What an incredibly busy day. I left the farm more in one day than I can remember in the last couple of years. I am the type to stay on the farm and not venture out much, I like being home and I have a plethora of tasks/chores/responsibilities that I can always keep myself busy with. Thus having these days generally enforces that mentality a bit more.
My buddy stopped by to bring me my srill for the roofing install I have coming up and he hung out for about an hour. After J going to school and my buddy stopping by but before taking R to school I got the tomatoes that have any color to them picked. I got 15.5 pounds with the bulk being the larger tomatoes. I have nearly 20 pounds of them that I am saving for later this week when we will run them to can. I should have another 5 to 10 pounds by that point I hope so we will have a solid batch to process.
R's first day of school finally happened. It had been pushed back 3 weeks due to his teacher being out sick. She is back now and feeling MUCH better so he got to have his first day.
After taking him to school I headed up to the winter squash garden to pick the last bits that were left. The Minnesota midget melons were mostly ready with about half turned ripe color and the other half still green looking. I picked every one of them though since frost is likely tomorrow morning.
The butternut had all kicked and there were just a couple stragglers left. I pulled all the plants and piled them in the middle of the garden to haul down to the animals.
I managed to get another 17 pounds of melons and 16 pounds of winter squash. That makes 1223 pounds of Winter squash picked this year and 126.5 pounds of the Minnesota Midget melons.
Who owns the property that I grow my winter squash on has a good sized raspberry bush/es that are loaded with ripe raspberries. I was informed that they need to be picked and I got a handful while there yesterday but I had no cup or bucket to hold them in. I plan to go back up there today and cleanup and pick the raspberries so we can run them in the freeze dryer as soon as the melon run is done.
After noon I got started in the kitchen cutting up melons to run the next batch in the freeze dryer. I started with the 4 pear melons that I had in the fridge that REALLY needed to be processed. They were on the back side of ripe so it was imperative.
I had to take a break in the midst of my cutting to go pickup the boys from school. Nicely they both are out within 10 minutes of each other so I just wait once I pickup R. Once back though I got the rest of the melons cut up and all the trays in the freeze dryer.
The first tray is all pear melon while the second is half and half.
The next 3 trays are all Minnesota midget and used up all but 4 of the ripe melons we have. I have a box of 16 sitting behind me that I want to let ripen if possible. I may have to put them back in the cooler for a while and hope they ripen some.
As I was getting the last tray filled we had to leave to go pickup the Azure order. We got to the truck and he had already parked and was unloading. It only took about 15 minutes for the unloading and we were home quickly. Not long after our friend and her kids stopped by to pickup their part of the co-op order. While they were here my mom had her generator deliver and I had to hook up the trailer to my truck to go out to the road and haul it in. I parked the trailer by her place and will unload it today.
So I ended up off the farm 5 times yesterday and amazingly still managed to get something accomplished.
We spent the last hour+ of the evening soaking in the tub. It started to rain some in the afternoon and when we went out it was raining fairly hard. It rained all night and this morning I was able to catch the tail end of the rain while soaking.
Today I pick everything that I can before the frost, pick raspberries, try to cleanup the winter squash garden, boys have school, I will be covering the garden tonight for frost tomorrow.
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Gab
Awesome job and this year has been very large blessing for you.
This is when I normally have the first frost, but nothing close so far. I do need to get basil harvested and parsley.