Castor beans are looking pretty!  Still growing but many of them have some nice blooms on.

Photo does not do justice.

I found a few pattypan squash!  I have 2 of each type of summer squash (that I am familiar with anyway).
2 pattypan, 2 crook neck (yellow), and 2 zucchini.  

Big elderberry weekend!  Picked and destemmed 5.75 gallons!
Katherine did the bulk of the destemming - thank you!

While Katherine started in on destemming the elderberries, I took off to Mom;s to get pick some peaches! I got about 1.25 bushel.  Some of them were in pretty rough shape.  

I was able to sort out the worst and can 4 quarts and one pint.  I have about a half bushel left to process yet.  Taking them back to process this week.

Picked most of the corn in the front patch this weekend!

Here is some more of it!  Despite being an off year because of the rain, the corn did quite well!
This was the least amount of corn I have planted and the yield 

All blanched and cut off the cob - ready to bag and freeze.  Ended up with 19 pints!  That means the total yield for that small  patch was 23 pints (plus probably and 3-4 pints that we ate along the way).

While Katherine was blanching and cutting the corn off the cob, I built and installed some tomato trellis!  

I hope these are good at holding up the tomatoes.  They installed fairly easily.  These were made from those "sticker strips" I made from the old oak and locust "crap" logs left over from the garage excavation.  Waste not, want not!  They just need to last the season.  Except for some screws use to attach the frame to the posts these should be easy to chip into mulch after the season is over.

More food processing! Cabbages, Peaches, Elderberries, Tomatoes, Cukes

Elderberry Syrup

Katherine processed the elderberry "2nd"s into elderberry syrup.  Recipe is basically the same as for the jelly except that she used the 2nd's and only added 1/4th the pectin (she actually used 1 pack of the "no sugar needed pectin" to 4 times the juice they call for - so that would be 12 C of 2nd's).  Turned out very nicely!  Canned just like the jelly too.

She got 10 pints of syrup from 12 C of elderberry "2nd's"!

Salsa

We made another 12 pints of salsa from the tomatoes that were ready yesterday.  Again we used the Mrs Wages salsa (medium) mix.

12 Pints Salsa

Pickles

We did up the cucumbers using the Mrs Wages Kosher dill mix.  We "chunked" the cukes instead of making them as spears or sliced.  I like them this way - I guess they would be called "salad" pickles.

Total of 13 quarts of  Kosher Dills!

Corn

Most of  the corn is now off our patch.  We still have some to harvest from the patch over at mom's.  I want to try to dry and can some of the remaining corn.  We got a total of 30 pints frozen from our local patch.

Most of the corn has been harvested from my local patch now - about 30 pints frozen.

Kale, cabbages, broccoli

The real disappointment of this harvest is the Kale and Cabbages.  Besides getting a late start due to the heavy early rains that made many of the cabbages rot out (and removed needed nutrients from the soil) they were attacked by the dreaded cabbage worms!   I only have 2 broccoli plants that have produced anything - and then just enough for Katherine and I to eat at dinner!   The kale was so filthy with bugs that I only gathered enough to freeze 3 quarts!  I went out and sprayed 3 gallons of BT on the whole patch!  I trimmed a lot of the Kale leaves that I didn't harvest and threw them away.  

Kale in foodsaver bags - freezing them first make it easier
to vacuum seal moist/wet veggies.  

I did harvest what cabbages that were ready - many were split!  Sheesh!  Can't catch a break! 

After cleaning and shredding I only got 13 lbs of cabbage.  I used this to start a batch of sauerkraut.

Kraut in the crock!

Lid on and the water seal set!

Now just to do the peaches and the tomatoes... lol

Katherine will probably do the tomatoes as juice.

peaches are for jam!

Afternoon update

Cleaned the corn off of 40 ears and froze it in pint packs using the vacuum bagging contraption.  I got 11 pints of corn!  Ends up being about 1/2 cup of corn on average ear of corn.

Doing dishwasher run of normal lidded pint jars to can some sweet pickles this afternoon.  I have 10 lbs of cuc's soaking in salt water to make some dill pickles tonight.  I have to clean up all this produce before Wednesday morning when we head back to PA!