Autumn Harvest

Yesterday was a beautiful day and we sat in the sun and processed the dried pea and sugar-snap peas from their haulms ready for planting next year. The whole family are here for a week helping me to harvest our home produced food mountain. We have our biggest ever pumpkin carried by my daughter Cat.

A huge tub of butternut squashes adds to the mountain.

The dried bean vines have been set out to dry both for beans to plant next year and dry beans for over winter stews. The turkeys are growing well and are starting to get their wattles. We seem to have three boys and a girl again. They are keeping the grass down in the orchard rather beautifully.

I am still very busy processing the fruit and veggies for the freezer. The sauerkraut has done well so far and stewed fruit is the order of the day for breakfast every morning. The weather is mixed but the rain is very welcome. The brush-cutter is back out and we are fighting to reclaim some of the forest garden from the brambles whilst still making time for trips out to see the beauty that is Galicia. As usual my medical tests are inconclusive and I now have to wait for a month for the biopsy results to come back. I seem to spend a lot of time waiting for medical results but I am not complaining. It really does beat the alternative.

"Thar she blows"

We don't have a hurricane thank goodness and my heart goes out to all of those who are losing everything to Dorian, but the Autumn gales are knocking us about a bit. It has been a dry summer despite the cloudiness but the veggies have held up well. My beans are the latest victim of the gusty wind and we have given up on re-erecting them until the gales have gone.

Our soil is thin because we are on a stony hillside and the canes are just not well anchored enough. We have eaten and frozen tons of them and most days I am stewing fruit from our trees or making chutney from our veggies. In good news the lupins are fattening up well. I am not sure how you tell when they are ready to eat but I will keep an eye on them.

The turkeys remain happy and chatty, they really are very sweet.

Our sweetcorn has been a great success and very tasty. I shall be saving seed from this variety.

We are on course to produce the largest pumpkin that we have ever grown. It is still ripening but it is going to be huge.

This summer has been magical so far. After suffering from cancer and going through the surgeries and chemotherapy I wanted, actually really needed, to spend some time with Tim in our piece of heaven and we have done it. This place is our dream and having been apart so much over the last few years because of Tim's work we have been hiding away together like hermits just enjoying the best food and drink that Galicia can provide (the finest in the world), enjoying our own company, and enjoying nature at it's best and most magical. Later this month yet another round of scopes, scans and blood tests start, always a time of anxiety but I go  into it feeling like the luckiest woman alive.