Harvesting and Putting by

We have been covered up in work lately. The garden has been ready to harvest. It's been a strange year. We had so much rain since spring which is a good thing and can be a bad thing. The early rains we got were a little too much and drowned out some of the garden. We replanted the green beans, pinto beans and black eyed peas. The green beans did OK. Not as much as some years. The pintos were awful. From what we planted we only put up 9 quarts.

(To click any link just click on the highlighted or underlined parts)

 We usually get 3 or 4 times that much. The rains also did a number on our fruit harvest. We got just enough plums to eat fresh. We did get enough peaches to freeze 6 quarts. That is not much considering we have 6 trees. The apples we usually get at least 3 bushels and one year we got 17 bushels. We only have the one tree. This year we only got 1 bushel. So I thought I would show you how I canned cinnamon apples.

I start by filling a dishpan with water and add citric acid. I buy it in bulk from SanFranciscoHerb company. (click the link to go to the site). I mix in about a half cup to that much water. I then peel, cut them in quarters and core and put them in this water. This keeps the cut apples from turning brown. 

The apples this year were a tiny bit wormy. I don't worry about it. I just cut around the wormy section.

Next I put my clean canning jars in the oven on 200F. and clean rings and new lids in a water pot and bring to a simmer. 

Next I put water, sugar and cinnamon into a pot. I use the ratio of 2/1. 2cups water, 1cup sugar. Then I add several tablespoons to the water. I just don't worry about measuring it as we like lots of cinnamon. I also use cinnamon flavoring.  I also buy these in bulk.

I bring this to a boil and gently simmer for 1minute. 

The pot looks kind of gross but that is the cinnamon. I have not yet scraped the sides. Once it has simmered 1minute. I add the apples. I don't measure how many. I just try not to overflow the pot. I continue to push the apples down into the syrup until it comes back to a boil.

Our apples are granny smith and they tend to mush easy. So I do not boil these. Once they come to a boil, I turn off the heat. You mainly want them to heat through. This keeps them from floating in the jars once canned. 

I then can them up in quart canning jars. I do use the off type canning jars for these if I have them because I have a lot saved from using other bought products like mayonaise, etc. They work fine in a water bath. I would not pressure can in these. I do not fill my jars completely full of apples. After bottling the apples, I then add the syrup from the pot. I make sure I clean the screw part and around the top of the rim before capping. Using a clean damp wash cloth I dip in vinegar to disinfect and it in turn disinfects the rims. I tighten the rings and Then the jars are transferred outside to the canner. Sonny does this part so no photos. He water baths them for 20minutes. The canning books call for 40 but any longer makes these type apples go to mush. 

Here is the finished product. 

We set them on the picnic table under a fan to cool and then transfer to our pantry. 

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One thing Sonny and I enjoy is a homemade pizza. My next post will show how I make one. In the rest of this post I'm showing some photos of our homestead.

Front view with patio area

Patio area. The upper section is our cook shack. We do our canning and grilling there and we eat out there as well when it is nice outside. 

Straight front view of the house.Someday I'll tell you the story of our house and try to find old photos. 

another front view. We used to have a huge iris bed in front but getting older, we decided we wanted to focus on a food garden. I did move many bulbs to the side of the drive and then gave the rest away. 

This is our garden earlier in the season. I took this photo from the front yard looking northeast. We keep an electric fence around it. Our fruit trees are scattered from there up the hill to the left of this photo.

We have 6 blueberry bushes. 2 are very old and 2 are a little younger and then we have 2 really young bushes. Our older bushes were so overgrown and needed the old wood pruned out. So this is after the pruning. They are about 1/3 the size they were before. The big bushy tree behind the top photo is our big fig tree and it is loaded this year. 

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I have some other news to cover next time as well about our self-quarantine. Later for that. In the meantime, I have been spending time on youtube. I could spend hours but have a few homesteading ones I love. This link is for the one that is my favorite. They are a homestead in Georgia. I think they have only had their place for 2 years or so. The woman is a joy to watch. Her accent is really southern and so I can relate. Their site on youtube is 

Homestead Heart. Click the link to check them out. 

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Time to close. and as always. 

More garden news and new toys

Our garden is coming off big time. Not many photos of it as it is beginning to look ragged. Our fruit crop has been a bust this year with much rain causing the fruit to drop. 

I found out something about my herbs. I have some mint plant I thought was peppermint. It seems I was wrong and it is spearmint. I had infused some vodka since last year and it stunk...smelled and tasted like weeds. So did some google searches and found that peppermint is what you need to use for infusing to get mint extract. 

The mint bloom is what led me to find out what kind of mint I have. So like the old old asparagus bed, we are killing it out and replanting both this next spring. And this time I will get peppermint.

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Our daylilies have been outstanding again this year. Sonny finally took my word that they bloom later than most flowers and I stopped him in time before he cleaned up the ditch bank.

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I spent a little money on Amazon. I bought some lids that fit on a large mouth canning jar to sprout seeds. I love sprouted seeds. I bought some mixed green seeds to sprout. I've only eaten alfalfa and mung bean seed so this is a little different. The sprouts definitely have a bite to them. 

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I also bought some fermentation lids to make kraut and other fermented veggies. This is the kit I bought.

I also bought caraway seed to flavor my kraut.

Here is mine. 

The yellow top is the sprouting lid. All you add to the kraut is cabbage, caraway seed and some water that has canning salt added to it. 

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We finally harvested all our corn off just 1 row. We got 20 bags of corn cut off the cobs and 9 of corn on the cob. 

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Sonny has been brining hams and making summer sausage. He had kept our big smoke house going this past week. Both taste so good and so much healthier for you.

Sonny uses about 40% deer and 60% lean beef. He adds the summer sausage mix, chopped jalapenos, and hard cheese. It is so yummy. 

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Hopefully this next week I'll show steps to making a homemade pizza. 

In the meantime here is the last to add. Just like God protects us under His wings. 

Few garden and family posts

We have been busy with gardening and canning. Here is our tomato patch. It isn't doing as well as normal due to mixup in tomato plants. They were labeled wrong and the main thing is the water. We have had rain almost every single day. The sun pops out for a little while and then it rains and repeats over and over. 

We have begun to pick our corn. We didn't plant much but I use it in cornbread all winter. We will put up a few cobs whole but cutting off the rest to freeze.

We have been slowly cutting the rosemary back some. We plan to kill out the spearmint. It has gotten scraggly and ugly and I tried infusing it in vodka last year and it tasted like weeds. I plan to start over next spring with new pepper mint and asparagus plants. But I took the rosemary and infused coconut oil and yesterday put some up to infuse with vinegar. 

I also made some blueberry health syrup from the last of the berries this year. I added several whole lemons, sugar, tumeric, cinnamon, and ginger. It sounds awful but really it doesn't taste too bad. It will good for cholesterol, inflamation and antioxidant. 

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Here are a few family photos. 

Sonny cooking breakfast. Yes I'm lucky but we really do take turns cooking. 

He really is in good shape for 74.

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These are my 3 granddaughers and their mother. I'm so proud of all of them and they are so close to their mom.

Busy Garden and Wedding

These last few weeks have been really busy. Our garden has been coming off big time. We finally picked the last of the blueberries and Sonny will be pruning them drastically so we may not have berries again for a few years. 

We have slowly been pruning the rosemary. We have 2 big bushes and they have overgrown terribly. So I'm drying the rosemary and saving some for my cooking but I also made some rosemary infused coconut oil. Rosemary oil is great for cleaning as it is a natural antibiotic. I did my infusion in a crock pot set on warm.

The local grocery store had some wonderful red bell peppers that are grown locally. They were HUGE. I forgot to get a photo of them. But we initially bought 10. Sonny roasted them on the grill and I peeled and packed in jars and we pressured for 10 minutes and now I have pimentos for my winter cooking. Later we went back and got what they had left so think I'm now prepared for winter. 

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We had a wedding on June 20 for our middle granddaughter. It was held outside and we all tried to social distance but it was hard. Sonny performed the wedding. So here are some special shots from the wedding.

Alaska Life

Our youngest son took a job this year working on a boat on the Toolic River in Alaska. His home base is Bethel and he travels up river about 400 miles to deliver cooking and heating oil to small villages. It has really been an adventure for all of us as he left in the midst of the pandemic. He was test 5 days before he left and then again when he got to Bethel and was in quarentine for 5 more days. Now he has been really experiencing life on the river. His boat is small and so living quarters are cramped. But so far he is enjoying it. I can say that our daugher-in-law and daughter are all that happy him being going for 3 months. He will be home the end of August for a couple of weeks and then back to Bethel until the river starts to freeze over. He will be off all winter and plans to use his time to work on his 2nd mates license. So here are just a few photos of his time spent in Alaska.

He went fishing and caught a Dolly Varden (artic char) and then he cooked it up. He is the designated breakfast chef.

He got to see a moose about 20 feet away from the boat.

And since he is in the land of the midnight sun he isn't getting much dark time sleep. In fact he is working nights. 

Here is a picture of his boat.

And he took this amazing photo of a bald eagle through the lens of a binocular.

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And as always. 

Phew!!! still not finished with garden days

This is always a busy time of the year for us with our garden veggies and fruit trees yielding their bounty. I've put up peaches in freezer for 2 days and now picking blueberries everyother day and freezing. 

These are just a few shots of our garden from the first few weeks after planting.

This is the garden from about 3 weeks ago. I'll post photos of what it looks like now on next post.

It looks quite different. We are now harvesting squash, cucumbers and green beans. I've put up pickles and dilled green beans and even squash relish. I have more of the pickles and relish to put up. Soon we will have corn and tomatoes. 

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My herb garden spot has really grown. I have rosemary, oregano, sage and basil. I planted Italian parsley but seed must have been bad. 

We have trimmed back about half the rosemary and have dried and frozen the herb.

I spent 2 days reorganizing my pantry and back laundry room. The laundry room shelves now house my wool dying equipment, canning equipment and crock pots, air fryer and cleaning tools. 

On another post later, I will post my youngest son's great adventure. Stay tuned.

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And as always........