Late Fall Weekend

We didn’t have special plans for the weekend, other than doing some late autumn chores, but Saturday began with a surprise. I needed a pair of gloves for outdoor work and opened a drawer of the chest that sits by the garage door in the entry room. Woops! The drawer held more than gloves. It held quite a lot of dog food.

Dennis opened the other drawer. More dog food.

Clearly, our pack rat friends have returned and made themselves at home.

After we cleaned out the pack rat stash we went to the cold frame to thin lettuce and spinach. Our approach to cold frame gardening is to plant generously and gradually thin the young plants. Dennis harvested enough baby lettuce and spinach to make several salads, leaving plenty for future harvests.

Next, Dennis began lugging garden hoses to the barn for winter storage.

Then we walked the pasture. Dennis’ task was to lop off seedling red cedar trees. If not kept in check, the red cedars would quickly turn our pasture into a cedar forest, the first stage of successive forestation.

My task was to scatter ashy sunflower seeds, but the strong north wind blew the seeds away. Instead of sowing, I just observed what is growing in the area around the pole barn. Construction of the barn necessitated creating a swale to draw rainwater away from the building, leaving a completely bare area. Two summers have passed since the land was graded and I was delighted to find a few well-established clumps of big bluestem and numerous clumps of side oats grama grass, another prairie native. There’s no side oats grama in other parts of the pasture, so I can’t imagine where the seeds came from.

When I went back to the house, Nancy called to ask what we were planning to do with our turnip harvest. I had no plans until she recommended what she called “Beef and Root Vegetable Soup.” As it happened I had cooked a beef brisket, so I made the soup using the caramelized onions and broth from the brisket, carrots, turnips, kale, and parsley, along with some pieces of brisket. I added thyme and summer savory. Oh, my, that soup was hearty and delicious, the perfect ending to a day of outdoor work.

Now, if only it would rain.

Copyright 2012 by Shirley Domer