Autumn isn't just for leaves

    This is my favorite time of year when it comes to the farm.  This is when I really get to step in.  Every year Jeff and I take a day (sometimes two) and make apple dumplings.  They are one of his favorites.  We will spend nearly the entire day down in the canning kitchen around the big table cutting apples, making dough, then wrapping them up to freeze.  Knowing that they will be quick tasty meals over the next year.  No need for highly processed, pre-packaged food in this house.  Most years my Mom and Dads will come over to help and we make about 2 bushels of apples into dumplings to share between us.  I know this sounds like a lot of work, making these from scratch but it really doesn't feel like it when we're all gathered around that big table working together, visiting and joking around.


    When the dumplings are done and the weather turns a little colder it's time to harvest the cabbages.  Then again Jeff and the boys and I will spend an afternoon cutting and salting cabbage and packing it into a crock to make sauerkraut.  Making sauerkraut is a lot like making wine.  Once you get everything into the crock there is a lot of waiting involved.  The night before last we got our kraut started so I am hoping it will be ready to eat by New Years.  I'm not exactly sure why but we always have pork and sauerkraut on New Years Eve.  Then I'll pack the rest of it into jars and can it. 


    Then of course we have the butchering.  Whenever we sell beef it's totally different.  We find out how our customer wants it cut send it to the butcher with their list and it comes back a couple weeks later cut, wrapped and frozen.  Ready to be delivered.  But when the beef is going in to our freezer things get interesting.  Jeff will take the cow to butcher who will do what is called a kill & chill.  In about 1 week we get a call to come pick up our sides of beef.  And that is exactly what it is.  Two giant slabs of beef each weighing 200 - 300 lbs.  They will cut those down into quarters and then we're off.  Back at home and once again down in the canning kitchen, we gather around the big table and begin to turn it all into steaks, roasts, and ground meat.  With this job if we have help it's usually Jeff's side of the family.  The adults all talking and laughing around the table while we cut and wrap.  The kids all running and playing happy to be getting together.  Once the work is done and the freezer is full we all sit down for a well deserved meal (we've usually had crockpots going all day) and a drink.


     At some point during the fall we will usually head over to Jeff's parents to butcher pigs.  This is a little different.  They buy 6 or 8 pigs, depending on who needs what, and we all gather at Jeff's parents place to cut and wrap them.  By the end of the afternoon we each have at least a grocery bag or two of pork for our freezers and a ham and bacon heading out to be smoked and cured.


   Yes, this is a very busy time of year, getting everything put up for the year ahead, but it's work we can do together.  It's not like the spring when planting requires hours solitary tractor work.  This is work that we do together as a family.  Which is one of the reasons I enjoy the controlled chaos of this time of year.  Also, there is something very satisfying in seeing a shelf full of mason jars containing fruits and vegetables of every color.

Jeff & I with some of this years corn crop.