In which harvest season is here, and there are inevitable zukes

It's harvest-time on the farm, and visitors are always pressed into service when they arrive!



My co-author for the other book brought her grandkids to visit


The only apples that are "ready" yet are the yukky ones (buggy or otherwise damaged), so Max and Anna gathered a bucket of those and delivered them to grateful goats.




"Can we pet her?"  
"I don't recommend it.  Pet goats, instead!"

 Fiddle got an apple too.  Good Dragon (mostly). 

Then, it was on to other crops:

Our most consistant crop: eggs

These Beanstalks could easily support a Giant or two.

Magical, I'm tellin' ya.

Jim will be canning beans like crazy this week--this 10-gallon bucket isn't even half of the crop!

But first, the neighbor's heavily-laden golden plum tree needed my attention

This big bucket of plums yielded about 6 gallons of sweet golden plum wine, plus some delicious plum juice, which Jim canned for me.  Maybe we'll use it in cooking, and maybe we'll just drink it.

Sweet...and messy to eat!

Will returned to the golden plum tree yesterday and picked another big bucket--more juice!

And of course, it's blackberry-picking time also.

Duana can reach the berries on the high branches

Patty and I prefer to pick down low

I carry several blackberry-harvesting buckets in my truck so I can stop at my favorite place by the river whenever I have a bit of time.  It's a peaceful way to spend an hour or so, if you don't mind gigantic spiders, purple-stained fingers and lots of bloody scratches.

Blackberries plants may root in Hell, but the fruit contains a hope of Heaven.

Transforming fruit

into wine...


So far this year, Jim has made dry cherry wine, sweet golden plum wine
and sweet blackberry wine.  We're still hoping to make a batch
of dry purple plum wine and maybe some apple cider.


...and jam.

It's gonna take at least another week to get everything into bottles, jars, and ziploc bags.

L-to-R: blackberry jam, canned green beans, and golden plum juice

And then, of course, there are the Inevitable Zukes.

Someday I'll name a grunge-rock band "The Inevitable Zukes."

Each large zucchini yields about 2 quarts of shredded pulp that I can add to soups and sauces all winter, as well as zucchini bread and Chocolate Zucchini Cake.

Fortunately, I am an accomplished Zucchini Bomber.

Harvest season is a lot of work.

It's good, though!