Just a quick update to try to keep the record keeping straight:
More Mowing Issues
Before I go off on the food preservation I want to mention that I replaced ANOTHER spindle on the Huskee (TSC's "brand" of riding mower/garden tractor). Grass really needed mowing in the orchard - which I did once everything dried off a bit.
New (?) Hawk sighting!
I saw a Hawk out in the paw-paw orchard Sunday morning! I hope he sticks around and that the insulators that the utility put up last week work! I got some nice pictures!
Backhoe finally got picked up!
Saturday afternoon, Joe Hines and his dad showed up with a big truck and trailer and got the backhoe. Joe asked if I was still interested in the Club Cadet zero turn model mower we talked about before. I told him that it depend on the bill for the backhoe! I didn't tell him that it also depended on if I actually got the portable saw-mill this guy in Michigan keeps hinting at building and delivering for me! I am hoping to get the needed repairs done on the backhoe for under $4K. I haven't heard back from Hines yet.
Last of the Elderberry
I picked the last of the elderberries for the season. I got about another gallon. I cleaned them and placed them in ziplock bag in the freezer for processing later. We are too busy with canning tomatoes and other stuff to process them now!
Canned Chicken
Katherine got some chicken leg-quarters on sale at safeway last week. They were $.80/lb so she bought 8 packs of roughly 4 lbs each. We tried our first attempt at canned chicken! I have done venison and pork before, but this is the first try at chicken! We cold packed it in wide mouth pint jars, placing 1/2 tsp salt in each jar and adding water as needed to insure there were no air-bubbles. Pressure canned at 15lb for 1 hour 15 mins. We tried a jar the next day - the bones became so soft you could eat them (although the shaft of the bones aren't very palatable, the ends of the bones are good!). We got 32 pint jars of chicken canned! The pressure canner holds 16 pints per load. We did two loads.
Tomatoes
Picked many more tomatoes. They are really getting gripe fast now. Katherine canned 19 quarts of diced tomatoes this past weekend. I don't think she took pics, but they all looked good to me.
Squash, pumpkins, cukes and sunflowers
Picked the last of the squash. I pulled the plants and removed them from the garden due to Squash Vine Borer (SVB) infestation. Still got a good 40 lb of squash. Katherine wants to shred and freeze at least part of them so that she can make zucchini bread in the winter. We already have 3-4 gallon containers full of dried squash! I picked more cukes - they are almost done I think, but still have a bus tray full of them. Katherine said something about making relish with them. I picked more pumpkins. They are about 2/3rds done I think. I got a couple that were in need of processing - I want to try making pumpkin leather. I need to take the vitamix up to the farm and do that next weekend. I need to look to harvesting sunflowers soon too, by the looks of them!
Potatoes
I finally got started digging the potatoes. It rained Friday and Saturday so I wasn't able to get started until Sunday. The driveway side of the front patch yielded some potatoes, better than the big patch last year by far. However, the side opposite the driveway was EXTREMELY productive! Since I was not able to de-weed and mulch or otherwise care for the potato plants this year the rows were hard to find to dig - I ended up just digging up the entire area where the potatoes were. Ugh! Hard work. Here is a picture of the first bunch I picked.
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| Mostly white potatoes - i am not sure if these are Kennebec or Yukon. I might have another variety too, but I am pretty sure I only have Kennebec and Yukon white potatoes |
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| This is a potato fruit! I never saw them as a kid. I told mom about finding this and she told me that she used to pick them off as she found them on hers because she heard that leaving them on caused the potatoes to be smaller and less productive! |
Corn
I went over to mom's and picked sweet corn from my patch there. It was a bit overripe so I decided to preserve it by drying! The corn there was also seasonally afflicted - lol - it was too dry there! Anyway, I got about 10 pints which I blanched, cut off cob, and put in dehydrator at 120F for 24 hours.
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| Almost exactly 2 quarts dried corn from roughly 10 pints (5 quart) of "wet" corn. |
I got some recipes for corn casserole type dishes that I remember as a kid. I don't know which one I liked though! Or even if I liked mom's or grandma's or which grandma's grrrr.
Here are some pictures from mom's recipe books:
Also, while over at mom's, we picked up some frozen black raspberries that mom and dad had put away in the previous years. Mom doesn't eat them - dad used them for his cereal in the morning. She was afraid they would get freezer burned if they didn't get used soon. I took them and plan on making them into jelly.
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