Harvesting the garden

Mooska the cat has a new baby kitten- striped (like the tomcat that hangs around)with its eyes just open, it was born the night I got back from Canada. Sadly Wishbone our very cute new puppy died while we were in Crimea. Victor says it was a stomach thing- not the same as the first puppy. We may have to stick to cats and hamsters- although the boys had the new mother hamster escape and the white kitten snagged it off the floor and it died after the boys rescued it. Fortunately the four baby hamsters, just two weeks old when it happened are doing fine, almost a week later (they are normally weaned at 3 weeks if you are wondering) The white kitten has been banished from their room- he had been put inside because it was trying to nurse along with the new baby kitten (at 4 months- he's nearly as big as his mother!)
Although we still have a hopeful couple more rows of sweet corn coming along, peppers, brussel sprouts growing nicely and even the green beans have set some little beans when it rained two weeks ago, the neighbouring gardens are nearly bare. As soon as something looks done it's pulled up and burned (all summer most of the weeds were pulled up and fed to something- different weeds are fed to geese, cows- and yes the pigs are fed pigweed!)
It seems that September is the month to get your garden harvested, clean up your yard and burn the debris(last year the village gardens were plowed in October- it frosted October 1st) Every night at dusk you can barely see across the village as a haze of smoke rises above the flames of the burning piles- and the smoulder all night since green things don't burn that well. We have the windows shut tight as smoke creeping in is giving us sore throats and coughs. Hopefully cleanup is over soon.
I made grape juice this week- mostly because I noticed one of the neighbor's chickens jumping up about a foot in the air into the the grape vines and walked over to discover she was plucking the low hanging grapes one by one and eating them! I gathered a big basketful of the riper bunches that night and made grape juice (or compote) the next day.
Garry admired some grapes at one of the neighbor's so they gave him some to take home, they are big purple/black ones. The grapes in our yard here are green, not real big (in spite of Garry's hard work, he did a great job of pruning them this year and they have produced a bumper crop), and taste just like the ones that grow on the farm in New Jersey where I grew up - maybe Victor is right and they are here since Mennonite days! I can remember my great-grandmother, Mama Johnson (her name was Flossie- just like in the Bobbsie Twins books) picking them off the vine in NJ and eating them, they are a little sour -and whistling- an amazing thing in my mind as she was missing some teeth. This was more than 40 years ago and those vines were old then.
I picked a big bowl of yellow apples from under the tree in the front yard yesterday(the guys herding the village cows have to watch out for the two cows who like to sneak in our gate and crunch up as many apples as they can get before someone spots them) so I have been making applesauce and cake today, pie tommorrow.