I also harvested rose hips from our Rosa Rugosa bushes right up until our first frost just before Thanksgiving.
Last Spring I planted 3 scrawny sticks with loads of thorns on them in a separate bed up near the orchard. Those little sticks were only about 18" tall and last summer we had a few roses bloom and some leaves appear on a new branch or two. Well, let me tell you, this year those scraggly things just took off! By the Fall, those three bushes had all but taken over the 12'x15' bed they were in and had grown to 5' tall.
The bushes were covered in roses all summer long and I never cut any of them as I was waiting to see if they would develop into rose hips. And they did! Whaaaaa? Rose hips? Bet you thought roses only had petals and thorns. Nope, they've got swagger......their very own hips. And are they ever gorgeous.
See? In the first picture above you can clearly see the rose blooms....and then in this picture what you are looking at is what is left when the petals fall off the blooms. Just behind the browned bits of leftover petals is a round, green part of the bloom. And that's where the good stuff begins.
If you don't pick the rose blooms, they turn into these! Yes, rose hips. Packed with vitamin C and tons of antioxidants.....these little babies pack a bunch of healthy goodness into each and every sphere. But wait. They aren't quite ready yet. Patience, patience. And so I waited.
Waiting paid off big time. Look at these beauties! Aren't they awesome? So pretty and ripe. I picked colander after colander of them over a month's time, waiting until they were a bright orange-y red. Once picked, they went into the kitchen for processing. They had to be seeded and chopped into smaller pieces and popped into the dehydrator for 18 hours or so until they were dry enough to store in Ball jars.
Now, just what the heck do I do with all of these chopped up things? Make tea......pretty, pink tea.....loaded with vitamin C. Rose hips are like super-charged vitamin C machines, and drinking tea made from hips is a great way to fight off colds all winter. And if you choose, you can also eat them fresh once their seeds have been removed. I simply choose to dehydrate mine so I had them to use until next Fall's harvest. And because I'm allergic to vitamin C from citrus, this is a great source of C for me....and no sneezing. Yea!
We've had so much rain and warm weather this Fall that my irises were blooming again under the roses. How strange? Everything lasted much longer this year in the garden. I continued to cut all my herbs and dehydrating them right up until Thanksgiving. Gotta love that last unexpected harvest. Now I have lots of herbs to use in my cooking until next summer. And I know they are as uncontaminated as possible because I grew them myself without any pesticides or chemicals.
The weather even cooperated during the week my mom came up for her first visit to Whispering Oaks. And my friend, Susan Marie and her beau came for a quick weekend, as well as my cousin, Rodney and his wife, Joan. So, in between learning how to care for the alpaca, harvesting food from the garden and visiting with friends and family we somehow began the "most dreaded Project of all". More on that tomorrow.
But for now, I'l close with the first pics of our newest animal additions to the farm. Four barn cats....a mama and her three kittens born this summer sometime. The folks that we bought the alpaca from brought the cats from their barn so we would have some mousers of our own. I've never had a cat, so, this was another new experience for us. Oh, and yes, I named them all after watching them for a couple of weeks and figuring out their personalities. The lady above is Domino because she has big, round, black spots on her like a ......yes, you guessed it.....like a domino.
This is Mama Cat......because she is.....well, the mama cat. Not very inventive, but it suits her. Now, Domino is probably the most wary of the four cats and runs whenever Joel appears in the barn. But Mama Cat, she's an old pro and has let me pet her since the day she arrived here on the farm.
And these two are rascals. They play with each other all the time, rolling and tumbling over each other in the grass. The guy on the left is Calico.....recently renamed Mr. Calico. I just figured out he was the boy. Don't laugh. I told you I've never had a cat before. Anyway, I have been informed that he's not a calico because they are three colors, white, tan and another color. Hey, what do I know? I thought his mottled grey and black was a calico pattern? giggle.....sorry about that to all you cat aficionados.
And last, but most certainly not least, the lovely lady on the right is Chloe. She is the most demure of the four cats. Her fur is much longer than the others and she is quite prissy. She just seems to carry herself like a little lady......how funny. I didn't know cats could have so many different personalities. So, there you have it. Our Fall in a Flash.
The head count at Whispering Oaks now stands at this:
2 humans
2 "inside" dogs
4 barn cats
17 alpaca
23 chickens
I'm really not sure what kind of critters will land here next.
Debbie
