Growing Home: Blog catch-up!

Grape picking and wine making

Mom saved some grapes for me from her vines. I stopped at her place and picked about 55-60lbs of concord grapes on the way up to my farm. There were hornets ALL OVER those grapes! It amazes me that I id not get stung. They got in my hair, crawled over my arms an hands, but no stings! Whew

They were in pretty rough shape, but that's fine for wine making!

All squished up and in the mesh bag for fermenting.

In the fermenter, ready to go!

Sealed up with the air-water lock

The recipe for the concord wine is included in the Elderberry Wine recipe link below (it's at the bottom of the sheet).

After a week of fermenting in the primary fermenter, I took out the grapes and let them drip/drain. I moved the liquid from the primary fermenter into the secondary fermenter (racked the wine). Always alot of dregs on the first fermentation! In this picture the concord grapes are on the left, the elderberries are on the right.

The grape wine is in the narrow necked carboy.

Elderberry Wine

I looked in my wine recipe book and online and finally came up with my own variation of an elderberry wine recipe: Elderberry Wine recipes

For the elderberry wine I boiled the berries with about half of the water that the recipe calls for. Berries can have differing amounts of liquid so its good practice to only use part of the water until you know how much juice you really have!

My elderberries were frozen, so bringing them to a boil took quite a while! After they reached boiling I let them simmer for about 15-20 mins. Then I let them sit overnight to cool. The wine making proceeded after they were cool enough.

Elderberry wine (I did two batches) in primary fermenters.

I had a "bubble over" event overnight - this is AFTER I cleaned the floor! I decided that putting the fermenters into these grey tubs was a good idea...

Here you can see why I moved them into tubs!

As for the concord wine, I strained the berries out and move the wine into the secondary fermenters.

The wide mouth carboys have the elderberry wine

Finishing up the tomato harvest

We have been freeze-drying a lot of tomatoes this season, but we had too many come ready at once to save this batch - so I made 5 quarts of chili base! Previously I had been making tomato gravy to use up the excess but this time was just too much! I figure that we got between 80-100 lbs of tomatoes this harvest. I only put in a dozen plants (I think), but many of the tomatoes I harvested came from the volunteer tomato plants in the other gardens!

Thats a LOT of chili! There was actually more. I ate a good portion too (BAD BAD heartburn that night!)

Technically, we are still getting some tomatoes, but I have just been leaving them on the vine. We have FAR more than enough preserved!

Harvesting the Butternut Squash

I harvested most of the butternut squash. I got a total of about 3.5 bushels. We freeze-dried some (after baking). I think that baking them first might make them too soft! Next time I think we will just cube and par-boil before freeze-drying.

I have more pictures - but they pretty much all look the same! Those are the last of the zucchini for the year too.

Wood Chipper repair

The feed brake weldment broke due to a crappy repair job last year. The last repair was so bad it actually made things far more difficult to fix this time. The arm broke off the pipe and left a big hole in the pipe. I had use the GMAW (stick welder) last time and I guess I had the current too high or something because it ate up a good section of the pipe! That is why there is such a big hole in the pipe.

There is about a 3/4" hole to fill once the arm is welded back on!

The hole is hidden in this picture. Its under the red magnet on the right.

This time I decided to use the TIG welder to do the fix. Well, the first weekend I tried it I ran out of argon about 5 mins into the weld! I stopped in Frederick, MD and got the next bigger size argon tank. Then I tried again.