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

Paw-paw patch tilled, bean planting, elderberries blooming!

Blueberries!

The new blueberries are doing well.  Actually, they look a bit yellow to me.  But the soil there is pretty good so it might be a special blueberry nutrient deficiency.  

The new blueberries have blueberries on them!

June drop continues

I keep finding more peaches on the ground, but there are still a lot in the trees yet too.  I am going to put up tree cages around these trees to protect them from the critters (raccoons) who stole them all last year!

It actually smells like peaches around these trees now - probably due to the fruit that falls.  I am sure that will interest many critters!

Elderberries blooming their hearts out!

Paw-paw patch tilled and planted

Finally was able to get the tractor over there to till.  It has been so wet and muddy this spring that this was the first chance I had to get in there!  I had to put up the fence for this garden too.  I will put a gate in the upper side I think - later.  I used the push-type planting tool to plant pinto beans and some of the fancy green beans that I have been harvesting for the past couple years (I really need to shell the rest of those!)

Free mulch/Wood chips!

The guys who trim the trees around the power lines stopped to trim along my driveway this weekend. I asked them if they could give me the chips from the trimming - they said yes - and if I wanted they could dump more there too!  I thought that was a grand idea! Sweet!  Now I won't have to be milling and chipping wood to get chips to put around all of my trees!

That's just one of their truckloads.

Daikon radishes are blooming

I just thought they are kinda pretty so I took a few pics!  These are volunteers that I did not remove from the front patch.

Cabbages surviving - just

Actually, not all of them look so good.  I am going to have to put some Sevin on them soon.

These are the good looking ones

More strawberries

Another gallon and a half (I think).   I don't take pictures of all of them and I have been bad at posting these updates on time so I can't remember how many we got this picking.  I think, all told, that I have picked about 6 gallons so far.  Between us and mom though, only a few have made it into the freezer!

I am seriously thinking of making strawberry jam and strawberry wine!  Maybe next year though,  depending on how many I get and how much time I have.

Mower tire issues

Well, the zero-turn mower tire finally gave way to the sidewall slash and wouldn't  hold pressure any more.  I (thought) was prepared with a spare wheel and a spare tire - BUT - I had purchased the wrong size!  Argh!  So I went to the McConnellsburg TSC and returned the wrong ones and bought a tire - no wheel though.  So I had to remove the old tire from the rim and place the new one on.  All with out any tire changer tools!  I just used crow bar, prybar and screwdriver.  I finally got the new tire on (with the help of some window cleaner spray) but then had to "re-bead" it.  Well, I got the idea to try the old "light the ether - explosive fuel" trick...  I sprayed some ether into the tire, threw a match at it - but no explosion!  It just sat there burning.  So I push on the wall of the tire a bit and BOOM!  Big fireball encompasses me and singes the dickens out of my facial hair (and head hair)!  It didn't hurt though - very fast flame and it was gone.  Embarrassing though.  I tried again, this time using my foot to push in the sidewall after it was lit - boom again - but I wasn't engulfed this time and the tire sealed up nice.  I rushed to fill it with air before it cooled and things went well after that.

Ugh - I could smell burned hair all weekend!

Chokecherry and choke berry clean up and mulching

Since I  now had enough woodchip mulch I decided to mow around and cleanup the chokecherry, chokeberry patch.  I used the weed wacker to clean them up nicely.  I got the old red push mower running too.  I had to take apart the carburetor and cleaning it - but it started right up after that and ran quite nicely.

Of course, I didn't get a picture of them after I put the mulch on!  D'oh!

Strawberry moon

Evidently, this time of year something happens and the moon is low in the sky such that it appears reddish.  The native Americans called this the strawberry moon.  When they saw it they knew it was time to pick the strawberries!  I couldn't get a very good picture of it with my phone though.

Weed wacker - trimmer died 

I was using it one minute, laid it down to do something, then the next time I picked it up it just wouldn't turn on!  I took it apart and never did find out what was wrong.  I figure its probably the switch.  Anyway, I went ahead and order a new one.  This ones newer version - the LST420 - lol - "weed" wacker  - too funny!

The old wacker 

Cabbages, broccoli, blooming stuff

Cabbages and Broccoli planted

They are a bit rough for wear, but I really don't care how they do.  Cabbage is good when fresh or canned into sauerkraut, but how much sauerkraut can you eat?  Of course, I cold try the root cellar approach, but I will need to get moving on that project and its just not likely this year.

I actually don't know which plant is which!  I might have planted mostly cabbage or mostly broccoli!

Grapes

The grapes are blooming!  Well, they are starting to.  Lots of blossoms about to break open.  I did find quite a bit of black rot on the grape vines though.  Not surprising since its been so wet this year. I need to get out there and spray!

These are blossoms that haven't come out yet

This is black rot!  Ugh.  

On quite a few of the leaves.

This stuff can really wipe out your grapes - especially young ones like these

As if the black rot weren't bad enough, the friggen deer have been chowing down on the new grape shoots!   I really like not having the electric fence up and in my way mowing so I am looking into trying some deer repellent spray.

Here you can see where the tips of the plant have been clipped off

The deer trimmed this whole plant!

I hope these recover!

Peaches

The peaches are doing ok.  It is about time for them to start the "June Drop" though.  I am crossing my fingers that I don't loose too many!  This is the first year that I should be letting them reach maturity.

As you can see, some are dropping already!

Strawberries

Still coming in!  I am lazy and didn't take pictures of all of them.  They all look the same!  I think I got another gallon and a half this weekend.

Box Turtle

This box turtle showed up (again?) this year.  I assume its the same one we have been seeing around here, but I didn't mark it and I am no good at telling one turtle from another.

Elderberries

The elderberries are blooming!  Yay!  Oh man, where am I going to store all these things when they are ripe?  I have got to get the freeze-dryer ready!