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!

Siding progress and growing chicks

I finally took more siding pictures last night. The front of the house (and the front porch) is not complete, but you can definitely see progress.

Here you can see the section we chose to do in 'shingles' as opposed to boards.

The big wood beam just above the post was replaced and it's now straight out from the house as it should be. You can also see where the ceiling was removed.

This is from the other side of the door. The big brick planter is gone - and that post will be covered to make it more attractive (when the ceiling goes back in).

The north side of the house - don't you just love the yellow 'accessories'?

The back of the house - we are thinking we need to replace that stoop which now looks terrible!

The back side of the house showing the deck (and the screwed up fencing we need to fix). Again, more yellow accessories including doors!!

And just for good measure, here are a few of the chicks. They are now 9 weeks old. We have at least 2 roosters (both White Leghorns) and they are just learning to crow. We also question the sex of a couple of our Ameraucanas. I could have sworn that one of them was making crowing sounds when I was taking these photos.

Roosters and chickens - the black/brown one in the far back was the one I could have sworn was starting to crow...

This is Bruno - he's the rooster with the reddest comb - he's also the best at crowing (so far).

And this is Maple. She's the smallest bird and easily the most friendly and least skittish of the group. Isn't she pretty?

Lastly, my applesauce and applebutter (which I had on toast for breakfast today!):

Applesauce made with three types of apples - one of which I know is Red Delicious. I love how it's got a slightly pink tint to it. It's quite tasty, too!

Applebutter - basically boiled down applesauce with sugar and spices added. It's amazing how much more flavorful this stuff is over the store-bought varieties!

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!

Applesauce success!

Today I set about to make applesauce. I'd picked two big fabric bags of apples off the tree that is now basically done with apples a little over a week ago and I needed to use them up. I've got two mesh bags of the most perfect looking ones down in the basement. I've also got a big 'green bag' of good ones in the fridge for eating now. I figured that the rest of them would make good applesauce.

Basically, I followed directions that I found online. First I washed all the apples. I picked over them and set the ones with big bruises to one side. Then I began slicing them. I used one of those slicers that you center over the core and press down. I left the skin on, and it went quicker than I thought it would. I kept a box at my feet for the cores, and I threw all of the slices into a big pot that had about an inch of water in it. I cut off the biggest bruises prior to slicing those, and it kept me from having to throw out too many apples.

Once all the apples were sliced, I boiled them in the water (the ones on top were only steamed) until they started getting pretty soft.

Then I started ladeling them into the food mill. I debated using the screen designed for salsa so that I could get a chunky applesauce, but decided that since this was my first attempt, I'd keep it simple and not screw around with the directions too much. It was really easy. I just kept dumping in the slices, turning the crank, and periodically emptying my bowl into a big pot.


Eventually, I had all the apples sauced. I then moved the pot to the stove to keep the sauce hot for canning. I added cinnamon, nutmeg and a little succant to sweeten it a bit.

As all this was going on, all my jars were in the dishwasher finishing up the 'sani rinse' so that they were nice and clean and hot for the next step.

I pulled one jar at a time out, filled it with applesauce, put the lid on and set it on the waterbath canner rack. I repeated this until I had 7 quarts filled (the max my waterbath canner will hold). It worked out perfectly. If I fill my big stainless pot to the top with apple slices, I get exactly 7 quarts of applesauce! Once they were all filled, I submerged them, added some more boiling water to cover the tops by 1 -2 inces...and then boiled them for 20 minutes.

I set them out to cool and was concerned that they wouldn't all seal (I'd forgotten to wipe the rims of two jars). Turns out, they all sealed beautifully and they are now sitting quietly in my pantry. As soon as I have enough ripe pears (or enough ripe apples of a different type), I'm going to make more. I was impressed with how smoothly the whole process went. Start to finish, I'd guess that it was about 2 hours. I feel so domestic!