Autumn?

September from my Christmas calendar by my daughter-in-law

Is autumn a word or a feeling? It's heralded by a date on the calendar, but how often does the weather pay attention to that?

I tend to think of September as our first month of autumn. It means the garden slows down and my busy job of preserving slows down too. Usually, it means cooler temperatures and an end to the intense summer heat. But this year has felt different because we had such lovely nighttime lows most of the summer. The closest we came to a "normal" Southern summer was the last couple of days of August. Then came rain and a cool front, and it seems that autumn is officially commencing. No color in the trees yet, but cool nights, shorter days, and the changing angle of the sunlight certainly hint of the seasonal change.

Besides needing a light jacket in the morning, there are other tell-tale signs.

The squirrels are feasting on green pecans (and bombing us with their leftovers).

The first muscadines are ripening.

This is the month when we look to start preparing for winter and writing our seasonal project list. At the moment, there isn't much on that project list. Dan hurt his knee last month, so the greenhouse has been on hold, although I'm going to try some plants in it anyway. It's the last big project we have for the homestead, so he's having a hard time being patient.

I've got the fall garden to finish planting, which, maybe now that I can ease back on picking and preserving, I can get the last of the seeds in the ground before it's too late! My indoor fall project will be to continue sorting and organizing our remaining spare room. Even after moving out most of my fiber and textile supplies, I'm still finding a stray box here and there. Then I need to get a handle on the office, which shares the other end of the room with my studio/sewing room. I have boxes of office related supplies and books that need to be unpacked.

Speaking of my studio, since my On Finding a Balance Between Work and Play post, I've settled into a new routine. Mornings have been in the garden, and afternoons have been for preservation. After dinner, I have time for weaving. So, basically, less time on the computer, except for documenting and discussing my fiber and weaving projects on my fiber blog.

Twill gamp dishtowel (1st of 3).

And occasional updates here. all told, it definitely feels like I have more balance in my life now.

I know everyone out there is ready for autumn! Anybody else winding down their garden and getting fall weather yet?

Autumn? © September 2023 by Leigh at 

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Peanut Butter Granola

 Another pecan recipe that I want to know where to find. 😄

Yes! Those are our strawberries! (With slug bites trimmed off).

Peanut Butter Granola

• 8 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (1 large 42-ounce box)
• 2 cups chopped pecans
• 2 cups unsweetened coconut
• 1 cup natural crunchy peanut butter
• 1 cup honey
• 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp salt (optional)
• dried fruit (optional)

In a saucepan, gently heat peanut butter, honey, and salt until liquidy. Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Stir well. Spread out on baking pans or sheets. (I use three 9x13-inch pans). Bake at low heat (225°F / 110°C), stirring every 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown (about 40 to 50 minutes). Remove from oven and continue to stir occasionally until cool. Makes a gallon jar's worth. 

Recipe Notes: 

• If adding dried fruit, add after baking so it stays soft and moist.
• I only add dried fruit when fresh fruit isn't in season.
• Any or all ingredients can be substituted!

Try:

• different rolled grains
• different nuts
• different sweeteners
• different spices
• different nut butters
• substitute butter for nut butter

We eat our granola with kefir instead of milk. 

Peanut Butter Granola © May 2021 by Leigh

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Pecan Meal Pie Crust

I'm still experimenting with pecans and now have another keeper for my pecan recipe collection. 

Pecan Meal Pie Crust

• 2 cups pecan meal
• 1/2 cup flour
• 5 tbsp. melted butter
• pinch salt

Mix well with a fork and pat into a pie pan. For an unfilled crust, bake at 350°F (180°C) for 20 minutes or until golden brown. For a filled crust, it takes about 40 minutes to brown the crust.

For the pie pictured above, I used my last jar of home-canned fig pie filling. I saved a little of the meal crust mix and sprinkled it over the top of the pie before baking.

Recipe Notes: 

• Any kind of nut meal and flour can be used. 
• Can substitute powdered sugar for the flour.
• Can make without the flour.

This was so good! I also made one and filled it with chocolate tapioca pudding after I baked the crust. 

I confess I cheated a little on this one. Usually, when I make a chocolate pie, I make it with a cooked custard filling. I used the tapioca because I had a shorter time slot to make it in. No matter, it was perfect for a chocolate pie. So good! Soon, I'll have to try it for cheesecake. 

Pecan Meal Pie Crust © April 2021

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

All Those Pecans

Last fall, we collected our biggest pecan harvest ever.

One afternoon's picking.

In years past, we would shell our pecans by hand. This year, we found a little country store that offers pecan shelling for 40 cents per pound. 

Shells cracked.

We have to separate the shells from the meats by hand, but it makes a nice activity in the evening while watching a DVD. According to the folks at the store, it was an abundant pecan year for everybody. 

Now that we have such an abundance, I've been experimenting with ways to use them. When I only have a small amount of something, I tend to want to ration it, or save it for special occasions. With a large supply, however, I need to get in the habit of using them. Part of my appropriate self-sufficiency is building menus around what we are growing and harvesting. 

So, what have I been doing with them? Here's one we like—pecan meal pancakes.

Pecan meal pancakes

To make the meal, I grind the pecans in my blender. By experimenting, I found that substituting half the flour in any pancake recipe with pecan meal makes a delicious pancake with a good texture.

Chopped, pecans are good as a salad topper.

Carrot, raisin, and chopped pecan salad.

I also dug out an heirloom recipe of my great-grandmother's. These were a traditional Christmas cookie at my grandmother's house, and my mother made them sometimes as well. To me, they taste like Christmas!

Butterscotch Cookies

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 cups cake flour
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups pecans - cut, not chopped 

Cream butter, sugar, and eggs. Add rest of ingredients. Dough is very soft. Bake at 350°F (180°C) till brown. Yield: easily 4 dozen or more. 

These are very sweet, at least much sweeter than I'm used to these days. I could try cutting the sugar, but I think next time I'll increase the pecans. The recipes calls for the pecans to be cut, not chopped, which I'm guessing is for a specific texture. You may notice from the picture that I didn't cut them, but used whole halves. Next time I'll cut/chop them and increase the amount to use the cookie dough to hold them together. Besides putting more pecans in every bite, that will temper the sweetness some. 

So there are my recent pecan experiments, to add to my chocolate pecan bars and lacto-fermented apples & cranberries (which contains pecans.) The next time I make a dessert, I'm going to make a pecan meal crust for a pie. And I think somewhere I have a recipe for butterscotch brownies (blondies) that I'll have to try one of these days.

Pecans are rich in oil, and so the shelled nut meats are best stored in the freezer. I've filled four gallon bags with them so far, and still have a bunch to go. A nice addition to our diet. 

All Those Pecans © February 2021

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Chocolate Pecan Bars

Last month, when I showed you our best pecan harvest ever, a couple of people asked how we used them. Here's one of our favorites! It uses pecan meal, which forms a crispy top layer when the cookies bake. Very rich, very special, and very holidayish!

Chocolate Pecan Bars

Bottom Layer:

½ C butter
¼ C sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla
1¼ C unbleached flour
⅛ tsp salt

Cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla. Combine flour and salt and add in 3 parts to creamed mixture. Pat dough into the bottom of a greased 9 x 12 inch pan. Bake 15 minutes at 350°F (180°C).

Top Layer:

While the bottom layer is baking, mix the following:

2 eggs, beaten
1½ C brown sugar
1½ C chocolate chips
6 oz pecan meal (can make this in the blender)
2 tbsp unbleached flour
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

Remove the bottom layer from the oven and spread the top layer mixture over it while still hot. Bake another 25 minutes. When cool, sprinkle with powdered sugar and slice into bars.

When the kids were little I'd bake a different batch of Christmas cookies every week for dessert for Friday night pizza. We'd eat some and I'd freeze about half-a-dozen or so. I'd start the baking right after Thanksgiving, so that on Christmas Eve, we'd have a huge assortment of Christmas cookies for dessert after our traditional pepperoni bread. That's a lot of cookies for just the two of us, so I don't do that any more, but we certainly do enjoy our best favorites this time of year. Do you have Christmas cookie baking traditions? I'd love to hear them!

Chocolate Pecan Bars © Dec. 2020 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Pecans Galore!

We're having our best pecan harvest ever, although it started out pretty ordinary.

Pecans started dropping in late September/early October. Every day we'd scour under the trees for windfall.

I picked up a pocketful here and a handful there, and over the weeks managed to find and collect quite a few.

By weighing them in batches I learned that a 5-gallon bucket holds about 20 pounds of unshelled pecans.

Then came tropical storm Zeta. We only got about 2.6 inches of rain, but the winds were so bad we kept looking for tornadoes. After it was over Dan counted five new downed pine trees in our woods. The winds also knocked down a lot of leaves.

And! A ton of pecans! 

Here's what Dan and I picked up in one afternoon.

And we're still picking them up! Every day more drop. The best harvest we've ever had.

In fact, this year I need to find someone who shells them. It's too many to do by hand. 

Pecans Galore! © Nov 2020 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Random Shots: October

Time got away from me this month, and now, October is nearly over. Was it the same for you? Here's a round-up of random shots from my October photo folder that never made it into blog posts.

Marigolds

Pecans

Lunch

Dill

Celery

Dodder

Goat check

Greens, preparation

Greens, cooked

Milking

 

Thyme

Kudzu basket

Soup

Mist

Lids

Chickens, old

Chickens, new

Ground pine

Salad

Color

Porch

Looks like we may get our first frost this weekend. Winter is on the way!

Random Shots: October © Oct 2020 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Autumn Chores

Certain times of the year projects like the barn are set aside for seasonal chores. When the forecast was for heavy rains followed by nighttime lows in the 30Fs (single digits C), it was time to get a few things done. I started by harvesting the sweet potatoes.

Sweet potato bed. The goats get the vines.

They are easy to find because the tops are right under the mulch.

They look good. Some are too big and some are too small, but they'll all get eaten. The one bed gave me about fifty pounds.

We have to wear leather gloves any time we work in mulch
because that's where our black widow spiders like to hide.

While I was in the neighborhood I pulled some radishes from the bed next door.

Purple plum radishes. The goats get the leaves.

The radishes' companion lettuce is looking good too.

Lettuce. I misplaced my garden chart so I'm not sure what variety this is!

I also harvested the cushaw squash. Not sure if frost would harm them, but the rinds were tough so they were ready to pick.

Cushaws - love this winter squash. Three is plenty for the two of us!

Dan's first autumn chore was firewood.

Then it was on to cleaning out the gutters and the woodstove chimneys.

Chimney brush with add-on extension rods.

The soot falls into the stovepipe elbow attached
to the stove. Dan used his shop vac to clean it out.

Lastly the catalytic combustor was cleaned and the stove is ready.

Next the cookstove chimney pipe was vacuumed out and the cast iron top oiled.

Ready to cook!

Pecan gathering will be ongoing for the next couple of months.

I keep a couple of buckets near the bench outside the
Little Barn. We add a handful of pecans to these daily.

The last thing I did was to move my Meyers lemon, aloe vera, and ginger plants indoors,

Lemons! Hopefully they will ripen by Christmas.

while Riley practiced for upcoming long winter's naps.

This takes a lot of practice, you know.

How about you? Are seasonal projects on your agenda too?

Autumn Chores © Oct. 2017 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com/