October 7, 2026
Well, the frost was on the pumpkins the
other day, and right on schedule, there go the trees. Some of them lose their
leaves early. Our walnut tree, for example, the moment it's done the business of
forming the walnuts, begins to shed its leaves. This is not an example of the
famed “autumn splendor” this area of the world is known for. Nope, it’s case of
ugly brown and yellow wilt and then down they come.
I also seem to recall waiting forever, as
a child, for my glorious weeping willow to get its leaves. That’s another tree
that drops them early, if I’m not mistaken.
But the bigger, hardier trees—the maples
and oaks and others—keep those beautiful green leaves well into September and
beyond. Until, of course, we get that first hard frost, with the temperatures
dipping toward the freezing mark.
It was so cold a few nights ago that when
I got up the next morning I immediately checked the weather forecasts—the 7 and
the 14 day ones. That was a huge sigh of relief I gave when I understood that
the nighttime low wasn’t going to be diving below freezing again for a while.
It’s forecasted to hover in the low forties, and that’s cold, but not freezing.
Unfortunately, we did have that one night
and already those beautiful trees that only last week had presented a nice lush
green have already begun their turn. The leaves become dull, and then, on a few
here and a few there, you see traces of yellow and red… It’s only a matter of
time, now. Soon, all we’ll be seeing are dozens of nekkid trees, their scrawny branches
and twigs flailing and creaking in the breeze.
The sight is enough to make the observer indulge
in a teeth-chattering shiver in sympathy.
Of course, we’re not denying the change of
seasons. We never do in this house. It’s autumn, time to begin to see what more
we can “put down” in the freezer for the coming winter. Everyone living here likes beets. So, when
one of our local stores had ten-pound bags of beets on sale for $5.99, of
course we had to buy one. I’ve never frozen beets before. Back in the day, I
used to make jars of pickled beets. But I’ve never frozen them.
The great beet adventure turned into a
two-day event. We have a Food Saver Vacuum Sealer for packaging food for the
freezer. That machine does its best work when what’s in the bag does not have a
high moisture content. With the corn, what worked was bagging the corn in
sandwich-sized bags and then, as soon as they were frozen, repackaging them
with the sealer.
For the beets, we used the flash-freeze
method: cook, drain, and plunge into an ice bath. Then drain that (after about
10 minutes) peel, slice, and lay the beets in a single layer on a cookie sheet
covered with parchment paper. We have three cookie sheets, and each one held
two layers of beets, the second layer separated from the first, of course, with
that parchment paper. Then the trays were placed in the large freezer and left
overnight.
The next day, daughter and I finished the
job, removing a tray at a time and filling the bags to our desired quantity. No
beet slice thawed during this process, and we ended up with fourteen bags of
beets—fourteen meals throughout the winter of a side dish that we know had no
chemicals used in the processing.
Our grandson—our daughter’s son who lives
with his other grandparents—gave us five butternut squash out of their garden. This
type of squash can be peeled, sliced, diced and flash frozen without
cooking. That’s a job we hope to do soon. I’m also heading to a garden market
before long in hopes of finding some baskets of green beans.
If all goes well, we’ll have plenty of
veggies for winter suppers—and the sense of knowing that we worked and provided
for ourselves and whoever else comes to our door.
That’s not a big thing in life. But it’s
not nothing, either.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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