Season wrap up

I’m pretty much back to normal now. I can eat pretty much anything, with only minimal care about swallowing, my weight is stable, and energy levels are coming back up.

I have an appointment for a CT scan December 5, and there will be a video conference with the chemo oncologist some time shortly after that, which will tell me how they did with the radiation and chemotherapy. I am confident that they have done what they said they would, and gotten rid of the cancer, but the verdict will be what it will be.

I got everything harvested, with the exception of the leeks = they are frozen in place now. I had them hilled up very nicely, so there would be more nice clean white stems on them. The hills are frozen solid now,and any attempt to get them out is going to thoroughly mash them. Still have to thresh out the majority of the beans, but they are all nice and dry. There are three bundles of Ethiopian lentils hanging under shelter, waiting for me to figure out just how to beat them out. They are dry enough that I think most of the plants are going to basically powder when I start thrashing. It doesn’t look like the pods are going to hold on to the seed very much = actually, I’m hoping I can get something around the bundles without losing too many seeds in the process.

Most of the tomato detritus is still in place in the rows, along with the rest of the debris. Cornstalks still standing, lots of immature onions frozen stiff and unusable now, Florida weave stakes standing alone and lineless now (I got most of the lines out of the way, but not past that). Potato beds are all set to receive seed potatoes = I intended to put them in and cover with a few inches of mulch, but we got a hard freeze (-9.5C or 14.8F) the night before they were to go in the ground. The ground was a little too stiff to dig them in, so I guess I do it in the spring. The leeks were supposed to come out right after the spuds went in = they aren’t going to be trialed in the spud pit this year after all.

Got all of the apples off for juicing. Still have four boxes in the basement, for consumption through the winter = that is a first here too. Usually, there are too few apples worth looking at at the end of the year, to do more than make juice. I can juice apples that are not in good enough shape to store for the winter, and there are usually too few left that have enough flavor to put in storage. This year, there was a bumper crop of good flavored apples on my Red Delicious. Most years there is either a poor crop, or the flavor just doesn’t develop in them, and they aren’t even usable for juice. I saved two boxes of Red Delicious, and got two mixed boxes of MacIntosh, Golden Delicious, Spartan and Jonogold from my neighbor for juicing all of her apples for her.

Most of the pruning is still to be done. Hopefully we will get some milder windless days through the winter, so I can get it done before spring. I would have preferred to get more done before the garden season ended, but I’m satisfied that I got the necessaries out of the way. There’s always next year to do better in, and I don’t foresee having any limitations to what I can do from now on.

And the adventure continues

JUICING

Eating is almost back to normal now. Still have to watch temperature and bite size, but with thorough chewing, almost everything is back on the menu now. Have to increase my fluid intake a bit more now, and stay hydrated. No stamina at all presently = the last round of chemo, and the over all effects of the radiation treatments, have me down to maybe ten minutes at a shot, then rest for a bit, and start off on what ever is next. I'll keep plugging at it, and pushing myself a bit, just to keep active, and try and shorten the recovery time. Still have 90% of the garden cleanup to get done this fall = if the weather holds for me for another three weeks, I might actually get some of it done.

Got into the orchard and picked the apples on Friday, and even had time to pull the last bed of carrots = the church will definitely be getting some of them, as there are at least another 6 pails = spud pit only holds 14 pails, and I still have to put spuds in it. There are already 6 pails of carrots in the pit, and I want to put a pail or two of leeks in, just to see how they do.

Finally got to press apple juice yesterday. It took me longer to get the press set up than it did to macerate and press the juice. One load in the press gave us 65 quarts of juice = still have another 40 quarts worth of apples to do for us today, and probably another 100 quarts or so for the neighbors. I did remember to take photos of the equipment and process, but rather than post 18 photos, I’ll give the link to the album they are in.

https://picasaweb.google.com/108421163807481105353/JUICING

All this and Epigenetics too

In the first few days after the last post, eating became substantially easier. I still have to be careful with temperatures, make sure I chew everything very thoroughly, and swallow small amounts at one time = but I am eating almost normal amounts of softer foods = noodles, ground meat in soups, fish, and vegetables. I’ve already picked up about 2 pounds of what I lost, so I should be able to get back to what they will consider an acceptable weight for next week.

Temperatures are starting to drop at night (-9C or 15F), but we are still getting reasonable daytime temperatures (10C or 50F). If I can get enough energy together, carrots and spuds will hit the pit in the next couple of days, provided we don’t get rained out of digging. Still have to get the macerator and press wrestled out of the basement, so we can make some apple juice = I don’t think we have enough pears left to make pear juice, but I might try a small batch, if we can find enough to make it worth while.

Canned 44 quarts of pears, which finishes what Shaoling has not given away or been frozen. I guess we must have had a few nights that were colder than I thought, because we lost most of the remaining Asian pears to water core, which means they were frozen. Checking the max/min thermometer memory, we have already been down to -14.5 C (5.9F), so I guess the water core should be no surprise. I suppose they could have gone to a juicing attempt, but it didn’t occur to me until later.

I caught part of an interesting discussion/explanation of epigenetics on CBC’s “Quirks and Quarks” on the way home from my second to last chemo treatment.

It is standard knowledge that DNA is formed from a combination of the parents DNA, and does not change through the life of the progeny. Epigenetics were explained this way = If you take the DNA as a string of letters that gets punctuated into words and sentences, epigenetics is what happens when the progeny are still in the womb, or in the early stages of life. Experiences and circumstances that significantly impact the mothers health and life style or quality, alter the punctuation to prepare the offspring for life. It does not alter the actual DNA, but rather alters the state of the expression of the DNA = turning some processes on, and others off. For example, if food is in short supply for the gestation period, then the ability to convert food into energy and save it is cranked up, trying to ensure the progeny will be better able to survive. If water is in short supply, the processes that regulate water utilization are fine tuned, to allow better usage in the progeny. The epigenetic “punctuation” may be changed to some degree by life experiences, or perhaps by chemical means (something they are trying to figure out).

The study that found this, used data from a long term, large bodied medical study, (for what I dis-remember) that had blood samples of those studied for a long period of time. They were looking for information that could show if there was any genetic footprint left on DNA by living in poverty. They tested DNA for individuals over a period of ten years, and could see the “punctuation” was altered by several indicators of poverty during the gestational period and early life. The “punctuation” was so definitely changed, that they could pick out individuals whose mother had smoked during the pregnancy, and even to some degree, the children who had two parents who smoked while the children were young. This would also tend to explain Fetal Alcohol Syndrome = scrambled “punctuation”.

The above might be something that would appear a bit strange in a gardening blog, but the phenomenon would be the same in the plant world = what your plants experience in your garden influences what their progeny are going to act like in the next generation. Gives you pause to think about how you might be able to “engineer” a little change in production or size in a variety, by how you treat this years plants. It would also explain why some varieties change over a fairly short period of time when grown in the same location year after year = epigenetics start changing the punctuation. Good examples are Blacktail Mountain, and Small Shining Light watermelons = first time I grew them, they came in at a size that was just about perfect for two people for one meal = this year they are about three times that size. And my weather conditions here are almost identical to those that Blacktail Mountain was developed in, with the exception that I have been feeding and watering mine somewhat more than the originals got. I have heard of people who have grown Blacktail Mountain for longer periods, and are now getting 20 - 30 pounders. I suppose the way to get back to the original size would be to grow them in less than optimal conditions for a few years, and get some of the original “punctuation” back, or re-punctuate in some way.

It is going to be squirming its way through my so called mind quite a bit now = what changes could I make if I........

I am now eating almost normally = only a small amount of pain when I get careless with swallowing. Tomorrow I get my last chemotherapy treatment. Sometime around the end of the year I will have another CT scan, and talk to both the Chemo and Radiation oncologists sometime in early January. There will be periodic checkups after that, to make sure things stay good, but other than that, I expect life will get back to what it used to be for many years to come = Shaoling says she wants "at least twenty years", and I intend to give her as many of them as I can.

We did get one carrot bed dug and into the spud pit = 6 pails worth. Still have almost as many more to pull from the other bed = they have sized up much better than I expected them to. I have a feeling the church is going to be getting quite a few of them, so I will have room for the spuds in the pit too.

This weekend should see us making apple juice, if the weather cooperates. I will be stripping the apple trees on Friday, weather permitting. For a change, all four trees have a good amount of fruit, and they have had enough water this year that they have a reasonably good taste = juice should be very good. I am fortunate enough to have a very good wine press to process the apples with. I'll try to remember to get the camera out and document the process, from box, to macerator, to pressure cooker. The result always beats anything you can buy.

And the adventure continues.