Use It Or Lose It

It's that time of year again, when we roll back the fencing between the chicken yard and one of the gardens to let them have at what remains after the harvest. This is one of the last pictures of my chatty Luella (the barred Rock under the leaves.) Only days after this, I discovered she had an impacted crop. Although I did surgery on her, she was already too malnourished and expired two days later. It's not the same as losing a beloved pet, but I do hate to lose one of the girls, and "Wellie" was a fabulous layer.

After griping much of the season about the weather, we didn't do too badly. This is only some of the harvest; we've since dug 50 more pounds of potatoes, picked clean the neighbor's apple tree, doubled the amount of cukes shown, and never even took a picture of the red huckleberries and Chanterelles that The Big Guy gathered. Unfortunately, the tubs of carrots and green beans, were mostly tossed into the compost, having been left one too many days in the rain. Vegetables left like that turn into an interesting -- if awfully smelly -- viscous ooze in the bottom of their tubs. Consider this your PSA of the post.

We were getting about 4-6 eggs a day, but egg production is at a low now due to the shortening of the days and half the flock being in molt. This is Opal looking like a Foster Farms reject chicken.

Otter also likes to do his part to help clean up. He is great at getting the last of those green beans. This is why I can't take him into the garden with me during the growing season. He is enamored of anything that grows on a vine: beans, berries, peas.

What didn't get frozen got canned. Or jarred. Or canned in jars. But not jarred in cans.
Here we have pickled beets, carrot cake jam, caramel apple jam, lemon cucumber dill chips, apple pie jam, zucchini pickles, classic dill pickles, strawberry jam, and zucchini relish. Still to come are apple butter and possibly spiced apple rings.

I swear I only planted three zucchini plants, but I ended up with six. For the longest time, it looked like even the zukes weren't going to grow, but then BOOM! I gave some away. I pickled some. I baked bread. I shredded some in meatloaf. But there were more of them. Every day they just kept coming. The pile on my picnic table was growing to epic proportions. I scoured all my cookbooks for recipes I may have overlooked, then turned to the internet. Eureka!

These are zucchini chips in the dehydrator. They are not very good so don't bother asking how to make them.

While I was making all things zucchini, this little guy came sniffing around the deck where the buckets of apples are. He had already started to move off by the time I could grab the camera. Not long after this, Mama Deer got as close as putting her front hooves on the deck. Ironically, the two of us yelling at Zuli to get away from the window before she started barking scared the deer off, and I missed a great picture.

But what about that zucchini?

Would you believe this is not a pumpkin pie? Would you believe that this tastes just like a delicious pumpkin pie? You should because it is and it does!

Surely, this is a country apple pie, right? If I told you that when I served it, you would swear that it is, but no fruit is anywhere near this pie. Both of these pies turned out scrumptious. I am just beside myself to have found that zucchini can be used like this, and I will never speak ill of the eager zucchini again. In fact, I'm already thinking of growing more next year.

Here are the links to the recipes with their official names. I will be referring to them in the future, however, as Zuckin and Zapple.

Zucchini Dessert Pie

Zucchini Mock Apple Pie