Tag Archives: Garden

Salsa

August 2, 2008Canning, GardenCanning, Gardenwarren

Tomatoes are starting to ripen so we’re starting to can salsa. We were given a great recipe by a friend last year and are making it like crazy this year. I didn’t keep track of how much we made last year but I suspect it was 25-30 pints. We are planning to make a lot more this year. From last year’s work, we learned a few things that has made the first batches a little easier. Roma tomatoes seem to peel the easiest for us.

We freeze the tomatoes in advance and then let them slightly defrost before peeling them. In a half-frozen state, the skins just pull right off. We never make double recipes because our recipe requires that we boil the brew for 10 minutes. Boiling something thick for that long splatters all over. Our pot isn’t big enough to even really contain a single recipe. We also hand chop onions and green peppers but use a processor on the hot peppers. Most folks seem to like big chunks of sweet peppers and onions but a big chunk of habanero can bring about a religious experience…usually losing religion actually!

Anyhow, we love salsa! We eat the stuff on tacos, eggs, baked potatoes and with nacho chips. Typically, we make two varieties, one pretty hot and one mild. Emily is starting to enjoy the hotter variety so we may increase production of that. We usually use a mix of jalapenos, cayennes and habaneros though we haven’t found habaneros for sale yet. Our crop of them failed miserably. Enough about that…the point is, salsa has to be one of my favorite things to can. Bring on the ‘maters!

Corn

July 30, 2008Bees, Family, Garden, NatureBees, Garden, Honeybeeswarren

I mentioned in an earlier post that the bees were really working the corn tassels a couple of weeks ago. I got some pictures (click on them…they are pretty neat when full size!) of

honeybees as well as a bunch of
blue orchard mason bees that were around. It turns out that the starlings were really working the

corn too. This weekend, we had to harvest a bunch of the corn before the birds did. We ate some for supper this weekend and Emily

froze most of it still on the cob. She blanched the ears for 6 minutes then let them cool. Once cool and dry, she then wrapped them in cling-wrap and put the ears in freezer bags. We probably harvested half of the corn so we’ll see what the birds left us later in the week!

More on the pressure canner

July 24, 2008Audio, Canning, GardenAudio, Canning, Gardenwarren

We canned a bunch of green beans last night with the new pressure cooker. I really enjoy using the All-American pressure cooker for a number of reasons. It seems to come to temperature very fast. This could really be a perception thing since it has a temperature gauge.

With a normal weighted-pressure cooker without a gauge (see pic below), I always watch the pot never knowing if it is almost at pressure, if the heat is actaully climbing, etc…and, of course, a watched pot never boils. With this canner, I can see the temp and pressure as soon as it boils. I also like this canner because it does not have a rubber gasket to break down and fail. The All-American is formed in a shape such that a metal-to-metal seal is formed. It is also American made (of course) which I appreciate.

Now, the bad stuff…you have to get the lid and base of the canner lined up just right or a seal will not form and the canner will not get to pressure. We ran into this problem last night on our second load of green beans. I didn’t realize it was not sealed until it got pretty hot. I couldn’t just open it and try again (it was still very hot, even though not to pressure). We’ll recan the beans tonight since it was almost midnight when we figured it all out. We’ll just put new lids on the jars and try again.

Most times this canner seals fine but I always have to gently pry the lid from the base after it cools.

It forms a very tight seal. The manual says that a screwdriver placed just right will break the seal (and it does) but I wish I could just pop the lid off every time. It is possible that I am not aligning the lid right when I screw down the bolts that hold the lid and base together. I think that task is nearly impossible though. This is a small issue but an issue nonetheless.

Finally, the All-American is very heavy compared to other canners. This is good and bad. It has a substantial feel to it for sure. The problem is that it is not recommended for glass top stoves and it is heavy to move when full. the price is fairly high but it should last a lifetime. It just has a quiality look-and-feel which I really appreciate.

I sort of like the sounds of canning so I recorded some of what we were doing last night with the canner. I hope you enjoy this “sound-seeing tour”. Click the arrow below to hear it :

Canner sounds

Green beans have started

July 22, 2008Family, GardenFamily, Gardenwarren

My parents were in town last weekend and helped us harvest from the garden. Most of out time was spent picking beans. There were 6 rows of tenderette bush beans to pick. All together, we harvested 44 pounds of beans on this first picking. A bushel of beans of 30 pounds so we picked about one and a half bushels all together. We expect to harvest again this weekend and we may get another harvest after that. Once we picked, we spent a good deal of time snapping the ends off the beans and breaking them into pieces for canning. With two pressure canners going, we canned 30 quarts of beans on Saturday/Sunday. Beans are simple to can. We fill the warm jars nearly to the top with beans, add boiling water and a teaspoon of canning salt and pressure can them at 240 degrees for 25 minutes. Of the 30 quarts, only one didn’t seal. Aside from the beans we canned, three families had a good helping of fresh beans to boot. Emily’s grandfather mentioned and I have read that beans near tomatoes do better than beans alone and that certainly was true of our first harvest. We have one row of beans between two rows of tomatoes and they are larger, healthier plants and produced more beans than the rows that were away from the tomatoes. Next year, we will plant tomatoes and beans, every other row.

Yellow Squash!

July 21, 2008GardenGardenwarren

We harvested yellow summer squash on Saturday when my parents were here for a visit. I didn’t count but I suppose we collected around 25 perfect sized squash. We ate a bunch of it and gave some away. I have a bunch of it in the dehydrator also. Squash is around 94% water so dehydration can significantly reduce the volume for storage. We haven’t tried to rehydrate and use squash yet but we have had luck with bell peppers and hot peppers. I expect we’ll use it in with other stuff more than we will eat it in a squash-only dish. We’ll see.

Anyhow, I took some pics a while back of bumblebees in the squash flowers. We have quite a few plants and there were tons (I didn’t count but I am positive it was over 100) bumblebees in the flowers.

Many flowers had two or three bumblebees. It is paying off now.

I think the flowers must be too deep for my honeybees to get nectar from it as I never saw a single honeybee. Anyhow, there are still a lot of flowers and bumblebees so I guess we’ll have a lot of squash. I surely hope so…I love it!

Sauerkraut!

July 13, 2008Canning, GardenCanning, Gardenwarren

Cabbage was done so we started a batch of sauerkraut yesterday morning. Emily’s granddad picked the cabbage

and her grandmother and I shredded 6 heads. Our recipe said to work with 5 lbs of cabbage at a time so we shredded and weighed it head at a time. Kraut is really simple to make…or at least set up. We had a few stone crocks into which we packed 1/3 of the 5 lbs of cabbage, followed by 1 tbsp of salt. I rolled the salt and cabbage together in the crock until it was mixed and the water was drawn out of the cabbage. We repeated until we had 10 pounds of cabbage in the crock. It as amazing how much water was stored in the cabbage. By the time we got 10 lbs in, water covered the cabbage and had allowed the cabbage itself to pack down significantly. We put a plate on top of the

cabbage and weighed it down with mason jars full of water. I will check it every day for 3-4 weeks to remove scum that may buildup. Our basement is 75 degrees which should allow the cabbage to ferment pretty quickly. We’ll (hopefully) have good kraut to can at the end.

More blackberries

July 11, 2008Canning, Garden, WVCanning, Garden, WVwarren

The blackberries are aplenty right now. We picked 2 1/2 qrts on Sunday, 4 qrts on Tuesday, and 4 more qrts tonight. The kids’ excitement has completely worn off by now though. Isaac brought a book while Abigail brought her positive outlook ;). My Dad (and sometimes I) used to pick blackberries along the logging roads near the house when I was younger. I am sure I always had a positive attitude. Anyhow, we have canned 27 half-pints of jam and 5 pints of syrup so far! I think we will make a bunch more into syrup for pancakes since we probably have enough jam to last until next year. I see some blackberry homemade ice cream in our future too! Speaking of that, Isaac and I discovered that a little jam (before pectin) tastes awesome on ice cream. I don’t care much for ice cream so I just get a little dab of ice cream and a heap of syrup. I don’t know what we are going to do if the picking continues to be as strong. I just can’t bear to see the food go to waste. For the first time, we noticed how much poison ivy is in the berry patch. I am not sure how we missed it before but we are hoping that we didn’t bring any of it home with us as well.

Independence Day

July 4, 2008Family, GardenFamily, Gardenwarren

What an Independence Day! Isaac and I walked in the woods with some friends this morning and had a lot of fun discovering all sorts of things while Emily and Abigail worked around the house. We started some ribs smoking around lunch in preparation for a 4th of July feast at supper time. Bud and Donna came over and ate ribs and corn and salad and taters and Hinora’s Stuff with us. Hmm…what is Hinora’s stuff? Here’s the core recipe (add whatever else is garden fresh):

Hinora’s Stuff

1 diced, unpeeled potato per person

1 green pepper

3 small green onions

1 tbsp butter

2-3 jalapenos

1 yellow squash

2 cloves of garlic

half a small head of cabbage

1 green tomato

Cut it all up, pitch it in a skillet and fry till tender. It sounds so-so and looks so-so but tastes SO, SO good!

We messed around after eating until the city fireworks started. We headed outside and watched about 5 minutes’ worth until the rain poured. Some of us endured the rain and viewed it as a much needed shower. As the finale wrapped up, our teeth reached full chatter, our boots were filled with water and the rain stopped…perfect timing as usual!

Garlic!

July 2, 2008GardenGardenwarren

Tonight we harvested the Music garlic we planted last October. I ordered Music, Hardy German, and Chesnock Red varieties of garlic from Seed Savers Exchange last fall. I had no idea there were different varieties of garlic. I figured that there was just the white stuff from the grocery store…little did I know! So, we planted several types figuring we’d decide what we like by taste!

Last fall, we opened the garlic bulbs and separated the cloves. Each clove gets planted and will develop into its own head of garlic by the next summer. The three varieties we got are hard-necked varieties (in honor of my wife…wait, she’s stiff-necked). I have no idea how they differ from soft-necked varieties aside from their necks. Anyhow, all-told, we planted about 45-50 cloves and each produced. We have a lot of garlic. Fortunately, we love it and eat a lot too. Over the course of the year, we will likely eat every bit of it.

The cool thing is that we will save our best bulbs of the types we like and plant them again this fall!

Raspberries

June 28, 2008GardenGardenwarren

My parents acquired some raspberries when I was pretty young and I remember eating them as a kid. My parents’ patch grew like crazy with no care whatsoever. I am hoping for the same out of our new patch. I got some red and black raspberries from a catalog and a bunch more red plants from a friend. All of the plants have taken off and seem to be doing well.

I think the red ones are better but we’ll see. We planted strawberries and blueberries this year also but they are a little slower to get going. I surely hope to be overrun with food in our yard though! We do have some deer that visit quite often so I may have a fight on my hands!?

My Home Among The Hills

Life in WV!