It’s September 15th. I just went out to my garden at -2 (Celsius) and picked herbs lying under a blanket of snow, still falling from the grey skies overhead. My hands haven’t been this cold in years, reminiscent of lambing when we used to do it in January/February. Am I nuts? I wonder sometimes.
I jarred a box of pears and one of peaches, ate some fresh too, yum. But, after all my work I probably paid more for those British Columbia fruits than I would pay if I bought the fruit in jars or “fresh” from the grocery store! Mind you, canned or jarred store fruits are often imported from overseas and “fresh” is a label, not a reality. My home canned fruits do taste better.
I have a crab apple tree and a Norland (larger than crabapples but best eaten fresh, don’t keep well). I jar apples in every form I can think of - juice, applesauce, whole crab apples, then I leave the rest for the birds and the sheep. This year I tried air-drying apples and they taste good - now to see how well they keep.
I have green tomatoes ripening on a shelf upstairs. Alberta has long days in summer but summer is short, especially this year. Winter in September is a bit much! I grow a variety of tomatoes called sub-Arctic, a short season variety that still needs to be started indoors or bought from a greenhouse. We did get some vine-ripened red tomatoes this summer but the majority of the crop must be ripened indoors. I got them in just a few days before the cold set in. As they ripen I cut them in quarters and freeze them until I have enough to make salsa, soup or plain canned tomatoes. I’ve tried my hand at spaghetti sauce but haven’t ever been satisfied with my results.
I freeze peas because they taste better than canned, but I jar beans, some zucchini. I make pickles and more pickles and eat fresh cukes until I pull the vines. I make everything I can with raspberries - juice, jam, wine. We picked squashes a bit smaller this year - what can a family of two do with a squash that’s as big as a Halloween pumpkin? Onions are stored. Potatoes, carrots and beets are still in the ground. We’re hoping for some decent warmer weather to come before freeze-up and waiting for our root cellar to cool more. They are the last harvest before tilling, manuring, and the long wait for another summer when we do it all over again.
And the honey experiment, well we found out the flow hive does work in this climate, but our yield was disappointing. We have probed the internet and asked producers and pondered and wondered but all we have managed to discover so far is that keeping bees is complicating. Hopefully we succeed in wintering what appears to be a strong and healthy hive once again, and next year (my how often we say those words “next year”) we’ll get a better yield.
This insatiable desire to live off the land, to grow organic, fresh vegetables and fruits in summer and preserve them for winter, where does it come from? I’m not preparing for some biblical “end times” or fearing a nuclear winter. Was I was born in the wrong century? Am I a throwback? I was a city gal before my husband and I “went back to the land”, yet I have comfortably fallen into this lifestyle as if I were born to it. Preparing all summer for winter, though a lot of work, is satisfying and I think work can contribute to better health. Sitting on your ass is not an option and that’s a good thing. When things need to be done they need to be done - now. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel like doing anything that day. And when those warning snows arrive early it’s amazing how inertia can be overcome and what’s not done yet gets done. I’m okay with autumn arriving before the calendar confirms it. I hope for more warm sunny days, especially for all the farmers whose crops are still in the field, but I’m nearly ready to settle down in front of the fire on those long winter nights ahead.
