more drying and the internal debate over a dehydrator in the high desert.

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our first few small batches of dried squash are in a small sandwich baggie and the next one in on the way to being salted yellow squash chips...mainly used to be reconstituted in stews, soups frittatas whathaveyou. i bought a nice bowl from an artist at santa fe clay, they are having pottery sales right across the tracks at the railyard and they seem to be doing well with the farmer's market there now. anyways the bowl is a nice orangey-brown and has two indents for chop-sticks. nice rice bowl for five dollars i thought.

dill was pulled off the dry stalks today and pretty much filled a one quart mason jar. still smells potent and fresh, and we dried a few extra flowers off the dill for pickeling in a pinch:)









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the way things have been looking lately...

cucumbers need a good pickle worthy harvest about once a week now. the roma tomatoes are getting bigger but still no color but green over there...we'll see if we don't have to hang 'em up in the shed with a space-heater after our first frost..only a few weeks away.




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hops are fully dry and vacuum sealed in two bags, then frozen until i acquire supplies/ learn the fine art of homebrew :) put that one on the back burner for now. dried lots more summer squash. getting better at it i think.

some close-ups of a hop so you can see.. our kitchen table has been our harvest table lately with a rotating array of goods..sunflower heads still drying and the seed shells are striping as they dry. they were just white when raw and we wern't sure .. now it;s all good







our first watermelon was a hoax. pink instead of red and not at all sweet. real bummer. will not grow them again. too long of a season crop. we are going to grow more summer squash next year along with winter squashes. corn to dry and anasazi beans .. the three sisters.



























drying half our basil harvest seems the best choice for preservation...especially with the amount we have...no basil next year:)

















becke made herself a really cool winter hat this afternoon while she was being sick around the house. she is also working on a sock and figuring out how to crochet socks. the one looks pretty good so far... we'll see. might be really nice to have some home-made warm socks to wear in front of the wood stove on those cold snowey winter nights.


tomorrow off to cut lots of wood. saw is cleaned and just needs to be sharpned tomorrow morinig. gonna see if becke can spot me while i fell a med-large tree right behind the dogs yard.

also might rework my log bucking stand to hold a log less than three feet. i think now it's about four feet long....but if it could hold a log to cut in half at less than 18" a log then i could buck a log to fit the stove...

work in progress..