Susan made stew using canned venison chunks, potatoes, and carrots from the garden (plus eleven secret herbs and spices!). The only thing we used that we didn't produce was the olive oil she used to brown the venison. (We still have some bear lard she could have used though.) Unlike the potatoes, the carrots are doing great this year.
One of the cherry tomato plants was killed by the frost so we picked the tomatoes off of it and are trying to ripen them in the house. We'll see how many ripen.
Frost killed the pumpkin plants so we brought in those that had begon to turn to see if they'll ripen in the house. The long yellow one is a summer squash.
Susan drying peppers.
Susan ran a loadd of squash through the dehydrator. I'm picking the seeds out. We'll dry the seeds and save them to plant next year. We may roast some for snack food.
Dehydrated zuchinni squash. Those on the right are fresh from the dehydrator. Those on the left have been run through the blender to powder them. The pan on the left was heaped to overflowing before she began running them through the blender. She mixed some of the powdered Zuchinni in with brownies she made. The brownies came out very good. When she made the stew she used some of the summer squash in it. That too came out well.
These are dried potatoes, labeled and ready for storage.
On the way home from getting the mail Friday we saw two moose next to the road. One made it into the woods before the camera came to life. Susan got a couple of good pictures of this one. Both were without antlers.
It's getting cold enough at night that I decided to get the pumps winterized so they wouldn't freeze. The water pump down at the marsh was the first project. I disconnected the suction pipe and drained the pump housing then coiled the hose (100 feet). I carried the pump, hose and cover to the house in a wheel barrow.
We store it on an old tire or pallet next on the south side of the cabin. The tire keeps it up off the ground. Sometimes the snow builds up them melts then freezes so we like to keep it off the ground in the winter.
I've already drained the housing so I covered it for the winter. One of the reasons we keep it here is because it's to exposed for packrats to move in. If we put it in a building somewhere the packrats would love to build a nest under the cover. We ususally have them trapped within a couple of days of their arrival but in two days they can do a lot of damage. It's best to prevent them from moving in in the first place.
We've had rain every day except yesterday (25th) when the sun finally showed itself for more than a few minutes at a time. I got the weed eaters running again. Susan's has a bad gasket on the back of the motor. I made a replacement gasket out of a paper plate which got it running again but I need to find some gasket material and cut one out of it for a permanent fix. The other one just needed the fuel line replaced. It's an old one we found at a dumpster. The choke knob is broken off but it runs great. I've been splitting wood whenever the weather permits. The wood shed is almost full. We have enough to last the winter but I plan on cutting one more load today. I have five dead trees on the property I plan on cutting down also. One thing about firewood. If I cut too much this year that's just less I have to cut for next year We've had a couple of hard frosts this week so we're harvesting some things from the garden. Some of our tomato plants survived so we're leaving them to grow as long as possible. The pepper plants on the south side of the cabin are still doing okay. The tomato plant on the porch is doing well yet too. The tomatoes and squash took a big hit in the garden. The pumpking plant didn't survive so we picked those that had begun to ripen. Susan dug up a few more potatoes. Some have very small spuds while some are big. The large ones are in new areas of the garden. We think the soil may be too fertile in the older parts for potatoes, hence the good plants but small spuds. Next summer we'll plant the spuds in the new places that we haven't fertilized much. The next project for fall will be getting the Uhaul fixed up for camping. After that I hope to get the new solar panels moved to their permanent location and get the bathroom finished up.
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