Diary 8/18/13

Smoky again in the AM, but still made applesauce and put four trailer loads of wood into the wood shed. Dried four racks of apple slices, and dusted the aphid areas with diatomaceous earth, a silica powder made from the fossilized shells of sea creatures from long ago that dried as a layer in the great basin and elsewhere. The spiny fossils poke soft bodied insects such as aphids. The aphids are there because a gopher is bothering the roots of the plants and thus weakening them. The bugs know the weaker plants and prey on them like wolves. Cooler, wetter, weather would help, but so would gopher eradication. Hope to do some widespread attacks when fire season is over.The boys from France made dinner; quiche and ratatouille! YUM!

Diary 8/17/13

So smoky this morning, I did not feel like we should be outside, so we worked on two more batches of jam. One we made with red raspberries only, and the other with red raspberries and two kinds of plums sauce. They are both very pretty and bound to taste pretty darn good! Finished drying some cherry plums I picked too early. I am worried about how it is all going to come at once without the wwoofers here to help. Ah well, I will do what I can. More tomatoes each day. Salsa round tomorrow. Went to check out huckleberries and found some, but may be the smallest berries I have ever picked.
Will try to find them in moister, shadier areas.

Diary 8/15/13

Played tourist with the wwoofers today. Visited Crater Lake, the lake in an old cauldera and Natural Bridge where the Rogue River disappears into a lava tube. I relearned why the lake is so blue. The only color not absorbed into the deepest lake in America and thus reflected back. Everyone enjoyed the sights, including me.

Just a little smoky at Crater Lake

8/14/13

Still working on apples, but slowing down on eating apple pies. The next ones will go in the freezer for a special treat this winter. Meanwhile, weeding and cleaning the edges of the garden for garden club visit next week. Have another shed to clean around. First round  of corn is ready, so will freeze some soon, and tomatoes are starting to stack up. First salsa tomorrow! YUM! Smokier today than it has been. Hot, dry, and kinda yucky.

Diary 8/13/13

I know when I gave birth to my middle child 32 years ago, I never thought about this time of my life. I feel like I am looking into life with a new dimension, as if a fog has

lifted and things that were there all the time are now more obvious. If these words are vague, don't mind me. Just thinking about how getting older can be a good thing, if you choose to take notice instead of seeing age as a loss of what you had before. Anyway, we cleaned the blueberries area up and added sawdust. Looks so tidy. Sawdust on the pond area we cleaned gave it a defined preciseness also. Worked on plums and apples and have more to do tomorrow. Wwoofers made jam by themselves, so they really know they can do it.

Diary 8/12/13

Busy cleaning areas around the greenhouses today. Tackled the well house where some animal was living for a time. It is going to be usable for storage again instead of a crazy mess. Picked a bucket of apples, probably a peck of apples at 3:30 today. Now, as I am going to bed we have a couple quarts of applesauce made, two pies, one of which we ate, and four trays of dried apples! We will pick again tomorrow and repeat the process some degree. That will take four days for the one tree at that rate and the tree next to it is almost ready. Not to mention the plums...oh, and blackberries.

Diary 8/11/13

I am not sure what I was thinking when I decided to have four woofers here at the same time. I know I was thinking they would pick raspberries, but actually the raspberries are between crops, so that isn't gonna keep them busy. The smoke is slowly dissipating which is good, but now to work these four young, strong, and enthusiastic visitors! So tomorrow we start on a big clean-up campaign at the well house in the garden where some sort of animal vs. animal event happened this spring. Hopefully there isn't anything dead inside...