We have finally decided to stop picking Blackberries. Now it was time to prune the canes, something which perhaps had not been done for 10 years. We encountered a lot of dead wood and canes that grew to the size of small trees (2-3 inches in diameter and well over 12 feet tall!).
I took the chance to inspect the Raspberries, thinking of a new trellis system we may implement in the Spring. I'm not sure how these raspberries will survive my weeding, but it seems I created a great environment for mushroom growing between the rows. Mushrooms seem to be in season as we see a lot of them in the forest now. I will take chances on a lot of foods, but when it comes to mushrooms, I think we will leave it to the experts.
As the fall season is rapidly approaching we decided to harvest as much as we could. This brought Tristan and I back to the wild grapes. After a second picking, we decided to do our first pressing which yielded well over 9 liters (indications of better things to come?).
On the food processing end of things we have now really perfected our crab apple jelly. It is now excellent, so the next step is simply harvesting as much as we can.
We tried to make a wild grape jelly with our juice and after 3 trials I am ready to give up. The juice is excellent but for some reason, we don't seem to get it to set (?).
You can tell autumn is coming to the farm. Although day time temperatures are still quite comfortable, the night air is becoming crisp and cool.
In fact, after hiking the dying corn fields we were very pleased to fall upon flowering vines....this meant pumpkin, squash or gourds were growing wild. In the end we gathered up quite a lot of very decorative fruits (completing 2 of the Native American 3 sisters...now I need to find the beans!).
I will not take chances eating wild mushrooms, but I will take chances on gourds. We decided to stuff the large green gourd. So after baking it (draining the water) we did this with garlic, wide beans, kale and topped it off with Parmesan cheese and decorated with Italian parsley... the results: actually quite good! We'll be trying the rest over time (although I suspect some of them may be "woody").
By the way, the Kale and Parsley came from our raised beds (yes they are producing even though we planted in early August). In fact, we have an abundance of tomatoes which I hope will ripen before first frost (otherwise: green tomato salsa anyone?).
The forest is still a real pleasure (particularly in the fall). We are now slowly getting accustomed to some of the plant species we have on hand. This week's discovery were Sassafras, originally used in the making or root beer (now that's a project waiting to happen), and tulip trees who's flowers resemble tulips (I'm dying to see this in the spring). Both have very distinctive leaf patterns.
Work on the old house continues and still brings surprises. More than ever we now know the home was built atop an old "land grant" homestead. With a lot of the homestead material recycled in the process. We found in the walls this beautiful old floor board being used as part of the Victorian structure.
As indicated last week though, it does look like things are going to look worst before they get better. The following shows what will eventually become a bathroom (the girls are now praying for it!). On the plus side, I am starting to feel that the original floor may be recoverable (cost will eventually determine if we can bring it back to life).
The Victorian barn has also released a couple of treasures. We now know that the lower portion was used as horse stables and we have a good feel for its original configuration. Two things discovered were a feed chute with a hand carved "valve" and a posted sign reading (spelling errors and all) "PLEASE CLEAN STABLES THA YOUR HORSES USE, BY OWNER A.W. CROWE, CANADA".
A. W. Crowe was the son in law of Joshua Ward (the man who built the Victorian manor). He inherited the estate before selling out to Vineland Canners.
I will leave you this week with an artist rendition of our tea room and barn. The painting is by local artist Cathy Peters. Versions of this work are currently selling as post cards in the country store (when the Tea Room is open).
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