Picked Apples and Pears

I usually have oatmeal mush every morning.  I make one batch which contains a handful of raisins, a little salt, two cups of water and one cup of old fashion oats.  I put equal amounts sin three mush bowels.  I have one for breakfast and one in the morning and one the next morning.  Sometimes Carol eats one or has it at night.  The first thing this morning I made the mush as usual, but I used the raisins from the grapes that we grew.  Carol had one of the bowels and quickly recognized that it was the raisins I made.  They were pretty good, they didn't have the taste that I was expecting.  The raisins that I made are juicy and tasty.

Every time I through the orchard I notice the pears.  They were heavy and some of the branches were bent down touching the ground.  Others were broke.  Over the years we have had a good harvest of pears.  They are hard and instead of ripening in our pantry, they begin to rot.  On You Tube the other day I was watching a video on when and how to harvest pears. You snap the pear stem from the branch.  I it leaves a scar, then it is ready to be picked.  About 80% broke of properly.  Below is a branch touching the ground.

I got two five gallon buckets full of pears.  They are hard and instead of leaving them in the pantry, I left them in the garage.   In three or four days the should be ready to eat.

I picked a bucket of apples of the tree west of house five.  The apples are wormy.  I sprayed them once this spring when they were the size of a marble.  The tree is really productive and quite short.  Next year I could easily cover it with a netting to keep the apple moth at bay.

I can't resist taking pictures of our old kittens or young cats.  The black cat is very casual. 

Picking Before the Frost.

We had a good rain last night.  Today was cool but no more rain.

I thought that Robert and Frank would be here this morning to pick the tomatoes, cucumbers, beans.  They are usually here by ten.  After lunch I called him.  He said that it had been raining in Woodland Hills and thought that it might be raining here.  About two Carol and I picked the beans.

The bean harvest was really good.  This week was a lot better than last week.  Carol picked the south side of the row and I picked the north side.

I put them on the scales and the fuzzy picture shows  a little over eleven pounds.

This morning started picking the stems of the last bunch of raisins.  I finished up tonight during the women's conference.  Which by the way was really good.  Interesting enough was the raisins weighted the same as the beans.  I still need to wash the raisins I did yesterday and today.  That is a job for Monday. 

Late this afternoon I finished the clean-up in house two, I mean the emptied the trays.  I hauled away the wheel barrow full of dead plants, and in one of my new gardens for next year. and began again to empty the pots and trays in house one.  Also, in house two I hauled more horse manure that was washed in.  There is still a little more to remove.

Nice Rain

Last night we picked all the bell peppers and we left the jalapeno and Anaheim pepper.  It had rained most of the night.  The garden was muddy and the peppers were wet . We don't need those peppers, so we put them in grocery bags and left them at the post office.  They were mostly gone by noon.  We have taken a lot of our surplus to the post office it is used by some that don't have much gardens.

Carol Sliced a lot of the bell peppers and put them on large sheet pan.  I put them into the freezer.  Later in the day she put them in a gallon zip bag and then back in to the freezer.

A couple of days ago, I cut the dead and worn out flowers and plants in the dry garden north of our house.  This morning Carol said that she would rake them up and wanted me to get a tarp.  It is much easier to use the tarp.  I then drag the garden refuse to the trailer.  When the trailer is full we take it to the dump.  

The was a couple of times during the day that I destemmed the raisons.  We have two red bowels when full of raisons will fill one quart zip bags.  I is quite slow doing this.  I filled both of them.  I have enough raisons to fill two more bowels

Carol picked two pomegranates and removed the seeds.  They are put into a zip bag, frozen until all the pomegranates are picked.  She makes them into jelly.

 Robert will be here tomorrow, Saturday, to pick the beans.  The planted late.  This will be the third weekend to pick, and most likely the last one.  A frost is forecasted early Sunday morning.  The will be turned into pickles. 

 This picture is the entrance into the crawl space under our house.  The threshold has been moved by some animal.  Maybe a skunk.  What ever is doing it cannot crawl under the door.   Mystery.