Suburban Homestead

We’ve had one night of freezing weather so far.  I pulled all the green tomatoes from the vines and they are ripening in a dish on the counter.  I dug up a hot pepper plant and a bell pepper plant before the frost and planted them in pots.  They will winter over in a back bedroom and hopefully provide an early start on peppers next year.

Today I dug up the sweet potatoes I planted.  It is a very small crop, but I am not discouraged.  I saw that the hugelkultur bed I planted yielded much more than the conventional raised bed.  I think that in a more normal year, when I plant earlier and perhaps we get a bit more water, the sweet potatoes will yield quite a bit more.  They will definitely be one of our staple crops.

We still do not have any rain.  I am watering our greens and other fall vegetables with water saved from our showers and rinsing vegetables, and with the last of the rain water we saved from the last rain.  But it’s not enough.  We need a really good rain.

Tonight we have the woodstove going.  The warmth is so soothing.  We got the wood from someone who lost a tree to a storm last year.  I’m grateful for the warmth, and for the exercise I get hauling in logs.