Early September

The garden has kept us so busy that Nammah’s Blog has been left behind.  The best we could do was to take pictures, whether by phone, camera or ipad, and jot down the daily harvest in the old fashioned (though I am preferring it right now) phrenology journal on my nightstand!


The daily harvest, in the earlier summer and spring, is so special and worth documenting.  Not that the larger harvests are any less special, but for some reason the miracle of it all can fade into a burden at times.  Perhaps we plant too much – but between canning, freezing, cooking, eating, we use it all - with even enough to give to the neighbor or friend who stops by.

September 2: Applesauce day with the Flotten-Wood family.  Thanks to an investment in pruning (Arborist Louise Levy) and a year off – the trees in the back yard are back in decent production. 39 quarts of applesauce this year split between the two families. We also cooked and ate lot – coleslaw, veggie lasagna, roasted beet/arugula salad, and brats.

The tradition continues and Ben and Aliya are becoming quite the helpers!

September 3: 4 pints of salsa, roasted tomatoes for the freezer, nice salad for dinner with Rigotzke salmon.

September 5: Full dehydrator of cherry tomatoes and basil, roasted beets for eating, made super salad with edemame, kale, onions and carrots from garden. Canned 2 quarts of tomatoes in their own juice and made 7 jelly jars of jalapeno jello.  Sara harvested a large jar of hazelnuts from the circle trail!  Foraging too!!

 September 8: Arugula/beet salad and edemame for dinner. That is the last of the edemame.  We could probably plant more next year if we wanted to freeze any. I finally cooked the 2 zucchini that got two big.  One was halved and stuffed – the other became the “noodles” for a vegetable lasagna.  A pesto layer, a roasted red pepper lay (from jar) and various other vegetables.

September, 9: 4 quarts of spaghetti sauce, 2 meals of roasted tomato, dehydrator full of cherry tomatoes, 3 bags of basil pesto.  We also got the cider press out – just us this time.  Last year was fun to invite everything who chipped in to give it to us for our wedding two years ago. They each brought a bag of apples and a jug to take some home.  The cider was amazing!  But I didn’t even get to really see how it worked (hosting and making food).  This year we wanted to have the experience of the cider making, instead of the experience of the community making cider (both nice in different ways).  Not enough apples left so we only got 3 partial bottles (2 half gallon and a liter bottle ¾ way full to allow for expansion in the freezer).  AND, with only our couple of varieties of apple, it’s not really cider and not that good!  The lesson, variety is the spice of life...and cider!

September 10-11:  Roasted 2 meals of tomatoes, froze 4 meals of brussel sprouts, and made 6 pints of HOT salsa – finishing the morning I left for England for two weeks.  A difficult time to leave Nammah!

The exciting news is that the garden/solar shed has siding!  The tar paper shack has been transformed by Kenny and his men into a space worthy of Nammah’s grace and beauty.