The first hard frost

We've had a couple of minor frosts but we had our first hard frost a couple of days ago. My poor car lives outside and I had to really scrape ice on the windows so I could go to work. I went out and picked all the tomatoes with at least a little color. They are now lining my kitchen window sill and nicely turning color. I wonder if they will taste like home garden tomatoes or like nasty store tomatoes. I'm thinking about going out and picking all of the green tomatoes to see if they will also turn color. I need to come up with some ideas on what to do with green tomatoes. I like fried green tomatoes but I have way too many green tomatoes to eat them all fried. Since I have so many dark orange tomatoes in the kitchen I may try my hand at making some salsa. I would have to buy everything else I need, but I might try anyway.

Friday after my evening feed-the-animals chores I went and dug up my potatoes. My potatoes were planted very late. I cut up the seed potatoes waaay too small and waited until they were almost completely dried up before I finally dumped them on top of the ground and covered them with cut grass. Most of them didn't survive my mistreatment and I was thrilled that any grew. I kept layering grass and barn waste hay around the plants as they grew. I wondered what, if any, potatoes I would get.

I didn't need to actually dig the potatoes. I removed the layers of composted, yucky, organic materials until I found the potatoes. Gloves probably would have been good but my hands wash easier than gloves. Besides, I forgot to bring them. I had several large ones, quite a few medium to small and a bunch of tiny ones. Reds, golds and some purple ones. I've wiped off the wet stuff and they are currently laying on a towel in my entry way drying. My mother was over this morning and viewed them. She was pretty doubtful that potatoes could be grown on top of the ground and was quite enthused about it all.

Next year will see a lot more potatoes grown. They will get planted in the spring instead of June or July, which ever month it was. How great, and really quite pain free, it was to grow our own potatoes. My sister-n-law makes this great potato dish. Cut some potatoes up into a baking dish, melt a lot of butter and mix with this great garlic mix she has and pour over the potatoes. Bake for about an hour. Not very healthy but oh so good! I'm going to do that with my potatoes. Soon. When they are dry. I can hardly wait.

A big want to do tomorrow is work in the garden a bit, loosing up the soil. Then I'll plant my garlic cloves. I bought some of the elephant cloves, two bunches. That's a lot of individual cloves. I have the space available and have just been waiting for the first hard frost. If nothing else gets done this weekend, the garlic will get planted.

I now have rabbits. I'd been thinking of raising rabbits for meat for awhile. I'm wondering if I can get past the cute factor and do the butchering. What with my own goat meat and now rabbits I'll be just a bit more self-sufficient. I like that. The rabbits belong to a friend of mine. They are just living with me for the winter until she gets back on her feet a bit due to the recent loss of her husband. It's fine with her if I breed them and eat the results. I need cages built though and they are currently, five of them, living in my garage. That sounds worse than it is - tonight is their first night in the garage. Tomorrow cages will get built for them.

Also thanks to this friend I got more chickens, with tons of chicks, and geese. One hen has 19 chicks and one has 17. Yikes! I figure we'll be crock potting a lot of roosters here in a couple of months. Egg production is low due as is usual this time of year. I miss all of the fresh eggs. It's always feast or famine with the eggs. Sometimes I'm nuts about what to do with all of the eggs and then it's I'm not getting eggs! I'd planned on freezing some of the extra eggs this year but thanks to predators, hawks I'm thinking, I never had an overabundance of eggs.

I sold two of the chicks this morning to a family that bought my last two wethers. I'd been thinking it was time to get them into the freezer as it's two less mouths to feed and the goats are already eating hay. I already have two wethers in the freezer though so it's nice that someone else will get the meat. I still have a couple of mama goats I'd like to sell but if not I'll have 6 does kidding in February. Too many for me. I prefer less as my kidding pens are still full of other things. And my barn floods every year. The first year the french drain was put in the floor barely got wet but last year wasn't good.

We've lit the woodstove a couple of time already. I though I would this evening but I put on a sweater top and sweat pants and I'm comfortable. Soon though we'll have a fire every evening. I still have a little bit of wood outside that I need to bring in. The main wood is stacked and waiting. Still lots to do before winter gets here.