Deer make their way to our small orchard at sunset. They come for apples left on the ground and for the last two months there were many of them. As many as eight deer arrive, and based on what remains in the morning, they return through the night to eat their share of fresh apples. At some point last week, I decided the rest of the apples on the tree were for wildlife. The last few days they cleaned the ground of apples completely.
Birds eat some apples as do bees and wasps. If nocturnal creatures share in the harvest, I don’t see them. I used to worry what to do with fallen apples. Now I know they are just part of community building.
I used some of my share of apples to make 32 servings of apple crisp for the county party fund raiser this afternoon. They came out looking good. I’ll deliver them to the fairground in a couple of hours.
Apple crisp with backyard apples.
I was up late last night processing the gleaning. There is almost always something growing in the garden, so there is never any final gleaning. All the same, the first hard frost is a big deal. There was celery to dice and freeze for soup, Redbor kale to freeze, tomatoes to clean and process into juice and tomato sauce, hot peppers to make into chili sauce, and the counter is lined with the last green tomatoes for ripening. We’re almost at the end of the season.
It has been a good gardening season. I’m ready for fall.
Ten half-gallon jars of apple cider vinegar fermenting.
There was an opportunity to fill the apple cider vinegar containers so I took it. With an abundant apple harvest there are plenty to juice and turn into vinegar. I’ve written about vinegar-making multiple times in the last ten years. All I have to add is this is one of the best apple seasons since I planted the first trees in 1994.
The apple juice produced by these Red Delicious apples is quite good, even better once the impurities are filtered out. I have a couple of five gallon buckets of juice apples ready to convert and store in large glass jars. It tastes better than anything I buy at the store. Key to good taste is drinking it fresh rather than canning it.
Vinegar-making is the end of the garden harvest season. I’ll glean the garden a couple more times and pick more apples should I need them. The main work is done.
Last year I planted garlic on Oct. 15 and expect about the same this year. A neighbor with a pickup truck already took me to a local farm where I bought four straw bales for mulching. They are resting in the garage and ready to go once the cloves are in the ground.
This is a punk autumn because everyone but me is away and sick. On Monday I went to a pharmacy that had the just-released COVID vaccine and got inoculation number seven. I am determined to avoid getting COVID. This means avoiding most human contact of a duration over ten minutes. With our child living on their own and my spouse at her sister’s home for an extended stay, the chance of contracting the virus at home from one of them is close to nil. I restrict movement as best I can and wear a KN-95 mask when with groups of people. For good measure, I also got the seasonal influenza vaccination last week.
With vinegar fermenting on the shelf, I am at the point of apple season where I need a big project to use the harvest before it goes bad. In the meanwhile, if I want a snack, it will contain apples. Breakfast? Apples. Lunch? Apples. Supper? Baked apple dessert. We look forward to this time of year so I plan to enjoy it.
Breakfast made for guests and for myself once in a while.
If a person overnights at our home they are likely to be offered a breakfast of hash browned potatoes, scrambled eggs, and fruit in season. Add some coffee or homemade juice and it makes a fine breakfast. The meal in the photo includes tomato, a pear, and potatoes, all grown in our garden.
We haven’t had any overnight guests in a while, so I made the classic breakfast for myself. It seldom fails to satisfy and is a great beginning to a day.
Some mornings I have just toasted bread with apple butter or fruit preserves. Others, I re-heat leftover soup or make tacos. When bananas are ripening, I make a smoothie with aronia berries, kale, plant milk, protein powder and Greek yogurt. I don’t give much thought to breakfast until I’m preparing it. Patterns are well established and I know what to do.
Today I worked on a care package for our child. Mainly, we went back and forth via email with ideas and requests. While that was happening, I made half a dozen jars of applesauce to include.
Applesauce made Friday, Sept. 22, 2023.
It rained off and on all day today. I managed to get in my half-hour walk along the lake shore. None of the outdoors work got done. There was plenty of indoors work to replace it.
Saturday is the first day of autumn. I’d ask where did summer go? That would be a bit ridiculous because I know where it went. It went into the garden, which produced food for the kitchen. I ate well this summer, including our home breakfasts.
Kale leaves from a single plant harvested Sept. 17, 2023.
Late season kale takes on a special quality when overnight temperatures get cooler or freeze. Toward autumn, I begin harvesting the whole plant and use the leaves until they are gone. Then I harvest another plant. The same goes for collards. I cut the stalk at ground level and take the plant to the composter where I sort through the leaves to pick the best for the kitchen. It’s another sign the season is turning.
Kale and collards are cold-hearty and can continue producing as late as November. The way things are going with weather, it could be until December this year. Occasionally, kale over winters.
Before joining Local Harvest CSA when we moved back to Iowa, I hardly heard about kale. I had never eaten it. When I worked on the farm beginning in 2013 I learned how to grow it. This year the bugs stayed away better than most years. Early season spraying with an insecticide containing Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki (Btk), a naturally-occurring bacterium found in soil, suppressed green caterpillars which love kale. 2023 was a great kale year.
I freeze my allocation of kale early in the season. Once the freezer space is full, we eat it fresh from the garden or donate it to the food pantry. The plants produce so many leaves we always have plenty. Most people don’t know about kale and some don’t care for it. Our typical uses are as an ingredient in taco filling, smoothies, and in soups. We consume a lot of those menu items here in Big Grove. There are few better sources of leafy green vegetables than a kale plant. We are supposed to eat more of that than we do.
The cruciferous vegetable patch was a success this year with plenty of cauliflower and broccoli for freezing, a half dozen red and green cabbages stored in the refrigerator, and kale and collards as much as we want. It works better to keep all of those varieties together in the same plot. It helps focus the attention they need for successful growing.
Summer’s end is rapidly approaching. This morning I looked out the dining room window without my glasses and could see fuzzy stars in the clear, dark sky. There was an impulse to get my glasses from the bedroom, yet I resisted and stood there trying to take it all in before summer slips away. The progress of the kale patch is one more marker of summer’s end.
Birds may not like it but I mowed the plot where weeds grew after garlic was harvested. They flock in to feed on foxtail seeds. A person can’t see them until they are startled and fly away. Lucky for them, the next plot over, where I plan next year’s crop of garlic, has some weeds gone to seed.
The plot cleared is for a burn pile. Because of the drought, burning brush is not a good idea. Johnson County is not under an official burn ban today, yet I err on the side of caution. Parts of the state just north of me are under a ban. As fall approaches, I need a place to pile brush from the yard. The added benefit is when I am able to burn, minerals from the fuel return to the soil. The plan is to plant tomatoes next year where the burn pile is going.
I’m finished watering the garden. I harvested more tomatoes on Saturday. While the vines are doing well, I rolled up the hose and will put it away once the first frost is forecast, maybe in mid-October. With cooler temperatures, evaporation is less and plants do better on natural moisture, even if there is no rain. A chance of thunderstorms was forecast Saturday afternoon. It didn’t happen. We had a brief, transient mist of rain that failed to penetrate the leaf canopy. Maybe another time. We need rain.
Deer returned to our apple orchard in larger numbers. Last night at dusk, six of them were eating fallen apples, including two young deer. I had noticed their work earlier in the day. Even so, it is reassuring to see them in person. I need to clean up the fallen apples before mowing, yet if they are eating them, I’ll wait and give them time to work. With autumn approaching, there is more food for wildlife. I’m glad to see deer stop by our orchard as a part of nature’s smorgasbord.
I decided to make a dozen pints of apple butter. I don’t need more in the pantry, yet I want to be able to rotate stock and have a supply ready. The apples taste so sweet this year and have minimal bug damage. It would be a shame not to preserve as many as I can. The refrigerator already has as many as there is room. I have half a bushel ready to go over to family in Des Moines. There will be a donation to the food bank. Today’s kitchen work includes more apple butter and apple juice for making apple cider vinegar.
Last year’s cherry tomato plot had some cherry tomatoes growing around the edges. They are particularly sweet. Midweek I made two casseroles, and the cherries served as a welcome side dish for a re-heated supper. The food our kitchen has been producing this summer has been memorable. Still, one tires of days in a row of leftovers.
I stayed busy all day Saturday. There is an urgency to get things done before winter arrives. It will be here before we realize it and I want to be ready.
My focus in the garden turned to apples. By weight, it is the biggest crop I grow. Doing something useful with them drives me to spend much kitchen time processing them. Zestar! and Earliblaze are finished with Red Delicious remaining to close out the garden season.
Of the four varieties I grow, Red Delicious hang the longest on the tree. When they produce, there are many, many of of them. Our needs for juice, applesauce, apple butter, dried apples, and fresh eating are modest compared to the quantity on the tree. I’m already looking for placement of most of them in a Community Supported Agriculture project.
Tomatoes are finishing and it has been a good season. Because of spring trouble getting seedlings to take, there weren’t as many, or as many different varieties, as I had hoped. The difference this year compared to last is that we used most garden tomatoes in our kitchen instead of giving them away. Tomatoes are a brief delight of summer. Once ours are gone, I expect to buy very few tomatoes at the grocer.
I took down the portable greenhouse and noticed a problem with the zipper at the access point. I don’t know if it will be usable next year but I folded it up and put away the frame. Replacing it will be a spring decision, although I likely will. The portable greenhouses are good for a couple of seasons.
I need to figure out fall garden plot preparation. Where will the burn pile be? Where will the garlic go next month? Where will tomatoes go next year?
The burn pile is important because I move it around to deposit minerals throughout the garden. Because we are in a drought I won’t actually burn anything until rain comes. There needs to be plenty of space to pile it high while we wait.
I plan to plant 100 garlic seeds and it will likely be in the plot where the garden composter currently lives. The pallets used to make the composter are getting old and deteriorated. I will likely move the composter to the west side of the garden. I hang my Practical Farmers of Iowa sign on it, so on that side, it may be more visible from the street.
Finally, there are tomatoes, likely the most important crop I grow. This year, deer were able to jump the fence and eat many small tomato plants. Next year I plan to return to a crowding method of tomato planting. By giving deer no place to land inside the fence, they can’t jump in, and the plants grow better. The issue is it crowds me as well. I liked having four-foot rows between the tomatoes this year. It made it easier for me to get among the plants to weed and harvest. It made it easier for the deer as well. I may have enough fencing to install eight-foot tall chicken wire around them next year. This may be the compromise I choose to keep four foot rows. Which plot will tomatoes go? I’m not sure yet, although I favor following the garlic.
As home life turns to apple processing, I enjoy the sense of closure it brings. In years when there are few apples, gardening doesn’t seem the same. In the coming days I’ll embrace the apple rush. Who knows how many more there will be?
I finished what I’m doing with Earliblaze apples this year. The trees produced so much fruit I could not keep up. There will be plenty for wildlife to eat well into winter.
Besides eating them fresh, I made apple cider vinegar and applesauce for storage. I have a backlog of apple butter and dried apples, so none of that this year.
There is a brief break in apple processing while I wait for Red Delicious to ripen, maybe a week or two. After they do ripen, it will be a mad rush to the end.
When I planted six trees at home I didn’t know much about growing apples. I knew I wanted apple trees, in part because of family stories of my Virginia ancestors. I picked varieties that would space out the harvest. That’s about it. There were four varieties planted in 1994 and two remain. My learning about growing apples came mostly from working for seven seasons as a mapper (person who directs guests) at Wilson’s Orchard beginning in 2013. It was an unexpected job, but one for which I am thankful.
Paul Rasch and Sara Goering bought Wilson’s Orchard in 2009. Chug Wilson had planted more than 100 varieties of apples before he sold to them. During my tenure I learned about many of them. I would come in well before my shift and wander through the part of the orchard where trees were planted to test how they did.
What I value most about working there is countless conversations I had with Paul about apple culture. If I had a question, he had an answer. I would bring in photos of my home orchard for his advice. We talked about everything apples. Learning with an experienced apple grower was a perquisite of the job. It was great!
Years like this one I’m on my own for apples. My trees produced so many I don’t need outside apples. What I’m saying is I’m now an irregular customer of Paul and Sara’s orchard. I buy a couple of half-gallons of sweet cider in season, and if they have Gold Rush apples, I’ll get some for storage. For now, I have all the Earliblaze apples we can eat.
This is one tart, tasty apple drink. I’m not sure what to call it.
When I make applesauce, I steam cored apples in enough water to cover the bottom of a pan. Additional moisture is released from the apples. Everything goes into a cone sieve strainer resting on a large Rubbermaid pitcher. Once the liquid filters out I move the strainer to a second identical pitcher and separate the applesauce from the peels. The liquid goes into jars which are stored in the refrigerator until used. I made about a gallon of it already.
Every kitchen has the potential for unique culinary items like this. With the thousands of cookbooks out there, someone is likely to have described this apple beverage previously. It is one more way to use produce in a kitchen garden.
Tomato peeling for canning whole.
I grow enough tomatoes to sort them by size and type. Medium-sized ones are to be canned whole and the process is much like what exists in other kitchens. I core them and put a small X in the bottom. Dip them in boiling water for a minute or two and then cool them in an ice water bath before peeling. Next, I cram them into a quart jar leaving about an inch of head space. Once filled, they go into a water bath canner for 40 minutes. This is a simple, reliable technique.
Some people add salt or a teaspoon of vinegar to the tomatoes before canning. I rarely have an issue with spoilage, so I leave it out. I can’t recall how many quart jars of whole tomatoes I put up in 2022 yet I have a half dozen left.
I make tomato sauce. Most of the crop of Amish Paste and San Marzano goes into sauce. Similar to making applesauce, I steam cook the tomatoes until the flesh gives with a spoon without adding any liquid to the pan. Into the cone sieve strainer the whole thing goes where they sit while the juice drains off. The juice is canned until I have enough quart jars to last at least a year. It is mostly for soup making. In the second pitcher, I separate the skins and seeds leaving a rich, thick tomato sauce. This goes into pint-sized jars. It’s enough to make a batch of pasta sauce for two people. The organic tomato sauce I buy at the wholesale club costs about $0.75 per 15-ounce can. It is good, yet I like using my own first. I’m at the point of summer when I’m running out of new canning lids. When I went to the home, farm and auto supply store to get more last week, they were out as well.
The dehydrator is running with Red Rocket variety hot chili peppers. When these dry, I’ll crush them and use for red pepper flakes, replacing the ones from last year. Since my spouse doesn’t like hot stuff, a little goes a long way.
I picked a half dozen Red Delicious apples and while crunchy and sweet, they are not at peak sweetness. I’ll wait a while before harvesting for the kitchen. Apples and pears have been so abundant this year, most of the crop will feed wild animals though the winter. I need about three more quarts of applesauce. Then I’ll pick the best to eat raw for refrigerator storage and juice the rest until all the half gallon jars are fermenting vinegar. It has been a great apple year.
A couple of bananas were getting overly ripe. I made banana bread for the first time since I can’t remember. I used the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion cookbook for the recipe. It came out quite good. The challenge for banana bread in our household is to reduce oil and take out the eggs and milk products. The egg replacements I used previously haven’t really worked. I use applesauce instead of eggs to make cornbread. Maybe I’ll try that next time. Once I try a recipe that works, and this one did, I then start to tweak it to make it low oil and vegan. Eggs are so much a part of American cooking it is difficult to give them up. We do like banana bread.
For supper I made a pizza with home made dough, my tomato sauce, and toppings of sliced onions, jalapeno peppers and tomatoes from the garden. Cheese was mozzarella and a sprinkle of Parmesan. There will be leftovers.
So that’s what went on in our kitchen today. Despite outdoors temperatures around 90 degrees all afternoon, I made the best of it inside. It felt like a productive day.
The orchard where I worked for eight seasons before the coronavirus pandemic has Red Haven peaches from the owner’s cousin in Michigan. They are among the best peaches I have yet eaten. I didn’t buy any this year because the pear tree we planted at our daughter’s high school graduation party is producing in abundance. Our pears are misshapen yet sit down and stand up sweet and delicious. I’ll save my peach buying for another season.
It is hard to keep up with the garden’s abundance. On the counter are tomatoes, pears, apples, squash, and eggplant waiting to be processed or cooked. In August, this could be a full time job. I truly want to can tomatoes for winter. Luckily, they have a reasonable shelf life and I can process them before spoilage. Half of the challenge in the kitchen is knowing what to process, how, and in what quantity.
Physical stamina is another thing. A person can stand at the counter slicing tomatoes for only so long without rest. I do it until my back gets sore and then stop and sit for a while. It extends the overall time to get things done. It also allows me to continue until the work is finished.
The way the harvest comes in makes for canning batches of two or three different items. I currently have apple sauce, tomato juice, diced tomatoes, and salsa verde ready to be processed in a single batch. We’ll see how the morning goes and whether there are enough tomatoes to make a complete batch. I know there are enough apples to make seven quarts of sauce for a single batch. Usage in cooking determines whether to put things in quart or pint jars. For example, tomato sauce is for pints, and whole tomatoes for quarts. Apple sauce is for quarts, apple butter for pints. Navigating through canning and food preservation is a learned skill.
Ten years ago, I preserved everything I could from the garden. That resulted in many extra jars of pickles, applesauce and apple butter. Unless there is a specific reason, I now limit my seasonal output to what we can use in a year or two. I do not see a future of canning pickles the way I did in 2016 when I generated 24 quart jars. Cucumbers are so abundant, I can make fresh refrigerator pickles that last for a year. The canned goods are tasty, but also too much when trying to process everything.
My cruciferous vegetable plot was an unmitigated success this year. I put up all my kale early in the spring and now pick fresh when I need it. Soon I’ll pick a couple crates for the food banks, but I don’t like to inundate them with kale. Same for chard and collards. We have frozen broccoli and cauliflower enough to last until spring. The broccoli plants are still producing small floret bunches.
When I’m busy in the kitchen, it is time for a batch of soup. The problem is the refrigerator and freezer are full, so there is no place to store a couple quarts of home made vegetable soup.
The rack of garlic is dry enough to process and clean. I’ll save the 25 biggest heads to break apart and plant as seeds in October and put the rest in a crate for storage on the lower level of the house. Because the garlic season lasts from October to July, I tend to forget about it. It is a mainstay in our kitchen where we use some almost every day.
There is no place I’d rather be than in our summer kitchen. When one grows a kitchen garden, meals are better and we engage in the process enough to forget our troubles. It’s where I’ll spend many of the coming days.
Not enough sugar for cider to make vinegar, so apple sauce.
I’m left alone to attend to the house while my spouse is helping her sister. She’s been gone three weeks, and a return date is uncertain. I made a care package of garden produce, a couple boxes of rags, and my labor for some heavy lifting last Wednesday. We had a good conversation about life after the work was done.
The main August activity centers on the garden. There is a lot of food to bring in and preserve for the future. It never seems a straight line on getting things done.
Apples are dropping at the rate of one every minute from the Earliblaze trees. I picked a bucket full, yet there is not enough sugar in them to make cider for vinegar. I guess I’ll sauce them. If it is a bit tart, we can add a sweetener when we open the jars and serve. This was not a good variety of tree to plant back in the 1990s and I have two of them. The Zestar! apples, from a tree planted a couple of years ago, made a great-tasting sauce. That jar is in the refrigerator for immediate eating.
The first round of hot peppers is in and needs processing. The goal is to make at least one quart jar of Guajillo chilies with garlic, maybe two. There are also Serrano peppers for eating fresh and another kind of refrigerated chili sauce. Jalapenos will be eaten fresh. Anticipating a fresh salsa, I bought a bag of organic corn chips at the wholesale club. Once we get past the hot times, there will be a surge of hot peppers.
There is a small patch of celery to bring in. These get sliced thinly and frozen in one cup batches for soup. The leaves are abundant. I put them in the food processor to chop them and then freeze with water in small batches in a muffin pan for soup flavoring. Nothing is so good as home grown celery.
Tomato canning is on deck for the weekend. There are a dozen quarts left from last year and it looks like I’ll need them to get through the year. I’ll have a separate post later about the tomato crop. The ones that are coming in from the vines have had excellent flavor.
It is more difficult to cook for one. I made a big cut vegetable salad and it lasted for days. A person can only eat so many vegetables. I’ve been donating to the food pantry, so that helps alleviate the backlog. Still, there is a lot to process this weekend before the vegetables deteriorate. Better get after it soon.
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