Rainy start - hurricane Joaquin

Wet start and a sick dog

Well, it looks like the hurricane is going to miss us.  I won't miss it though!

I took off for farm alone, Katherine is staying with Smokey because he got tapeworms!  Found sign in his stool in the morning.  Ugh.

Anyway, I took of in the rain and stopped by Hagerstown Home Depot to get more caulking and a decent caulking gun. I also picked up a replacement gas cap and nozzle for the deisel gas can top I broke last weekend.  I grabbed a set of utility scissors and a couple of quick disconnectors for use with my tree-pulling-ropes.

I got to the farm and ATE!  OMG, it must be the fall allergies or something. I was famished and I couldn't stop eating!  I am going to be so sick from that, I am sure.  I tried to eat healthy - at first.  Ate 2 pieces of chicken (leg-quarters - so like total of a half chicken there!, about 2 cups of cole-slaw and about the same of broccoli with ranch dip!  Then I ate almost a whole bag of potato chips and some nut crunch snack that Katherine sent along with me.  Ugh.

Elderberry processing

I finally got to working on something though.  As soon as I got to the farm (and finished eating), I grabbed a couple bags of frozen elderberries from the freezer so that I could make some elderberry juice for making jelly!

Once they had defrosted (mostly) I put one bag in at a time to boil.  Once the berries had defrosted a bit I mashed them as best I could with a potato masher, then put them back on the stove to simmer for 15 mins.  Then I put them in a jelly-strainer bag and began boiling the next bag of elderberries.  Each gallon bag seem to hold about 4 lbs of berries.  Each pound of berries seems to produce about 1 Cup of juice.  As we discovered last year, the berry pulp - left over from the jelly-bag, can be put bag in the pot with a like amount of water (that is, for each pound of berries you start with, add a cup of water) and boiled again and re-strained.  The liquor from this second straining isn't as strong, obviously, but it has as much flavor as many commercially available elderberry jellies!  Last year me made jelly with this 2nd extract liquor, but this year I thought that I would instead mix the second extract liquor with the juice - that way the juice is extended and the liquor will taste stronger.  So basically, 4 lbs of berries produce 8 cups of fairly potent elderberry juice this way!!  I am trying for a second extraction this time to see what that turns out like.  I wont mix it with the juice mix, but I am thinking it might be ok for drink or something.

Here are the pictures for the elderberries:

Frozen berries from this years crop!

Boiling the berries to make juice.  Actually, this picture is from an extract run.  I think the 2nd extract run, so the berries are pretty tapped out of goodness here.  Se how they are not dark anymore?

Straining the juice from the berries using a jelly bag.

Elderberry pulp.  This can be reprocessed at least once.  Maybe twice depending on how this experiment goes!

 Drying pumpkins

As I was waiting for the elderberries to thaw I started to process the "sugar baby" pumpkin harvest.  I will just dehydrate these as I did last year since we do seem to be using the pumpkin powder.   I cleaned up the dehydrator with the vacuum cleaner and grabbed some of the drying trays.   Then I went out and gathered a bunch of the little pumpkins from the porch where they have been curing for a couple of weeks.  I choose the pumpkins that looked like they may have trouble keeping.

The process starts with simple scrubbing the pumpkins well, then cutting them open and removing their seeds.  After seed removal its just a matter of slicing up the pumpkins into pieces no more than a quarter inch thick and placing those slices on the dehydrator trays (oh, I wiped the trays clean too - just in case).  Then the trays go into the dehydrator at 120F for as long as it takes for the pumpkin to get "brittle dry".   After they get dry enough I will powder them in the vitamix!

These little guys can spoil fast!  They get dehydrated first.

After drying for about 10 hours.

First use of the dehydrator this season.

Labor day! Literally - lol

Well, i loaded up my little SUV to the brim with my new wine making stuff and took off last Friday (Aug 29, 2014) for the farm.  It was a rainy kinda weekend - not a lot of rain - about .5 inches all told, but it was on and off making it hard to get out to do much.

More mower issues

When it dried off enough for me to mow, I took out the Huskee riding mower (the one I had just replaced the spindle on last weekend) and proceeded to mow the front lawn.  Mission accomplished.  That was Friday, between showers, if I recall,  I did some food processing Friday night while it rained a bit on and off.  When it dried off a bit Saturday morn I took the mower out and started mowing around the paw-paw trees.  Didn't get far though before I broke a mower deck belt!  That's the second mower deck belt i broke this year on the Huskee!  i hope that it was just because the belt took damage when the spindle went to hell.... So mowing was done that day!  I decided to do some harvesting and preserving work,  Eventually I got up to TSC in Everett and got a replacement belt (and some slime for the front tire that kept leaking air - I couldn't find a leak - but it was consistently going flat pretty fast!).  I replaced the belt and filled the tire with the slime during rains.  Eventually I got back out and finished the mowing.  The tire leak seems to be ok now.  We will see how it holds out over the week!

Dehydration Mania!

I got my zucchini sliced up and in the dehydrator the first night (Friday night).  They continued to dehydrate nicely the next morning while i went and picked more pumpkins, squash and tomatoes from the garden.    I got quite a haul of tomatoes - and I already had a bunch on the porch ripening from last week!  In the meantime I noticed that some of the pumpkins needed to be processed due to spoilage issues.  So first things first, I decided to make "pumpkin leather" from risky pumpkins first.  I followed the recipe, but I substituted splenda for the sweetener.    That turned out to be a bad idea.  The leather turned into "paper" or hard cardboard!  You could seriously cut your mouth trying to eat this stuff!  I pulled the pumpkin leather off the "silpat" dehydrator trays and loaded them up with tomato leather mix (recipe on the same page as the pumpkin leather above).  While the tomato leather was drying i loaded up the rest of the dehydrator with tomatoes!  

Dehydrated tomatoes on the right!

tomato leather - it grows on you!

tomatoes - some saved pumpkin seeds there too, on the paper towels

more tomatoes
and
some dill - i saved about 1 pint of dill seed.

Anyway, I re-did the pumpkin leather by powdering it and adding it to a new batch (which used the recipe above with honey!)    This time it turned out very nice!  I will be making more of this!  No pictures of it though - maybe next time.

Onions Cured!

I checked the onions out in the red-barn., they are cured! So I trimmed the stems and put them in my new plastic crates.

Yellow seem in great shape.

the red seem ok - but the white may have issues.  Mom warned me about that earlier this year.  The white ones don't keep well - they will be used first.

More Tomato Processing

Well, with Katherine busy making cucumber relish this weekend down in the "city" house, I decided I would try using the vitamix to process some of these tomatoes.  The plan was to simply clean and then puree the tomatoes in the vitamix, then boil the puree/sauce and can like regular tomato sauce.  Well, it worked like a charm!  My only concern is the taste and if it gets bitter due to the seeds being ground up.    I did 2 loads of 7 quarts and then 4 pints.

Oh, and i made some more Mrs Wages salsa mix salsa - just did 6 pints (canned 5 - ate one!)

Potatoes - finally all picked!

Was hot as hell and barely got it done because of rain - but I did it!

Letting them dry and cure - then I will sort and process the rough ones.  Then i need to get moving on that root cellar!

Took back alot of tomatoes, some cabbages and pumpkins.  Whew

More greenbeans, squash and cuc's. Canned pork

I picked some of the larger squash when I got to the farm as well as more cuc's.  

I brought some pork that I bought at Safeway for $2/lb.  I want to PC it - I have never done pork before.

I spent some time and set up the dehydrator (a Cabela's purchase earlier this year) then I used a mandolin to slice the squash thin (about 1/8th inch) and then placed the slices on the racks and put them in the dehydrator.  I set the dehydrator to 115F and set the time to 24 hr.  While those were dehydrating I set to work on the pork.  I cut it into 1 inch cubes (and cut some of the fat off while doing so) and raw-packed it into 5 pint jars (along with 1 tsp of salt per pint). I left about an inch space at the top - maybe a little more in some.  I was super concerned about the fat melting and screwing up the seal at the top.  I cleaned the tops of the jars very carefully before I put the lids on to make sure there was no grease between the lid an the jar.  I tightened the lids up and placed in them in the PC. Cooked them for 75 mins after pressure came up.

While the pork was canning I sliced a bunch of cuc's up readying them for bread and butter pickles (I found a Mrs Wages mix in the back room so I decided to use it).  I got a bit scared when I couldn't find enough jar and lids - but then I realized i actually had some brand new jars in a case from last year so I was ok.  I put the cucumber slices in the jars and then covered them with the hot mix.  cleaned the jar tops and put on the lids as usual an then loaded 7 quart jars into the water bath canner.  I was just putting the canner lid on to help the water come back up to boil when I heard a "crack".  Sigh.  I little investigation turned up that one of the older jars broke a bottom out.   I took the broken jar out an removed as much of the cuc's as I could grab safely.  I added some hot water (carefully, not wanting to do any more damage from thermal shock!) to bring the water level back up and brought the water to boil.  Processed the remaining quarts for 10 mins.

I still had to wait for the pork to finish canning after all of the pickle shenanigans - was up until almost 2 am!  Good news was that all of the jars sealed and look pretty good.  Of course, the pickle jars needed to be washed and I gave the pork jars a good washing too to make sure the grease was off as best I could.

The next day I checked the squash in the dehydrator - they had turned into paper thin slices.  The weren't crisp though.  BTW, I did use some salt (salt flour from Zimmerman's) on the slices.  They really aren't that good to eat straight.  Maybe I will try toasting some to see if they crisp up...

Anyway,  before I left I picked (and continued to de-weed) the green beans in the big patch.  Maybe got 1 1/2 quarts.  I picked some more squash an cuc's as well.  Also picked a couple beets and 5 Kohlrabi.   Also stopped by mom's place (she needed gasoline for mower) and picked a couple of handful's of green beans there.  There are lots of beans there but they arent quite reay yet.  Next weekend I will have a good harvest there!

Here are some pics:

The 6 surviving quarts of bread and butter pickles

Canned pork!  5 pints. Cold/raw-packed works fine for pork.  Lean meats should be hot packed.

The squash in the dehydrator.

Another weekend of mulching - 2nd garden patch done (mostly)

I went up to the farm Saturday morning - it was raining - again!

I spent some time putting the frozen greens away.  I used a couple old packs of beet greens and a pack of corn and a pound of sausage (italian sausage - purchased, I don't make that - yet!).  I fried it all up together and then added 2.5 cups cooked jasmine rice and some oregano.  Was edible - needed salt.  Beet greens are not my favorite!  I am tempted not to save of them this year...

I went to putting up the remaining high-tensile wire for the grape-vine trellis and trimming with the weed wacker.  That's about all that I got done Saturday!   Everything was so wet - this is getting serious!  I needed to get into the front garden patch to WEED and mulch.

Apple orchard status:

Sunday morning I removed more black plastic from around the trees - didn't get all of them up, but most I think.  Found 3 good sized garter snakes under the plastic of the trees in the far right highest portion of the orchard.  I was careful not to hurt them.  Fortunately, I didn't find any other kind of snake!  I weed whacked around the trees that I removed the plastic from.  I definitely think the black plastic was a mistake.  I want to advise anyone looking into putting in trees - use the tubes, but not the weed protectors!  Do not use the plastic weed protection if you are able to mow around the trees!  The plastic gives varmints and bees a place to live and if you are able to mow, then the plastic gets caught in the mower!  BTW:  the fruit looks good on most of the trees.  I did see some insect damage.  I applied Sevin before I left this weekend.

Cherry orchard:

I observed some damage from deer - I think.  I noticed that the cherries were gone last weekend.  This weekend I looked closer and noticed some of the limbs broken down....  I figure the deer were able to reach up and snatch the cherries and broke the limbs off in the process.  I don't think that varmints can climb the tree protectors.  I also  noticed that the Japanese beetles were starting to really eat - so I sprayed them with sevin.  Some of these trees have significant growth of foliage inside the tubes - tempted to break the tubes and trim that off to keep disease under control.  Not sure - will do some reasearch.

Mom's patch status:

I may have a crop failure on the corn there. I checked mom's patch - only about 6 plants survived the onslaught of the crows.  Mom over-planted with a small pack of short season corn, hopefully the crows will leave that alone!  If that comes in then maybe there will be enough to eat fresh corn, although not likely enough to put any up.

Big patch status:

The corn in my big patch is growing - poorly.  I think I still need more nitrogen (and way less water).  The mulch has helped, I think.  General improvement in all plants.  The eggplant survived the flea beetles.  I applied Sevin to the eggplant and some tomato plants.  I hate to apply sevin when plants are blooming, so I left most of the tomatoes alone.  No sign of pests there yet anyway. We will see.  Squash, cukes, and pumpkins look OK.  Looks like I may have inadvertently got a couple pumpkins planted inside the garden fence - I am trying to train them to run to the garden fence and away from the squash and tomatoes. The pumpkins and sunflowers on the outside of the fence are coming along.  I need to put supports up for the sunflowers and tomato trellis up - SOON!

Paw-paw patch status:

The paw-paw patch is looking really bad.  I think tilling in the straw and wood chips was a bad idea - they weren't mulched enough and I have read that is they mulch in-place in the soil that they steal nitrogen from the soil.  Along with the water issue hasn't been a good year so far.  Even weeds aren't growing in most of the paw-paw patch!  However, the transplanted plants still seem to be holding on.  I see some beets and carrots up - but not many.

Front patch status:

The weeds were so prodigious that I really couldn't see most of the plants.  I had to wait until midday to get in just because of water on the plants.  The ground really was too wet to be walking on it - but I had to!  I had to use the weed wacker to get the bulk of the weeds under control.  I did find about 6-8 parsnip plants that had survived!  Long story short - I busted my ass and got it mulched!  I didn't get the potatoes mulched.  I think I will use wood chips to mulch around potatoes.  I hope its no too late to put mulch down - at least I hope to keep weeds at bay later in the season.  Right now the potatoes are pretty much blocking all the light from the bulk of the weeds.  Some of the potato plants are 4 ft or more!  I did find some potato bugs eating them up - so I treated the potatoes with sevin as well as many other plants in the main garden (carrots and kohlrabi).  Here are some pics:

Front patch - as I was leaving - taken from my car, because thats how busy I was!

potatoes!  They still need mulch - but at least bulk of weeds are gone.

onions and kohlrabi (garlic on far right - just a few - up front) .  The beets and carrots are behind the kohlrabi

Dehydrator Arrived!

I finally bought the dehydrator from cabelas!   Katherine had brought it to my attention again about 2 weeks ago when she found that it was on sale.  I had stumbled onto another dehydrator ad - I forget where - maybe a google suggestion? and after some reading I went and looked at the commercial dehydrator in the Cabelas sale page.  It was actually a good deal and got great reviews.  So I pulled the trigger and ordered it along with some special trays for fruit leather and fruit slices.  Here are some pictures:

I haven't assembled it all - I just took it up and unpacked it.  Seems very well built and solid.  It must be run indoors - I was hoping to run it in the shop - but maybe that wouldn't be great idea anyway.. I will have to think about where to run it.  Maybe, during the day - on the porch?  Maybe I could make a special structure for it?  I am thinking about moving the canned storage downstairs (need to either beef up the shelves down there - or build new ones) and then use the upstairs storage room for running the dehydrator (I would leave the windows open to help keep moisture levels down).