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| Pomegranate on the tree |
Of all the current garden tasks, harvesting is creating the heaviest load. The particular combination of fruits and veggies on our homestead means we are now in full harvest and processing mode, more so than in September or October. This is mostly due to our large pomegranate tree. So far Mr. English has harvested a little over half the pomegranates from the tree and already we have three burlap sacks full of fruit in the garage, not including the crate I already dealt with.
If you love pomegranates, you know about the painstakingly delicate process involved in extracting the seeds without crushing them. I have a system I like, but it still takes one person about one hour to pull all the seeds from six large pomegranates. Do the math on several hundred pieces of fruit and you begin to see what a task I still have ahead of me if I want to process all of it. This is why we give away lots of pomegranates this time of year (let me know if you'd like any!)
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| Pomegranate seed pockets |
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| About 4 hours worth of seeding |
In addition to the pomegranates, we're also happily dealing with about 50 pounds of English walnuts. Mr. English's father owns a walnut orchard up near Chico, so every fall we gratefully receive the gift of enough walnuts to get us through a year's worth of baking and cooking. Of course, the nuts arrive in the shell, still needing to be cured, shelled and frozen. A Davebilt #43 cracker would get the job done in about an hour, but at $150, that's not a justifiable expense when we only crack one 50-lb bag per year. So, instead we use the one-at-a-time nutcracker, and it takes one person about 45 minutes to create a pound of shelled nuts. This is when it helps to get the whole family (and friends) involved.
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| English walnuts |
With the gorgeous weather we've been having, we're also still harvesting and processing lots of eggplant and peppers, and even basil. Most of the winter squash is still on the vines and will need to be pulled, cured and stored before the first frost arrives, probably later this month. In addition to the harvesting, I'm also ripping out summer plants as they finish up and amending the soil before cover cropping or planting with winter crops like garlic, onions, peas and greens of all kinds. That will mean another trip out to the horse barn on the outskirts of town to get another free load of aged horse manure, probably this week before it starts to rain. Those forecast showers are probably the first break I'll get in the garden!
If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. I love the harvest season, it's just that since ours comes a tad later around here, it means we are still in full swing and will be for a few weeks, when others have been winding down for the last month. Not everybody is winding down, though. Just yesterday we joined about 40 other people at Frate Sole olive orchard to pick olives for another Foods Resource Bank fundraiser. We picked about 500 pounds of olives in an afternoon, but most of the trees there are still loaded with fruit and they will be harvesting for a number of weeks to come. So, we are in good company.
What are you still working on in your garden this month? Any relief in sight?
We are soooo right there with you! We got in on a bulk order of apples and purchased 80 lbs. Got 20 lbs of olives from a local grower as well. And then ended up being given pumpkins (12), persimmons (75 lbs) and pomegranates (100 lbs). Did not expect to be this overflowing with an incredible harvest. Lots of work and so much thankfulness!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh!! How can you possibly have time to process all that amazing goodness? Curious if you're brining your olives or pressing them for oil. I had fun learning about the olive oil making process this past weekend. And what do you do with your pomegranates?
DeleteWould love to hear how you de-seed your pomegranates! They look beautiful! I just started using the spoon method that works amazingly fast. I prefer using a wooden spoon, but the following video shows how the method works with a regular serving spoon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3WsTMNi1M
ReplyDeleteShelling and cleaning walnuts is also an annual activity I still do with my parents - we use a nutcracker similar to the Davebilt, but often we will use a hammer and are just as fast getting better results when it comes to extracting in-tact nut halves (great for making candied walnuts!). The hammer method works best by standing the walnut up right on its flat end (stem end) and tapping the point with the hammer hard enough to crack the shell open. In fact, this is a method that many walnut producers in Chile still use to obtain more in-tact nut halves than the American companies can with their mechanical cracking methods. Happy harvesting!!
I'll post soon about de-seeding. Thanks for the link. I basically follow a similar process, but instead of using a spoon I pull the sections apart by hand in a water bath. Less mess, and it goes relatively quickly, but I will definitely try out the spoon technique to see if I can make it go faster.
DeleteAs for the nuts, I think I'm about to break out the hammer and try it that way. Thanks for the tip on how it works best! Outside, though, or I'll have bits of shell all over the kitchen. :)
For the walnuts: Get a large pair of pliers, a couple of bowls, a comfortable couch/easy chair, and a TV.
ReplyDeleteStep 1: Turn on TV to an episode of The Office or The Daily Show.
Step 2: Sit in couch/easy chair with pliers, bowls, walnuts.
Step 3: Crack walnuts lengthwise with the large pair of pliers.
Step 4: Place shells in one bowl, nut meat in the other.
The time flies and you get a great deal of them done as you laugh.
The other day at school a former student of yours said to me, "You know which teacher I really miss?" When I asked her who she said you. Fun thinking of you and and I told her how I had a surprise seeing you at the Soil Born Farms event. Miss you!
ReplyDeleteAwww, how sweet! Whoever it was, tell her I miss Orchard and that I said "hi". I miss teaching with all of you fantastic people and think of you often, especially now that I've taken on a 20% time job teaching (EL/Reading Specialist) at our neighborhood school. Great to bump into you at Soil Born.
DeleteDo you do anything with the walnut shells? We'd been talking about some sort of a nut tree as one of our next rounds of expansion (before the latter half of 2012 came to a grinding halt), so even if it doesn't happen this year we'll probably put something in soon. Starting to think about it...
ReplyDeleteStill trying to figure that out, actually. We have a Black Walnut in the yard and I'm always picking out shells from finished compost. It takes FOREVER for them to break down, even immersed in soil or compost. So...I hesitate to put the cracked English Walnut shell pieces in, but they are smaller and a bit softer. Since I have so many right now, I may try making a separate out-of-the-way compost pile just for the shells that can sit for a year or more and see how that goes.
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