Harvest-time and Happy Michaelmas!

Michaelmas-time harvest!

After feasting on your garden’s bounty, watching the growing season wind down is a bit bittersweet, isn’t it?

Yesterday evening, it was down in the 40s at our place and the fourth day of rain. Still, in between showers, I was able to get a nice little picking of three quarts of blueberries!

I also scored a few zucchinis and a handful of tomatoes that hadn’t split from the cold and wet weather.

I’ve never had my Chandler blueberry shrubs still bearing at the end of September, and I expected them to be really sour. What a treat, then, to find them as sweet as the ones I picked three weeks ago.

The tomatoes still had some nice flavor, which was also a nice surprise! 

Today, September 29, is Michaelmas, the traditional feast day celebrating the harvest. As a food gardener, I think about how, back in the day, the harvests were precious—the food had to last for a whole year. 

Here at our place, we’ve got garlic and onions stored to last through the winter; enough potatoes for the next couple of months, and a fridge full of apples. Our second crop of carrots, as well as our parsnips, will be ready for harvesting within a couple of weeks. 

So today, recognizing this olden-times tradition seems like a wonderful way to recognize the fruits of your food-raising labor. 

Today we’ve got a sunny, warmish day, and garden chores are waiting for me! Instead of writing something new, I’m sharing (reposting) our Michaelmas celebration from two years ago…

Michaelmas, or the Feast Day of St. Michael and All the Angels, is an old-timey holiday that was celebrated September 29. 

In the British Isles, Michaelmas traditionally marked the day the grain harvest was pretty much done. People would celebrate with a feast of roast goose and all the trimmings--and the landlords would be pretty happy too because harvest time meant farmers could pay the rent.

Michaelmas also gets a mention in many of the historical BBC series John and I enjoy, created from classic English novels like Jane Austen's or Elizabeth Gaskin's. Those English-country worlds are very idealized, sure, but we all need a wee farm fantasy once in a while!

John and I like to recognize Michaelmas as an early start to the autumn holidays. We set out our set of fall figurines that remind me of an old-fashioned, New England apple farm, and they help brighten the house after the fall rains arrive and darkness comes earlier and earlier. 

We also like to celebrate our own little harvest time. The blueberries are done--we each had our last bowlful of fresh ones this morning--but we're still picking cukes, tomatoes, and zucchini. The fridge is brimming with apples, potatoes and carrots; garlic and onions crowd the pantry.

We definitely won't have roast goose though--a few years back, we bought a crazy-expensive, locally-raised, pastured goose, and I roasted it like turkey. And had to wonder, did I do it wrong? It was tough and gamey- tasting, and given the $40 we spent, we decided never again. 

So I'm preparing beef stew, full of our own vegetables, inspired by a super simple recipe I found in the October issue of Country Living magazine: Braised Beef with Tomatoes and Onions. I'll also make a cucumber salad with the gigantic cuke I found a couple of days ago. And with all the apples around, I think an apple dessert needs to happen. 

After all, with Halloween just around the corner and Thanksgiving not far away, fall is a glorious time!

Back to 2023… Tonight, the harvest moon—that is, the first full moon after the autumn equinox—is a “super moon” so it appears much larger than usual. I hope you’ll take time to gaze at the night sky and enjoy the sight!

Homestead-Style Gardening Class & Irish Novel on Sale!

Part of my summer homestead garden

Looking for a little guidance for your food gardening this fall?

My community college workshop, “Grow a Homestead-Style Food Garden”  is happening next week, Tuesday, September 26! 

We’ll cover lots of sustainable gardening techniques, as well as composting and natural fertilizers…plus a handy timeline for your gardening tasks and activities throughout the year. 

Even if you don’t take the class, accessing all this information is easy! All the course content and more can be found in my free ebook, Little Farm in the Garden. Available at all ebook retailers, you’ll find the Store links on my website. 

 If you’d rather, you can get the PDF on my website too. 

The August photo above features parsnips on the left, and a newly seeded carrot bed on the right, two of our fall mainstays. Center is a bed of cucumbers, and past the carrot bed, our largest marrionberry, two of our favorite summer crops. 

Little Farm series, Book 3

Since growing food is sort of a “calling” for me, writing Little Farm in the Garden was hugely fun—and a way to share lots more information than I can convey in a workshop. I hope you’ll take a look!

Quick update September 21–my Irish novel, The Galway Girls has been selected for a 30% off ebook sale!

4th book of my Village of Ballydara series

The novel, which has a fun gardening thread inspired by some of my homestead experiences, is now 30% off at Kobo books. To check out The Galway Girls, simply click the link, and scroll down to the “Find your new favourite story” carousel! 

Kobo Books has a helpful reading app so you can read ebooks on any device, and a great new “read for free” subscription service too…The promo code for this sale is SEPT30…and it ends October 1!

DIY Dryer Fix

Our clothes dryer, at 17 years old, had plenty of quirks. But the latest was one we just couldn’t live with.

It had, like, quit drying.

“Maybe it’s time to buy a new dryer,” said my husband John. 

He had a point. For years, the control panel of this appliance had a life of its own: lights blinking, annoying beeps going off for hours at a time without rhyme or reason. 

Then, not long ago, the settings I regularly use, “Normal” and “Permanent Press” would start the dryer…but go for only about 10 seconds. Then the dryer would just turn off. 

I jollied this latest quirk along by using the timed settings, 30 or 45 minutes. But then this week, after I had a load of two flannel sheets going for around three hours, and still as damp as damp could be, I had to admit defeat. 

This dryer was pretty much toast.

But after John suggested a new dryer, I sort of cringed. We’d had to replace our dishwasher a few months back, and we just couldn’t really afford the expense of another new appliance. 

You might ask, how come you headsteaders aren’t using a clothesline?

Well, a few reasons. We have a lot of birds around the yard, and they love to roost on poles, like you might afix a clothesline to. And when they roost, they…drop stuff. If you get my drift. Nothing you want on your clean laundry!

The second reason, is well, fall is on the way, and our rainy climate isn’t very conducive to hanging laundry outside. And the third…well, I don’t know how I would find the time! 

Anyhoo…back to the dryer:

“Let’s see if it’s worth repairing,” I said, and got out the business card of a local repair guy who had fixed our freezer a couple of years ago. Then I had a brainwave. “But first, how about we check the vent.”

A while back, my daughter’s relatively new dryer wasn’t drying well—and the culprit turned out to be a vent full of lint. Maybe that was our dryer’s problem.

So two days ago, John found the necessary screwdriver, and got the outside vent cover off. We looked inside, and it looked okay. I stuck my arm a ways into the vent and felt around. Sure, there was some lint here and there, but again, nothing blocking the air flow. 

“Looks like that was a wash,” said John. I prepared myself for the best option: a sure-to-be-costly service call. Then I had another epiphany. 

“Let’s try looking at the lint trap,” I proposed. 

Our lint trap structure is again, one of the dryer’s quirks. The trap works great, but there’s this odd cavity area beneath the lint trap, where every bit of lint that doesn’t get caught in the trap falls down.

John got another screwdriver, a Phillips this time, and undid the lint trap structure so we could get a look down there. “Hold on,” I said. Not wanting to tempt the electricity gods, I figured it was a good idea to switch off the dryer breakers. So now we were set.

The angle of this cavity meant you couldn’t really get a direct view of it, so John fetched a stick from the shop (he has any number of handy little gewgaws for repairing stuff) and handed the narrow, two-foot long stick to me.

Sitting on the rug, I eased the stick into the cavity and felt something…soft. Pillowy, even. 

Pushing a little harder, I could feel more pillowy material. Like, a lot of it. Using the stick, I began to pull up whatever it was, and brought up a handful. Then poked the stick around some more. “You won’t believe this,” I said to John. I was discovering… Holy Moly…

Yours truly, hauling out lint

This whole part of the dryer had a huge pile of lint stuck in it!

I was able to squeeze my hand down into the cavity, and began yarding out lint. Clumps of it, one after another! For about 20 minutes, I pulled out lint, while John stood by for moral support. And to take pics…plus occasionally cheering me on.

That’s some pile of lint!

How many times had I heard lint buildup can cause a fire? Pulling out this massive pile of lint, I cringed again, as in seriously, thinking of what a fire hazard we’d had right in our laundry room. 

I’m sure all that lint had wreaked havoc with the control panel—no wonder it kept beeping. Trying to tell us something!

I’m just glad we didn’t find out about all the lint the hard way.

After I got every last shred of it down there I could reach, I said, “This should do it.” 

“Now to test it out,” said John. 

The dryer interior had gotten pretty dusty from the dirt around the lint trap structure, so I gave it a little cleaning. 

Here’s the cavity below the lint trap structure

Then, after turning the breaker back on, I loaded in some towels that had been sitting in the washer since the day before, waiting to be dried.

And turned on the dryer…

Not wanting to jinx the process, I just let the dryer run for its 45 minutes without checking on progress. It behaved very well, no untoward beeps or blinking the whole time. Finally, I opened the dryer door to find…

Dry towels! They were completely dry! 

Since then, I’ve put two more loads in the dryer, and yippee, they both came out perfectly. 

Tip: if your dryer isn’t behaving, you can’t go wrong checking out the lint backup. But first, be sure to turn your dryer breaker to OFF!

PS…Interested in bees, blueberries and bears? I hope you’ll check out my September newsletter, Late Summer Pollinators & Homestead Varmints …Read it for free and no need to subscribe!

Downtown Abbey’s Butterfly Cake vs Same-Old Berry Buckle

Here in the Foothills, days of wildfire haze and smoke has kept me and my husband captive indoors.

In the last 10 days, we’ve had only two smoke-free ones. And after one full week of smoke, we both needed a little (actually more than a little) consolation for being cooped up all this time. Since our big blueberry harvest means we’ve got berries coming out of our ears as the old saying goes, I decided on one of my go-to summer desserts: blueberry buckle. 

I’ve got a recipe I’ve been using for years…but I made some minor modifications to the cake portion of the recipe, to make it a wee bit healthier: some olive oil in place of the butter, and little less sugar. 

Problem:I hadn’t been too happy with this version for a while. You know when you take a bite of something you’ve baked or cooked many times, and it just doesn’t taste as yummy as you want it to? Well, that’s exactly what happened with this recipe.

Three days ago, fed up with smoke, I figured we deserved a “treatier” treat. I scoped out a bunch of recipes, looking for a richer version of the buckle I’d been making all these years. And in one of my new cookbooks, I found it!

A lovely cookbook

The Downton cookbook is wonderful for those times you really want to treat yourself and feel like the British gentry!

The recipe I found is for “Butterfly Cakes,” a cupcake recipe. Only I used it for the cake portion of my buckle. The recipe is very similar to my original buckle I posted, but with a “scosh” less flour and an additional egg. I deep-sixed the olive oil substitution to go all out on the butter, and used the full amount of sugar. 

Here’s recipe for Downton’s Butterfly Cakes:

1 2/3 cup flour

1 1/4 teaspoon baking power

1/2 t salt

Whisk the dry ingredients together

In a separate bowl:

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar 

Cream together until fluffy, then add

2 large eggs, beating well

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

But there’s one more ingredient: 1/2 cup milk, but hold on…

Add half the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, add the milk, then blend in the rest of the flour mixture

Now here’s where I improvise: I use a 10-inch buttered pie pan

Spread the batter in the prepared pan, and top with two-plus cups blueberries (Tip: After rinsing, I let them dry on a towel to avoid adding sogginess)

For the streusel, I used the original recipe: 

For the crumb topping:

½ cup sugar 

½ cup flour

½ - 1 teaspoon cinnamon (we like cinnamon a lot)

¼ cup butter

Mix the sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in ¼ cup butter and combine until crumbly. Then I improvised again…

In a wonderful synchronicity, the same day, I had come across Ciara Ohartghaile’s recipe for Blackberry buckle in her “Gorse” newsletter. The recipe had a lot of similarities, then I saw she had added slivered almonds to her streusel. Brilliant!

Instead of almonds, however, I used about a 1/2 cup of toasted, chopped pecans. 

Chopped pecans add terrific flavor and a wee bit of wholesomeness

Back to the recipe: Sprinkle the streusel over the berries.

Bake at 350 degrees for around 50 minutes. I generally use more berries than the recipe calls for, so my buckle takes a longer baking time—maybe closer to 1 hour. I just watch it carefully for the last 15 minutes or so! Let it cool an hour or so to set…

Then…feast! Melt in your mouth delicious!

Awash in Blueberries!

Thank goodness for extra yogurt containers!

Ahoy, Matey! It’s mostly just pics this week, as I am currently drowning in blueberries. 

After picking until dark last night—7 quarts—I stayed up way past midnight to process the take from the previous day’s picking…rinsing, air drying on towels, then setting them on cookie sheets to freeze. That was about 5 quarts. 

For this afternoon’s project, I’m looking at about 4 quarts in the pail, and 5 in the yogurt containers.

But wait! There’s more…

I’m also thinking of making a Blueberry Buckle, one of my favorite recipes… It’s a convenient way to use up more berries!

When I come up for air, I look forward to posting about something other than blueberries! 

Thank you all for reading! Are you a gardener drowning in summer produce too? I’d love to hear from you—I’m at www.susancolleenbrowne.com 😊

Berries, A Michigan Backyard Farm, and Jane Austen!

A terrific year for blueberries!

I just can’t keep up…

With our blueberries, I mean. Our shrubs are going nuts this season: I’m harvesting five-six quarts each day, but I can’t pick and process the berries fast enough. 

In fact, I’ve had to stay up late several nights in a row to get the berries into the freezer before the next day’s onslaught of fruit!

I have only myself to blame, though—I didn’t get around to pruning my shrubs back in April. I told myself that missing a year would be okay—and this month, I remembered I’d done only light pruning the year before that.

As a result, some plants are overbearing…so as it turns out, skipping a year was not my best move. And I will probably pay the price with lower production next summer. In any event, I’m planning to give my shrubs a very thorough pruning in the spring.

Still, it’s been fabulous, eating my fill and then some every day this month!

I’ve included my fave blueberry dessert recipe in Jane Austen and the Internet , my August newsletter, just out! Besides a bit about Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility, you’ll find a quick bear update and more. My newsletter is free and open to all, so I hope you’ll take a look!

No time for reading? Here’s a terrific mini-series!

And a treat for food gardeners…

I highly recommend my favorite newsletter, The Suburb Farm, from Erin, a Michigan gardener and beekeeper! 

My family lived in central Michigan during my teen years, and Erin’s lovely, thoughtful gardening newsletter brings back good memories of days gone by. She shares lots of beautiful photos and helpful food gardening tips, and I’ve even learned a fair amount about backyard beekeeping. 

What’s truly amazing is the impressive amount of fruits and veggies she and her family produce from their backyard!

What’s especially fun for me is that her posts and pics remind me of all the Michigan summers that my sister and I picked scads of plums from our backyard tree. Despite the Midwest heat, the two of us would bake every plum dessert you can imagine. 

I imagine your August is crazy busy…but I hope you’ll take a moment to spend some time in a gorgeous Michigan garden! 

Beware the Zombie Herb

 One pot.

From one small potted herb, brought from our city garden 17 years ago, a veritable plague has sprouted. I’m talking about oregano.

I used to have several pretty perennial beds, filled with well-behaved bee balm and purple palace heuchera. But oregano, which sneaked into the beds, has pretty much sucked the vitality out of the other plants.

Once upon a time, bee balm filled this bed

As you see, there’s only a few bee balm blossoms trying to hold their own.

A couple of weeks ago, I took my little weed-eater to a bunch of oregano encroaching into my patio, and mowed it down to the nubs. Within days, it was growing again, and now there’s a bunch of perky little crowns that look stronger than ever.

Earlier this week, I was weeding a neglected, empty bed, and saw to my dismay it was carpeted with tiny oregano seedlings. Most weeds that size, you can easily pull out, no problem. But oregano has robust, wiry roots, even in the tiniest plant.

I took a hoe to the seedlings, but I don’t have a lot of hope my puny efforts will keep them from growing. 

Once the crown gets established, you’re in trouble. 

Are you a fan of All Creatures Great and Small? I just started the series, and there’s always lots of scenes with the young veterinarian attending a cow giving birth, and having the pull like mad to get the calf born. 

Pulling on a well-established oregano crown from the soil feels something like this! And if you’re like me, yarding out oregano guarantees you a wonderful case of elbow tendonitis. 

Gardeners in the know tell you to beware of mints: keep them in a pot, or a separate bed. But contain them, whatever you do. 

But in my experience, mint of all sorts, even the hardy peppermint, has nothing on oregano. 

The bed below used to be a lovely little herb garden, of thyme, lavender, and yes, a variety of mints: chocolate mint, spearmint, and peppermint. Now it’s oregano from stem to stern…

Oregano has just about smothered the mint here!

Just like with rock-paper-scissors, and scissors cuts paper and paper covers rock, well, here’s the deal:

Oregano covers everything.

I’ve been imagining that left to its own devices, oregano could cover every inch of our garden, then start growing around the house and up the walls—until the entire structure is encased in it, much like Sleeping Beauty’s castle was surrounded by thorns.

So I have had it with oregano!

This fall, I have vowed to try and get a handle on all this oregano. Starting with smothering it over the winter, then digging up the roots in the spring. I can only hope the oregano roots are weak and frail after being treated so badly. 

If you’re trying to get rid of excess oregano, show it no mercy…Otherwise, this never-say-die herb will completely take over!