Harvesting spaghetti squash

Remember how prolific and abundant the spaghetti squash was in the garden this summer?

Well, we've had some frosts, so the time had come (the walrus said?) to harvest it. Low nighttime temperatures had killed the plants, so there was no sense leaving the veggies languishing in the garden with no further source of nourishment.

The trouble was two-fold. One, we have nowhere really effective to store that much squash. (A root cellar is still a distant dream.) And two, about three-quarters of the squash was still unripe, thanks to the late "second wind" so many plants got a few weeks ago.

But issues or not, I started picking.

As I picked, I separated the ripe from the unripe. The ripe went into a wheelbarrow. Headcount: 23 squash.

I piled the unripe squash on one of the garden beds.

Headcount: 73

This means we harvested a total of 96 squash. It's a nice problem to have, but this much squash is still a problem.

A couple of squash were so small that they weren't worth counting.

And one had split, so that one will go in the compost pile (and with my luck, the seeds will grow as volunteers next year.)

We packed the ripe squash into crates...

...and stacked them in the well house. This is as close to a "root cellar" as we have. We have a small heater inside that kicks on whenever the inside temp dips toward freezing, but otherwise the space stays quite cool.

We piled the unripe spaghetti squash into every remaining crate we could locate. When we ran out of those, the remainder went into burlap sacks.

Apparently heat (as in, room temperatures) will help unripe spaghetti squash to ripen, slowly. So we hauled the crates inside and stacked them next to the ripening tomatoes.

We're unlikely to be able to eat this much spaghetti squash before it goes bad, so as the unripe squash  ripens, we'll be handing it out to friends and neighbors. And next year, I'll dial back how much I plant.

Another autumn chore, done.

Harvesting tomatoes

I got a late start on tomatoes this year. Between the trip south to see my parents early in the spring and the time it took to get the garden deer-proofed early in the summer, I didn't even get seeds planted (indoors) until late April.

Among the seeds I planted was a type of paste tomato I'd never tried before called Federle. This variety came to my attention after I did a search for the meatiest type of heirloom paste tomato available. I found the seeds from a place called Tim's Tomatoes.

Due to various neglect issues on my part (ahem) as well as some hungry insects in the garden, hardly any of my original seedlings survived the transplant process with the exception of about six of these Federle paste tomatoes. They were so small and spindly, in fact, that I had no hope the ones I transplanted would survive.

Well, not only did they survive, they thrived and grew huge.

And my goodness, did they put out tomatoes. These weren't cute Roma-shaped tomatoes either, but big honkin' misshaped monsters that looked more like sausages or peppers than tomatoes.

It's not at all unusual in our neck of the woods to have the vast majority of tomatoes still green when the first frost hits. We kept the tomatoes on the vine for as long as we could, but finally the weather promised a drop to 29F, so Don and I hustled to strip the plants bare.

The oak tree gave a dramatic backdrop to our labors. It was a cold and blustery day as we picked. Despite the sunshine on one side, you can see some dark rain clouds in the back, which skirted around us.

I had only two beds of tomatoes (on the right), so Don and I each took a bed and started stripping the plants.

The first thing we discovered was the plants were insanely productive. Among those few plants that initially survived transplanting early in the summer, we got two full tubs of (mostly) green tomatoes.

We also pulled up the volunteer cherry tomato plants.

This was the afternoon's haul.

We pulled the tubs into the kitchen for the night and covered them with mosquito netting to keep fruit flies away. (We always seem to get fruit fly infestations this time of year, no matter how many jars of apple cider vinegar mixed with soap we put out.)

The next day I set the tomatoes up for ripening in the house. I started by laying the mosquito netting on the floor, then put down a flat (unopened) plastic garbage bag. This works to keep any moisture from damaging the carpet underneath.

Before storing the tomatoes, however, I wanted to see how much they weighed. One tub weighed 70 lbs.;  the other tub weighed almost 60 lbs.

That's nearly 130 lbs. of tomatoes from two garden beds. Yowza.

I set up a large cardboard box on the plastic, then started layering tomatoes. In most (but not all) of the layers, I added a banana, which exudes ethylene gas and helps ripen the tomatoes faster.

Between layers, I put sheets of newspaper.

Some of the tomatoes were huge. (Banana, as they say, for scale.)

When the first tub of tomatoes was layered in the box...

...I cut the box down and loosely sealed it closed.

Then I set up a second box and repeated the process with the second tub of tomatoes. The boxes are large enough that I could fit all the tomatoes in one box, but I didn't want to do this for two reasons. One, I didn't want the bottom tomatoes to get squashed; and two, periodically I'll be pawing through all the layers and removing ripe tomatoes, so it's better to have two boxes with fewer layers than one box with lots of layers.

After the second tub of tomatoes was packed away, I turned to the cherry tomatoes and separated the ripe from the unripe. I put the ripe tomatoes into the fridge for immediate use, and the green tomatoes got tossed onto the top layer in one of the boxes.

The very last thing I did was wrap the boxes in the mosquito netting. Kept away from fruit flies (which accelerates rotting), the tomatoes will ripen slowly over the next two or three months.

The plan is to check the boxes about once every 10 days or so and remove the ripe tomatoes, which I'll run through our food strainer and then freeze the pulp. When all the tomatoes have been puréed, I'll defrost the purée and cook it down slowly on the stove into tomato sauce, which I'll then can up.

These are seriously meaty paste tomatoes, so it will be interesting to find out how long it takes to cook them down compared to "regular" paste tomatoes like Romas or Amish Paste.

Another autumn chore, done.

We're the same age

A couple of days ago, I stumbled across an article written by a British journalist named Kate Mulvey entitled "I regret belittling men; at 63, I’ve ended up alone."

It was a painfully honest and achingly sad analysis written by a woman who is exactly my age.

The most telling paragraphs in the article were as follows:

"I’m convinced that the reason I’m still booking a table for one at the age of 63 instead of having settled with a significant other is because, like so many women of my generation, feminism has ruined my love life. Instead of empowering us, those ideals of the second-wave feminists made us believe marriage and domesticity were to be avoided like the plague and that men were competition rather than partners.

"I might have a successful career as a writer and broadcaster, but I have never had children or been married, and my longest relationship lasted eight years. I regret this; I had always imagined I would end up married with two wonderful children and living in a house in the countryside. I have paid a hefty price for my so-called liberation."

Curious about the author, I read a few more of her pieces, including one written a couple of years ago entitled "I was shamed for being single at 61 – so I bought myself a ring and invented a fake fiance, it helped me bag a date." (The title pretty much sums up the premise.)

She writes: "For the last eight months, I have been wearing a divorced friend’s engagement ring and pretending that I am getting hitched to a photographer called Max. No, I have not lost my mind and yes, it’s a bit extreme but I am one of those modern glitches, an aging spinster, at 61, who has never managed to tick the boxes of marriage and kids." (Apparently the logic here is that men like the challenge of pursuing the unattainable.)

Ms. Mulvey seems to have a thing for much younger men (in yet another article, she describes dating men decades her junior) and expresses disdain for older men who are "balding," as if that's a turnoff.

I dunno ... having read a number of Ms. Mulvey's pieces, I find myself torn feeling very sorry for her. I hope she finds a nice man (her age) soon.

Bookish indulgence

Sorry for the silence, dear readers! We've had an extraordinarily busy week. Among much else, I took a trip to the city for what is now an annual shopping trip at the big box stores. I used to go two or three times a year, but since I got laid off from my online job last February, it's turned into an annual trip (I haven't been to the city since last October). Glad it's done!

At any rate, Older Daughter pulled me away from our autumn chores with the promise of a bookish indulgence, namely a nearby town's annual library sale. Groan, how could I resist?

We got there even before the doors opened up. It's always fun to go to these events because every homeschooling family for miles around shepherds their kids inside and they all get to indulge in books to their hearts' content, which is always charming. I saw one toddler in a stroller, avidly perusing a classic kid's book. It would have made a darling photo.

As I emerged from the building, I saw this trio of siblings waiting for their mother to fetch the car, and who couldn't help but dig into some of the treasures they found.

Our (meaning, Older Daughter's and mine) haul was modest this year. The pile below is my choices. I felt guilty going to a library sale when we're on a budget, but you know how much this collection of books cost me?

$4.75. Yes, less than $5. In fact, I just handed over a $5 bill to the nice volunteers running the sale. It's for a good cause, after all.

So no, I don't feel too guilty. At all. The books were a lot of bang for five bucks. Bookish indulgences are always fun.

Update: A reader asked what books I bought. Here's the list:

• National Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Familiar Mushrooms
• How to Prune Fruit Trees by R. Sanford Martin
• 1,000 Difficult Bible Questions Answered by George H. Sandison & Staff
• Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger
• The Cinderella Pact by Sarah Strohmeyer
• 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper
• Recipes for a Small Planet by Ellen Buchman Ewald
• How to Stay Alive in the Woods by Bradford Angier
• First Impressions by Nora Roberts
• Ancestral Passions by Virginia Morell
• Into the Wilderness: An Artist's Journey by Stephen Lyman

Ode to one of my favorite writing tools

The year was 2005. Don and I had moved to Idaho two years before. I decided to join the local chapter of RWA (Romance Writers of America), meetings of which were held in Spokane.

It was there, for the first time, that I saw something that was to become something of an obsession: An AlphaSmart Neo.

It was more intense than an obsession. I coveted this little writing gizmo, but it simply wasn't within our budget to buy one new.

One day a woman in the writer's group wanted to upgrade to the newer version, and she offered to sell me her old unit for an extremely low price. I leaped at the opportunity and never looked back. A few years later, I saw an identical model in a thrift store and snapped it up, so now I have two.

Essentially an AlphaSmart Neo is a portable keyboard capable of storing 200 pages' worth of writing. It runs on AA batteries that seem to last forever (I change mine about every five years). Everything typed into the AlphaSmart is automatically saved, and the text isn't lost when changing the batteries. It has eight different files, so I can work on eight different documents at the same time.

And these things are tough. Older Daughter once dropped mine on concrete and it was fine. I believe these machines (there are several versions) were originally developed to teach schoolkids keyboard skills, so they had to be tough.

Today I needed to take our car in for new (used) tires at a local place. I had about an hour to kill, so I brought my AlphaSmart with me and got my daily half-chapter of my latest book written. When I got home, I ran the cord from the AlphaSmart to my laptop and downloaded it all.

In about a week, I'm taking a fast trip down to see my parents. Guess what I'll be packing in my suitcase so I can do some concentrated writing in the airports?

For times I need to just write and not be distracted by emails or the internet, the AlphaSmart can't be beat. Since it turns on and off instantly, I don't have to worry about powering it up or down. It even has a two-button "on" option so it doesn't accidentally get jostled on when carried in, say, a backpack.

Sadly, the manufacturer went out of business in 2013, doubtless unable to compete with newer whiz-bang electronics. However units can still be found online. Honestly, if Amazon had any more than a single unit in stock, this would be a product review. (You can find units available on eBay.)

So yeah, even though I've had my AlphaSmart for 20 years, my love affair with this remarkable little tool hasn't faded. You might call this blog post an Ode to the AlphaSmart.

Garlic, start to finish

Last fall, I planted what ultimately turned out to be five beds of garlic. Four beds were the variety I'd grown the year before, and the fifth bed was a later addition in which I planted a larger-sized variety. I always plant German porcelain-neck garlic.

By April, the plants looked green and healthy.

I ended up harvesting it in early September, which was honestly a bit late. I should have pulled it up mid-August or so.

This is the size difference between the regular-sized garlic I planted in the four beds, and the larger variety I planted in the fifth bed. (Guess which variety I'll be replanting this year!)

After each bed was harvested, I trimmed off the stems and put the bulbs in a bucket.

After everything was harvested, I had a good amount (in the black tub). Each day, I sat down to trim the garlic, filling a bowl with the trimmed stuff. Working my way through the black tub took about two weeks of trimming in my spare time.

As I worked, I put aside any exceptionally large cloves for planting.

Because I waited so long to harvest the garlic, it came out of its paper shell rather dirty, so I carefully washed and dried it.

Every few pounds, I chopped the garlic up, then put it in a bag and froze it.

Ultimately I ended up with five bags of chopped garlic in the freezer totaling 21.25 pounds. Soon, however, whenever we opened the freezer, we were greeted with the overpowering scent of garlic. I knew it was time to can it up.

I took the bags out of the freezer and let them defrost overnight.

If the garlic smell in the freezer was a bit much, it was nothing next to 21 pounds of defrosted chopped garlic sitting on the kitchen table.

To can minced garlic, especially in this quantity, I started by boiling two large pots of water.

After the water reaches boiling, I turn off the heat and add the chopped garlic. This parboils the garlic.

I let the garlic soak in the hot water for about ten minutes. Then I started filling canning jars. My pressure canner fits 18 regular-mouth canning jars at at time, so I started with that.

The jars are topped off with the cookwater. It's helpful to slide a knife along the inside of the jars to reduce air pockets and bubbles.

Wiping the jar rims.

This is how I store my canning rings.

First batch into the canner.

About 14 lbs. of pressure for 30 minutes.

It took two batches to can up the harvest.

Final tally: 28 pints of minced garlic. That's more than enough to last us a year. Or two. Maybe three.

I washed the jars before storing them in the pantry.

Aha, but I wasn't finished with the garlic. I still needed to get next year's crop planted. Not, more than likely, because we'd run out of canned garlic before next year; but because even with a super-abundant harvest, things must be planted when they must be planted. And garlic must be planted in the fall.

Also, I had ordered a pound of seed garlic in a jumbo size. I'm still trying to "recreate" the huge garlic cloves I grew in our last garden at our old house, and this jumbo-sized garlic was closer to what I was used to. Plus, of course, I had reserved some of the larger cloves from this year's harvest for planting.

Before planting, however, I wanted to amend the beds with compost and sand. This is some of our composted cow manure which Don scooped out of the barnyard and piled below the driveway.

I shoveled some into a wheelbarrow and trundled it up to the garden. And I mean UP to the garden. Everything on our property is sloped, so it's like we're always climbing, y'know?

I decided to plant just two (rather than five) beds with garlic. These two particular beds had potatoes in them before, so I raked them more or less level.

I dumped the first load of compost on one of the beds, and went for another. Darcy was a big help during this process.

I trundled up four loads of compost, two per bed.

Then, from the other side of the property, I scooped up a wheelbarrow full of sand. It. Was. Heavy. So heavy, in fact, that I simply couldn't push it up the incline into the garden.

I had to get a second wheelbarrow and empty a bit of the sand into it, then push that up, then repeat the process a couple more times.

Here's about half the sand, covering one bed.

Using a pitchfork, I turned over the compost/sand and worked it into the soil. Fortunately this was an easier process than I anticipated, so it didn't take long.

The beds were kinda overfilled, but that's okay. They'll settle over the winter.

Then it was time to pull out the seed garlic. Homegrown stuff on the left, new jumbo garlic on the right.

Here's the difference in clove size.

Of the new jumbo garlic, I only had 24 individual cloves, which planted half a bed.

Then I placed the homegrown seed garlic in the rest of the beds.

Planting is easy. Lever a hole with the garden tool, push the bulb down, cover, and voilà.

The last task was to mulch the beds with straw. I pulled up the hay sled with the straw, which normally is tucked under the porch to keep the straw dry.

The garlic beds are now finished. Except for watering and a little light weeding, there is very little I'll need to do to the garlic until next summer.

Darcy's final act was to steal one of my work gloves. He has a "thing" for gloves (but only if they're outside). I had to throw a Frisbee to distract his attention so I could rescue my glove.

Another part of the harvest, done.