Just because one is stricken with a horrible autoimmune storm attack doesn't mean things just stop on the homestead.
Well, for me they did, through no choice of my own, but the hubs and our son still carried on with all the fall harvest and imminent arrival of winter prep.
Thankfully, before I got wholloped by my immune system, we had most of the big stuff done. And now that I can actually get out of bed for a bit, I spend what little energy my mitochondria can muster on easy but needed post-harvest tasks.
This week we picked the last of the zucchini. I have been picking zucchini every week since June! It's been amazing! I have a freezer full of shreds yet I am sure that my friends and neighbors are truly happy to see the frost...
Anyway, since I am on a no dairy, no gluten, no soy, no refined sugar eating regimen, I am thankful for the zucchini. It's nourished me in all sorts of tasty ways during this time of healing. I especially have been enjoying it sauteed in olive oil and garlic and simmered with some of our hamburger, pizza sauce, and drizzled with some Miyoko's pourable mozzarella. It's like pizza in a bowl!
Another small chore that I can handle is seed saving and pepita roasting. This year I grew Kakai pumpkins for the first time and I love them! One vine produced seven nice sized pumpkins that were packed full of hull less seeds.
During one fifteen minute energy fest I tossed some of the seeds with olive oil, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper, and roasted them for a bit. Hello magnesium and zinc! They tasted so good.
I also took the seeds out of the best Kakai, washed them, spread them out on a paper towel, and let them dry so I can plant a bigger patch of them next year. They were a definitive cultivar winner!
Speaking of the squash family, the hubs drove me out to the pumpkin patch yesterday so that I could get some fresh air and he could grab the rest of the pumpkins from out of the field as there's some very cold weather and our season's first S word in the forecast.
He really got a kick out of the mutant pumpkin that grew on the competition pumpkin vine. The squash is all lumpy like a clump of cells that didn't divide right. I love it! And you betcha I am saving seeds out of that Frankenstein's monster of pumpkin to grow for next year!
As this weekend was packed full of a plethora of things for the hubs, everything from his rifle team having a raffle table at a local craft festival to him coaching shotgun today, he took a bunch of the pumpkins and set them on a little rick of wood we have in the carport. The cats and kittens of course think he did this just for them. Chaos has thus ensued.
Speaking of chaos, the kittens are really growing. I've truly appreciated their antics while I have been down. Sometimes I have to just sit in my chair next to the fireplace and convalesce and they provide no end of entertainment. Heck, they even check to see if I am still alive by biting my toes once in a while!
The day before yesterday I had a nice burst of energy where I felt almost human and used it to process a few pounds of tomatoes that had ripened in my paper bags in the back room. After slipping the skins, milling them, simmering them, packing a couple of jars, and processing them, well, lets say I had to take a two hour nap after that one lol.
Speaking of naps, it's time for me to go take one. I stepped outside this morning to grab a couple sticks of firewood, stopped to admire the last rose of the season (It's supposed to drop into the twenties at night by Tuesday), and well, just that and switching some laundry has wiped me out.
It's been a bit of a struggle to not get annoyed at times by all this, but just like we have no control over the seasons and their change, so do we have no control over what afflictions strike our carcasses. So, I'm just doing what I can on the mental and nutritional front and trying to stay positive. Cause Time marches on right? I'd just like to be able to march peppily with it....