Blowing and Snacking

There was much fuss made last week over a series of three storms that were supposed to hit our area.  Storm number one wasn't much more than a rain storm.  Storm number two came with rain and high winds, and we did loose power for a couple of hours.  Such a relief when it came back on.  I had even made an effort to bring a few more battery powered lights in from the trailer before it happened, but the power was off and back on in daylight hours.  Storm number three had great potential to be the worst.  It was the remnants of Typhoon Songha.  The weather people could talk about nothing else.  It was supposed to hit Saturday evening.  We were worried because it didn't bode well for Sunday morning's Farmer's Market. In fact some markets had cancelled on Saturday, and others on Sunday.  I kept waiting for the wind to pick up, but it never did, and in the end the storm missed us completely and crossed the coastline farther north.  Even there I don't think it made the impact that had been predicted.

We had very little damage here.  On our morning walk through the bush we only had to pick a few small branches off the trail from storm number two.  No volunteers for winter firewood came down.  One very sad story though.  About half an hour from here, that same storm brought down a tree that killed a 16 year old boy just after he left school for the day.  How incredibly sad is that.

The main row of dahlias took a beating though, and most of the plants got blown over to some degree.

It's not a big deal though, as dahlia season will be over in a week or two, and then it will be time to get all the tubers dug up.

 This is what it looked like in our garage last week. Garlic, apples, pears, green tomatoes.  What you can't see is a large laundry hamper full of apples, another flat of apples, and three more of those beige bins of pears.  We are over flowing with fruit. There are still more russet apples on the tree.

I really am the crazy dehydrating lady.  I rope Larry in to help when I can.  I core and slice the fruit and he lays it on the trays.  I've bought 8 more trays for the dehydrator, it is at it's maximum capacity of 12 trays. I've been looking at bigger, more powerful dehydrators.  So far I have resisted.

Last Sunday I took dried fruit to the market.  I think it was a success.  I sold 13 of these bags.  I guess if those customers come back for more.....

We sold quite a few bags of the fresh fruit too.  I put out samples last week, that certainly helps!