Harvest Time

A week ago, I was digging a few carrots to put in a batch of sauerkraut I was making that day.  It was a lovely sunny day, and I briefly thought "Maybe I should dig all the carrots today".  But it was already a full day, and I didn't think I had the time to dig, clean, and bag all the rest of the carrots, too.  I decided to wait one more week.  That turned out to be a mistake!  Just a few days later we had a foot of heavy wet snow.  SIGH!

The forecast was talking about some double digit temps in another week, and I thought I would wait for that.  But I realized that it wouldn't be much better because I'd be digging in mud.  So yesterday, I dug up my carrots from under their snow cover.  At least the wet soil made it easy to dig them out.  And I got the very clever idea of wearing a pair of heavy duty rubber gloves for the job.  The worst part of digging carrots in snowy wetness, is how cold and muddy your hands get from having to break off the tops -  the rubber gloves did a great job of protecting mine.

I managed to get the pails of muddy carrots home without messing up my car too much.  Then the next couple of hours were spent washing all the mud off.  Here's a pic of the carrots drying on a flannel sheet.  You can see my 3 pumpkins along one edge.



I had already given some carrots away because I only have some much storage space, but my cousin kindly allowed me to store the remaining 4 bags in her extra fridge.

Here is the sauerkraut - you can see that fermentation is causing stuff to seep out along the edge.  That's natural, and the reason I have the jars sitting in ice cream pails to catch any seepage.



I also decided to ferment some other veggies, in this case onions, carrots, and celery.  Since there is no cabbage in it, I fermented them in a brine solution.  I have been enjoying having a little sauerkraut in my salad, and thought some fermented variety would be nice.  In terms of adding stuff like fresh ginger, onions, or hot peppers in my ferments, I have discovered that a little goes a looong way.  Too much and it can be overwhelming.



The cabbage I bought at the farmer's market was very large, so I had enough to make 3 litres of sauerkraut.  It makes such a difference when the cabbage is fresh and full of juice!  The process of making sauerkraut goes so much faster than at the end of winter when your choice of cabbage is drier.



This takes up a fair amount of space on my counter, but it's only for a week or so, and then I have enough veggies to last for months - yay!  Now, the only thing I really have left to deal with from harvest time is my pumpkins.  They were still green when I bought them from a local organic gardener, but are now a lovely shade of orange and ready to go.  However, that really can wait another week, and I think I deserve a break today.  Gonna have a Thanksgiving chicken with potatoes, gravy, etc.  And I made a little pumpkin pie from last year's frozen pumpkin puree....