Armadillos, Apple Pie, and Mushrooms

What we hear from Bri in Oklahoma is that she is getting a taste of that South land.

She went on a midnight armadillo chase

and they caught it and put it in a cage to be carted away because it was destroying the lettuce patch.

She found a scorpion by her bed.

She was bitten by fire ants while gathering kale.

She was warned to watch out for wild pigs when she goes running.

The land is flat and running is pretty easy there.

She chopped piles of okra for winter storage.

She's enjoying her friends...

One even flew in for the weekend just because.

She's spent a fair amount of time in the filming studio already.

We are MISSING her.

Just so you know, making applesauce in the rain is no fun,

 but we got another 60 quarts done. 

We made 264 quarts on Friday and 

today's adds up to 324 quarts total so far.
My math is really off the wall these days. I can't guarantee that is correct :-D

We plan to finish up on Tuesday.

Christina made apple pies. Gluten free, even.
Missy filled the food dryer with apple slices- after she had a tantrum over it and destroyed about 8 apples in spite. She has had a difficult attitude ALL day!
James made an apple crisp. He's a little disappointed it cooked down so much and it's only an inch thick. Experience is a good teacher. He knows what to do about it next time.

A fellow that came to my yard sale in the spring showed up again today. He wants all my green tomatoes when our harvest is over. He offered me pears, apples, and peaches in exchange... Apples I have. Every kind of bartlett and D'Anjou pear is offered to me on every turn.... PEACHES? YES! Our peach tree died.  He also offered me a good deal on some sweet corn. I'm sure we'll get as many Asian pears as we like, but I'm on the lookout for abandoned plueot orchards and also concord grapes would be nice.

We gave away 4 boxes of tomatoes from our market garden to two people today. I have one for myself. I plan to make salsa. I have three more orders to fill before frost.... In the thick of it we wonder if it's worth it. We don't make a lot of money,  but, ah, we do make friends. Actually, Brianna does better at making money than I do. Between that and her other jobs, and a rather nice donation, she is set for her Africa trip. I guess we will do again next year. It's so much work, though.

You can only imagine our fruit fly and house fly infestation
with all the fruit and tomatoes around here! UGH!

I don't usually pick wild mushrooms. We went hiking up the back of the Icicle yesterday and met up with some backpackers who were really excited about all the mushrooms they were finding. They said that these pine mushrooms were worth a lot of money, but they were just excited to find them and even though one of the guys doesn't even like mushrooms they were going to eat them. They were super friendly and happy. To make a long story short... they are Canadian and SDA  know alot of people we know and after learning our name realized they know our relatives. SMALL world. You don't usually expect to find and make friends in the middle of the woods over mushrooms. I figured out they were French Canadians and they had us pegged as SDA before the connections were made. It was fun. We hiked out with them and took their backpacks and mushrooms the last 5 miles in our car so they could ride their bikes unencumbered. They had hidden the bikes in the woods before setting off on their backpacking trip. They gave us these mushrooms to try and I washed them - which, according to google, you aren't suppose to do. Then I stir fried them, which, according to google you aren't suppose to do. Oh, well. They WERE good anyway.

It's good to make new friends.