Dinner: Tomato gravy and some corn!

Made some tomato gravy, cooked up some corn - delicious harvest time dinners

I like tomato gravy and since we aren't needing any more tomatoes preserved (plenty canned and freeze dried from last several years), I decided to splurge and make some!  Also cooked up some of the corn from the least harvest.

I don't use a recipe for this.  I just put some oil in the pan, slice the tomatoes, dredge them in flour and place them in the pan.  Then when it looks like a pan full, I add some sugar (like a tablespoon - artificial sweetener works too) and some salt and pepper.  Sometimes I put this in the vitamix if I want it smooth.

Fruit preservation continues, final peaches picked and CORN!

Fruit leather

I believe I have already mentioned that I love fruit leather and have committed myself to making a bunch of it as a way of preserving my fruit.  This stuff is great.  I can take it to work easily, its very compact, and is fairly easy processing work compared to canning.  I did several batch this weekend.  Elderberry, peaches and pears and I think maybe some apples made it in.

Corn harvest

I had no need for corn this year, I just planted the old seed I had just to get rid of it.  Didn't do much to take care of it either (although Katherine did pull a few weeds in one section, the bulk of the corn patch was never weeded or cared for).  Nonetheless, we got a fairly impressive harvest of corn!

Katherine did most of the hard work on this.  I simply picked, helped shuck, and put the loose corn into the freezer bags and vacuum sealed them.  All told we got 46 pints!!!

Canning Pears

It's a bit embarrassing, but I have gotten so far behind in these blog updates that I don't know which of the varieties of pear I am canning here!    I believe these are still the "top of the hill" variety of pear, but I can't find any picture records of the other variety.  Quite disturbing.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the canned pears:

I am not even sure how many pints I canned!  Holy Moly, I have to do better!

Gala Apples Picked

I went ahead and picked the rest of (the bulk of) the Gala apples.  We got a decent number of them.  Using these mostly as eating apples since they are in pretty good shape and should keep for a few weeks.

Well, the bottom container apples aren't in great shape - these will be used for leather or apple crisp!

These are "eating" apples!

Picked the last of the peaches

The peaches on the smaller tree started falling so I decided to go ahead and pick them all.  We got quite a crop from just one small tree!  By the way, there are a couple of those "Korean Giant" pears on top of the peaches there - evidently, the only picture I have of these pears this year!

See the two pears?

Amazing amount of peaches off of one little tree!

Pear picking, apple picking, corn, tomatoes and orchard care

Elderberry & peach leather

Elderberries are starting to slow down but there are still plenty to pick and process.  I decided to make some peach-elderberry leather!    I had to boil it down a bit more than for the strawberry leather and I had to add more honey - elderberries aren't very good without some sweet!

B-day outing with family

Tom and Julie were up to see mom and asked if I wanted to go out somewhere with them for lunch!  We went to the King Buffet in Bedford.  It has the best Chinese food around the area.

Asian Pears

Picked a bunch of the "top of the hill" variety of my asian pears.  They taste pretty good!  There is a big-ass yellow bee that seems to like them too.  Looks like a yellow jacket but 4-5 times the size.  They actually consume a good portion of the pears!  After I saw the condition of the remaining pears, I decided to pick all of this variety of pears.

Bee damage!  This is not all of the damaged pears - some were completely cleaned off!

This is the last of this variety of pears - I picked all of the rest to save them from the bees!

Apples

I picked more of the apples this weekend too.  Picked all of the crab apples.  I don't know what to do with the crab apples.  Katherine says she's going to make pie filling with them.  I guess we could try applesauce too.  We will see.  They are a bit unripe yet, so we have time to decide.  The pain in the butt thing about them is they are so small that prepping them for any use takes a bit of effort.

All of the crab apple crop this year.

First real picking of the Royal gala and some yellow delicious apples.

Mulching and caging the orchard trees

I put in a significant effort to get cages around all of the trees in the orchard.  I have seen a couple of deer now with antlers!  So its just a matter of time before they start scraping the velvet off.  I hope the decide to use some forest trees rather than my fruit trees this year.

I mulched a bunch of the orchard trees too.  They are easier to mulch before putting up the cages.

I just sat the cages on top of the mulch for now.  I will come back later and stake them in

I ran out of fencing so I couldn't do these last three trees.  I will probably scrounge some fencing from some of the dead cherry trees for them.

Some veg harvest

I checked the corn and found that it was getting about ripe.  We picked a dozen or so for eating.  We will probably pick most of it next weekend.  Also, the cold nights have made many of the tomatoes rot on the vine before ripening, but I did manage to get a few usable ones. 

As usual, I picked a couple quarts of strawberries

Also got some of the eggplant and cabbage in there!  

I managed to get enough tomatoes for a modest skillet of fried tomato gravy!

With corn on the cob.  Was excellent "first eating" ceremony

Eclipse

Well, it wasn't total eclipse here - only 80%.  20% of the sun is still pretty damn bright!  

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.