Harvesting

On 8 September Devin and I rescued the sunflowers from a spell of damp weather, cutting them down and hanging them in the hay barn loft to cure.

Yesterday we brought the heads down to the front porch and began removing the seeds.

While some of the seeds rattled out easily into a collander or big bowl, others had to be pried loose.

Above are seeds from the various dwarf sunflowers.  With the petals curled and dried there was no telling whether the flower had been burgandy, gold or a brown and gold bi-color. 

Interestingly, all had shiny black seeds.

Friends gave me a generous quantity of sunflower seeds in the spring--I had room to plant only a portion.

These are from  the classic grey-striped mammoth sunflower. 

Most of the seeds around the edges of the flower head were well filled out, plump. Nearer the center there were seeds in which the kernals hadn't developed.

I wonder if this was due to the prolonged drought during July and August.

D. and I were fascinated by the intricately formed pockets that held the seeds in place.

D. holds out two of the sunflowers he is shucking.

Who knew that those honeycombed seed heads have tiny spines!

The pads of both my thumbs suffered from these stiff slivers as I popped the seeds free--those that didn't fall out when the sunflower head was tapped against the bowl.

I used a needle and tweezers to remove a number of splinters last evening.

By morning several more were visable.

I worried at one deeply imbedded in my left thumb as I rode this morning with G. to the Sunny Valley Bulk Foods Store.

We stopped first at the greenhouse and produce stand which is part of the complex.

Since a greenhouse seemed a likely place for workers to get splinters I asked one of the Mennonite women clerks if she might have a needle I could borrow to remove a sliver.

"No," she replied, "But I have a straight pin."

She whipped a pin from a fold of her crisp white cap and within a moment I had pried out the deep-set sunflower splinter.

G. slowed the truck so that I could take a picture of this man using a horse-drawn machine to cut sorghum.

I had to aim the camera through the back window--a closer shot was runined when a man on a motor scooter whizzed by.

There is a local sorghum mill that produces and bottles this sweet stuff.

Although we weren't planning to linger, G. pulled in at the produce auction barn for a look at the mums being lined up for sale.

I stayed in the truck for the few moments that G. explored the auction floor.

She came back wondering, "What on earth are those big striped squash looking things?"

They are cushaws--apparently widely grown in the southern Appalachian regions and prepared similarly to winter squash or pumpkin.

At home, I snipped a harvest of herbs, bringing them in as the sun slid behind the woods which mark our western boundary.

Years ago I dried herbs by the time-honored method of hanging them from a nail [or a curtain rod] in the kitchen. I always felt they gathered dust--and a cat hair or two--before I cut them down and crumbled them from the stems.  Last year I placed them on trays and slid them into the oven set to its lowest heat.

Tonight, using that method,  I have dried thyme, sage, spearmint and catnip.

After removing any damaged or yellowed leaves, I rinsed the stalks and whirled them in my salad spinner to remove the moisture, and except for the thyme, pulled the leaves from the main stems and arranged them one layer deep on baking sheets.

I checked the herbs for dryness about every 10 minutes, shuffling them about on the trays.

The catnip dried fast, as did the mint. The heavily textured leaves of sage needed to remain in the oven for more than an hour.  The wiry stems of thyme were fiddley to deal with--I swirled the dried stems around in the bottom of a collander--which allowed the leaves and some of the finer stems to pass through.

As soon as I entered the kitchen with the basket of catnip I was mobbed by felines.

Teasel's performance last year was a reminder that it isn't wise to leave

a tray of catnip unguarded, even for a moment! 

I bought tiny zip-lock plastic bags at the bulk foods store so I can make up packets of herbs

to share with family and friends.

I have more sage to dry as well as marjoram, apple mint and lemon balm---pleasant harvest tasks after the messier and more intensive labor of canning tomatoes and applesauce.

Around Here

J. dozing in the afternoon sun at the barn door.

That's Sadie enjoying his lap.

I saw J. headed up toward the hay barn while I was tidying the kitchen after lunch on Saturday.

I followed him up and jostled him over so that I could sit on the hay bale.

The sun was warm and there was a light wind shushing through the center aisle of the barn.

The kittens tumbled around our feet. Pebbles made "look at me" noises from just outside.

The breeze quickened, and the hanks of bale twine dangling from nails on the wall began to sway.

Sally the Kitten was fascinated and made daring leaps into the tangles, trying to pull herself up, paw over paw.

Attempts to catch this in a photo resulted in a blur of moving twine and tortoiseshell fur.

The unsquelchable Wills.

The flirty breeze quite suddenly morphed into a cold wind pushing grey clouds ahead of it.

The somnulent afternoon became brisk, chilly, and we retreated to the house.

J. kindled a fire in the livingroom fireplace and I succumbed to the bliss of reading in the big leather chair, cats in my lap, all of us soaking up the warmth and comfort.

On Sunday morning, stepping onto the front porch, I noticed a difference in the appearance of one of the resident spiders. [Argiope aurantia, a large black and yellow spider.]

The spider who has her web nearest the porch pillars has outdone herself, creating four sacks of eggs.  Meanwhile her "sister" spider a few feet away in the clump of sedum, has kept her web tidy, feasted on the victims who blunder into her lacy abode. She has looked fat to bursting, but I could discover no egg sacks dangling from the surrounding foliage.

On Sunday her distinctively patterned body appeared shrunken.

I discovered her balloon of eggs well secured.

With chilly nights and shortening days, the spiders' life cycles are nearing an end.

I have pondered my interest in them. They are not "pets" who welcome me, they don't interact with humans; they are not creatures for whom I have any responsibility.

They appeared in neighboring webs in late July or early August.

I have been intrigued to watch them repair their exquisitely designed webs each day, noted when they have packaged meals of unwary insects. The four egg sacks which the nearer spider attached to the post are a marvel.

I will be leaving the egg bundles undisturbed  over the winter months.

I can enjoy the presence of these spiders on the periphery of my space--they aren't the sort who would like to come inside.

J. is working at stocking the winter wood supply.

On our second trip last week to the closer of the two Amish sawmills, there was a sizable pile of already sawed up chunks.  I helped J. to fill the bed of the old Dodge truck with these.

Hardwood slabs are loaded onto the trailer.  These J. cuts to stove lengths.

We are not dependent on wood heat, but in this area of hardwoods and sawmills it is an economical heat source. Walking past the neat stacks I catch the cold, faintly sour tang of the wood and I am immediately transported to my Grampa Mac's woodshed.

Each fall and winter afternoon he could be found there, selecting large chunks from the neatly stacked ranks, splitting each to the size that would best suit: smaller pieces for the black range in the kitchen, heftier blocks for the livingroom chunk stove, fine kindling and slender splits to make a quick blaze.

J. watching the bidding at the Mennonite aution of Friday.

I have no photos of the produce we brought home.

You will have to beleive me that the past few days have been busy ones.

I put up ["bottled"] 28 quarts of tomatoes on Sunday afternoon, lining up the processed jars on a checked cloth on the table to cool overnight.

On Monday we turned 2 bushels of apples into applesauce for the freezer.

We both peeled and sliced apples until we had three large kettles  simmering on the range.

J. took on the process of cranking the cooked apples through the foley mill, adding the sugar and cinnamon to the sieved sauce, and ladeling it into freezer containers.

I continued chunking apples and made another trip to Wal Mart for containers.

[The apples which we bought at the greenhouse/produce center up the road from the auction were very disappointing. We suspect they came out of cold storage rather than from this season's crop.  They were not "keepers" and needed to be immediately processed.]

While the applesauce bubbled on the stove, I set out several packages of our Wyoming ground beef to thaw.

On two succesive days I  made a meatloaf mixture to stuff the green peppers. We are working our way through a pan of them. J. delivered another panfull to Mr. Rogers last evening at suppertime.

Several foil pans of them are well wrapped and in the freezer.

Yet another serving went to J.M. and Marla today.

[We seldom stop there that we aren't gifted with asparagus or whatever is flourishing in J.M.'s garden and we like to return the favor with baked goods.]

Last night I diced and packaged the remaining peppers for freezing.

I canned what must surely be almost the last of the green and yellow snap beans.

The swampy, sticky kitchen floor has been mopped more times in three days than it usually gets in three weeks!

We are blessed with abundance, thankful for these beautiful autumn days.

I do think I'm about ready for a little rest!

Also, I've missed having a few moments to reply to comments and to leave comments on my friends' blogs.

It is amazing to realize that we are into our 7th month in Kentucky. 

Thus far, "retirement" has been a busy whirl.