Yesterday I harvested the hot peppers and shut off the heat in the hoop house. Last night it snowed 4 inches!

Wow, is winter hitting us early this year. A little over a week ago we got dumped on by 4 inches of heavy wet snow. Then rain, rain, and more rain. But we heard the forecast a couple of days ago —cold and heavy snow. As we’re still harvesting and doing other fall work trying to get ready for winter, this was not welcome. So I brought in the very last of the tomato boxes which were stored in the hot pepper hoop house and harvested all the hot peppers which were ripe. Then in the afternoon, I pulled all of the hot peppers that were still green, to dehydrate, can, and eat. I also snapped off several big branches of the Thai Baby Dragon and Venice Bootleg peppers to hang on the back porch to use later. I was totally floored by the two buckets of Sugar Rush Peach peppers I picked off three plants! These peppers are quite large and oh my, how productive! Next year I will stake them as nearly all of the plants had so many peppers they bent down to lie on the ground.

One of the buckets of Sugar Rush Peach hot peppers I harvested yesterday. I had already harvested nearly all of the mature ones for seed saving.
Look how productive the Sugar Rush Peach peppers are! This is one plant from which I’ve already harvested most of the mature peppers.

Will is trying like mad to get the big corral finished before winter hits. But in this weather, it’s miserable work. Not only are all the logs wet but he’s working daily in the rain, slopping around, carrying boards, and cruising in mud in the pasture. He has a lot of the boards cut and up on the barn walls, but we don’t have a lot of longer logs for the fence planks. When he tries to drill holes for the remaining fence posts, the holes fill up with water as soon as the auger comes out of the holes. This is a fall we’ll long remember, for sure.

David got another big haul from work. He not only got another big shipping crate he plans on using for more storage, but two 14-foot-long pallets made up with 2x8s, and several other stout shipping crates. He took our triple axle equipment trailer to work and loaded them with a fork lift after his shift was over. It’s lucky he hauled them home yesterday as now we have 4 inches of heavy, wet snow, and trees are bent way over on the driveway. Will’s out right now with the chainsaw, cutting his way to the front gate.

I hope all of you in the hurricane’s path were and will be spared bad damage. Please stay safe! — Jackie

18 COMMENTS

  1. Not a fan of snow…or ice for that matter lol…it was 90* up to last week; then we started cooling off…walking into work today at a wet rainy 56….gotta love OHIO weather…we never know from day to day what were going to get ??? Thanking God my husband has had the wood stove going now for about 4 days…the older I get…the more I hate the cold…those peppers look fab….I may have to place me an order for those
    Have a great day,!!!
    Sandy

  2. Cold here southern Wisconsin no snow but excess rain. Nearly all the field crops are yet to be harvested. We can’t get into the fields. One son got an 8 point buck with his bow. Garden clean up has been delayed. Extreme weather has been the norm. The larder is full and we’ll adapt. Stay warm.

    • Congratulations to your son! I hear you about not being able to get into the fields. Will still has some big round bales on a field you can’t even drive a tractor on. Gotta wait till it freezes. Yep, our larder is full too and we still have a beef to harvest and hunting season starts in November so…..

  3. Over here in Aus. we are hoping for rain. With much of the country in drought, it looks to be a difficult growing season. Oh, and Jackie, thanks for keeping my spirits up, I will be hoping for more of Jess Hazzard in the….fullness of time.

  4. Here in Canada, Alberta got snow the 2nd week of September! Fall has been non existent for much of the prairies. I’m on a gulf island in BC and we’re having a stretch of beautiful warm sunny weather.The dips and turns in the Gulf Stream is apparently causing all these weird weather patterns
    Hope the snow melts soon so you can finish your jobs before winter sets in for good!

    • Our snow is going fast but it’s still raining daily. Boo hoo. But sun’s forecast for this coming week. Yea!!!

  5. I’ve been unable to get into the garden to clear it off and/or harvest what’s left (not much!) because of constant rains. I keep hoping we’ll get a break so I can get support posts pulled before the ground freezes. Miserable about describes this fall…well actually it pretty much describes the entire growing season here. It was so wet I never was able to till the garden so just dug holes to stick plants in or made a row in the mud to plant seeds. Farmers are hurting because they’re unable to get into the fields to harvest without equipment bogging down.

    • Yep, here too. We still have round bales out in the field and all of the tomato cages and steel posts have to be pulled yet. Hopefully, next week the forecast will prove true; sunny and fifty! You can bet we’ll be hard at work.

  6. Oh boy, you are right! You WILL recall this fall! Here in Iowa we have rain for weeks now and snow frosting predicted for tonight and Sunday night. Where did our Fall go?!!

    • Far, far away I think. It turned winter early. So we just have to suck it up and deal with what we have.

  7. Hi Jackie
    Sorry to hear about your early snowfall!
    Have a quick question. In my seed order I received wild plum seeds. They’ve been in my fridge for about a month. When should I plant them, this fall or next spring?

    Thank you!

    Heather

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