It’s been a little busy lately. Late summer is easily the busiest time on the Sithean farmlet, and compounding our usual gardening/preserving/weeding/back-to-schooling of this time of year is some nuances related to the pandemic and some much-needed home maintenance as well as wrapping up our home reorganization as we prepare to adopt.
2020 is turning the year that both everything stopped being normal and we did absolutely everything.
Just typing that reminds me that I’m tired. I still watch the world, and there are wildfires and the aftermath of Hurricane Laura and police still detaining and shooting black people without reason and so many things that I see that just seem so wrong, but unlike the world of fear and chaos being painted by some, and not enough help for those in need, still I see hope. Not Pollyanna-ish hope, but the tiny shoots through cracks in the pavement. As the pandemic lingers and spins out of control in the US, reality is seeping through to all but the most denial-wracked. My mostly-white community is awash in Black Lives Matters signs. Protests continue, and the world is not complacent. Whatever our new normal will be is not going to be as easy as what came before, but hopefully it will be more fair.
This week is the first one in a while where we have time and the only pressing projects are cleaning and organization, and food preservation. Well, and a long -needed hair appointment for me. While Massachusetts case counts are low, I am scheduling key appointments – physicals, eye doctor appointments and dentist, and just a tiny bit of personal maintenance. I’ve thought about giving up my hairdresser in favor of home haircuts and no cost, but landed on keeping it in the budget 2-3 times a year.
Rain has returned with some regularity to Sithean, for which I am profoundly grateful. And just in time, because the garden is producing everything, all at once. The tomatoes are ripening, the raspberries have returned to the vines, and all the pumpkins and squash are growing wherever they can throw out runners. Which is everywhere. Yesterday I found a pumpkin growing in the middle of the raspberry patch. That should be fun to extract.
This morning I blanched and froze kale, and this afternoon I’m starting another batch of zucchini relish, which fits right into my strategy of mass-produced homemade holiday gifts, making a pot of chili for easy lunches for a few days, and for dinner making a pot of cauliflower curry soup with goat cheese and pomegranate seeds, one of my favorite Halfbakedharvest.com recipes.
We have more basil than we know what to do with, and we’ll be giving away pesto as well as freezing as much as possible. This year I’m determined to replicate the minestrone soup with pesto I ate one glorious day in Italy in 2004. I’m going to start with this recipe and see if it needs adjusting.
Because soup season is coming. The nights are getting cooler, the geese are beginning to congregate in local fields before they head south, and my weekends are going to be spent in the kitchen.
Garden season will last about another month, maybe 6 weeks, and at the end, the fruits of our labors will be waiting in bags and jars for us to eat.
Little House on the Fairy Hill 