Wise Women's Ways

As the harvest seasons comes to an end, one of the last projects we do here on the homestead before the snow flies, is to get the horseradish dug and processed. When I moved here to the homestead over 23 years ago, the horseradish has pretty much taken over the garden area. From years of tilling and only harvesting small amounts it had flourished and spread. I began moving the bits and pieces of root to the end of the garden in rows as we tilled each spring. Even though it is still in the garden, it is a small area and is managed by picking the root pieces out each spring after tilling. It only takes a small piece of root for the plant to take hold and grow. I love having my three long rows of transplanted plants at the end of the garden. It is easy to harvest and not scattered among the other vegetables like it had been growing before. Thankfully we still had the mini backhoe (from hubby's work that we've been using for other projects) here and my hubby dug up enough for two...

Lots of different stuff going on this time of year! Over the years I've learned to be a multi-tasker and out of necessity get a lot of projects done in this very short harvest season in Minnesota. Living on an old established homestead has taught me how to live in and with the seasons of the year. Actually it's always a very busy time, no matter what season it is. So, harvest time here must be prioritized. I'll snatch moments for more fun things like wild crafting...but when the tomatoes are ready...they've got to be "done up". I'm almost done with the canning. Just a couple more batches of "Convenience" to do. I had a very adequate crop of tomatoes this year. Yeah! Last year was not so good and we ran out of everything by mid-summer. As you can see I had some monster tomatoes! Most of the tomatoes we grow are heirloom. We save seeds for next year's growing season. This year we grew Brandywine, Italian Roma, German Pink, and Long Tom. W...