Processing the Harvest

Nice one Dave

Only ever had 2 tiny olives on mine in the past 25 years

 

Bumper crop this year Zigs, though the olives are quite small - more pit than flesh but never the less nice to have ANY olive crop this far north.

 

Dave, I believe they are very hard work to get to being edible. When will they be ready and have you spent a lot of time on getting them to this stage?

 

Hi Jenny! This is the first time we've tried proccessing. I first cut the skins and then they spent two weeks in a water/lemon juice solution which I changed every day - it might have been better to extend this time but we were fed up looking at them on the kitchen window. They are now in the fridge and we'll try a taste in six weeks time. Don't know how things will turn out but we thought it would be fun to have a try.
The jar contains a salt and wine vinegar solution with a sliced garlic clove and some sprigs of dill and I've topped it with a thin layer of oil.
We're rather attached to these olives as our 'tree' was grown from a cutting I took in Greece a few years ago and we say hello to the parent every summer!

 

Cor

look forward to hearing how they taste

 

Olives, well done.

Shiney, good recipe! 400F for 45 minutes after being tossed in a bowl with mixed soybean and olive oil (next years project for Dave). So 1 kg sprouts, 1/2 pound carrots, good salting, pepper, good oiling in a bowl first - shake pan every five minutes, excellent! A couple people at the big meal said it was the best thing on the buffet. Just redolent with vegieness and greenness and a seared outer and tender inside. *** three stars. Here they are -> they are much more browned than it looks, the carrots were excellent too with a sweetness brought out by the dry cooking.



So the huge turkey meal on a beautiful day, in the huge garden by the pool in warm sunshine - and next was BLACK FRIDAY. Wednesday I had been to the local DIY and bought $50 of 75% off bulbs! below are some of them - and going home from the meal yesterday we passed a Wal-Mart and saw how the parking lot was only half full (4 p.m.) so thought 'Why Not' - I had seen this ad.



We got the two lower items - $159 computer - which I really need - was a 'lost leader' with only 10 for the whole store and we happened into the line at #7! (one stood in line till 6 and then wrist bands were put on the ones who could get the item - and you came back at 8 to collect it, in what best could be called a swarm of shoppers - the huge parking lot was by then full with cars on any bit of grass too. So my wife went in the computer line and I got in line for the $98 TV at no 19 (119 available). I have never had a TV other than the very small ones but now my vision is getting worse thought 'why not'? I grew up in a home where the TV was considered to be a slightly shameful thing, and was kept in the TV room to be watched for the Royal Wedding or War in Iraq news; but otherwise was too anti-intellectual to be mentioned or seen. I have always had this reticence for TV since........but no longer! A 32 inch (diagonal measurement of the screen, how it is done in USA). Then a couple $5 bed pillows, a $50 sewing machine for my wife, a blue ray player for $35 (go all the way - I wanted the $35 TV speakers too but they sold out too fast), set of stainless steel bowls for $9.97, and the lap top computer!

Talk about harvesting......I have done it!

Some of the swag - (lots more bulbs downstairs including a 10 pound bag of daffs, more bulbs, and the rest). Wild shopping times with the Thanksgiving sentiment being slightly trampled in the mass - and it is a wild mass in WalMart on the biggest day of Black Friday!
Every police in town it seemed were there in uniform and plainclothes, and kept things smooth and polite as it could be. A big line of parked police cars down the front of the store to show no messing around was going to be tolerated. Good fun in a very different way.



This site is teaching me brevity - it has gone to slow mode telling me to go... Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Looks like you'm been processing the processors Colne

 

I have been! I am on my new computer now, and what an amazingly annoying thing it is Windows 8.1. All apps, and I have never had a smart phone so this is all very alien and frustrating. My wife does not even use a computer and I see more and more how I am falling behind into tech senility. I will soon be in the newer world where one banks, business; everything is paid by ones phone and I will be lost. Like those Pakistani grandmothers who are being brought into Heathrow by the tens of thousands to a world way beyond their ken; us native oldies will be dismayed and helpless in the completely connected world of the soon future.

So back to processing my harvest: my bags of daffs and hyacinths is about 3 gallons total and I have thought it best to keep them in the refrigerator till the colder weather less they think it is spring and begin growing immediately - today being a warm, no sweater or jacket needed, day. Also the bad news is that hyacinths are an annual here - too few chill hours (and so one should dig them up late spring and refrigerate to replant next fall; good theory but I doubt would be done).

But then it is all odd, this Thanksgiving day and this 'Black Friday' day being one. I have kept having the stanza from The Battle Hymn Of The Republic going though my brain:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
CHORUS:
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

And so the wicked and unworthy are crushed in retribution for their ways. I do think of this song as we conflagrate holidays of religious or ultimate significance with overwhelming commercialism and forget those who struggled for us - Christmas, Easter, (USA) Thanksgiving. Our militant secularism is calling down onto us a militant theistic way of a very different nature. Maybe secular decadence is a vacuum that always will become filled by people of some belief. The world is never static.

This hymn is timely as it tells of the solider doing gods work as he fights and dies, that god requires ultimate sacrifice of those who are called, that armies (swords, rows of steel, camps are alters...) must exist to fight and die and kill for right. Processing the Harvest; spiritual ones are also to think of. Like the poppies, Thanksgiving is to remember the struggle which brought us such blessings of peace and prosperity.

This computer is not working - trying again:

 

I got Windows 8.1

It's the most annoying pile of useless poo i've ever had the misfortune to use

 

Robeson, who can forget him in Gershwin's Showboat (edit: Hammerstein)



"I'm tired of living but scared of dying...."

"He don't plant taters, he don't plant cotton;
and those who plant then are soon forgotten,
But Old Man River; he just keeps rolling along.."


And singing the Volga Boat Song! That was a terrible death sentence for the towmen, the lowest one could sink - food sufficient to keep living till exposure or injury soon killed you off in the lonely remote, hostile, land.



"Once more men, and once more again"

"Once more boys, and yet once more"

 

All such powerful melodies Shiny and Colne. I find them hard to listen to,
Jenny

 

And I am sinking posts and stringing wires for the blackberries on the hill where just strings were doing a temporary job poorly last year. It is fun to take the unkempt bush and leave it all heavily pruned and neat.

I have not planted in the spot the sweet potatoes were dug, although have finished it up with 50 gallons of compost dug in, and think I will go with collards because they dehydrate so well for soups - and a row of garlic, and one of elephant garlic (from the %75 off bulbs).

My crab traps are pulled for the winter and I am not fishing much. I did a bit the other day off my point behind the house and caught 3 undersized redfish - which I released.

Next week the Chihuahua owner will be back and I have one tree next to this house to take down, and several others. Him and I have cut down many trees, even vary scary ones, so it will be time to do that. (I own a $250 tree felling rope, and chain saw naturally) Warm out today but winter is coming; I really do like the hot weather.

I have not planted a bulb yet - the dozen iris ($1 each bulb, reduced from $4) I bought I worry about planting because I want them growing in the pond so worry they will rot over winter - they are dried, withered, things. Should I start them in pots and plant out once they are growing? I may do that. I want to begin daff beds by digging in trenches of compost but I have broken my 3 inch heavy duty trenching shovel which is the only thing that will trench through the woody roots where I want them to go - a new one is $32, I will think about that.

Cooked a load of Siberian kale, great stuff.