My Daughter Found A Deal

My oldest daughter knows how much I covet seeds. I know, bad, bad.

She was in a Dollar Shop at Sylvan Beach (who knew Sylvan Beach had a Dollar Shop?!) when she noticed this guy buying boxes and boxes of their leftover seed.

She kind of gasped and stared at him for a minute once she realized he took every last packet in the store. He looked up and said, "Oh, do you want some? Here." And threw a bunch in a bag for her.

.02 cents a piece! It was mostly zinnia seeds he gave up, (but who cares - I adore zinnia) but there was a packet of Roma tomato, some Okra and an Indian Mustard.

Hmmmm ... I've never had okra and no one can seem to describe to me exactly what it tastes like. Guess I'm just gonna have to try it!

We figured the guy that grabbed all of the rest of them would probably repackage them and either sell them outright or put them on ebay. Pretty good friggin' profit!

Well, I ended up with almost 50 packs of seed that didn't even cost my daughter 2 bucks! I think I taught her well.

Busy Hands

My niece just bought a house not too far from me, and with the house came a huge apple tree.
She's so busy moving in that all those beautiful apples were dropping to the ground and rotting, so she told me to come pick them...

Oh, boy, did we!

I've been hectic for the last week putting bags of pie filling, chunked, sliced, diced and applesauce in the freezer. I've made bread, pie, muffins and baked apples. I think we're appled out!

The growers were right if her apples are anything to go by - so ridiculously sweet it almost hurts your teeth.

Thank goodness my neighbor had a food mill I could borrow to do the applesauce. I used it to do the last batches of tomato sauce while I had it in my hot little hand, too.

It feels so good to have a full freezer! One less thing to stress about this winter. At least we won't starve. We might have the trots, but won't go hungry. lol.

Still Harvesting In October

Usually we're done pulling zucchini and cucumber out of the garden by mid-Septemberish (at the very latest). But, this is what we harvested this morning:

While most people are complaining about the heat lasting this long, I'm quite happy about it. No cold = no need for fuel. I know darn well that we'll get paid back for all this warmth keeping the temps of the lakes up when we end up with ridiculous amounts of lake effect snows this winter, but I'm still happy it's not cold! Besides, a nice snow cover will protect everything, right? Yeah, that's what I thought! And no...I don't need to be reminded that 10 feet is just too much. lol.

I don't think we've ever had a year when we've harvested zucchini and cukes after we've harvested pumpkins. Strange.

Today I'll be making more spaghetti sauce with a lot of the tomatoes still being produced, and maybe some zucchini bread now! The tomato plants just won't quit, and with temps not forcasted to drop too much any time soon, I may still be making sauce in November!