amount of tomatoes by weight – usually 4 lbs. I had no idea how many pounds of tomatoes I had, so I just winged the quantities for the other ingredients, and split everything between the three pans.

After all the tomatoes were cut and seeded, I added more olive oil and carefully turned the tomatoes to coat them, while trying not to move the onions and garlic on the bottom too much.

The recipes I found had oven temperatures ranging from 300F to 425F, and while some had cooking times, most were “until the skins start to blister”.

I decided to go lower and slower. I put the three roasting pans into a 325F oven. I checked them at about 40 minutes, then added another half an hour.

While they were roasting, I went and got some fresh oregano and thyme. I didn’t get a lot of oregano, because the plant is mostly blooming right now, and the bees were loving the flowers. So I just found a few smaller stems. I picked about the same amount of the thyme sharing a pot with the oregano. We have German Winter Thyme in the old kitchen garden, but the seed pack for these ones didn’t include a variety name.

This gave me a chance to try out the herb chopper I picked up at a Dollarama not long ago. It came with a cutting board with a recess matching the curve of the blades. It did a pretty good job, though with the slightly larger oregano leaves, they sort of got caught between the blades while just rocking it, so it needed to be lifted and shifted with each cut. That was not as much of an issue with the thyme leaves.

I like it.

When the timer went off on the oven, the kitchen needed to be used for other cooking, so I just shut it off and left the pans in the oven. Then, before I started on the final cooking, I made sure to do all my outside stuff and other little things, so they were in the oven for probably 2 or 3 hours. They were still quite warm when I took them out!

When transferring them into my big stock pot, I was very happy to see how softened the onions and garlic were! Exactly what I was after. All three roasting pans really filled that pot!

At this point, I added the chopped herbs and salt. Sea salt, because we happen to have some at the moment. After stirring that in, I turned on the heat, then used the immersion blender on it. Not for long, but that things is very efficient, so there were just a few larger pieces that got missed.

After that, I kept it at a simmer for about another couple of hours, stirring frequently. I tasted it a few times and ended up adding more salt (twice), some pepper, some dried sage, a bay leaf and a splash of lemon juice.

Towards the end, I removed the bay leaf and took the immersion blender to it again. This time I kept it going for longer, so make sure there weren’t any big pieces of tomato skins anywhere.

I like that this pot has a measurement scale inside it. After the first blending, the sauce reached just under the 7L mark. When it was done, it was at the 6L mark. I could have cooked it down further, but I think it’ll be good enough.

For now, the sauce is cooling down. I plan to put it into freezer bags and freeze them, though we will probably use some of it with a meal, first.

I think the next processing I will do is to dehydrate slices of the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue tomatoes. Those can be left in a warm oven, unattended, while I get other work done.

A dehydrator would be a useful gadget, but we really don’t have the space for one. At least not where we also have access to an outlet.

For now, the oven will do just fine, and tomorrow, I hope to get some work done outside at the same time!

The Re-Farmer

Swinging

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

While checking on the garden yesterday evening, I noticed some of the melons were getting pretty heavy, so I dug out something I’d made the first year we tried to grow melons, and succeeded. This morning, I got some photos.

Melon hammocks!

I might have to make more. There are quite a lot of melons getting nice and big in the makeshift trellis!

I look forward to when we have permanent and portable trellises. I am really happy with how some of our climbing vines have been doing. Especially the melons in their kiddie pool raised bed! There are three varieties in there, but they are all climbing so vigorously, the vines are all twisted around each other. We’ll figure out which is which, when it’s time to harvest them.

The Re-Farmer