Capped honey

We bottled 5 gallons of Honey and still had plenty of the dregs leftover to make probably 20 gallons of mead.

Winter grape pruning-it is time

Two weekends ago we found an unseasonably sunny and warm afternoon, making it my favorite time to prune our grapes. We started off with the arbor that is on our southern exposure adjacent to the garage. We were apparently fairly lazy last year and neglected to do a thorough grooming of these four grapes. Consequently there was a mat of deadwood with the last year growth above it. We gave it a thorough beating back and hopefully new growth will be encouraged. I'll always worry that we over prune the grapes and each time spring rolls around I am again reminded that they do survive.

American Guinea Hogs

We are weaning our three piglets born this summer to our sow. We are keeping the herd in the forest and the piglets in the secured barn where they cannot escape.  After weaning we will put them back into the pasture with the rest of the herd.

Mike Arnold,
Creswell, Oregon

Racking Glenora grape wine - 6 percent residual sugar

cardboard boxes & feed sacks as garden mulch

They decompose over the winter and till under nicely in the spring. Note the carpet walkways which will be removed for tilling.

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Greenhouse cold frames from leftover roofing material

Triple paned polycarbonate lays nicely over pots with germinating lettuce greens

Abigail & mom in the 51 degree greenhouse (38 outside)

We cleaned up the greenhose yesterday & pruned the tomatoes. Spring planted collards are in the background.

Greenhouse tomatoes in November are a beautiful thing

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Storing winter delectica & butternut squash

I've wrapped the winter sqaush that we use as "sweet potatoes" in pantyhose (as you would for onions) and hung them in the garage. We will use them first. We have about 18 stored. We eat those a lot mashed with butter & sweetened with our own honey.

Storing winter sqaush in Oregon

I just finished wrapping 40 unbruised spaghetti squash in newspaper and boxing them up. We are storing them in the garage pantry which is fairly dark (the newspaper helps with that).

We'll see how many last until spring. Hopefully they will compliment nicely all of the tomato sauce we canned. We'll eat one a week and supplement the hogs with the leftovers.

Pigs make great garden cleaners.

These are American Guinea hogs eating tomatillos and tomatoes.

Picked 3/4 of the Glenora grapes

Don't buy Chinese iron! Lodge Logic's cast iron griddle is best!

This is our replacement griddle. We bought our first cast iron griddle at Bi-Mart a few weeks ago. We went looking for a Carolina-made Lodge griddle after seeing their manufacturing process featured on the Food Network during our delivery at the hospital (the last time we were around TV). Bi-Mart had several Lodge cast iron skillets but no two-burner griddles. There was only a very inexpensive Chinese-made griddle. I prophetically said, "I don't want to buy some cheap Chinese made crap." Response: "It's a solid piece of iron; how could they mess it up."

Well, we learned firsthand what bridge builders and office builders have known for years: Chinese iron sucks. I mixing eggs and heating the griddle when I heard a loud "Crack!" The griddle broke! They cut corners. Heck, their iron was probably mixed with lead, which is great for a cooking surface! At least the lead can't make me any stupider than not buying American iron. Buyer beware.

The goats being processed at the Eugene Livestock Auction

The high school kids at the auction house glue numbers on the goats and mark breed and gender in their ledgers.

The way it works is you drop off the livestock and give them your address. Then they mail you a check next week. Pretty easy process.

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Goats gone & we're full of breakfast from the Stockman's Cafe

Racked the hard apple cider tonight

It started at 13.5 percent original sugars with the final at 5 percent . 8.5 percent alc. content. I use the refractometer to determine residual sugar to calculate alc. content.

We originally picked the apples on or about September 13, 2008.

Then we put the apples into the hopper to shred them and then pressed them:

And then the cider drips off the press:

Vine baby belly pumpkin

It's ripe and ready to pick.

A pumpkin among the corn rows

8-Ball Zukes stuffed

Picked this two zukes, hollowed them out and steamed for 20 minutes. I stuffed with fresh picked turnips, rice, prosciutto, chard, and French sorrell.

A home cooked home grown meal

Everthing from tonight's meal came from our farm except for the cottage cheese and ranch dressing.

We had a rib steak, collards (with a bit of honey), yellow tomato, and salad (mixed greens, hard boiled egg, cucumber) & plum mead.

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