Preserving the Bounty

A couple of harvest pics.  Beets have done well, with very little vole damage this year.  I'm thinning carrots, which have also done very well.  These were planted early, in last year's potato patch.

These beets are from the patch beside the corn.  They're even bigger, but some have a bumpy surface, potato scabs.  I'll have to add some pine needles to raise the acid levels next year.

Tomatoes are ripening now.  Cucumbers are still coming along nicely.  A few peppers every few days.

More pickles.  I lucked out and got a bunch of dill at the fair.  Exhibits are donated for an auction to raise money for next year's fair, and I bought the red ribbon dill.  I wish I knew who had entered it.  The stalks were about 7 feet high.  It's keeping well in the fridge in a jar of water.

 Yesterday's canning, 12 more jars of pickles, 10 more jars of beets.  I also started tinctures- thyme, speedwell, and pennyroyal.  I froze three bags of beet tops (to eat like spinach).

I need to buy more jars!  I buy more all the time, sometimes leaving the thrift stores with my trunk full.  I had about twice as many this year as I had last year, and I'm down to the last couple of boxes now.  Unbelievable.  What can I say?  It's been a good year in the garden.

We opened a jar of dill pickle relish.  Blech.  Husband likes it- it tastes like salsa to him.  All I taste is onion.  I'm going to try another batch and triple the cucumber.  All I want is a nice, boring, cucumber relish recipe, like you can buy in any store. 

Yarrow is growing in the ditch on our road, so today I'll go out and harvest some to dry.  I dried mint and raspberry leaves for tea, and I have a bunch or parsley drying now (from the fair).

Citrus Lemonade Concentrate

I've been reading the back posts over at Canning Granny's blog (one of my new favourites), and came across these two posts, Lemon Squash (or Lemonade) and Orange Squash and I knew I had to try that!  I just happened to have a bunch of lemons and limes in the fridge, too, so I set about making a Citrus Squash.

Let me tell you, a little bit of lime goes a long, long way!

I of course, didn't follow the directions.  :)  Not completely.  Next time I will, lol.

For this batch, I think I had more limes than lemons, but limes are small, so I kind of figured a two to one ratio.  I washed them, then heated them, saving the liquid.  Well heating them did such an AMAZING job of loosening up the insides, and I don't have a juicer, so after squeezing out as much juice and pulp as I could with my hands, I tossed them back into the reserved water, to see if any more juice would come out.

I didn't want to waste the pulp, and I tend not to do things in small batches, so I juiced every one of them.  I got 4 cups of juice and pulp.

After reheating the reserved water, I pulled out the lemon and lime shells and measured the water.  8 Cups.

I sincerely thought about tossing the extra 4 cups, but it was such a pretty yellow colour, and smelled very much like lemonade...  In it went.  A total of 12 cups of lemon/lime liquid.  I didn't want to make it too sweet, so I started with 6 cups of sugar (double the original recipe for 2 cups of juice), added the lemon zest, and brought it to a boil.

Then we did a taste test.  Sour?  Not exactly.  Tart?  Yes, but...  The taste of the lime was just overpowering.

I added 2 more cups of sugar and brought it back to a boil.  Another taste test.  The lime was still overpowering.

I looked through the fridge and cupboards for something that would tone it down.  I settled on cinnamon, added a bit to my glass, and tasted again.  That's better.

I added three heaping teaspoons of cinnamon to the pot and brought it back to a boil.  It smells and looks like apple cider.  It still tastes like lime, but not overpoweringly.  A bit of mint would probably help, but I didn't think of that until after I had jarred and processed it.  Drinkable, at any rate, which is good, since I ended up with 18 half pints.

And, oh yeah, the pickle factory is still in business...

Sunflowers

While out picking comfrey and plantain yesterday, I noticed that the lone sunflower outside had opened.

And Mr. Bumbles was busy pollinating it.

Our weather has really been fantastic this year.  There's no doubt that the garden has been the best ever, but this beauty really takes the cake.  It's the first sunflower I've managed to grow OUTSIDE in the north that's actually flowered.  It's only 3 feet high, and sadly, probably won't have time to develop seed, but I just love that happy yellow flower!

Herbal Remedies

Ok, so to be honest, great things are not happening in the perennial bed.  Transplants died in our hot, dry spring, weeds overtook the beds while I was away, seeds never seemed to germinate...  I will add more seed directly outside to the same spots next spring, and maybe overwintering will help some of them out.  For now, I don't have a lot to work with.  Except, of course, for what was always there to begin with.

Plantain, Comfrey, Rose Hip, Raspberry Leaf

And the few transplants that took:

Jacob's Ladder,  Lady's Mantle, Speedwell

 An internet search on plantain (the easiest thing to start with- a simple weed) brought up some pretty basic instructions to make infused oils and salves.  The most basic,  CALENDULA - COMFREY SALVE RECIPE
   

I don't have any beeswax (or calendula), so I was thinking of just doing an infused oil, skipping the salve steps.  But further reading, through a blog's comments, led me to believe that I already have a good alternative, and access to an even better alternative in the future.

It seems that my beef tallow will work nicely as a salve in place of both the olive oil and the beeswax.  Isn't that handy?  And bear lard is supposed to be even better.  Right up my alley.  For now I will use the tallow, and render bear lard at my next opportunity.

Here's what I did.

Pick a bunch of plantain and comfrey leaves.  Chop them up roughly and put them in a baking pan.  

Add tallow.  The tallow is very hard in the jar, and has a beefy aroma.  I added a drizzle of olive oil after all, and some rose petals.

Stir and bake at 170°F (my lowest oven setting) for 3 hours.
Strain through cheesecloth.  (I didn't let it cool first, as it would start hardening).
Reheat the oil.
Add vitamin E.  Mix through.
Pour into jars.

It hardened to a lovely shade of green, with just a tiny bit of sediment at the bottom of the jars.  It smells pretty good, not really rosey, but not beefy either.  It's still a bit stiffer than I would like it, about the consistency of chapstick.  I'll add more olive oil to the next batch.  Must save more cute little jars!

Another one of those things- if it's so simple, when did it become so hard?  What shall I try next?

Harvest Monday

We went away for a few days again, just Husband, #3 and #4 this time. When I got home the cukes were waiting for me.

Lots of pickling cucumbers, and 4 lovely Marketmores.  There will be more Marketmores in a day or two.  They're really coming along nicely now, and I really like the flavour and texture.

 I picked a handful of peppers off the plant I thought was the Medusa (sweet green peppers that grow like jalapenos), and a couple off another plant.  It looks like they may both be Medusas, no bite at all from the second batch.  They're definitely a keeper, and I'll be saving seed from them, despite that they may have cross pollinated from the hot peppers.  I'll look for Medusa seed when I order next year as well.  It's nice to have a green pepper that actually produces around here.

One big tomato from the greenhouse, 2 little ones from the perennial bed.  Tomato season may be upon us!  I'm pinching off flowers and suckers ruthlessly now.

I also started deheading squash flowers last week, and came home to find this one had doubled in size.  I have an overwhelming desire to pick it now, but it's still so green.  It's the biggest squash I've ever grown!

 I soaked the cukes for dill pickles (found dill in the grocery store last week), then went out to pick the yellow beans.  #2 had picked some while I was gone, but I thought he must have missed some, since there were only a couple of inches in the bucket.  I didn't find too many more, ending up with just enough for supper and one bag for the freezer.  Afterwards he told me he had picked a full 5 gallon pail- he just ate them all, lol.

I pulled a few northern (dry) bean plants that were starting to topple over and turn yellow.  I think the yield there will be quite good as well, about a pound from just a few plants.

Mom gave me a bag of cucumbers last night, so today I think I'll try a batch of dill pickle relish.

Last week's Cream of Celery soup took a bit longer than expected, but didn't break the rules after all.  The recipe called for chicken stock, rather than milk and flour for the base, so I had to cook a turkey, then make stock, then make the cream of celery soup.  This one will definitely be a winter canning project in the future.  It's nice to have a few jars sitting on the shelf right now though, ready to make Balogna Rolls with all of those beans at a moment's notice!

And one huge fail, just before we headed south.  The freezer in the hallway came unplugged, and no one noticed until it was too late.  Luckily it wasn't even half full, but sadly it did have the last of my roast beefs and corned beefs in it.  I've been cooking it up in my biggest stock pot for dog food, so I can package it in smaller portions.  At least it's not a total loss, but it makes me mad at myself for rationing out those roasts rather than eating them all. :(

Lemon curd

This one is a definite winner.  I had a hard time canning it, rather than sitting down with the pot and a spoon.  Delicious!

The banana jam was way too sweet.  The boys don't even want to eat it.  It might make a good filling for tarts or something. 

Back to beans today.

Another Garden Update

Because, seriously, what else is there to talk about at this time of year?

The last dill weed.  It hasn't flowered yet.  Lots of sprigs on it though. I think I'll do a batch of cucumber relish with my next cucumber harvest, to give this little dill weed more time to flower.

Peppers are coming along quickly now.  There are at least 3 or 4 on each plant in the greenhouses.  The ones in the perennial bed haven't started fruiting.  Now which peppers did I plant where? I'll have to check my greenhouse 'map'.

Romaine going to seed.  These were transplants.  No signs of life from the ones that were direct sown.

Yellow beans still going like crazy, but the grasshoppers are starting to do some damage.  Some plants have hardly any leaves left.  Spotted a few snails in the hugelkultur bed as well.  Green beans are slowing down.  That does not upset me.  I left the last row to go to seed.

Yesterday I canned another 4 quarts of dill pickles, and 15 pints of yellow beans.  I'm canning beans now, because I have 30 bags of green, and 20 bags of yellow frozen.  That should get us through the winter.  So I figure extras will last longer canned.

I got a great deal on bananas, tomatoes, and assorted fruit on the cheap rack in the grocery store.  99¢ per bag.

The tomatoes I bought to eat fresh, then mom gave me a bag of tomatoes from their garden.  Then I found the peppers.  Now I'm thinking of doing a batch of salsa.  With red tomatoes.  Go figure, lol.  I started canning salsa a few years ago when I had about a million green tomatoes that obviously weren't going to ripen.  Google led me to green salsa, and it was an instant hit.  It almost feels like blasphemy to make it with red tomatoes.  And what shall I do with all of the green tomatoes I end up with at the end of the season?  But I don't think I have enough red tomatoes to do a batch of pasta sauce.

I did do a batch of pasta sauce the other day.  I cleaned out the freezer in the garage and found a bunch of tomatoes from last year hiding at the bottom.  My big roasting pan full of tomatoes resulted in 3 quarts and a pint.  Is it worth the effort?  I'm not a small batch canner.  All of that farting around and all of those dirty dishes for 3.5 quarts?

Hmmm...  Maybe I should just freeze them.  I'll think on it.  While I'm thinking on it, how about another BLT?  Maybe the 'problem' will go away on it's own....

Today's adventure- Jamaica Banana Jam.  If I can get it done before the boys inhale the rest of those bananas.  ;)  And then I want to break a bunch of rules again, and can cream of celery soup.