Another one where I do apologize, but just going to be kind of raw, unedited, and cover a few weeks of work with mostly pictures.
This is my daughter Claire showing a seed saving demo. Renville Paste tomatoes. Just slice, squeeze them into a container, and move on to the next one.
So when all said and done, couple thousand seeds in pulp.
Goes into a dated, labeled jar for 5 days, then rinsed in a wire strainer, dried on a ceramic plate, and then packed away for another year.
Rumi Banjan tomatoes from the garden. Claire chopping garlic.
Seeded tomatoes.
How every pot of red sauce starts: garlic and olive oil.
Chip bud grafts I did on seedling trees here at home. Kleffman & Cortland apples using cuttings from trees in our yard. Bud chips have grown in, swelled, and burst the Parafilm covering.
Arikara Sunflowers out at the Adickes farm are doing well.
Going to need to cut them soon and lay them out to dry in one of their protected greenhouses.
The hops we planted on our windmill trellis up at the property grew pretty well this year. Had been led to believe they were not likely to flower first year. Cascade though proved them wrong.
Hallertau and Centennial did not flower. But was fun to see the Cascade make it to about 8 feet tall, and give up a few flowers.
One of our neighbors runs a sheep milk and cheese farm. Was fun to just see them out with their minder dogs.
Someone was having fun stacking rocks by Siskiwit Falls in the river.
Wild turkeys on a road going up Pratt’s Peak. This trip was just with Nell, and not as long as I would have liked. We got rained out Labor Day Monday morning. 4.5 inches in 4 hours. But I did finish the grafting work I needed to do up there the day before. Will have to go back to do weed remediation and wrapping of tree trunks before winter.
Just a wild apple tree we found. They were sour and not sure if ripe yet.
Nell and I were invited to Highland Valley Farm (see their website at http://www.bayfieldblues.com/ ) where we were introduced to the finer points of farming blueberries, currants, honey, maple syrup, and just a few hours of great fun. Magdalen Teasley-Dale lives near our property and is who the invite came from. Entertainment and tour/lesson came from her dad Rick Dale.
And I got to play with his son’s dog.
This is one of the winter bench grafts I had done and transplanted up north that worked well.
Nell kept me company while I was up there. Ate the food I cooked, (bacon and egg sandwiches, and bacon cheeseburgers on the fire) and made me bouquets of flowers she hung around wherever I was working at the time.
Another bench graft. Really shows how important matching the cambium layers up is.
A different type of bench graft, but also seems to have worked just fine.
Another done the same way.
Just an apple tree growing in a black spruce hedgerow on our place. The pines are older, so this is likely a volunteer, but the apples taste pretty good, have a nice pink blush inside, and are more tart than a Harelson. Not as sweet and crisp as one, but still a nice apple.
The more ripe they are, the deeper the red blush. This is just a photo of one I cut up there. Ones we brought home and we have had here for a week are darker.
Patti and I got out to the Adickes farm to do weed remediation and pick beans.
The chip bud grafts I did up there really took off.
Just a month since I did them, and nearly all took, and some have even put up full branches.
This is one of the few ones that failed, and thought it was cool that the tree healed itself behind the chip bud and blew it right off of the main stem.
Another example of a successful one.
Just two of the wine grapes I grew from cuttings taken last spring. Top is King of the North, bottom is Frontenac.
Another view of an earlier shot. The graft is Crabby Crisp, a variety developed by Dave Macgregor that he gave me cuttings of to propagate by chip budding.
Cat had to come ride the shoulders while Patti and I were picking beans. He is kneading his claws into my shoulder and drooling all over me. Guess he missed me.
Ended up with about 4 gallons of beans, tummies full of a wonderful dinner cooked by Katrina, and a tumbler of Crown Royal to sip while watching a spectacular sunset.
So that is the last couple of weeks. Starting to see color in the trees, air is getting crisp in the mornings, deer season is around the corner and winter is coming.
