Fruits for winter

Checking them every day, August 2022

I wish I had more veg growing for winter harvest!  Hopefully I'll get some cabbage, chard, Brussels sprouts and a few leeks.  As it is, I'm preserving all I can of the summer harvest to make up for it.  We are concerned about food security (though to be honest, I've been concerned about it for years, ever since we got snowed in for two weeks during the winter of 2009-2010), and while we're eating a little bit fresh, most of it's going in the dehydrator or freezer.

Those two Kumoi pears above (and their third and final sibling) will probably go into the fresh category.  I've now dehydrated most of the figs and the plums and Sparta apples are almost ready (though the Laxton Fortune apples have nearly all been eaten).  I've got a bag of Morello cherries in the freezer from earlier in the summer, and a bag and a half of wild blackberries the son and I picked--it was a great year for them (they're usually small and seedy).  I was hoping for some good grapes, but it looks like they haven't thrived in the dry summer we've had;  there's a lot of small, partly-formed bunches.  If I possible I'll dehydrate them, but they might only be good for the birds.

Now at the end of August, fresh fruit season is nearly over for us.  I would normally have yellow raspberries next month, but I transplanted them to the allotment early this spring and they haven't flowered.  Hopefully next autumn.  In September I hope to pick some wild (or feral, at least) apples to store, and that will be it until next June at the earliest.