Raspberry Canes on Steroids

The last couple of weeks, our raspberry canes have been growing like I've never seen before. In October? This is no spring growth spurt. I finally took a walk down to the patch today to check things out. And this is what I found.

And this.

And this.

What's going on here? This is the 27th of October, for heaven's sake. I thought I had picked the last of the raspberries near the end of August. I know there are varieties that are specifically fall-bearing, and I even had one row of those but pulled them out several years ago because we didn't like the flavor of them. The three rows we have left have never had fruit at this time of year.

Although the perspective isn't as good as if you were here in person, the above picture may give you an idea of how high the canes have grown. The raspberry patch is in an area that catches a lot of wind so now I'm afraid some of these tall, tall canes are gonna get blown down and broken in the early winter winds before there is enough snow on the ground to stabilize them. I do have trellis-like supports on either side of all the rows but these canes have grown either outside the supports or are waving around way, way above them. I'll have to decide what to do about that little problem within the next few days.

Meanwhile, what to do with the raspberries. Umm, how about picking and eating them?

Not a great quantity, as you can see, but they sure are nice and big. How do they taste? Well, not quite as flavorful as ones in summer, and I think the seeds are a little more noticeable, but we sure can't complain about this surprise harvest on October 27th in 36° weather!

This morning we also did a little bit of wood splitting. It's the time of year that it's still too warm to stoke the wood stove with an over-night fire, and we let it go out if we're going to be gone for the day so we end up having to restart fires maybe a couple of times a day. This uses more kindling than usual and also requires smaller pieces of wood to get the fire to catch before putting on a decent sized log. We have plenty of good, dry, seasoned wood in our woodshed but are finding a lack of the needed smaller pieces so decided to start up the wood splitter and make an ample pile of same.

Here's Roy getting things ready to go.

We have learned that the two of us make a very efficient wood splitting team if I operate the lever while Roy places the wood on the splitter and then removes it after it's been split. But I wanted to prove that I was out there working, too, so had Roy take this shot of me doing both jobs.

And this shot shows how well that works. Oops. Darn. Watch out. Clunk. Dropped everything.