Frost visited this morning in a serious way. Cold mornings had burned the squash vines back, but it wasn’t enough to hurt the tomatoes and peppers. This morning’s frost burnt everything! And that is a shelled-out baked pumpkin in the lower right. Michael is making pie and the ducks love the leftovers.

Which led us to trim the deck plants and bring them in for winter.

I hunted down the last tomatoes, feeding the injured ones to the chickens.

I gathered 4 pounds of tomatoes. Tossed with olive oil and salt, garlic and onions, they roasted nicely in half an hour. I put them through a blender and into the freezer. They will brighten some dinner in the middle of winter. That is a 16 pound cabbage sitting next to those tomatoes.

I shredded four pounds, layered it with salt (2 teaspoons per pound), and stuffed it into a crock.

I chopped another 4 pounds, along with onions and carrots, and made a sauce with grated garlic, ginger, fish sauce, sugar, red chile, and glutinous rice paste. (Doesn’t everyone keep glutinous rice in their pantry?). Both the kimchi and sauerkraut should be done in a couple of days. They make my house smell good!

I weighted both down with plastic bags filled with salt water. The bags seal the cabbage and keeps it under the water generated by the fermentation process, and so far has kept any unwanted mold from growing in my brews. I didn’t have Korean chile powder, so I used New Mexico red. The rest of that cabbage went to my daughter, who has her own plans for making beautiful food for her family. Braised? Grilled? All good!

We gathered squash and pumpkins in from their garden spots. I found several by pulling vines out of the weeds, reeling in squash like bass out of lily pads.

We decided to leave the really big pumpkins in place. Our children will have to come and claim them.

While Michael was hiking squash down to their basement home, I was clearing out the pepper and eggplant gardens.

I ended up with about 20 cups of chopped green chile and 12 cups of eggplant pulp.

Michael dipped the rutabagas in paraffin and they should last until December.

Before we left for the wedding, we chopped one rutabaga, potatoes, onions, mixed the veg with ground venison and made 32 pasties.

Michael got the apples off the trees. So many were bad due to an early hail storm. We have the ones that look good enough to save in bins in the garage. We are still trying to decide if it’s worth making cider. Now that the tomatoes are done, I will start eating apples and yogurt for breakfast.

A couple of days before our trip to Massachusetts, we found a sulphur shelf and a hen of the woods. They are safely stashed in jars and the freezer. The hen of the woods is particularly good rehydrated by adding it to brown rice.

The rice was great with our final meal of green beans. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the cabbages I still have on my table. If the kimchi works out, I’ll see if I can can it and maybe I’ll make more. We only eat so much sauerkraut.

This beautiful, crazy, time of year brings the frenzy of racing against the hard deadline of this first real frost. And then the day comes when the growing season is done. We still have food to process and save, but this is the end. I’m looking forward to sitting before the fire and knitting.