Following German tradition, we share presents on Christmas Eve, after days of baking cookies, making Christmas candy and deserts and finally, on the 24th, preparing a big dinner and spending the evening with family. All of the preparation is team work, with everyone pitching in! Our holiday cookies for 2010 included:
Got some major house cleaning, re-arranging and decorating done this weekend as well. Even finished our home office area. Now we are almost ready for everyone to come and visit for Thanksgiving!
It was a beautiful fall weekend, and we got a lot of things done outside. The backyard's overgrown, messy flowerbed is no more: after Tina transplanted all perennials worth saving to other flowerbeds and moved all the scattered large stones to the future stone wall, Jeff pulled out most of the tree-stumps with the tractor and then used his grader to level the ground. Only two stumps could not be removed - one of the Magnolia trees is planted between them and they will now anchor a much smaller flowerbed. After Jeff raked the space smooth, Tina spread grass seed over the bare ground. Not sure it will still grow this fall, but it was worth a try, since the seed was left over from the spring planting in front of the house. We then removed the round turtle pen and mowed off the weeds (the turtle - being a desert creature - had to be moved inside for the winter). 
Tina also pulled out the dead annuals - since we had a pretty hard frost earlier this week, not much is left from any of them. All this cleaning up certainly made the compost pile a lot bigger. Jeff shut off all the outside water spigots, and we put away the water hoses before they freeze and crack. Mowed the backyard and the "orchard" one last time this fall, which made everything look rather clean :)
nd I went to the yard sale and found what may well be our best bargain purchase yet. The guy selling the racks was a very high end contractor, who had remodeled a multi-million dollar home, where the new owners wanted to reduce the size of the build in wine cellar. The contractor pulled out the extra teak wood wine racks that were no longer needed and he has been selling them to friends for a while 
and wanted to get rid of the last 6. These are not small wine racks, they are about 8 ft wide and 6 ft tall. We bought all 6, of these, 3 are for individual bottle storage, the other 3 are for case storage - we also got all the extra teak wood which was used around the built in shelving, plus a small side rack. All but the small extra rack are stored in the bottom of the barn, where we have yet to build a wine storage area.
First we made the patch a lot larger (with the tractor), dug holes with a spade :), planted and then ran irrigation lines. Luckily we still had some line left over, plus enough emitters to make this work. We've been irrigating every day since we planted..
But we still found time to work on our farm, mostly we spent the last couple of weekends cleaning up around the pond. We cut down the remaining willow trees and pulled out their roots as best as we could. Since we have had such a terrible long dry spell, the water level was at a record low - which allowed us better access to weeds around the banks. We weed-whipped around the pond, push-mowed and removed all weeds, including the wild roses and poison ivy! We also pulled out the old boat dock, which jutted out into the pond - but it was rickety and not too safe. Taking advantage of the low water level, we cut off the decking portion, hooked it with chains and ropes to the high- lift of the tractor and lifted it off - after some creative sawing, the former dock became a front porch on Lars's playhouse in the woods. The pillars from the dock (old telephone poles) were pulled out with the tractor, and we will re-use them for trellises for either the grapes or blackberries.
We also picked potatoes - Jeff used the single plow to dig up the rows, and the potatoes were literally just rolling out of the ground. We picked up 24 buckets of potatoes, which ended up being about 17 bushel. They are spread out on the middle bay of the upper barn to dry a little. We'll have to pick through them and sort out the damaged and cut ones, and then store the rest in crates in the bottom of the barn where it is cool and dark.
We started off on Saturday morning picking tomatoes and then picking through (and cleaning) a pick-up load of apples, which we ran through our apple press. It was a beautiful morning, not too hot and windy enough to keep flies away (had a lot of bees buzzing around us though). We ended up with about 40 gallons of apple cider. 
Jens and Grace stopped by and brought along half a bucket (5 gallon sized) of assorted hot peppers from their garden and a 50 pound bag of onions from Sams Club. In the afternoon, Duff came up with his first batch of original salsa - which we called "Duff's Smokin Salsa" (it contained chipotle and ancho peppers and we roasted the onions before adding them). Today (Sunday) we canned some of the cider,canned some peaches, started a batch of apple wine, made another batch of salsa (this one was a milder variety), made apple sauce and nectarine sauce (some we mixed 50:50), and canned all of this, and cooked enough tomatoes for another batch of sauce.
Combine all ingredients in a large sauce pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, then fill hot salsa into pint jars - adjust lids and process in boiling water bath for 15 minutes.
Our cup measures were generous - and this batch made 14 pints. The salsa is bursting with flavor - not very hot, but slightly tart from the vinegar, may want to add some sugar to the next batch to reduce the tartness somewhat. This is the kind of salsa that you would add to melted cheese, or to mashed avocados for a dip (avocado, sour cream and salsa) or add to your chili.
Today we pulled one of the flowering potato plants out and it had 6 nice sized red potatoes on it (already). We also pulled out 3 rather puny red beets - they need some more time to grow! Lars rototilled most of the garden - he was very careful between the rows of plants and did a great job!
Last weekend we did some major grading, pulling the artificially high "flower bed" that had been created around the front of the house away, to allow for better drainage of rain water after major storms. The flower bed had been edged with large field stones, which looked to have come from an old foundation or stone wall. Sam had the idea of building a new stone wall as a border between the back yard and the adjoining field - where Tina had started to create some sort of shady flower beds under the existing tree line. None of the guys were keen on this idea (probably realizing that they would have to help with the heavy lifting for a project bound to take months), but Tina found basic instructions for a mortar free stone wall - with pictures - and the first stones were sorted into piles. There are literally tons of such stones around the house and fields, so theoretically, the wall may become a reality.
Jens volunteered to paint the barn roof! He arrived before 7:00 am, and Jeff had already gotten a safety harness (plus reflective roof paint and brushes). By 8:00 am Jens had secured the D hooks on the rooftop and strapped himself into the harness - he finished the entire one side of the roof by 3:00!
Our potatoes are up very nicely, as are the red beets, peas, parsnips, lettuce and spinach. We had a nice slow drizzling rain all afternoon and planted - finally - 114 tomato plants (about 100 Roma and the rest Brandywine) and the 47 cabbage plants. Also planted a dozen basil plants in the herb garden. Went to the Newville Hardware store to get more corn seeds, as well as summer and winter squash, cucumber and some flower seeds. Weed-whacked two rows of blackberries and filled in those spots where the plants did not take (about 10%) - we had extras set aside for filling in. Would have gotten more done today, but Sam locked her keys in the car while getting ready to be a bridesmaid in a friend's wedding - so we had to drive the spare key out to the wedding venue for her (twice - since the first time we took the wrong spare key). Also got another section done in the shade bed at the edge of the lawn, put in more bleeding hearts, sweet woodruff and hostas.
Went to the Cumberland County Master Gardener annual Plant Sale and found some nice additions for the flower beds and more:
This past weekend we worked on cleaning the pond - around the edges and the water.
On Saturday we added a blueberry patch to our collection of small fruits. We planted them in front of a fence by the barn, that had been home to a large compost pile. After leveling the compost and working it into the ground, we dug holes for the 12 plants, and watered them with an acid fertilizer. We added a mixture of peat moss and potting soil into the holes and around the plants, which were two year old bushes. We'll keep working on that ground to keep the pH around 4.7%. We chose to put the blueberry patch in front of an existing fence so that we'll only need to add a few more posts in order to fence it in and cover the bushes with netting, once we actually have berries. We ended up planting the following varieties:
Today we finally moved the former "treehouse" to a useful location. We decided to put it into the grove of pine trees which is located at the far corner of the pond-side of our property. But first we had to do some tree trimming to make space for the treehouse - now called the playhouse. Then we carefully loaded the playhouse onto the trailer (with the help of the tractor), and pulled it with the four wheeler across the street to the new location.
Then we had to move the base ( the deck portion of the playhouse which used to be anchored between the trees) - Jeff did this with the tractor. Once the base was where we wanted the playhouse to be, we backed the trailer to it and tilted it (again with the help of the tractor) and slid the playhouse onto the base. After the playhouse was positioned on the base, Jeff used the tines of the tractor's front bucket to lift first the front, then the back - while Zach stacked cement blocks under the base to make it level.
