The Frost is on the Pumpkin, and the tomatoes

It's been a busy week at work and my time at home has been minimal and most of it spent in the dark! I hate that about fall and winter. Leave for work in the dark, come home in the dark and don't see your property or your animals in the daylight from Sunday evening to Saturday morning.  But enough complaining.

Even though its been mild during the day we had enough frost this week to kill the tomatoes. The evening before the frost I picked seven of the nicest, largest green tomatoes and brought them in to ripen. If I am lucky they will ripen without rotting. All the rain we had early in the week is hard on the tomatoes - makes them crack and rot from the inside out. Everyone I know has complained about the poor tomato crop this year. Too much rain all the way around. Strangely though, peppers of all kinds have done very well. I always thought peppers liked hot and dry but apparently not. Then again, all those beautiful peppers we see at the grocery all winter come from greenhouses in Holland. And that gets me thinking again about having my own hydroponic green house to raise lettuce and tomatoes for the restaurant trade. Next year maybe.

I keep the big brush mower, which I call a bush hog (but I think that's a trade name), attached to the back of my tractor. Normally I would have had my brother help me take it off to store for the winter but I've left in on for a couple of reasons.  I've been feeding big 500 plus pound round bales for the last month and the bush hog gives me weight on the back of the tractor to balance the round bales on the front. The other reason is, with all the rain, I've needed to mow weeds - particularly pig weed which everyone is complaining about this year. Pig weed grows like , well, a weed!  I've mowed it four times this season (normally I mow twice) and its one of those weeds that just keeps coming.  It has spiny sharp thorns up and down the stem. It grows about two feet tall, branches out like an umbrella with many flower heads held high above the foliage.  The cows like to eat those flower heads which are full of seeds - and then they pass the seeds all over the property in their manure.  I didn't have pig weed two years ago, but it came in with some hay and now it is epidemic! 

I've picked the last of the French filet green beans and they are in the freezer. Freezing green beans is by far the best way to preserve them, especially these French filet types. Its so easy as well - just blanch them in hot water for a couple of minutes, rinse in cold water, pat dry, spread out on big jelly roll pan and freeze for an hour or two, then bag them in plastic freezer bags and you are done! In the middle of winter they will seem like such a luxuary!