Somehow, I nearly forgot that we had a garden at Two Barn Farm.  It was a nice, warm, fall-feeling night, and I was itching to work.  We had 90 minutes of light left after work, and I intended to do something.

I took Grampy down there, and we got some trim and insulation hung up.  Grampy also pre-cut a few pieces of siding.  It was getting dim, but I got the first 3 pieces of siding on the East end of the crib.  After we picked up the tools, I thought about checking the gardens.  There might be some lunker of a zucchini hiding over there.

Tomatoes.  I nearly filled a 5 gallon bucket with bright red tomatoes.  Reagan has already canned sauce, diced tomatoes, garden relish, salsa, and a few other things out of the garden.  We have storerooms and freezers full of peas and onions too.  Now there is another batch of tomatoes to deal with.  Maybe we should check into Carla’s soup recipie…..

The whole canning process has gotten me into a fury as well.  I had to put up some barley and hops of course.  My hop vines only grew about 8 inches this year.  I used my business trip to St Paul as an excuse to visit the homebrew store that I usually order from.  Somehow, I came home with enough grain for 2 more batches of brew, even though I had that much at home already.

I started with the oldest first, which was something called “Big Honking Stout”  I realized that my power drill can replace the handle on this thing labeled the “Barley Crusher”.  It took care of 12lbs of grain in a minute!  Much better than cranking by hand.  I have quite the setup, and have started doing all-grain batches last year.  So there was a huge production of interconnected coolers and tubing and hot water sprinklers, and pots all over the kitchen.  Crazy to the untrained eye, but it was much more manageable than normal.
That batch is sitting in one of my large conical fermenters.  Next on deck for tomorrow is a Belgium Dubbel.  Next week might entail an Irish Red Ale followed by a Strong Dark Belgium Trappist Ale.  Notice that nothing seems to be labeled as American style?  Yes, there is a reason for that.
Hopefully this warm streak will continue for a few more nights and into the weekend.  I might get some more corn crib work done.