Here at Homestead Albania we do a fair amount of canning. And this year we stocked the pantry with various versions of tomato based sauces, pickled various peppers, eggplants and tomatoes, made a few rounds of mulberry and grape pekmez, fig and plum jams, made plum and pear compote, dried chickpeas, beans, popcorn, figs, plums, quince, lavender, mountain tea, rosebud, mint, chamomile, spearmint, rosemary, basil, thyme and parsley. And added various jars of honey from local beekeepers. The deep freeze is full of meat, blueberries, pomegranate juice, and figs. I know I am missing a few items, but I think you get the idea. It's packed and ready for some long winter nights and cooler days.
One of our great mama hens added another ten baby chicks to our flock this week. Egg production averages about four to six a day.
In the garden, we are still harvesting eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, squash, melons, watermelons, mountain tea, brussel sprouts, and broccoli. We are still awaiting the cabbage, leeks, a few pumpkins plus the spring onions and garlic are poppin.
We picked all but six pomegranates in the orchard. We've confirmed that the turkish variety ripen first and they are sweet. The wonderful variety need a few more weeks to ripen but we did taste test one and it has a semi-tart flavor. The davendish variety trees are slowest to mature. We only had three poms of this variety and we are waiting to pick for another week or so.
And we did pull the sweet domestic mature pomegranates from the garden this week. We squeezed 13 liters of fresh juice.
And this month we granted life long wishes for two visitors, Jennifer and Enola. They stopped by and toured our little corner of the world. We took them up the hill to give them a birds eye view. They were giddy excited to take in the views.
They also picked a few grapes and got to live out their 'I Love Lucy' dreams of stomping grapes with some Albanian music playing. We danced and laughed a lot. It was amazing sharing their joy and seeing our homestead through their eyes.
Albania offers US citizens a one year visa free stay. This attracts remote working/retired travelers to make Albania home for a year at a time. We've had 17 visitors stop by over the last few years. It's always great to share a bit of the history and seasonal goodies from the homestead.
We harvested a second round of grapes for wine. It took two days to collect and crush another 220 liters of grapes to ferment. So far we've pulled about three liters of grape juice (mushti) with a kick and it's amazing so far. High praises so far for the wine this season.
Art finished the cellar project just in time for more wine. A fresh coat of paint on the walls and floor. Custom steel and wood shelves add the storage we need to expand our wine production and store other canned goods.
This week we've been blessed with a visit. Art's sister and brother in law are here just in time to enjoy the beautiful sunshine. Cheers to an amazing fall with bright warm days and average temps in the mid seventies (23°C).
