gardening, self-sufficiency, homesteading, food preserves diary
Blog documenting progress in transforming new property (50 acres - mostly wooded) into garden-farmette . Trying to become more self-sufficient and more self-aware.
After the last batch of potatoes in the FDer I decided to drain the oil and put on the flush kit that I had purchased earlier.
The drained oil was dirty and had water in it. I let it sit in a mason jar and could see about 1/4 C of water on the bottom of the oil.
After assembly, I filled the pump with fresh oil and ran a flush for 5 mins (which is what they recommend). It seemed to work ok. Acid test is to see what happens on the next dryer run!
I put in a lot of time mowing - grass was getting a bit tall in some areas since I didn't mow everything last time (because of drought). Nonetheless, I had to pick some veggies!
Onions
I put in a lot of work on the onions. They were a nightmare of weeds because we just never got around to keeping them weed free. I debated with myself about using the potato plow to dig them, but decided against it. I dug them all by hand (I used a potato digging fork to break up the ground afterwords, but wasn't really needed to pick).
Here they are - all of them! Laid out on newspaper to cure for a week.
All told, I am guessing about 1/3rd of a bushel of onions. These are all "stuttgart" variety.
Tomatoes
Harvested more of the volunteers from the front patch and quite a few more from the paw-paw patch. Some of the ones from the front patch were starting to go bad so I made tomato gravy with them as soon as I could. I served the gravy over some of the new potatoes that I boiled.
Paw-paw patch tomatoes
Front patch volunteers!
Tomato gravy.
Shell Beans
We finally got to pick some of the front patch shell beans. We discovered that a lot of the beans were not fully formed. I suspect that they would have filled out better if the deer had not had eaten all the leaves off of them! We only picked the "accelerate" variety this weekend.
This is off of only 4 of the 19 rows of beans in that patch! Ugh
Squash
I discovered quite a load of squash in the far patch! We will eat what we can and then try to freeze-dry the rest.
Corn
We harvested the last (essentially) of the corn this weekend. I cut down the stalks. Some of it was pretty worm ridden. Most of this will be freeze-dried.
I cut up some of the new - damaged potatoes and boiled them until soft. Then i placed them on the FDer trays and dried them. After they were dry, I used the vitamix to turn them into powder. Note that I had used the FDer about 5 times at this point and the machine was taking longer to get down to vacuum. I also suspected that the potatoes weren't as dry as I wanted - but they seem fine so far. I am watching them. I also repackaged these with O2 absorber and vacuum sealed in jars.
I left the skins on - that's why this has speck in it!
1 tray of boiled taters = about 1 pint (a little bit more)
Zucchini
I cut up the squash into cubes and blanched it for a few minutes. Then I placed on tray and placed in FDer with the taters above.
It doesnt even look dry!
Tomatoes
I did a tray of tomatoes with the above mix since I had one tray left.
We are not sure what the final yield is - somewhere around 25-26 gallons we think!.
Probably the last major picking of elderberries this season
Last picking for the weekend. Didn't even fill the small bucket!
Potato picking!
Wasn't right on my birthday - but it was close! I picked up the potato plow I had ordered at TSC. After mowing the last bit of tall field grass I took the flail mower off the tractor an put on the plow!
LAst bit of mowing one before I remove the flail mower and put on the potato plow
Because there was so many weeds the plow did tend to lift. When it lifted it would cut up a bunch of taters! None-the-less, it was a heck of a lot easier and faster then digging by hand!
Dirty taters fresh from the harvest. This pick includes the ones I picked own at the city house
Washed, cured and sorted to remove damaged ones
Damaged potatoes will get used first - thinking of FDing some mashed taters!
More berry picking
Strawberries and blackberries are still producing. We got a few.
Blackberries are slowing down. Probably get a few next weekend too.
Some lathe work for friend
A friend of mine at work is creating a animatronic tree for halloween. He needed a couple of shafts turned down to fit some flange bearings. It has been awhile, but I got things running pretty quick. Unfortunately I only did one of the shafts! I will take care of the other next weekend.
Video of the process.
Trimming around hazelnuts
While mowing I noticed that the hazelnut trees where getting a bit overwhelmed with grass and weeds, so I cleaned them up.
Some of these still look pretty rough. I hope they all survive the winter.
I will try to make enough wood chips to help them out.
Trimmed around some of the elderberry plants too
Again, while mowing, I saw some plants getting overwhelmed by weeds so I made a point to trim around these elderberries.
The deer ate most all of the leaves off of several of these plants! I guess this is payback for putting the electric fence around the beans!
Parrot Tree survives!
This is the tree that Tom and Julie gave to me to plant during the weekend of the reunion. It was a bad time to plant, but since this tree is supposely a native to Iran (Iraq?) we figured maybe it would handle this heat and drought. It initially looked like it died, but here I see some new green growth! Notice that some of the new growth seems to have been eaten! Not sure if deer or bugs. I might have to put a cage around it if its deer.
Several new branches of green!
Squash and corn harvest
More summer squash came in - so Katherine will be happy! Also, a lot of the corn was ready. I grabbed several ears and decided that I needed to go get a bushel basket!
We decided to try freeze-drying the corn to see how it turns out. Also, we still have plenty of frozen corn from the previous couple years harvests and we just don't want to fill up the freezer!
The corn is under the cabbages
I had two full trays go into the dryer! I filled the trays to the brim (note that this tray is not full).
I figure I got about 5-6 pints of corn. Not bad for the crappy time I had with corn this year!
Tomatoes are ripening
The tomatoes that I planted are finally starting to ripen. I harvest mostly romas, a few others were starting to blush. I also de-weeded a bunch of the tomatoes and found a tomato worm! I sprayed with sevin.
I put most of these tomatoes in the freeze-dryer with the corn. I saved a few out to make tomato gravy for over some of the new taters!
I noticed that some of the vines were partially eaten, so I looked around and finally found the culprit! (there is a worm dead center of this picture - look carefully!). I applied some sevin to the tomato plants. I hated to do it - but these worms can destroy harvest fast!
Sweetpotatoes
Woohoo - they are blooming! I am very hopeful to get a good yield of them this year. I love them and they are a very good food.
Winter squash
I also noticed that some of the winter squash plants has little squashes on them!
