Tomatoes canned, rutabagas, wine

Finished canning 14 quarts (actually did 14 pints sauce and 14 pints juice) of tomatoes.    Things went smoothly.  Used the double boiler juicer thing and the squeeze-o strainer.  Used the pressure canner - 10lbs 15 mins.  Got caught up on all the ripe tomatoes.  Only a small number left to can here.  Saving those for Katherine to do this weekend (not sure they will even be ready - I think they will be though).

I picked the rutabagas tonight.  I was getting tired of seeing them decay out there and the tops were crowding out many other plants.  The chard should do better now.  I took the good rutabagas and cleaned them, diced them and roasted them with some salt.  Katherine and I had them for dinner.   Was just about 2 cups once cleaned.  Not exactly thrilled with their productivity - but the soil here is a bit hard on most plants.

I finally got around to doing the next step in the winemaking on my zinfandel.  Did the de-gas and added the "F-pack" (flavor pack?) and isinglass for clarification.  Now wait 14 more days (Oct 3rd) and see if ready to bottle!  I need to check to see if I have enough bottles!

I got my draw-knives and my hydraulic line adapters today. I got 2 different sizes (3 of the smaller and 1 of the larger) of hose adapters - not sure which size is correct though - if either!  I am hopeful that at least one will fit the bill and then I can replace at least one of the lines and use the tractor for garden tilling and planting my cover crops this weekend!  NO DIGGING with the tractor anymore! [unless I don't get the backhoe or excavator!]

recent plumbing and More tomatoes!

Well, the sink issue in SS finally came to a head.  We tried using more draino on it Monday (and of course, the small snake) and it didn't improve.  in fact, it got worse!  I guess the draino adversely affected the plastic pipes?  Or maybe just the jostling of the plunging actions, but by Tuesday morning, it was leaking under the sink!

I took Tuesday off from work and proceeded to try to figure out a course of action.  I wanted to put in a heavier metal pipe based solution (I had a mix of light plastic and metal), but i couldn't find the parts I needed at Home Depot and time was running short to create a decent PVC solution.  The local Home Depot "experts" are useless, at least with respect to plumbing!

Anyway, long story short, I ended up going back and forth to HD only twice!  A miracle!  LOL  I did end up using the crappy light weight plastic pipe fitting that they offer.  Unlike last time i used those fitting though, I immediately bought pipe sealant!  I also got a 50 FOOT 1/2" pipe snake to clear that damn clog up once and for all!  It took a while to put the snake down and run it through, but I did it and cleared the clog (never did identify the clog though!)  I rebuilt the drain with all new plastic and sealed them good.  The build seemed solid.  Leak testing showed few leaks - mostly just needing to tight compression fitting around the garbage disposal connection.  Hopefully that will get snug and we will be OK soon.  Its good enough for use though, and saved me having a $300+ bill from James Wheat (and having to WAIT for Wheat!)

So that was my Monday and Tuesday.  Wednesday night we got back to processing tomatoes (after Katherine spent much of Tuesday and Wednesday cleaning a BUNCH of dishes by hand!)  We got to use the squeeze-o style strainer (BTW, the mail order squeeze-o arrived Wednesday night - but we used the one I bought from Zimmermans because it was already clean).  We processed 5 pints of sauce and  7 pints of juice.

Also, I hung up the sunflower heads in the shop to dry so that the squirrels can't get to them!  Once the heads are dry enough I will remove the seeds and then soak the seeds in salt brine, then dry the seeds for eating.  I need to remember to save some of the seeds for planting!  Probably try to save those that are still on the sunflowers up at the farm.  I don't want to harvest them too early in case they aren't mature enough to make good planting seeds!

Today, I would like to process all of the remaining tomatoes that are ready.  I have a batch in the juicer right now.  Will update blog later.

More tomatoes

Did more tomatoes like last night. It worked so well!  We got 7 pints juice and 7 pints pulp tonight.  14 pints in pressure canner right now.

Took this picture just now (next morning):

New approach to tomatoes!

Katherine found a reference to a technique to process tomatoes that is such a neat idea!  The technique first processes the tomatoes with the hot water bath juicer to separate the water juice from the tomato solids, then the solids can be run through the Foley mill and used for a thicker tomato sauce!  Brilliant!