My buckets runneth over

Well,sort of.....

I've got a ton of things to get done around here,and it seems not nearly enough free time.

This morning,I've got some fresh concord grapes to do something with,kind of leaning toward throwing them in a gallon of vodka and letting them age/flavor the vodka....seems like an easy solution,and quick too..

A friend of my Mom's gave me a big bucket full of grapes from her house,knowing that I make all kinds of homemade things.While I do appreciate it,I've more than got my hands full at the moment with apples,pears,plums,and starting the get the garden ready for winter....

The weather man is predicting a possible hard freeze tonight,so that will finish off what few plants are left out there.We've got to get the beds cleaned out and prepped for winter,one,you don't want all the old plant material sitting there,you want to pull it up,chop it up and add it to the compost,and two,with four rabbits now,we need the space to dump the trays when we clean the cages.

We were going to dedicate just one bed to cage cleaning and compost materials,however,the leaves,grass clippings,and rabbit manure break down into the soil so fast,that I'm thinking it might not be needed....So the new plan is to get a good deep layer on each bed,tilling it in until the ground freezes,let it sit all winter,and then till all the beds a few time before it's time to plant.

We will need a dedicated compost heap though to continue the cycle during the growing season and I don't want to add any manure to the garden in the spring,as it won't have time to break down properly before time to plant.

So my plan for the day,my only day off until sometime next week,is to buy some cheap vodka to pour over the grapes,get that taken care of,which is just a matter of washing the grapes,adding them to a container full of vodka and sitting the whole works in the dark somewhere for a few months.

Then on to the plums.I think I will dry enough to fill the dehydrator once,and then make a jam or plum butter with the rest,there's only about 5 pounds of those.

After that's done,I've still got pears and apples to deal with.I made a pear butter last week,with some from the tree in the yard(it's still young so only produces few pears a year)and some a friend gifted me.It turned out WONDERFUL,it's super sweet,and nice and smooth(yeah for stick blenders),and another batch will get canned up and gifted to friends this holiday season.

The apples will have to wait until the plums are done drying,and for my next day off,or late shift so that I can cook some down into apple butter.