Oct. 14-20, 2024

Weather | 10/14, p. cloudy, 39°, 57° | 10/15, xx°, xx° |10/16, xx°, xx° | 10/17, xx°, xx° | 10/18, xx°, xx° | 10/19, xx°, xx° | 10/20, xx°, xx° |

• Monday, 10/14: Cleaning Plants Prior to Tomorrow's Killing Frost
  
  • This morning, several dozen robins piled into the poke berries under the Granny Smith apple tree and went after the Sargent crabapples. These robins came in with yesterday's northerly winds. They had very pale breasts. Some were almost white.
  • Mary saw a young deer with a gray winter coat when she walked the first waterer to the chicken coop. I heard it snort just a couple minutes earlier from the north woods.
    
  • Mary and I collected more nuts with the husks on that were under the pecan trees.
  • Mary picked the remaining hot peppers and hung three strings of them in the upstairs south bedroom.
  • Then, Mary picked 90 jalapeño peppers that she will make into refrigerator jalapeño pickles.
  • Next, Mary picked a five-quart pan of cherry tomatoes, and a four-gallon bucket of big tomatoes, including some unripe ones.
  • I took the husks off a 26 pecans.
  • I made noontime waffles, giving Mary relief from cooking.
  • Mary pulled up all pepper and tomato plants. She wanted to get them prior to the killer frost that's predicted for tomorrow night. She says there were probably 1,000 immature green tomatoes that were too young to save. If left until after the freeze, they all would have been pounds of gooey mush. In the future, we must get tomato plants in the garden sooner than we did this year. She moved seven wheelbarrow loads of plants stacked up to head level to a pile down the hill, east of the far garden. Mary had green hands and forearms after that job.
  • I chased squirrels away roughly every 10-20 minutes and husked another 105 pecans for a grand total of 133 put away for the day. There's only 577 left to reach our pecan nut goal for the year.
  • The tool I'm using to husk pecans is nice and black. I remember Dad telling me that prior to trapping muskrats, he and Grandad would soak new steel traps in boiling water filled with walnut husks. Pecans, hickories, and walnuts are all related. I understand, now, how well the juice from these husks blackens steel.