Preserving the Harvest

I have been slacking on updating the blog but with school, fall harvest, lambing, a visit from the newlyweds, Halloween, wood cutting, Thanksgiving and hunting its been ...a bit busy!

One of the things we have enjoyed learning is preserving what we grow for use during the winter months. Not only does it help reduce the grocery bill and give us some great tasting fare, I think its an important skill to know particularly if you care about what you eat and where it comes from. We freeze, can with both a water bath and pressure canner, and we have discovered the wonders of dehydrating.

 

We took the green tomatoes and made a great green tomato relish that came out just like hot dog relish. We added in some of the green peppers, some onions, some pickling spices and vinegar and cooked it down and canned it and it tastes great.

 
 

 

We cut the bigger tomatoes into cubes, salted them and let the juices drain in cheese cloth and then cooked them down with all the spices and canned it.

 

The small ones we made into green tomato pickles and they are delicious and retain their tomato flavor.

We are pickle people and love pickles of all types and these guys are now some of our favorites.

 

We have been wanting to try dehydrating for a while now but it always seemed so complicated...its not. This NESCO dehydrator cost less than $50 and does a fine job.

We started with some of our late harvest green peppers..

We washed and cut them into small pieces, loaded them onto the trays, and turned the machine on and.. 

At the end of about 5 hours we had these dried up green pepper pieces that are so concentrated in flavor they would be a good snack. They will be great in soups and stews this winter and they got put into a freezer bag for storage in the freezer...one dehydrating project down.

Then we washed and slit the various Serrano and Thai chilies and loaded them on the trays. Please note the use of Nitril gloves, I always have them on me in my medical bag but I highly recommend using them when your preparing your chilies.

We loaded up the trays (there are three) and took them out to the garage to turn on. The fumes will drive you out of the house if you don't.





 

 

 

We keep the seeds in them for an extra kick but it works fine if they are de-seeded. These are the dried result and again, they have a concentration of flavor that is amazing.

These also got put into freezer bags for storage in the freezer. Even though they are dehydrated you want to make sure they don't get moldy so just sticking them in the freezer is a good preventive measure.

 

Not all the peppers got dehydrated though. We decided to make some pickled peppers and they are very tasty in addition to being colorful.

 

That right there is a whole lot of heat and I have to be careful because I can sit down and eat half a jar...then pay the price all night!

We got a pretty good pear harvest this year after our fire blight scare last year (we thought we were going to lose all the pear trees in the orchard) and we canned a bunch for tarts and pies this winter. We lost the entire apple harvest (literally about 100lbs of apples) to deer. We just waited too long to harvest them and the deer wasted no time.

I love this time of year and we all enjoy canning. There is just something visceral in preserving what you grow and the smells as they cook are intoxicating.

And finally, we dehydrated a lot of herbs from our herb garden like this Basil.

Its important to wash everything thoroughly even though we don't use chemicals on our food gardens and we only dehydrate unblemished herbs.

 

So the pantry and root cellar are full to the point we have to buy more cupboards to hold it all but we will eat well and as I said before its a deep down feeling of satisfaction to be fortunate enough to have such a bounty to preserve. We grow our own vegetables, fruit, nuts, and herbs, we raise our own chickens who give us meat and eggs, we raise our own beef and lamb and next year we are going to try for some grain crops, peanuts, turkeys, quail and a hog or two.

 

Most people don't have the land to grow a lot of crops or raise livestock but even apartment dwellers can take advantage of sales and can preserve through canning or dehydrating. Give it a try.

 

 

Where Have we Been?

We haven't purposely forgotten to update the blog but lots of things have been going on and time just got away from us. We have been selling lots of vegetables, we have been harvesting and canning for our personal needs in the next year, and our various volunteer efforts have taken a lot of our time.

The reality of how fragile life can be came to us since the last update as well when during a not too severe (seemingly) structure fire a Fire Fighter from another department was trapped and burned to death. I was not initially on that fire as we were only providing tanker support as mutual aid but when my radio went off for an all call and that a Fire Fighter was down I knew it was bad. You know you train and train but sometimes things just happen when they shouldn't and once I got there and looked at the fire it didn't look that bad; but it turned out to be deadly and I think the best thing we can do to memorialize that Fire Fighter is to study and learn from that tragedy.

Next month I start advanced level Fire Fighting school which runs through December and then I am going to continue my EMS training at the EMT level. I find that I gain far more from belonging to the Fire Department than I am able to give and I highly recommend it to anyone who moves into a rural area and wants to give back to their community.

I don't think its a secret that we like old things or that we enjoy hitting yard/garage/farm sales and we scored pretty good a couple weeks ago.

This Huot roller was sitting in the yard of an older couple who were moving to Texas and Holly saw it driving by and so we turned around and checked it out. Everything works on it, the drawers slide smoothly and i got it for $65 which is a pretty good deal as these are highly sought after by shop rats.

This will go up in the pole barn shop and will probably become my socket wrench box and I couldn't be happier with it. The pickle fork on the box was a buck and will be used to replace the steering knuckles on the IH tractor.

And then we saw these two shelving units with boxes of screws, bolts, nails, and electrical connectors and we got the whole shebang for $35. I can now find fasteners and its like having our own hardware store in the garage.

 

On top of everything else the work continues on the Blue Dodge that has now become our daily driver. We put new tires on it so it drives very smooth now and if you have been following the blog you may remember how this front quarter panel was caved in when we bought it but I managed to get it mostly pounded out and it will soon see a grinder and some Bondo.

 

This is a tomato horn worm....

They are big, ugly, and destructive and we kill them by cutting them up with scissors rather than using chemicals. But its gross as they have a green goo for insides and I must confess its not my favorite activity.

There was some angst by folks around here because the Hummingbirds, bees and butterflies were very late in arriving but they are now here in large numbers and we enjoy watching them. Besides Hummingbird feeders we ensure there is a source of water for these creatures and we have flowers and other plants to attract and nourish them.

This was my attempt at taking a picture of a bee in a Hibiscus flower just to prove to the doubters that the bees have indeed arrived.

 

This time of year is great because we get to not only see the fruits of our labor we get to eat pretty darned well too.

We have cured onions and are making onion marmalade this week...

We have eaten and canned lots of beets...

We got a good crop of both Yukon Gold and Pontiac Red potatoes...

And of course its tomato time and we eat them with just about every meal. Unfortunately we sell so many we probably wont be able to can any this year.

Also, the corn is finally starting to show some decent progress

Another week or two and we will be eating fresh corn. Its actually not very cost effective to grow your own corn since you can get it for about $.25 an ear here right out of the field but it sure is satisfying.

 

One of the things you find when you grow your own food is that you have to plan for how your going to preserve it and that isn't as easy as it sounds. It takes planning, a little creativity, and you just have to buckle down and do it on top of everything else. 

We have canned pickled beets, frozen peas and beets, canned relish made with onions, beets and cabbage, made blackberry jam, and canned potatoes.

The old pantry just isn't big enough so we have decided to move the freezer to the garage (on the left in this photo) and put in new cupboards along this wall.

 

So what does canning entail? In this case we decided to show family how we were canning potatoes and I wont be posting a recipe because my personal view is that you need to get ideas about canning from a blog like this but actual recipes need to come from your local cooperative extension office or something like the Ball Blue Book. We are over 1000 feet in elevation so canning times and pressures are different than say someone below 1000 feet and there are other variables to consider. Canning is a safe way to preserve food but you need to follow instructions carefully.

 

In this case we canned a mixture of Yukon Gold and Pontiac Red potatoes. First we wash them thoroughly.

Jars need to be hot but not sterilized since we will be pressure canning and we heat our jars in hot water, some people heat them in the oven.

We have seen people can potatoes with skins still on them but I think your flirting with potential bacteria contamination so we peel ours then wash the potatoes again

Insert smart alec comment about all my time peeling potatoes while on KP duty in the military....or as Holly says...I ought to be good at it.

We keep small potatoes whole and cut bigger ones into what I describe as chunks...I dont know how esle to describe it. Then we cook them for about 3 or 4 minutes but you still want them fairly firm. Notice the yellow pieces in the pot? Those are Yukon Gold and they are the most creamy and tastiest potato around and I think next year thats all we will plant.

You pack the potatoes into hot jars, fill with boiling water, wipe the rims and then put on the lids and rings and place into the pressure canner.

We use a pressure canner with a series of weights to adjust pressure and its pretty straight forward. Lots of people are intimidated by pressure canning but its actually a good way to preserve low acid foods (we can acidic foods with a water bath canner) and come this winter when we open a quart of potatoes we canned and make soup or stew or have fried potatoes we will be glad we made the effort to learn.

 

Judy started some Geraniums by seed and they actually grew and she is proud as punch of them. I guess its hard to start Geraniums from seed but she didnt seem to have much trouble so who knows?

And what would post be without at least one picture of my buddy Bandit

Okay two pictures of Bandit....look at the look on his face back by the stove!

 

 

So that brings us up to date and just about closes a tough month. The weather here has been mild (its gotten down in the 50s several times at night lately), we have gotten some good soaking rain on a fairly regular basis, two of our heifers are getting ready to drop calves soon, and we traded an old golf cart for a couple of sheep....August should be interesting.

 

 

Farm Auction Finds

I have said in previous posts that you really have to be careful if you attend farm auctions because you can get carried away. Yesterday we arrived at one about 1000 and there were several items (like steel topped work benches) we wanted but the elderly lady holding the sale said folks had started showing up at 0500 so we were a bit late. But we ended up with a couple things for next to nothing and we are pretty pleased.

Lots of the old farms around here are in real bad shape and the one that had the auction was no different. The very nice lady told us her husband had passed away a year or so ago and she was moving closer to the big city (Springfield) to be closer to her kids. Her house and the immediate yard were as neat as a pin and you could just imagine all of the family memories they contained but the barns and out buildings were in bad repair and lots of the equipment had sat for years. You might think it was a depressing scene but like so many of the hardy people we have come to know around here she was very upbeat and the prevailing attitude is this is part of life and I'm off to the next chapter; I hope I can be as stoic,

We have been looking for thing to get our new pole barn shop up and running; mostly we are looking for shelving, cabinets, work benches, a parts washer, tire balancer, tire rack etc. We have two shops and the one attached to the house is fairly well equipped but the new pole barn is spartan.

These three items we got for about $3.00 total. The little bookshelf will hold my shop manuals (and with as many vehicles and equipment we have I have a bunch), The metal shelving unit will be rebuilt and hold various cleaners and fluids, and the unit on the right is a cupboard under a heavy duty Formica work top with a couple of shelves above...and its a heavy son of a gun.

This little rolling bench (it has caster wheels) cost us $0.50 and will get cleaned up and a new top affixed and will be perfect for a place to put tools and parts while working on equipment. You can just roll it around as you go. Most of this stuff could have been built by us but not for that cheap and its kind of pleasing to have these older things with their implied memories and their working patina.

We gave a couple dollars for this old block that I imagine was used in the old barn to bring up hay into the hay mow. We already have several from our own barn and we didn't need it but it just has a pleasing look to it and I cant resist these old things. For the price I know I would have regretted it if we hadn't gotten it. It has "Meyers O.K." cast into it and I am trying to find information about it. The obvious thing was that  O.K. stands for Oklahoma but we haven't been able to find a community of Meyers and its odd to have the periods after the O and K for Oklahoma.

As you can see its well worn and I am guessing its from the mid 20th century.

So what is this? This wasn't from the farm auction but we found it at an old store and gave a couple bucks for it. I'm not much for pinups even in the shop but we collect old advertising and this was something that stood out. She isn't nude and shows nothing (she is wearing a long chiffon dress) but its classic 1940s pinup art. The date on the back says 1948 and its amazing to look at this photo and think that was 64 years ago; this young woman would now be in her late 80s at least.

This is another photograph we picked up. Its hard to see but she is dressed to the nines and standing next to an early 1950s Chevrolet Bel air and we suspect it was part of some type of advertising of the time. It too will go up in the shop.

But its not all farm auctions. Crops are still in full swing and our watermelons are ripening in stages and we are selling them and eating them...

Cantaloupes and passion fruit have done well even in this heat and we sure enjoy their fantastic flavor.

These berries are Elderberries and we didn't even know what they were until a short while ago. We thought they were a weed bush and we almost cut them down but an old farmer showed us the difference between Elderberries and Poke berries (which are poisonous). For some reason we have a bumper crop but we don't really know what to do with them yet. 

Next week we harvest apples and will can them. We have one pint of last years canned apples left so we don't want to let these go to waste. None of them are real big but they are sweet and juicy and they add a much needed element to the winter diet.

And we are still awash in Tomatoes. We have canned stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce of various types and now we gave Salsa a shot using our hot peppers, our tomatoes, our onions, and most everything else except the Cilantro because ours burned up in the heat.

It is the best salsa I have ever had. Even after the canning process (we had to open one to try it out you see) it tastes of the fresh ingredients and its just the right level of hot. I like really spicy things but the gals don't so this is a nice compromise.

Now that the heat has abated somewhat the critters around the farm are a lot happier. We have wild turkeys everywhere and they make a showing all the way down to the barn yard. Come hunting season you would think there were no wild turkeys in Missouri. People say they are dumb birds but that sure hasn't been my experience.

The barn cats all like the cooler weather too and there has been a lot of playing going on when they should be working at killing mice and moles. We will let it slide for now.

And finally, the long suffering Maybelle has finally recovered from her eye infection and been released from isolation and rejoined the herd, She literally jumped for joy when we opened the gate from the isolation pasture and its fun to see such an animal cavort around and kick up her heels.