Elderberries - A LOT!

Elderberries

We picked a huge amount of elderberries this past weekend and took them home (city) to process.   We are doing the "juice and can" process so that I don't have to worry about losing power and wiping out my elderberry supply due to lack of freezer!

Processing the berries took a couple days.. most of the week!

I forget how many  we did this batch.  It was the biggest single batch.

We are continuing to can the juice from these berries

Strawberries

Picked more strawberries.  Freeze-drying them for making strawberry preserves later. Or something else, maybe just eating.  

I added a few frozen berries because the fresh batch wasn't quite enough.

Here they are all vacuum packed.  The one (foremost) lost its vacuum eventually.

Beans, strawberries, apples. First elderberry picking!

English walnut - I have one!

According to the internet English walnuts shouldn't product until their 6th year.  I planted these 2 year old trees 2 years ago - so they are only 4, but I found a nut on one of them!  Cool.

I have never seen a "real" english walnut - this will be new for me.

Cabbages, broccoli, and eggplants...

Not sure how the eggplants got in there though!  I am wondering if they got the seeds mixed up?

I wasn't able to tell which plant was which when I planted them but I lucked out and planted mostly cabbages!

Corn is growing fast too

Eggplant is actually doing well.

Cabbages are doing nicely.  I have been keeping up on the sevin

Strawberries

The ever-bearing strawberries kicked in again.  We didn't get a huge amount - maybe half-gallon at most.  We have just been eating these - no processing.

This is all of the berries that we brought back this weekend.  We did eat some there though.  Notice the bramble berries?  They are coming in too!

Blueberries

The few that are on are getting ripe.  We picked a couple handfuls for eating.  More to come.

Those radishes should be harvested soon probably

Bean patch

I was finally able to get into the bean patch to run the hoe.  Its just been so wet I didn't dare get in there before now.

Greenbeans are blooming

Pinto beans are a bit sparse.  I didn't plant seed beans - just dried beans from the market.  Also, I didn't count on a river running through this patch!

The patch actually looks ok from this angle!

The "green-beans" (velour? accelerate?) are on the right - they are planted in rows that are closer together.  

First of the elderberries this season!  

Some of the elderberry plants are diseased or dying for some other reason, so I picked the berries off of them (since they ripen earlier when that happens).  I didn't think I had that many - but after I picked them I found it made quite a pile!

We took these back to the city and de-stemmed and processed them for the freeze-dryer.  They are still drying as I type this.

First apples of the season!

The pristine apples had enough ripe to pick this weekend.  I got about 15 of them I think.  I ate a couple, gave Tom one and brought a bunch into work to share (and eat).

They are a tangy apple - but juicy and sweet as well.  Best early apple that I know of.

Freeze-dryer cleanout, regular deer season prep and progress on hickory top

First cleaning of the freeze-dryers vacuum pump 

I don't know how many batches we have put through the freeze-dryer, but it was definitely past time to open up the vacuum-pump for a cleaning!  I didn't get any pictures of  how filthy the innards were, but if you look to the back edge in the pictures below, you will get some idea.  I scraped alot of gunk and rust out of the pump and cleaned it as best I could with paper towels.

See the gunk between the baffle plate and the body?  That's pretty much what the entire inside looked like when I first opened it!

The cover cleaned ok - but the sight glass was hard to clean.  It really didn't get very clean....

More apples!

After cleaning, I added clean oil (and ordered more oil filters - they evidently take WEEKS to ship!) and we then did another batch of apples.

This is what they look like going into the freeze-dryer.

Regular-hunting season preparations

There was a major wind storm for 2-3 days last week that seriously had me concerned that my little blinds would be in the next state.  I was surprised to find that two of the blinds didnt move at all! One blew further into the woods but didn't sustain any damage.  

This blind is the closest to the house and you would think that I would see the fewest number of deer here - but NO!  This blind gets plenty of traffic!    I think it is because it is on the way from the fields to the forest.

I actually drew a bead on a deer with the crossbow while in this blind!

The view from just in front of the blind

This is the blind that blew away.  I moved it back to its original position...

Then I moved it again..

And finally moved it to behind this pile of brush (its not there yet in this picture)

The "deep" woods blind (I think - they all look alike...)

After i got the blinds taken care of and the trail-cams setup again, I started to get ready to sight in my .30-06 rifle.  I haven't used it in years and I was a bit anxious to shoot it.  I didn't want to shoot it out in the fields in the clearing because I was afraid that the sound would carry and scare the deer.  So I set up a target at 25 yards and sighted in.

There should be a orange surveyors flag somewhere in this picture!  Anyway, I positioned myself at the edge of the woodshed to take the shots.

You can almost see the target at 100 yards - dead center in this picture.

At 100 yards.  Well, i hit the target anyways! LOL

The 25 yard shots were damn nice.

All of my ammo is FMJ!  I will have to go get some hollow-points or some kind of expanding  bullet.  It's not legal to hunt with FMJ

My FMJ bullets!  Cheap surplus from god-knows-when

More hickory milling

I milled up the top portion of the hickory log this weekend.  I got less useful wood than I was hoping. There were more bugs and the tree had more branches up high which caused some defects.

The mill-ends from the top portion of the hickory

Plane dust

Cut the wood slats into 3 1/4 inch wide boards for the laminate workbench

Lots of firewood!

Letting the slats cure a bit before jointing

Some nice pieces for odd jobs maybe?