Babies and Bounty

Strawberry jam canned mid-summer - the start of our canning season!

We've been busy! Harvesting, canning, cleaning, fixing, and playing (mostly with goat babies!).

Since my last post we've named the goat babies (Daisy is the girl and Dollar is the boy), had them disbudded (they both turned out to have horns), and attempted to milk Skylark. Milking has been unsuccessful thus far. First of all, one udder doesn't produce much milk so we are hesitant to take any for fear the babies will suffer. They are eating quite a bit of other food now, so we may try milking her some this weekend. Secondly, she hates it. We ordered a hobble (a velcro strap contraption that will hold her legs motionless while we milk) but we have yet to put it into practice - again, hopefully this weekend. Dollar is growing like a weed. He's easily more than twice Daisy's size now. Both goats are super sweet and very friendly.

Pepper has been bred. We matched her up to a buck with similiar coloring to her and she made friends quickly. She stayed at the buck's place for a couple of weeks but is now safely back with us and tolerating the babies reasonably well. She should be due right around Valentine's Day. I'm anticipating naming at least one of her babies 'cupid'.

The farm bounty has begun! We harvested pears and then I dried and canned as many as I could in one weekend. Lots went to waste though - I am getting better at dealing with this! Then we harvested blackberries - they went into a LOT of jam and quite a few batches of muffins. I have a recipe from my mom that was based on the original Jordan Marsh blueberry muffins (remember back in the day when department stores had restaurants and bakeries? Jordan Marsh in downtown Boston was known for their killer blueberry muffins). I've subbed in blackberries (and whole wheat pastry flour) with much delicious success. I particularly love that they freeze so well! I also freezed a few quarts of blackberries for recipes later in the year. Lastly, I made a pear blackberry pie with cardamom in it and it was DELICIOUS! It was so good that I'm tempted to actually buy more pears to make it again for Thanksgiving. Oh the sin!

Then the harvest moved to apples. I did 16 quarts of applesauce (I still have a couple left from last year!) and then 6 of those went into making apple butter in the crock pot which then turned into 7 pints of apple butter. I also did a couple of dehydrator loads of apple rings for winter use (and hiking food!). Delicious apple bread, apple crisp and baked apples were also made. There are two more apple trees that are just now ripening, so I forsee much more apple products in our near future.

We harvested the garlic which turned out beautifully and is drying in the garage. We harvested TONS (possibly literally, though I didn't weigh them) of onions. One dehydrator load took care of about 20 huge Walla Walla onions (Walla Wallas are similiar to Vidalia onions for you southern readers!) and the rest are stored in the laundry room for general use. Having what feels like a neverending supply of onions is nice...but I can honestly say that I will never buy bottled garlic again. The home grown fresh stuff (we did four varieties) is incredible!

I didn't get many zucchinis this year, but yellow summer squash is taking it's place. I've successfully subbed summer squash for zucchini in my favorite banana zucchini bread recipe, so I will be doing quite a bit of squash shredding for freezing and winter baking. All the winter squash varieties appear to be doing really well, so expect a future post about sweet potato squash, pumpkins, butternut squash and Fujitsu black squash recipe experimentation!

And then there were tomatoes - and more tomatoes...and more tomatoes. Wow. HUGE harvest this year. With a friend's help, we produced 12 quarts of seasoned sauce this past weekend and two pints of salsa. My next project will be to attempt to can tomatoes diced since that's how I use them the most. I'll probably end up doing another batch or two of seasoned sauce as well. I will also chop and freeze and also dehydrate as many as possible to try to tame the hoards.

Then I'll move on to carrots...looks like a bumper crop of some delicious carrots! I think carrots are like tomatoes - the store bought ones just don't compare to what you grow yourself in terms of flavor.

Grapes will be the last to be harvested, I think. The plan is to put a new steam juicer to work so that we can get the most of our grape harvest. Who knows...maybe home made wine is in our future!

The pruning begins...

Loganberries - as they looked last summer just prior to being fully ripe.

We have about 20 different fruit trees, two types of berries (both thornless!), and about 4 different varieties of grapes on our property. We are also going to be adding blueberries as well.

While we got more apples, pears, berries and grapes than we knew what to do with this past year, there were some things that could use massive improvement. First of all, many of the grapes didn't mature well and they were extremely difficult to pick. The same could be said of the blackberries and and our loganberries had a lousy harvest. The apples were plentiful, but many were smaller than they should have been. We saw a small plum harvest, but no cherries at all. To improve all of the above, we need to prune (and spray...but that's a different entry!).

Pruning is best done in the winter with the trees are basically dormant. This is true for the fruit trees, the berry brambles and the grape vines. The previous owners used to take really good care of their garden, but in the year before we bought the place, they had some illness in the family and ended up neglecting things in the yard. They also had the house on the market for over a year, so they were probably trying to keep things 'picture perfect' and pruning can be messy. All of this led to some very overgrown things and this winter, we are working to remedy that...

Anyway, this weekend I worked on the berry brambles while my H tackled the grape vines. For the grapes, he first cut a path behind the last trellis and in front of the buffalo fence. You can actually walk back there now (previously an impossibility). He had to cut massive amounts of wild blackberry canes coming over the buffalo fence. Then he had to tame the out of control grape vines working their way back over the fence from our yard. The two were so intertwined that it was hard to tell where one finished and the other began, particularly in the summer! Then he started on one of the trellises (we have three). He straightened it, added and removed wire, and secured it. Then he started pruning so that we can better train the grape vines. We figure that it'll take a few years before we get them in order, so we felt justified in really cutting back some of them. It's such a huge job that he was only able to finish one row (besides cutting the path). The other two rows will have to wait for the next rain-free weekend.

Berry brambles - "before". The left are predominantly blackberries and the right are the loganberries.

For the berry brambles, we have two rows spaced about 4 ft apart. They are oddly assorted in terms of variety. One row is half logan berries and half some other un-identified plant (we need to wait for it to bloom to figure it out). The second row is predominantly thornless blackberries with one logan berry plant on one end. The photo above is how it all looked when I started. There were at least three years worth of canes on the blackberries as it was not pruned last year at all. In the middle of the summer, my H dug into it and tried to cut out all the thorned blackberry canes he could (these are wild and grow everywhere around here). Wild blackberries are actually considered a nuisance weed here and we do our best to keep them under control. Anyway, thanks to his hard work last summer, I only had a few of the painful variety to dig out of the mess.

I basically started by cutting out all thorny branches and anything thornless that had given us fruit last year. All the branches that had leaves but no fruit yet are the branches that will give us fruit this coming year (they give fruit on their second year). I also had to cut away a lot of dead grass and a few other types of plants that had flourished under the protection of the blackberries. Then I set about restringing all the wire. I did three rows of wire between each t-post (and I had to reposition a few posts, too) and pulled them as tight as I could. Then I carefully worked each remaining cane into the trellis taking care not to break them. I tried to spread them out as best I could. This will allow the sun to better reach all the berries and make them all much easier to pick. I think this might also make them much more visible and accessable to the birds, so we do have bird netting set aside should that be needed next summer. All in all, it was a LOT of work, but I feel really good about having it done. All I have left to do is to spread some compost at the base and then mulch on top of it to keep the grass at bay.

Berry brambles - "after"... Hard to see in this photo since so many canes have no leaves, but they are woven around the wire trellis. I still need to add compost and mulch.

Next opportunity we have, we'll finish up the grapes and get the trees done (apples, pears, cherry & plum). The trees will be a team job. I should also mention that we took a few clippings from our neighbors who have this apple tree that produces absolutely delicious apples (for both eating and baking). We are going to graft those branches on to one of our red delicious trees (we have two). We figure we'll do it on those particular trees for a number of reasons. 1) we have way more red delicious apples than we'll ever need and they aren't good for anything but eating and drying 2) those trees did really well last year, so they are clearly nice strong healthy trees and 3) the red delicious apples are the most distinctive apple (throughout it's life cycle), so it'll be really easy to tell the new variety from the old red delicious apples. Neither of us have grafted fruit trees before, so wish us luck! I'll definitely report back on our progress...

Where the buffalo roam

Our tiny plot of land is essentially a square. It was once part of the playground of an old school. After the school was closed (in the late 50s), the land was divided into three lots. The lot we have is the middle one. The one to our north is our neighbors' lot where they have a house similiar in age and style to ours. The lot to our south is about half the size of ours and still houses the original school house. We are bounded on one side by the road on which we live. The last side (the back) is backed up against a much larger plot of land. This land actually surrounds all of the land that originally belonged to the school house. The owners of this land use it to house a herd of buffalo (American Bison, to be exact).

The first time we saw the bison, they freaked out our goats. Now our dogs continue to bark at them in the early morning, but somehow learn to live with them as the day wears on. My H has taken up feeding them apples. He will fill a plastic bin with the windfall apples and toss them to whichever bison feel brave enough to approach.

There was always one bison who kept apart from the rest of the herd. It was a big one, and clearly had been around for awhile. This bison had an injured leg (slight limp) and horns that looked like they'd seen some fighting. We made the assumption that this was an older male bison who was no longer (or maybe never was) the dominant one of the herd. It was a bit thinner than many of it's herdmates, but we figured that was due to age. This bison had a strong affection for apples and would come right up to my husband to get them. Eventually, it got to the point where it would take them from his hand. Last weekend, it took one from my hand! We even got to see this bison nose to nose with one of our dogs - with no aggression or fear from either party.

This particular bison got used to hanging around. On Sunday, it brought a friend with it on it's visit. H fed them both apples but the 'friend' was obviously wary. He dumped a pile of apples there so that they could eat them while we contintued with the apple picking. Next thing we know, our dogs are barking like crazy. A truck had pulled up to the fence (from the buffalo field). It was the owner of the herd and he came looking for this lone bison. He was wondering why she kept hanging around down here and he needed her up at the main barn. Yes, you read that right...this huge bison is a SHE! And apparently, her companion was following her around because he thought she was 'available'. Our neighbor 'herded' the bison across the field and over the hill with his truck.

About 20 minutes later, he came back. He wanted to appologize for being short and to introduce himself. We all chatted for about an hour. He apparently lives down the road a ways, but owns the land that surrounds us. He uses the original barn on the property, but the tiny house remains vacant. He sells his bison meat through a CSA - so we got his card and we hope to sign up for a share next year. The reason he came looking for that bison and had to get her up at the barn? She was due for slaughtering on Monday. Turns out that she was more than 23 years old and was having a hard time keeping on the weight. She'd lived a full life and he felt it was time for a culling before she froze to death this winter or something. We were feeling a bit guilty for feeding apples to someone else's buffalo, but after hearing that, I was glad that we did. She deserved to spend her last day in the warm sun enjoying an endless supply of apples!

On Tuesday morning while I was milking the goats, I saw the bison heard come running over the hill and into the field behind us again. It was a smaller herd...but such is the circle of life.

Friday stress

This photo was taken about a year ago when we rode our bikes to the farmer's market in North Carolina to buy pumpkins. Now this is the bike that I ride to work when I can. My how things change in a year!

How many people do you know who get to Friday and start to feel the stress setting in? Seriously, what does that mean? That I try and do too much on the weekends? That I set my standards too high? That I perhaps should stop trying to work a full time job and a farm? UGH.

So yes, it's Friday and I'm already stressing about everything I need to get done this weekend. The list is too long for two days, but here it is anyway:

Paint the house - we should have decent weather, so we need to get more painting done. This means hand painting the trim and then covering it and the windows and renting a sprayer to spray the walls.

Trim hooves - both goats are in need of a hoof trim. This should be about a quarterly task and we've had Sass for about 3 months now. We have instructions and the tools...but neither of us have done this before. It should be an interesting experience.

Build 'green house' - The weather has warmed a little, so we've been able to put this off, but I have the materials necessary to build a green house of sorts over one of our garden boxes. The plan is to build it and then plant lettuce, spinach and other colder weather items in it. This is definitely an experiment, but it's one we have to start very, very soon!

Process grapes and apples - we are still up to our ears in grapes and apples. I got a neat grape preserve recipe that I'm going to try - and we are going to juice as many as we can. I also need to keep working on putting up apples. My goal is to fill two dehydrators full of red delicious and to do at least one (if not two) canner loads of apple pie apples.

There are lots of other little things (like buying dog food), but these are the BIG ones. Let's hope that we can knock a few things off this list!!

Slicer/peeler/corer magic!

So I stopped at Ace hardware on my way home from work on Thursday. I'd heard a rumor that they could order canning jars, so I needed to check for myself. They were out (of course), but not only were they able to order 4 cases of wide mouth quarts for me, but they also had some wide mouth half-gallon jars in their inventory. I ordered a case of those to be used for goat's milk! They said it could be up to 2 weeks before they come in, but I'm hoping it's sooner. I am just so happy to know that we have them coming our way! While I was there, I discovered that they had the 'Back to Basics' apple peeler/corer that I wanted (for the same price as online retailers). I bought it immediately - no shipping!

Of course, once I got home I had to pull it out right away and give it a shot! I had a few apples in the fridge, so I stuck one on it and went to town. This thing is great! It's such a simple tool - no parts that could break that I couldn't fix myself - and it's almost entirely made of quality cast iron - so it'll last. Best $25 I've spent so far! I ran through a few apples and then decided to try a pear. Yeah - no go. Pears don't have a core that is strong enough to hold the weight of the fruit on the peeler - so it sags off and makes a real mushy mess. It might work with a different variety or a less ripe pear. For now, I'll just stick to apples. It also is supposed to work for potatoes - so that'll come in handy when we have enough of those to harvest that we can preserve some...

Anyway, so I decided since it was so quick and simple that I'd do a dehydrator full of apples. First I spun all the apples on the peeler/corer/slicer.


Then I used a knife to slice the spiral so that I'd have individual rings.



Then I spread them on the dehydrator trays, filling almost all 10. I saved one tray for 'experiments'. On that tray I put sliced bananas (dipped in lemon juice laced water to prevent too much browning), sliced roma tomatoes from the garden and a couple of halved grape tomatoes to see how they'd do.


The apples were yummy (my favorite dried fruit, I think), the bananas were good, but not crunchy like I like them, and the roma tomatoes were delicious, too. The grape tomatoes - not so much. I figured that since they are sort of sweet when juicy that the'd be extra sweet when dried. Nope. They were actually too tart to even eat! Go figure. I'm glad I didn't waste many of my sweet plump grape tomatoes on that failed endeavor!

Canning, canning and then more canning!

Pears are ready - we have three trees all of which are ripening at the same time. Pear overload! It's a mad dash to get them all preserved in one form or another before they go bad!

When Saturday dawned grey and chilly, I was secretly delighted. Perfect weather for spending the weekend in the kitchen without feeling like I was missing out on something better. ;-) Our first order of business (after the chores) was to pick up our share of grass-fed beef and pork from the local CSA. We met the couple who owns the ranch and their six (SIX!) sons! They couldn't have been much older than us but they had six sons ranging in age from about 17 to about 2. AND they run a ranch? Yeah, remind me of that the next time I'm complaining about not having enough time on my hands! They were a cool couple and we are glad to be supporting them. We offered to bring them fallen apples and pears for their pigs - so we hope to do that this coming weekend. Anyway, after we stopped at the local discount store to pick up some more wide-mouth canning jars, we headed home.

While my H was keeping himself busy fixing a plethora of items around the homestead, this weekend was all about food preservation for me. First off, I started with making cajeta. This is a mexican caramel candy made from milk. It basically makes a creamy caramel sauce that can be used over ice cream, with apple slices, eaten by itself to squash a sweet craving...etc. I liked that it used up 3 quarts of milk! The directions sounded deceptively simple and we've long ago learned that when it sounds too good to be true - it is. Anyway, I started with a big pot of milk, sugar and cornstarch.



I boiled it until it started forming a caramel-type mixture.


What the directions failed to point out was that this process would take HOURS. Ugh. Anyway, once it was the right consistancy, I pour it into pint jars and processed it in my waterbath canner. I now have two jars in the pantry and one in the fridge for immediate consumption. I've only tried tasting it (creamy, milky, caramel flavor) and have yet to use it on sliced apples (maybe tonight?). It's good!



Then I went out and picked the last of the blackberries. While I was out there, I met up with our neighbors (and their dogs) and we got to chatting a bit. They gave us a few of their apples (delicious variety that we don't have) and we offered up all the pears they could eat! They also mentioned that if we needed their help, they'd be happy to watch our animals for us some time. That was good news! That and the fact that they are going to get chickens, too. :-) Anyway, I used up the blackberries by making the jam, freezing two more quarts, and then baking my mom's awesome blueberry muffins but with blackberries.

Our freezer packed with milk (the ivory colored bags - it's white when it's defrosted), grass fed pork and beef (the white paper packages) and frozen berries (blackberries and blueberries).

Blackberry jam - seedless variety. We have now 12 pints of this which should last us through the year, no problem!

Blackberry muffins! Jordan Marsh style!

They turned out tasty, but fell apart when I tried to get them out of the pan. I didn't grease it well enough. Ooops.


Then I moved on to pear sauce. First I picked out enough pears to fill the same pot that made me 7 quarts of applesauce.

Washed pears - awaiting the knife...

Then I sliced them leaving the skins on since my food mill will separate them for me.

Then I boiled them, sauced them, and put it back into the pot to season it. It just didn't go as well as the apple sauce did. The sauce came out kind of watery. I tried to boil off some of the juice, but it's still pretty wet. Eh. I canned it anyway (7 quarts).

I need to make labels - the pearsauce looks deceptively like applesauce!


On Sunday I canned the pear slices, made more applesauce (which turned out way better than the first batch because I used 3 varieties), and started making applebutter in the crock pot. I'll be canning the applebutter this evening after work.

Pears - canned and ready for the pantry!

All in all - it was a weekend of successful pantry stuffing!

Growing things

Grapes - white variety. These are sweet and will probably be excellent table grapes in a week or two.

Unknown plum variety - this is a HUGE tree in the way back of the property. We think it's likely older than the house. These plums are tiny little things - but taste pretty good (they aren't quite ripe yet).

One of our two first watermelons! We planted 3 varieties and so far, this is the only one producing.

Our first full sized tomatoes - about to turn red! (we've already had some grape and plum tomatoes to harvest)

Grapes - this is the red variety - we have way more of these than the white ones. I forsee grape juice in our future.

Pears - the pear harvest will be HUGE this year. I picked the first 4 ripe ones today. The cold wet spring that affected the apple harvest apparently did not bother the pears!

Plums - these are prune plums. We need to harvest them and dry them as they taste weird in their current state - should be interesting!

These are one of 4 or 5 apple varieties we have. This one is very small. Small trees, small apples...but they taste a little like Cortlands (if I remember correctly).

We also have identified two red delicious trees, three tress of a variety that looks like fuji and one tree of a totally unknown variety that is tart and makes a good baking apple. That particular tree ripened well ahead of the rest of the apple trees. Lastly, we have a tree on the other side of the property that is well behind the other apples. The variety is yet to be determined as the apples are still small green things with only a slight blush on a few...

I also harvested our first potatoes last night. I've never grown potatoes, so I wasn't sure what I was doing when we started. We basically just took a regular potato that had sprouted in a few places and cut it into smaller pieces. Then I planted these pieces in the garden in a row. H said that his father used to cover the potato sprouts with dirt, so we did that for awhile. They bushed up nicely:

Potatoes on the right, corn on the left.

Eventually though, the potato plants started looking sickly. I'm not sure if it was lack of water, lack of sun (the corn kind of shadows them now), or some bug issue. They never flowered (I thought they were going to) and now they look sort of dead. Last night, I picked the worst looking one and pulled it up. I then dug into the mound. There were no potatoes in the mound at all, but there were 5 or 6 under the ground (below where I first planted the spud). How easy was that? I'm definitely going to leave the rest of them where they are for awhile yet. And we also have two types of sweet potatoes planted that don't look sickly or dying at all so we should be harvesting potatoes this fall. We definitely have plans to expand next year - both corn and potatoes.