While the drought continued outside, and the search for a new home continued, I made the best of things. I'll even get to teach you something again today for a change: fermented carrots and sauerkraut. We'll return to the garden in the next one.
Last time, we left things while I harvested spinach in the garden. This time, we'll see what I did with the harvest. We'll also tackle some other indoor tasks that were urgently waiting for my attention. It's going to be another vlog-style mesh of Kate-does-things.
I'm in the garden to check on everything and it is so cold again but there is life everywhere and I'm very happy that nothing is lost.
At home, things were slowly taking shape. We had the bare essential to live again. It was a time of waiting. Waiting to find a more permanent home. Waiting for spring. Waiting for my operation.
Whenever my brain needed a break from studying, the kitchen was in full swing. Pancakes, sourdough pizza wheels, and syrup for drinks were made while avoiding exam prep. I’ll show you all that while talking about good sources for ingredients and ranting about supermarket organic.
The garden is now an hour’s drive away. It’s a rare refuge. I lucked out that my appointments in the area aligned with a rare beautiful winter day. A day in the garden, away from all the politics and injustice out there, it’s rare but it’s everything. So, today, I won’t rant about the world out there. Today, we’ll harvest some spinach and talk about pretty things.
The end of October brought dark, wet, but still very warm days. I had a plan for next year’s garden, so I brought cardboard into the garden to start new beds with. I’d already prepared most of the beds for winter, made most of the new beds. Three beds were left to start. I’ll likely never get to plant these beds. But I didn’t know that yet, so I worked diligently.
Fall is harvest season. I busily preserved the harvest from my and other gardens. Despite issues with blight, our tomatoes had produced enough for some canning. The neighbor’s apple trees had left me with goo harvests. In the garden, I harvested the rest of the sunflowers.
The outside world was darkening. Growing food was moving mostly indoors, the focus otherwise shifted to preservation. I switched to indoor tasks–and I had put off enough of them to fill a book.
For weeks, I’d prioritized the garden, ignoring tasks at home until they became urgent. Now, it was time to catch up on, well, everything. It was too wet for most garden work anyway. I used the time inside to bake crackers, infuse a lemon balm syrup, and catch up on the million things I hadn’t done.
On a stormy day, I visit the garden, ramble on about the garden year, and show you a few of my favorite plants in the garden. There is a lot of me talking to the camera in this one.