Kale crackers,

Kale Crackers!

I haven't gotten around to harvesting much kale this year and I felt bad about it.  So I went out to the raised bed and managed to salvage enough to make some Kale crackers!  The recipe is somewhere else on the blog here.  It's something like 3 cups of Kale puree, 1 C almonds, and 1/4 C nutritive yeast powder, salt, pepper, various spices to taste.  These turned out quite nicely!  There is always some variance in the moisture content of the Kale so there may be some tweaking involved to get the consistency correct.  I just spread this on silpat and dry/bake in oven at something like 250F - 300F.  Your choice of when to take them out depending on how crisp you like them.

Kale crackers bagged and ready to munch on!  

Canning more peaches

I picked these peaches off of the "packed" tree last week - it had more peaches than leaves I think! Anyway, I got around to canning them.  They were a little bit unripe - but good for canning.  Looks like 15 pints canned here.

Looks like about 15 pints canned here!

Not bad for one little tree!  This is the first real harvest from this tree too!

Squash, tomatoes, strawberries, and elderberries are still producing

The tomatoes were a bit of a disappointment this year, but that's ok.  I have plenty canned and freeze dried in storage!  In fact, I did not plant these for storage/preservation since we had so many.

Everbearing strawberries are still putting out some fruit!

Not a lot of them, but enough to flavor some fruit leather!

Grape harvest - whats left anyway

The deer and the racoons left me only about 6 lbs of grapes.  That's in total, all varieties included!  Buggers!  Next year there is going to be a fence around the grapes.  Maybe electric header too.  We will see.  Anyway, I picked what I had and mixed them all together to make about 1/2 gallon of wine.   It will probably be awful, but these grapes aren't much good for eating (they taste funky).

Total grape harvest for 2017!  All picked off them stems and ready to squish to make some wine.

Squished and in for the primary fermenting

Air-lock in place.  Now just wait for the grapes to render a bit more juice.  I believe I added some pectinase, but I can't remember.

Apples

I processed some of the Gala apples (and a few of the other apples from varieties that didnt produce many apples)  into applesauce and apple leather.

Didn't make a lot of applesauce, which is ok since I evidently don't eat a lot of applesauce (I still have over 12 quarts left over from canning it in previous years)

The Raspberry/apple leather may actually have some elderberry in it too, if I recall.

Hmm, I guess I didn't get any pictures of the blackberries (not raspberries, despite the label)

Fruit harvest continues!

Elderberries continue

They keep ripening!  Gathered more.  Canned the juice.  Repeat.

BTW:  Here is the canning "recipe" and info:

• Expected juice yield: 2 Gallons of fresh berries should produce about 2.5 to 3 quarts of juice. This corresponds to the 4 lb or berries per gallon number I found last year.  About 3 lbs of juice and 1 lb of pulp per gallon of fresh berries.  The juiciness of the berry is a function of how ripe it is (and the variety of berry - mine are mixed variety evidently).  Note that when I freeze dried a gallon of elderberries produced about 4-5 pints of water.  This would suggest that 1 gallon of berries should produce 4-5 lbs of juice, which is about what i get.  

• So, bottom line: 1 gallon of berries = 4-5 lbs juice = 4-5 pints juice

• Best method of juicing:  Slowly, on low heat, bring fresh (de-stemmed) berries to boil.  You can use a potato masher to help a little, but don't overdo it!  Once boiling, cook berries for 10-15 mins.  I stir about every 5 mins to make sure there is no burning going on.  Watch the heat! The berries are then strained through a muslin bag or sheet.  Compress the ball of skins and seeds in the bag as best you can - its hot so be careful!  Measure the amount of juice that you extract, then remove the seed/skin ball from the bag and place it back in cookpot.  Measure the amount of juice you got and add that amount of water into the cookpot with the seeds/skins.  Now bring this to a boil as before.   After reaching boil and cooking for 10-15 mins, strain through muslin again.  Take the juice from the second straining and add to the juice from the first straining.   Throw the seeds/skins out. 

• DO NOT run elderberries through a squeezo or similar device!  The "meat" around the seeds contains a very sticky and hard to clean substance that will gum up everything!  However, there is literature that suggests that the "sticky goo" is the stuff that contains the anti-viral substance! I just hope that the regular juice I extract had enough of the substance to help me!  That goo is too damn hard to deal with.

The juice-count continues.  

Fruit leather 

Faced with a certain amount of damaged fruit that made canning impractical, I considered fruit leather.  I took the peaches and strawberries from this weekends harvest and simply cleaned, cooked, and pureed them in my vitamix.  I sweetened to taste (tricky for dried foods - don't over sweeten!) and then poured onto the silicone dryer mats.  I placed in the big dryer at 135F for 23hrs.  Turned out very nicely!

Seriously considering getting more of these mats.  perfect for fruit leather.

Grapes

The grapes are looking good so far!  I keep spraying with the myclobutanil fungicide.  The stuff really seems to work.  Unfortunately, the rains come so often and washes the sprays off!  I am also applying sevin to counter the japanese beatles.  I am spraying all of the fruit with sevin.  I am occasionally using the fungicides on all the fruit and nuts too because some are looking diseased.  This is especially true of the sour cherries.

Peaches

Besides the damaged peaches that I made into fruit leather, I also harvested some nice peaches for canning.  These are the Raritan Rose peaches (I think).  They are a white peach.  They taste milder than most yellow peaches.  I only canned 9 pints of these.  A lot of these were given away at work and in the neighborhood to friends.

Canned white peaches

Garden planting finally done!

Cool - they gave me even more mulch!

This is sure saving me lots of work!  Now all I have to do is to move it to where it belongs.  Around they trees mostly.

I still need to move the new stuff up on the pile so that it "ferments" better

Grape health

There is no doubt that the new sprays (myclobutanil and manzate) are keeping the black rot and rust at bay this year.  With the weather being this wet if I didn't have these sprays these grape vines would be dead - I am sure!

Lots of grapes on these vines!

I hope the varmints don't get them before I do!

Orchard update

The orchard trees look ok.  The June drop didn't seems to drop much; most of the fruit is still intact!  I have noticed some diseased looking leaves so I think I will spray sevin and fungicide - just like the grapes.

Pear tree looking ok.  Not needing bracing. yet.

For some reason this pristine apple tree isn't needing bracing.  Apples are lower in the tree i guess.

I switched out the stakes on the pristine apple trees.  The "leaning board" idea just wasn't working.  I moved back to the tried and true tripod setup.

These are getting close to ready!

More Choke cherry/berry damage

Freaking rabbits!  I have managed to kill 4 so far.  I also took out a small groundhog nearby and a raccoon out in the sheep hollow.  Still, there is a big rabbit that I haven't been able to get in this area.  I am pretty sure hes the one doing this too.  I got a couple have-a-heart traps at TSC last week.  I am trying them out.

They just snip off the top and leave them lay!

I mowed around the choke cherries this weekend too.  I use the small - hand mower for this.

Here is one of the have-a-heart traps ready to get the buggers!

Forsythia & elderberry cleanup

I finally got around to trimming the grass away from the forsythia and elderberries.  I did find that one of the forsythia had died below the elderberries.  I am trying to keep them clear until they are big enough to overwhelm the weeds.  I still can't get into the elderberries out in the swamp.

Squash and cukes planted!

I was finally able to get into the garden and put the plastic down and plant the squash and cukes.  I planted all of the buttercup and summer squash that I had left.  I only put in a few cukes.

The corn is growing nicely.  Where it came up.  I was used up all the old seed I had laying around.