Soup, Wine, Bees, Squash, and whatever...

Harvesting out of the garden... last week was a butternut squash that was begging to be picked.  The first of the season.  LG has a killer recipe... that starts with...

Curried Butternut Soup

8 cups cubed peeled butternut squash (about 3 small squash)
1 Tbs butter
2 cups chopped peeled tart apple (Granny Smith or similar)
1 1/4 cups finely chopped onion
1/2 cup thinly sliced celery
1 bay leaf
2 tsp curry powder
1 clove garlic minced
3 (14.5 oz) cans veggie broth
1/8 tsp salt

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Arrange squash in single layer on foil lined baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes or until tender.
3. Melt butter in a big pot.  Add apple, onion, ceelery, and bay leaf.  Saute for 10 minutes. Stir in curry and garlic.  Cook 1 minute stirring constantly.  Add squash, broth and salt. Stir well.
4. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes.  Discard bay leaf and partially mash mixture with a potato masher until thick and chunky.  You can top with grated extra sharp white cheddar cheese.

This recipe made enough for me, 2 friends, and have some in the freezer.  Was telling my daughter about it, and she mentioned she's been telling me about a curried butternut soup she's been making for a long time... Duh.  She just texted me her recipe and it includes curry, cinnamon, nutmeg, and caramelized vidalia onion.  Yum!!!  She uses half and half and a blender to give a more creamy texture than mine.  And she grates her nutmeg and cinnamon fresh.  She didn't have a recipe... she cooks freelance.  She cooks great food!!!    :-)

The Black Raspberry Wine went into the secondary fermenter last week.  Ended up with a gallon and 12oz.  In a few weeks, I'll rack it again, leaving the sediment, or lees behind.  Will top it off with the extra 12 oz, and drink what's left of that.  Excellent color so far, and great taste.  Gonna have to sweeten it before bottling, as the yeast cooked off most of the sugar... thinking it's gonna end up around 12-14% abv.  What you see in the center is the must draining.  Never squeeze, makes stuff cloudy.  This drained for about 3 hours total.  Should get a little over 3 bottles, but gonna use 12oz bottles, cuz some of it is gonna be gifts.  Are you one of the lucky ones???  Have access to several 20lb buckets of frozen berries from my buddy Denny.  If the recipe is good, will make more.  Posted about the farm here.

My girls are doing well.  All 40,000 of them.  The hive is full, and they are starting to gather honey.  About time.  But i'll still have to feed them this winter... maybe.  They are building new comb, but seeing alot of drone cells.  Not sure why, and drones are kicked out in fall anyway.  Here's some pics.

In the above pic, the new comb is white.  New comb is comb that hasn't held honey or brood.  Earlier this year it was yellow.  That little tear shaped piece of comb lower right, i broke off and attached to the next bar.  I just pressed it on, and the bees take care of the rest.  Every comb has it's own bar, easier to work the hive.

A close up.  Notice the smashed cells in the center.  That is where I centered the comb on the bar, as it was going astray.  Bees build straight when the previous comb is straight, and because I want straight comb on the bars, I gotta straighten it.  Bees don't care.

Old dark comb that has held brood before.  Look closely and you will see larvae in about 60 of the open cells.  Queen lays an egg in a cell.  3 days later it hatches into a larva. For the next 5 days workers feed it.  Then they cap it and for 13 days the larva spins itself a cocoon and turns into a pupa.  The pupa then chews its way thru the cap and enters the world as a honey bee.  The cocoon it sheds gets plastered onto the sides of the cell, progressively making it darker the more it is used.  That was stages of a bee in 15 seconds.

Another pic of brood being capped.  Dead center is a partially capped cell, lower left uncapped.  Big bullet domed capped cells are drone brood.  They are bigger, and take about 3 more days to mature than the female worker bees.  Purpose of a drone, hook up with virgin queens, and be pampered till driven from the hive to certain death.

Capped honey in the center.  I will not take any honey out of this hive this year.  First year of a hive is all about building the hive and making comb.  They need all the honey they can get for the winter.  I'll get my share next year.

There she is.  Queen bee.  All she does is lay about 1400-1600 eggs a day.  Workers tell her when and where.

Cleaned up the garden this weekend.  Mostly the burial mound, where the squashes and a few rogue tomatoes were.  One tomato plant is left, with about 5 tomato's on it.  This was the harvest, minus 3 butternut and 2 acorn squashes.  The pumpkin was planted by LG.  She failed to tell me that.  We roasted it and made Pumpkin and Pear Quick Bread.  Did 2 pans of mini loaves.  Most are in the freezer.  Froze the rest of the pumpkin... enough for 12 more batches of bread, or whatever we wanna use it for.  I'll plant it, and the squashes again next year, and I wanna go vertical with them... just don't know how... yet.

Tomatoes.... picked what was left, and made a big pot of sauce with them.  LG and I split it.  Nothing fancy like what I canned late August.

This weekend.... Farm Aid Concert on Saturday, and headed north to Maine early Sunday.  No agenda, except seeing friends on the way up, camping in Acadia, meeting new people, and trying my first couchsurfing experience.

Good Times.

Hop Harvesting

It's easy... cut the vine, pick the hops.  Try not to get your arms and hands scratched to the point of bleeding.

Total take on 2 of 3 vines was 2 half full laundry baskets.  Not a good harvest according to Scott.  Last year was a total bust due to excessive wetness (ie flood), but the year before yeilded over 6 full baskets from the 3 vines.  He thinks they are still recovering from the drowning last year.  His wife gave me cutting to plant at my place early this spring, but only 1 of 6-7 plants survived, and the hops are only as big as my thumbnail.

A Little Local History

Spent Saturday afternoon in Marietta at a friends harvesting hops (another post).  Decided to head to the river for a few hours.  Next year is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.  A few days prior to the battle, Confederate troops were attempting to cross the Susquehanna River on route to Lancaster.  A small group of Union solders prevented the crossing by burning the Wrightsville-Columbia bridge.  It was at the time the longest wooden bridge in the world.  You can read about it here.

Columbia, Marietta, and Wrightsville across the river make up an area known as The River Towns.  Great place to spend a weekend.  Lots to do and see.

Here is an artists rendition of the fire, and an actual photograph of the bridge.  The photo is taken from the Wrightsville side of the river looking east.  The fire was started on this side.  The painting is from the Columbia side, looking west.  The smaller overhangs were for pedestrian and those on horseback.

 

The stone pillars still stand, overgrown with scrub grass and trees.  Every 5 years bonfires are lit on the top of each one to commemorate the burning.  Amazing the stonework, after 150 plus years.  It was completed in 1834 and is the second of 4 bridges that were to be constructed on these pillars.  You can read about them, and the other two bridges here. 

A new concrete bridge was built in the late 1920's, and you can see it in the background, and clearer in this view.  The pillars are on the other side in this pic.  Once a year, the bridge is shut down to traffic and vendors and artists line the mile long bridge.  It's called the Bridge Bust and is always the first Saturday in October.

It was a nice way to finish a hot afternoon.