Pumpkins and Hubbard Squash

This very ugly squash finally was cut open.

It looked like this inside, very similar to a pumpkin or other squash.

We cut it open, removed the seeds and cooked it to make puree.

We roasted the seeds and froze the squash. It is supposed to make excellent pies, similar to pumpkin.

At the same time we cut up, pureed, and roasted the seeds from our pumpkins we grew this year. Needless to say Katie lost one of her toys.

Kevin and Katie worked on removing the seeds and cleaning them. I helped with the cooking. We used the oven and microwave this year and got quite a bit of puree. We them made pumpkin butter with a large portion of it but I will save that for another post.

End of the Garden

If you remember the garden looked something like this earlier in the year, it grew quite a bit from here.

It finally began to freeze at night after having temps in the 90's all the way into October. So then the garden looked more like this.

So on a Sunday afternoon my mom, brother and Katie joined with me in clearing the garden out. All of the tomatoes that has not yet been affected by the freeze needed to be picked.

The tomato cages had to be pulled and have the plants removed from them. Katie helped by picking up the stakes from the ground that had held the cages.

The cages are kept in the side yard, Katie helped by rolling them over.

All of the plants were moved and stacked to be put in a compost pile.

There were a lot of tomatoes both ripe and green. This area is now empty and my yard looks huge!

Dried Apples

We recently made our yearly trip to Tehachapi to get fresh apples. This time we picked our own in addition to purchasing bags. Katie was very eager to pick apples.

This enthusiasm and joy lasted for about 20 minutes, then it was just hot and we were ready to go, we had filled two buckets a little over half full.

Once we got them home we peeled, cored and sliced some of them.

They soaked for eight minutes in lemon water.

Half of the apples we put in a cinnamon sugar mixture.

Our dehydrator has four trays, the apples take about 10 hours to dry. It works out to one apple per tray and we have done this four times so far.

The dried apples are delicious!

Newhall Library

A little over a week ago we opened a beautiful new library in Newhall. I could post a ton of pictures of the building and tell you detailed information about the historical and architectural details of the building but that is better in person. Here is a view of the pedestrian entrance on opening day.

Katie came to the opening and got a into the library early, it helps that she knew someone on the inside.

Katie enjoyed running around while the building was still empty, this soon wasn't an option, we had over 4,000 people in the library opening day.

A glimpse of the crowd lining up.

It was a busy day but seeing her like the library was the highlight.

Bungle Jungle Quilt

I found out earlier this year that one of my AmeriCorps team mates was pregnant and they would be welcoming their second child around Halloween. This of course meant that it was time to make a baby quilt. I chose to make the stacked coin quilt I have made before using Moda's Bungle Jungle fabric line.

It is a bright and colorful series of fabric. The binding is green and the back is a large print blue.

It came out better than I expected and I hope he will enjoy his quilt