Sept. 29, 2025 - HARVEST TIME
Afternoon harvest
The Italian, melanzana or milinciana in Sicilian sounds so much more appealing than eggplant!
In addition to vegetables, Julie has done an amazing job with her flower garden. The dahlias are a little bit late, but they should be a great fall bloom.
Julie’s dahlias….
On Saturday, we rushed home from work so we could get some chance to catch the last hour of the River Lynch and the Spiritmakers band with our own, Alex Cote on lead guitar……he had to leave work even earlier than we did on Saturday!
My lunchtime cocktail of choice….A Bloody Maria!
Sunday dinner… adorned with beautiful flowers from Julie‘s garden.
Dr. Jennie playing some tasteful renditions of old-time tunes in three finger style on a beautiful 1920s Bacon FF that I sold her…
Vegetables have not been the only harvest. Ryan Yarmel went on a little road trip and harvested lots of banjos and parts and tools and statues and ephemera.
HARVEST TIME
September 29th, 2025
Good morning friends,
Mid September until the end of October is harvest time. It’s when we reap all the benefits of our hard work. But reaping the benefits is hard work itself. We are inundated with tomatoes, eggplant, hot peppers. It has been a strange growing season with the lack of rain, but our two 4 x 8 raised beds have produced more than we can use. So, it is time to can, freeze and otherwise preserve the fruits of our labor, or in this case, the vegetables of our labor!
We have made a variety of types of pesto, as I planted a dozen basil plants. Basil is the " king of herbs". We made and preserved lots of Genovese pesto with its bright green color. We also made several batches of Trapanese pesto which has roasted almonds and tomatoes in addition to basil. We made Ajvar, which is a condiment made from roasted eggplant plant and red peppers. It is popular in the Balkan countries. We have pickled eggplant and hot cherry peppers and I made a glorious caponata. Coming up this week there will be lots of "Sunday sauce" which I hope to serve on my birthday, which is coming up in October. Tomorrow we’re getting a load of grapes to make some old-time jam! Or maybe it’ll just stay as juice…it’ll be a messy one but lots of fun.
On Sunday, we ventured out across the Finger Lakes over the top of Seneca Lake and down the west side of Cayuga Lake to Knapp wineries. We heard through the grapevine that our friend Dr Jennie was going to be playing her five string banjo as entertainment during the lunch hour in the restaurant. So we headed over there spent some time listening to some great music. We had a little lunch….and I had a cocktail which kind of set me off for the day. Then we ventured down to Watkins Glen, and I took my scooter for a bit of a ride around the town. It was a lovely jaunt through the Finger Lakes and finally a beautiful ride back to Penn Yan where we had to feed and water the dogs. It was a glorious beginning of Autumn.
With peace,
John Bernunzio
The garden
Construction at the park along the outlet trail has kept a portion of the trail closed for most of the summer. They are remodeling the park and apparently putting in a dock. It has been very slow going.