Canning Season...

Last Friday we went on our almost annual trip to pick fruit and prepare for the busiest canning week of our entire year.  We were able to pick 2 varieties of peaches, nectarines, pears, and a few gala apples for fresh eating over the next few weeks.

We had a nice time on the outing, it amazes us every year how little time it takes to pick over 600 lbs of fruit.  We saved our fruit boxes from years past so they all stacked uniformly in the car and had a nice gentle ride home without bruising too badly.

We canned 63 quarts of peaches the next day.  We got all the ones that were ripe done, now we are waiting for the other half to ripen enough to can, hopefully that will be tomorrow.  The canning process goes efficiently and quickly with our skilled helpers and 2 canners going at once.  We had one set up outside on the propane camp stove and one inside.

We keep work time fun and entertaining!

Before we started the peaches we got one batch of green beans canned so we could reclaim the refrigerator space they had been taking up.  After we canned peaches, we did one canner load of corn and also a batch of dill pickles.  Oh and Mr. Wonderful didn't want the peach juice to go to waste so he canned that into a jam/jelly of sorts.:)   It tastes pretty good!

I really enjoy this time of year, few things top that feeling of being prepared for winter and tighter finances that no doubt will be coming.  Knowing we've put in the hard work and that we have healthy foods for our family is comforting.  We like that we got to make some silly memories and that the kids are learning some great skills at the same time.

Socially speaking, it can be a little hard because we feel isolated while we focus on all this food preservation (partly because we are so busy, and partly because it feels like most people don't understand our desire for doing this sort of thing), but at the same time it is enjoyable enough work, it isn't so bad. I look forward to getting back to doing a little more with friends and family soon though.  I am already brainstorming an idea for a possible fall party of some kind.  Maybe, we shall see.

No More Messy Boil Overs...

I received a really cool gift for my recent birthday from a dear friend of mine.  I had to share about it because it works too well to keep to myself.

It is a silicone lid that prevents things from boiling over.  As you can imagine, on any given day I have a few things going on simultaneously and I get distracted from things on the stove on occasion.  Just the week before I received this gift I had accidentally let a pot of sweet pickle syrup boil over (really really sugary syrup I might add)!!!!  It was a huge sticky mess!  I had to lift the top of the stove and wipe it all up from under the burners, then I unplugged the burner and took out the drip bowl and washed and dried it as well.  With that time consuming mess freshly on my mind, it is safe to say, I was pretty excited to receive this gift!

Doesn't this look daring having a pot so full?  This is a tall pot of corn I am boiling to hot pack into jars for canning.  It is almost ready to boil over now!

I placed the fancy lid over it and waited, wondering if it could possibly work with the pot this full!

Here is a close up of the name of it.  Kuhn Rikon made in Switzerland.  I really like the colors too!

Here it is starting to boil hard and the foam is coming up through the center softer silicone "petals".  The "petals" almost flap the bubble down a little like it is giving it a talking to about settling down and not making a mess.:)

Here it is several minutes still on high heat when by now without the lid we'd have had a HUGE mess to clean up without this handy lid on there.  The foam never amounted to more than this even when I left it longer.  This is going to be a very handy item to have in my kitchen for sure!

A heartfelt THANK YOU to my dear friend who thought of me and got this great gift for me.  I feel loved!

If you'd like one of these handy lids, they are available HERE and they have several sizes and colors to choose from.(I receive no incentive, I am just pleased with this item!)  I am sure they are available in other places as well. 

The Busy Season...

We are entering into one of our busiest seasons yet!  Homeschool has started up in full swing and currently takes up most of my available hours in the day at least 4 days per week.  The food preservation processes are in full swing with the garden produce and with the local harvests of fruits and things.  Pretty soon activities are going to be starting back up more in church/community and we want to try to take part in some of them.  Then of course Mr. Wonderful's work schedule is fuller than ever as he tries to meet deadlines on his latest construction/excavation project.   Finally, hunting seasons will be gearing up before we know it!  Like I said, busy!

Things are very productive on the home-front lately!  This week, on top of everything else, I am crunching numbers to determine what all we need to preserve for the year's worth of food (the stuff we can reasonably preserve). We try to do the math and stick to the most productive and financially reasonably items to focus our time on for the most part.  If there is something we use a lot of that someone else can produce better or much cheaper, we save ourselves the work, and we buy in bulk instead or directly from the producer when possible.

One evening's harvest for dinner...

Pickles and sweet relish that Sunshine made!

Fresh picked corn...

Keeping the mess outside!  

Whippersnapper took pictures for me and got corn juice all over the lens....hence the soft focus effect!

Shucking corn...

Have you ever pondered about how much your family consumes per year in basic food items?  For instance we have about 8 or 9 main veggies we enjoy to have cooked or fresh most of the year.  Those would normally be zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, potatoes, onions, carrots, and lettuce/greens etc. Then there is of course corn, which always confuses me....we eat it like a vegetable, but it really isn't is it?   Do you think about how much you'd likely eat of each particular item?  I never used to!

This year, I just started thinking in general terms.  I asked myself simple questions like...."How often do we tend to buy and eat frozen or fresh broccoli from the store?" and  "If we could get it really cheap, would we eat even more than we do now?"  Then I started to break it down from there to figure out how much we need  to get put up for "winter" (really all year until we can harvest again from the garden next summer)!  I set a goal of 40 quart bags of frozen broccoli because it wasn't likely we'd have it once per week normally if I was buying it from the store.  Then as the season rolled on we realized we were able to surpass the goal of those 40 quart bags.  Yet, the broccoli was still going strong.  So we upped it to 60 quarts.  This worked out really well because the green beans are not producing like we'd hoped and we will have to make up for that with something extra in the veggies category, like broccoli!  Plus with extra broccoli we can enjoy a little more broccoli cheese soup than we might have normally, mmmm mmm. Once we hit that goal, we will be happy to give lots away (we've already given quite a bit away), and maybe sell some as well to help re-coop the costs of the seed starting supplies in the spring.  Money is always tight that time of year, yet getting those starts going is important for the later crops to flourish and produce the next year's food supply.

Then we have the fruits we enjoy, we LOVE fruit and consume quite a lot as a family~

Peaches~ Mostly we enjoy canned and eaten fresh when in season of course.

Pears~  Canned pear slices, as well as pearsauce which is like applesauce, and dried pears too.

Apples~ Canned applesauce (LOTS!) and apple butter and maybe a few jars of apple pie filling.

Cherries~  We enjoy them mostly fresh, but 2nd best is frozen like mini lollipops, and 3rd best canned.

Grapes~  Again the best is frozen and eaten while still frozen, that is even better than fresh for us!  We are known to buy 15++ lbs of grapes when they are in season and rock bottom priced and freeze them in a big container and snack on them during schooling or movies for weeks!

Berries of many kinds~  Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, black berries for jams, jellies, cobblers, smoothies, etc.  We like to flash freeze some on a cookie sheet and package them in bags loosely so we can take out a few here and there for muffins or smoothies without defrosting an entire quart bag of frozen berries at a time.  We eat blueberries frozen like popcorn for a snack!

Of course we enjoy other fruits fresh and canned weekly from the store that we don't have to preserve, thank goodness!  These would be bananas, mangos, grapefruits (LOTS), oranges, fresh apples, mandarin oranges in light syrup, fruit cocktail in fruit juice, applesauce (when we run out of homemade) and pineapple tidbits in fruit juice.

Those are just the fruits.  I will probably talk about veggies in a later post towards the end of the growing season once I know more what the average yield is.  Whenever we can, we also try to gather things that are essentially free like huckleberries, blackberries, morel and oyster mushrooms, and we also try to harvest animals such as elk, deer, bear, and birds such as grouse and maybe a wild turkey when we have the tags to do so.  The wild meat helps our annual grocery budget immensely.  I have a very skilled husband that doesn't need much gear each year to get the job done, which I am super thankful for.  I hunt too but not to the degree he does, now we have 2 young hunters coming up in the ranks!  Two kids are taking Hunter's Safety Classes right now in fact.  We've always cut and wrapped our own meat, (even the whole beef we bought, whew what a job!)  Processing our own meat really saves a bundle!  As I've written about previously, we raised meat chickens this year which added a sizable amount of quality protein for the year.  The pigs round out the meat selection nicely and they compliment the other game meats because we can use the fattier cuts of the pork to mix with the leaner ground game meats for excellent flavor.

All in all, I feel so incredibly blessed that we both had people in our lives growing up that taught these skills to us, that we've continued to hone the skills over the years together as a couple with our own family, and that we have the helpers that we need to make it happen efficiently!  That is a huge factor, having well trained help that isn't afraid to pitch in wherever they can!  Granted, if we didn't have so many "helpers" we wouldn't be needing to put up near as much each year either.    Funny how that works.

To some I am sure we seem crazy!  Spending all this time and effort just to put food in the pantry and freezer when we could just go to town and buy it (maybe).  There are several reasons why we don't just do that, the two main ones are money and health!  To be really honest, there isn't much REAL savings in doing it ourselves (especially when we figure in the time, which we don't) because by the time we buy the fruit, the fuel to get it home, the sugar (even in very low sugar syrups it adds up), the lids for the jars, etc.  It comes in at maybe at most 10% cheaper than conventional types probably the same or a possibly costs us a little more than it would on a really good sale at the store (how often would it be on sale when I needed it though?) and 35%++ cheaper than organic versions.  The fruit we buy is not officially organic, but it is grown on a small scale and more naturally than most commercial producers and we control what all goes into those jars and how it is handled while being processed as well.  That gives us a little more peace of mind for our health.

Another reason we go to all this work, is to teach our children something useful and memorable.  You never know when these old fashioned skills will help them make it through a tough season in their lives one day or how the work ethic they are learning will come in handy in their future career or marriage even.  Or maybe they will appreciate learn the value of food and not to waste it by seeing how much work it takes to preserve just 1 quart of food!

Having a connection to the food you are eating is a wonderful thing.  When we are harvesting things I can't help, but start thinking of how we carefully placed those small seeds in the trays of soil to start indoors all those months ago.  Then how we tended the little seedlings each and every day.  Then how we transplanted them all into larger pots and watched them take off in growth.  Oh and we can't forget the process of taking them all in and out every morning and evening to properly harden them off to fluctuating weather! Finally a warm spring day where we planted that same group of plants in the garden with high hopes of good weather to grow well.  The late night panicked trips out in the garden with piles of sheets and blankets to guard those tender plants from a late spring frost that threatens to kill all our efforts thus far.  We can't forget the diligent watering and weeding to help it flourish and the patience to wait for it to eventually produce food!   That is just to get you to the point of actually harvesting that food....

Now a different kind of work begins when we preserve or cook these foods!  All of these things are a powerful process to reflect on, especially as you enjoy that tasty meal featuring some of your homegrown items.  It connects me with thoughts of our Creator so much more than if I simply selected a can off the shelf of a store or a bag of frozen veggies from the freezer section.

Granted, there is a LOT of work that goes into this way of life, and we've had to limit what we get involved with outside of homeschool, homemaking, and farm care.  I am sure there will be many years we end up not being able to do near this much as life has a way of throwing curve balls, but for the years we can, we will celebrate all year long with thankfulness in or hearts.

Turkey Check Up...

Well we still have Butterball and Snowball, the two turkeys we've managed to keep alive.  Or maybe it would be better to phrase it that they've managed to stay alive in spite of us.  However you want to think about it works for me.  They love free-ranging and we love having them free-range.  They have continued to be good foragers and have left the garden plants alone for the most part.  They are efficient eaters of all things creepy-crawly and green-n-tasty, they only seem to eat a small amount of commercial feed.  We keep some commercial feed available at all times.  They also get into the pig feed we soak for the pigs.  I think they think they have it made here, what a smorgasbord they have to choose from really!

They follow us everywhere as we go about our chores around the place, they even follow the boys down to the dirt pile where they play and then they follow them back when they head back to the house.  I truly adore all the sounds they make as we work in the garden.  I had no idea we'd enjoy turkeys this much.

Butterball checking out the freshly cut hay.

Butterball on the left, Snowball on the right.

I thought we were going to get some electric fence action here but Snowball was just after a bug on the post and didn't touch the fence in the process.  Good thing too, because that fence is really hot!

They have the darkest eyes and the strangest looking heads!

They are really cool animals.  We still aren't sure if we will do turkeys next year.  They were a rather expensive adventure to get started and we weren't all that successful in keeping many alive. We will keep thinking about it and see what we can afford to do next spring.  For now, we are really enjoying these two characters.

Fall Crops? Maybe.

We are attempting a few fall crops this year.  We've never planted a fall crop before, but we thought we'd try since we have the room and some things were done for the season.  The first one we planted was the broccoli.  I had planted an open pollinated variety called De Cicco but I didn't care for the growing habits, they had small little florets mixed in a ton of foliage and very little yield per plant.  So I pulled out that variety and planted my favorite variety this year called Imperial from Johnny's Seeds  it is an excellent variety with large heads and seems to handle the heat of summer well.  I am not sure how well it will do being planted the first of August, but we will try for a nice fall crop and see how it goes.

Here is the row marked off with jute string and seeded already.  We will put a fresh layer of mulch around the plants once they are up and established well.  We also need some more on the walkway as the weeds are starting to peek through because the mulch is too thin.

Here we just finished pulling out all the old pea vines.  We planted some snap peas and they were excellent!  We had one package of seeds left so we replanted as many as we had for another fall crop of these tasty peas.  They were our favorite crop to snack on while in the garden while they lasted!

As far as the fall crops go, we plan to also plant another crop of cauliflower (Amazing Cauliflower from Johnny's Seed) and a purple cauliflower variety  (Violetta Italia from Burgess), carrots (Bolero from Johhnys Seeds), radishes, lettuce, and spinach.  I might even start some ornamental kale (from Harris Seeds) from seed if I get really organized!

The kids' help is very much appreciated, just knowing the kids enjoy the garden, love eating the veggies that come from it makes it feel more worthwhile.  We've been blessed by so many aspects of this process from early February when we started seeds indoors, clear through the season so far the kids have been right there with me, excited sharing in the memories, hard work, and fun of it all.  I wouldn't have it any other way, even when there are mishaps and squished plants, or premature harvest efforts.  It doesn't hurt that I have a husband who thinks weeding is therapeutic, he enjoys weeding in the early mornings or evenings on the weekends whenever he can.  For that I am SUPER thankful!

Sunshine has really taken voluntary ownership of the garden this year, I find her tending plants, helping to train them up the supports, weeding as she walks to do other chores, etc.    Just today, she asked if she could make some pickles.  I was busy working on the new school year's lessons plans so I told her to go for it!  She harvested some cucumbers and canned a few jars of Low-Sodium Sweet Dill Pickles (they are a family favorite that many request us to make for them) she managed to do the whole process herself and they turned out beautifully!  She even cut some in the sandwich stacker style.  I was pretty impressed she took that on without hesitation.  I guess those years of doing it together has really paid off.  

Tobers and Whippersnapper are excellent harvest assistants, they regularly bring in the bounty for me.  I think it is like a scavenger hunt for them, many times they bring things in I didn't even realize were ready or couldn't see like they can at their vantage point (and a few things that weren't quite ready too, oops).  They are a really big help.  Spud Man keeps busy with his pig plot portion of the garden and weeding enough to feed his pig each day.  The pigs actually like the weeds better than the actual crops we planted for them to forage.

I will try to keep you posted on how the fall crops turn out, hopefully there is something positive to report back on in a few weeks time.

Garden Tour Early August...

The garden is doing pretty good, there are a few crops I wish had done better (like the green beans, cucumbers, and corn), but overall they still look good and we are getting some bounty from even the weaker crops so we have much to be thankful for.  The weeds have been very healthy this year and keep finding ways to create more work for us, but the deep straw mulch helps so much I can't complain too much!

Here are a few overview pics of the garden and you can see the hay field has been cut for the 2nd cutting too.

Cucumbers, cantaloupe, dill, celery, chicken run etc.

Green beans, tomatoes, and flowers.

Swiss chard, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, onions, carrots, zucchini, crookneck, and furthest out is the pig plot area that has mangels, canola, turnips, carrots etc.

Sunshine is checking out the Crenshaw melons.

The strawberries and corn beyond that.  The orchard is beyond the corn.

1 Ball yellow squash, I love these for stuffing!

Broccoli head, we have harvested about 75% of the plants now (we have about 90 plants) and we have about 34+ quart bags of  broccoli in the freezer (plus we've eaten a few meals worth too), our goal is about 45 bags.  We will continue to get some side shoots off the harvested plants later in the season to help us get to our goal.  We also plan to donate some of the larger remaining heads to the local food pantry if it is ripe on their next distribution day.

Some of the cantaloupe are gaining in size and might have a chance of ripening in time before frost.  We were unsure if we should grow melons as they take up a lot of space and we have never had good luck with melons, but we had to at least try now that we have so much more room to grow things.  So far so good on these.

My first year growing cauliflower is, so far, a success.  It tastes good, we've frozen a little here and there but mostly we've been eating it for dinner.  We did a few bags of frozen mixed broccoli and cauliflower which will be nice in the winter.  I am still learning how to tell when they are fully ripe and when to tie the leaves around the heads to prevent sunburn.  

We had to replant the cucumbers 2 times this year so they are a little later and I haven't gotten the yields I hoped for to be able to make pickles.  The only seeds I had left to reseed with were a space saving type so the vines are relatively small but are producing well for such small vines.  They have great flavor so far.

The lemon cucumbers are almost ripe and Mr. Wonderful can't wait for the first one of the season!  He LOVES these little gems.

The lettuce patch is hanging in there surprisingly well for such high temps lately.  It tastes good still and I'd love to plant this kind again next year!  Too bad I am not sure which mix this was. 

Here is a nice purple kohlrabi, we also have white and they both taste really good.  We sold about 22 to the local fruit stand because we had too many.  What we have left we should be able to eat before they grow too large to be tasty.

This spaghetti squash plant is really happy!  It is producing lots of squash, probably more than we'd eat so we might have a few to share and sell at some point.

At the end of the day with all the watering, weeding, harvesting, and tending....this is how we feel....

Then again, living here is a dream come true and no matter the hard work we are blessed and really enjoying it!  God has been so good to us.

July Garden/Animal Tour...

It's been a while since I had a chance to post anything about what has been going on around here.  This warm weather and the prolific weed population proved to be no match for my 30 minute weeding sessions in the early mornings.  I needed help!  Mr. Wonderful came to the rescue when he had a 4 day weekend over the 4th of July.  We took 2 FULL days as a family, and weeded almost the entire 10,000 square foot garden.  We didn't worry about weeding much in the walkways or the pig food plot, because they weren't at risk of crowding out the garden produce plants.  It was hard work, but we really enjoyed working together, visiting, laughing, throwing "weed bombs" at each other, and then celebrating with a nice swim in the reservoir nearby when we finished each day.  Standing back when we finished each section gave us a sense of accomplishment, and it was fun to see each section reveal what plants has flourished even with the weeds in there.

Here is a sample of the before and after effect...

We are starting to enjoy several garden harvests.  So far we've harvested a few 8 Ball Zucchinis, some of the 1 Ball Yellow Squash, lots and lots of lettuce, a few handfuls of strawberries, a bumper crop of snap peas, and several herbs.  It is an exciting time to see all that is about to go into full harvest mode.  I should be harvesting and blanching broccoli either today or tomorrow.  We have quite the crop of beautiful heads of broccoli coming along!  There is also one head of cauliflower starting to form.  I've never grown cauliflower successfully before so I am pretty excited about it.

Here are some garden pictures...I can't get the whole garden in any one picture because it is L-shaped  and very large, but you can get the idea.  It is hard to believe that many of these plants we started from seed way back in January and February!

I have learned mulch is my best friend!  Lots and lots of mulch is the secret to maintaining a garden this large. Sure the mulch itself is a lot of work when you are putting it down, in fact the only areas that managed to get out of control weed-wise were all non-mulched areas.  Now we have most everything mulched, after we got it weeded.  It really helps keep the moisture in as well.  We noticed our soil doesn't hold moisture as much as our previous place, so anything to hold it in better is good.

The yard landscape is shaping up pretty well too.  We have had very good luck with the wave petunias we planted from seed, they are really starting to cover some area now and I so appreciate their color where we have such large areas to cover.  I have quite a few in pots as well.

 The front flower bed is going pretty nicely for it's first year.  Considering how little money we put into landscaping plants, I think the area is filling out pretty well.  We planted areas of sunflowers, zinnias, and gourds to help fill in some of the space between the shrubs and perennials we have gotten so far.  I am really pleased with the overall shape and look of the flowerbed areas.  We still have a lot of work to do like bark mulch, edging, and more plants.

Now for a quick update on the animals too...

 The pigs actually like weeds way better than the actual pig food we planted for them so lesson learned on that one...they snub their snouts at beets, turnips, rape seed, and corn plants (but they will eventually eat it), then they go wild over plain old garden weeds.  Go figure!

The turkeys are doing great, Butterball is growing nice and large.  He is the guardian of the smaller turkey we hatched out a few weeks ago, he really looks out for him.  The smaller one, Snowball, is growing quite well also.  He follows Butterball all over the farm.  They both love to follow us while we do chores, they are very personable, and so far they are enjoying the free-range life.  As long as they remain gentle on the garden plants and they stick close to home they can remain free.

We still have meat chickens for just one more week.  We are finishing out the 4th batch which will bring us to 300 birds raised this year.  The project has went extremely well and we are pretty pleased with how it is turning out.  That being said, raising that many birds are a LOT of work.  Lots of heavy lifting with moving the pens twice daily, hauling bags and bags of feed, dragging hundreds of feet of hoses or hauling buckets of water, handling or moving the birds and not to mention the actual processing day to get them ready for the freezer!  Oh and don't even get me started on how expensive they are to feed!  I had no idea we'd be going through over two ton of feed in one 3 1/2 month stretch!  I will have to post a meat bird review soon to give you an idea of what we liked or want to improve on for next year and if we even plan to do it again next year.

I have had to be realistic and step back from a few commitments and other things to make it easier and more realistic to keep up everything we are doing right now.  We've had to change our lives some to make sure  I/we can still keep up with schooling the kids, caring for the animals, and maintaining this place. We've also given up the freedom to take off and go camping every couple weekends like we used to.  So far I have struggled to keep balance more often than I thought I would.  There is so much to try to keep up with when you have schooling the kiddos, church activities/ministries, friends, family, and social events, but hopefully everyone can be patient with us as our priorities change focus with the seasons of our lives.  That was really hard at first, but then I looked at it like a gift after a while.  A gift to focus on simply what I felt God was calling me to do THAT day, without all the other stuff hanging over my head.

Even though I go to bed most days exhausted and I have sore muscles just about daily, I always feel at least a small sense of purpose and satisfaction even if it was a so-so day.  That sense of contentment has always seemed to escape me before we lived on acreage.  For that, I am truly thankful every day!

Dutch Oven Cooking Adventures....

We I finally did it. I cooked my first meal using a dutch oven outdoors with charcoal briquettes. I would like to point out, this isn't a cooking blog....as you will see from my poor food pics. HAHA

I had to do it in a make-shift way because I don't have all the neat outdoor dutch oven tools...like say an outdoor dutch oven. This dutch oven is a cast iron chicken fryer that is probably 50+ years old. Grandma used to fry chicken in it. It is well seasoned and I love it for cooking inside. I have been wanting to try outdoor style meals too.....in preparation for the heat wave of summer, I am trying to find ways to keep the heat out of the kitchen for summer dinners.

What is inside the dutch oven you ask?


Elk Steak, onions, Morel Mushrooms, BBQ sauce, Worchestershire Sauce, garlic, and seasonings.

Here it is, all done ready to serve, the steak was super tender, the mushrooms were yummy and all partakers were HAPPY! I will definitely be doing more dutch oven cooking this summer.

Previously on....It's 5:18pm

Well those TV dinners weren't half bad, surprisingly. Wanna see my choice?

Hey! Who ate MY brownie?!?

Sure enough it's gone!

So Spud Man had a great B-Day. Check out one of his presents!

Remind me to get this kid into Hunter's Safety Course ASAP!

By the way he loved his cake too! Just look at that grin.

Thanks for following along on this very special day!