Karen's Garden Delights Journal
2nd week of October 2011

Carrot Bed Garden clean-up was the focus this week. To pay off a barter, I was thankful for the services of two young adult helpers to pull out trellises, fold up melon plastic and pull ugly weeds. Often this task is put off till November and I am excited to see it done so early though I did have a sore back the next day. We brought in all the butternuts and gourds we found along the way. With all the groundhog damage to the squash, I'll need to start cooking down many of them to freeze. We enjoyed our first pumpkin pudding of the season this week and soon we'll have pumpkin cake and maybe even some pumpkin ice-cream. Another fall crop we are looking forward to are carrots. Here is one of our nicely weeded carrot beds (thanks Rachel!) which is a beautiful sight since last year we totally missed carrot weeding due to a family illness and death late summer. The carrots will be at their peak after staying in the ground through some cold weather when their sugars will fully develop.

Groundcherry Pie Another task that we tackled this week was butchering the last batch of pastured chickens. We did 98 in one day which made for a very long day but we were thankful for perfect butchering weather - 70s and overcast. We let this group grow to eleven weeks old so some of them were HUGE. I certainly prefer them this size so that there are actually leftovers after supper since the appetites at our house seem to be increasing as fast as weeds grow. The seven and eight pounders resemble Thanksgiving turkeys. And the perfect thing to accompany a Thanksgiving meal is ground cherry pie. We gathered a number of ground cherries this week to set aside for a Thanksgiving pie in memory of my mother-in-law. To give us an early taste of this Kidron area specialty, an Amish friend shared a ground cherry pie with us to thank me for red raspberry stars and cold frame plants. Very yummy!

Praying Mantis With cooler weather, many critters are also preparing for winter. We are finding many swallowtail butterfly caterpillars that will overwinter. While picking popcorn and cleaning up the stalks we discovered an interesting act in process. A praying mantis female was making an egg case and laying her eggs. It looked like spray styrofoam coming out and then hardens to a sturdy tan winter home. It was simply amazing to watch one of God's unique creatures in this fall rite. We find egg cases everywhere but this is the first time we watched it happening. Soon it will be time for us humans to cozy up in our winter homes.