The next item on the harvest list, the Vanessa grapes, have started to ripen enough. They are not all ready so I had to pick through the bunches hanging from the vines. These are our bigger of the 2 grapes varieties and this year they are the biggest they have ever been. I hacked the pants back a bunch and strung them on lines which I believe did the trick. By focusing more energy into less fruit it made the ones that did grow a lot bigger.
You can see the somewhat uneven ripening but that is pretty normal. Under than canopy of the plants the bunches mostly all hung free.
Super stoked to have bigger grapes finally. They have seeds but it is not as bad when the grapes are larger. The bunches all came out similar sized and packed full.
The tub full with not even half the grapes gave me over 12 pounds. These will mostly be for eating but we will have to do something to save some. I may throw a bunch in the freezer if I can find any room. I don't want to can the juice if I don't have to since they are such awesome eating grapes.
R had preschool mid day and after picking him up and feeding the boys we went up the hill to the squash garden. I dropped the upper fence and backed up to the garden. My truck was super full from just the 2 sections. The delicata and butternut plants took up the entire bed of the truck. I had to drive nice and gently down the hill to the house. There were are few straggler squash hiding amongst the plants but nothing really big.
I backed the truck into the sheep's pen and tossed the plants around. You would think I didn't feed them or something by the way they attacked the strewn plants.
They spent the rest of the afternoon digging through the vines for any of the still green leaves. Given how badly they decimate the pen and the plants it's not super surprising. One of the only bad things about the property is the lack of grazing. It is mostly pine and fir trees up top and the soil is shit, no water, no power, etc.
First batch of tomatoes put through the hot water bath. @stryeyz got 8 1/2 quarts of tomatoes cut up and the n7 quarts got processed and 2 are left for us to use this week. I check the tomatoes in the cooler and only had a couple of them bad. The rest of the 160 pounds are still green and very slowly starting to ripen. I have to go through them all and remove all the stems and sort them for quality.
The latest audiobook:
Lawrence Block - The Liar's Bible - Telling Lies for Fun and Profit
(The older books are a bit interesting to listen to. So much of the business side of writing has changed in the past 20 years and the books from the 70s and 80s really feel antiquated. I remember some of Block's columns from Writer's Digest when I was in middle and high school.)
I just got a bunch of audiobooks that I am super anxious to listen to.
Save the cat - Jessica Brody
Wonderbook - Vandermeer
Murder your darlings - Clark
Essays on the Writer - Ursula K Le Guin
Putting the science in scifi - Kobolt
Zen in the art of writing - Bradbury
Today I am likely keeping R home from preschool as he has what seems like an allergy cough going on so best to not freak others out despite it just being allergies. I have to sort tomatoes, pull more of the winter squash plants, and do a little hunting for trees that need to be cut up for firewood.
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Gab
Nice beautiful nature and an interesting product :)
Love those grapes! So pretty!
Never had sheep, so it's interesting the things you feed them and they eat.