Beans are DONE - and some rain - finally!

Last of the bean picking for this year!

I finally got to finish picking the shell beans this past weekend.  The "velour" beans are same and were crowded with weeds, so picking them took quite some time.  I got them done Sunday morning, before the rain really started.

Now, to shell them all out!  UGH

More harvest

I got out to pick the strawberries, summer squash and tomatoes before we left.  Good amount of the tomatoes came from the volunteers!  Not sure how we are going to preserve these - some will go to FDer for sure, but other might be frozen for FDing later?  Or maybe I will make some chili base for eating now?  We will see.

Family reunion!

Saturday we went over to my cousin Patsies house for the family reunion.  We took coleslaw, some zucchini muffins and some of my concord wine.    Here are some pics:

Panoramic view

Panoramic view

Paul's grove of black walnut - like 35 years old! 

The puppies stayed in their cages for the most part.  We did take them out on leashes to go walkies.

There were a good number of dogs there so taking the cages was a great idea.

We had a good time and reconnected with some cousins and their kin.  As usual, I ate too much!

BEANS!

Yep - picking more beans.  Slow slow process with the "velour" beans.  Fortunately (in this regards anyway) the weather has been so dry that the grass hasn't grown much, therefore I did not need to mow.   I think I got all but 1/4 of the "velour" beans picked.  Here is a final picture of the patch as I left this weekend (its a panorama - the garden is not curved!)

I did pick some crops - the strawberries, the zucchini, brussel sprouts, and tomatoes:

You Have to zoom in to see the berries - but they are doing quite well considering the drought!

Good number of nice looking berries there!

I put the brussel sprouts and the zucchini in the same tray - sprouts cover most of the zucchini - but they are there!  About 6 of them I think.  I let the sprouts go too long and they started sprouting !

Tomatoes are less than last week but still doing well.  Especially since we aren't looking to preserve a great many this year!  These will probably go into the FDer.  Some of last weeks went into freezer because the freeze-dryer can't keep up!

Big tree came down!

The big tree that was hung up out in back of the house finally came down!  I am not sure when it happened - maybe last Friday.   I still need to clean it up a bit.  There are some widow-makers hanging on in the trees yet.  Kind of letting them sort themselves out before I go in there to clean!

Broke out a section of this tree too.

Nice little bridge across gully!

Not sure if this bug damage was before or after it broke.  Woodpecker damage too.

Widow-maker!

More harvest stuff - shell beans, tomatoes and squash

Shell Beans

I planted 19 45-foot rows of shell beans this year.  The patch was originally unprotected (no fences).  Deer eventually found it and ate the leaves off most of the plants!  I eventually did place a baited electric fence around the patch that did stop the deer (either tha or they found better things to eat!), but the damage was done. Many of the beans did not fill out - they didn't mature.   Anyway, we started picking the beans the last weekend of August - we got about 1 bushel of the Accelerate beans from 4 rows.  This weekend I was by myself but able to dedicate most of my time to picking so I got another bushel and a half of the accelerate variety.

The rest of the "Accelerate" bean harvest

I started in on the "velour" variety but found some issues.  The Velour bean is much smaller and evidently matured earlier.  Also, the weeds in the velour side of the patch were much more prevalent so picking was very difficult!  I essentially was pulling EVERYTHING!  Except for some volunteer locust trees which I think I will try to transplant next spring.  I got only a tiny amount of beans, shown below.  I still have most of the velour section of the patch to pick.  I hope the weather doesn't turn rainy next weekend!

"velour" bean harvest to date.

Elderberries and crab-apples

I found more then a few elderberries left on the bushes - at least enough that I didnt feel good leaving them there!  So I picked these last elderberries:

There is about a half-gallon of them after picking off the stems.  Very ripe!

I mowed what was tall in the orchard - there is a draught so not all the grass needed mowing.  AS I did I noticed some crab-apples were ready to pick - so I grabbed them.  Not sure what I will do with these though.

Crab-apples - this is whole harvest!  Of course, these came off a tree that I thought would have died this year!  

Tomatoes and squash

I harvest the volunteer tomatoes in the front patch as well as the planted tomatoes in the sweet-potato patch.  I got about 35lbs!  We are going to be drying some of these, but I don't think we can dry them all before they go bad.

From the planted tomatoes

From the volunteer tomato plants in the front patch.  The squash are from the  squash plants - go figure!  The last of the corn harvest is in there too - not sure if it was worth it though.

I also harvested the zucchini and even one of the butternut squash from the far patch!  There are lots of butternut squash getting close.  IDK what I will do with all of these!  I hope they keep well!

Strawberries keep coming!

Decent strawberry harvest considering the time of the year and the drought conditions!  I am definitely going to have to buy more everbearing strawberries!

Freeze-dried potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, etc...

Trying out the freeze drier!  

Potatoes

I cut up some of the new  - damaged potatoes and boiled them until soft.  Then i placed them on the FDer trays and dried them.  After they were dry, I used the vitamix to turn them into powder.  Note that I had used the FDer about 5 times at this point and the machine was taking longer to get down to vacuum.  I also suspected that the potatoes weren't as dry as I wanted - but they seem fine so far.  I am watching them.  I also repackaged these with O2 absorber and vacuum sealed in jars.

I left the skins on - that's why this has speck in it!

1 tray of boiled taters = about 1 pint (a little bit more)

Zucchini

I cut up the squash into cubes and blanched it for a few minutes.  Then I placed on tray and placed in FDer with the taters above.

It doesnt even look dry!

Tomatoes

I did a tray of tomatoes with the above mix since I had one tray left.

Tomatoes feel like fine styrofoam when dry!

Weekend update: potatoes and tomatoes

Just a quick update to try to keep the record keeping straight:

More Mowing Issues

Before I go off on the food preservation I want to mention that I replaced ANOTHER spindle on the Huskee (TSC's "brand" of riding mower/garden tractor).  Grass really needed mowing in the orchard - which I did once everything dried off a bit.

New (?) Hawk sighting!

I saw a Hawk out in the paw-paw orchard Sunday morning!  I hope he sticks around and that the insulators that the utility put up last week work!  I got some nice pictures!

Backhoe finally got picked up!

Saturday afternoon, Joe Hines and his dad showed up with a big truck and trailer and got the backhoe.  Joe asked if I was still interested in the Club Cadet zero turn model mower we talked about before. I told him that it depend on the bill for the backhoe!  I didn't tell him that it also depended on if I actually got the portable saw-mill this guy in Michigan keeps hinting at building and delivering for me!   I am hoping to get the needed repairs done on the backhoe for under $4K.  I haven't heard back from Hines yet.  

Last of the Elderberry

I picked the last of the elderberries for the season.  I got about another gallon.  I cleaned them and placed them in ziplock bag in the freezer for processing later.  We are too busy with canning tomatoes and other stuff to process them now!

Canned Chicken

Katherine got some chicken leg-quarters on sale at safeway last week.  They were $.80/lb so she bought 8 packs of roughly 4 lbs each.  We tried our first attempt at canned chicken!  I have done venison and pork before, but this is the first try at chicken!  We cold packed it in wide mouth pint jars, placing 1/2 tsp salt in each jar and adding water as needed to insure there were no air-bubbles.  Pressure canned at 15lb for 1 hour 15 mins.  We tried a jar the next day - the bones became so soft you could eat them (although the shaft of the bones aren't very palatable, the ends of the bones are good!).  We got 32 pint jars of chicken canned! The pressure canner holds 16 pints per load.  We did two loads.

Tomatoes

Picked many more tomatoes.  They are really getting gripe fast now.  Katherine canned 19 quarts of diced tomatoes this past weekend.  I don't think she took pics, but they all looked good to me.

Squash, pumpkins, cukes and sunflowers

Picked the last of the squash.  I pulled the plants and removed them from the garden due to Squash Vine Borer (SVB) infestation.  Still got a good 40 lb of squash.  Katherine wants to shred and freeze at least part of them so that she can make zucchini bread in the winter.  We already have 3-4 gallon containers full of dried squash!  I picked more cukes - they are almost done I think, but still have a bus tray full of them.  Katherine said something about making relish with them.  I picked more pumpkins.  They are about 2/3rds done I think.  I got a couple that were in need of processing - I want to try making pumpkin leather.  I need to take the vitamix up to the farm and do that next weekend. I need to look to harvesting sunflowers soon too, by the looks of them!

Potatoes

I finally got started digging the potatoes.  It rained Friday and Saturday so I wasn't able to get started until Sunday.  The driveway side of the front patch yielded some potatoes, better than the big patch last year by far.  However, the side opposite the driveway was EXTREMELY productive!  Since I was not able to de-weed and mulch or otherwise care for the potato plants this year the rows were hard to find to dig - I ended up just digging up the entire area where the potatoes were.  Ugh!  Hard work.  Here is a picture of the first bunch I picked.

Mostly white potatoes - i am not sure if these are Kennebec or Yukon.  I might have another variety too, but I am pretty sure I only have Kennebec and Yukon white potatoes

This is a potato fruit!  I never saw them as a kid.  I told mom about finding this and she told me that she used to pick them off as she found them on hers because she heard that leaving them on caused the potatoes to be smaller and less productive! 

Corn

I went over to mom's and picked sweet corn from my patch there.  It was a bit overripe so I decided to preserve it by drying!  The corn there was also seasonally afflicted - lol - it was too dry there!  Anyway, I got about 10 pints which I blanched, cut off cob, and put in dehydrator at 120F for 24 hours.

Almost exactly 2 quarts dried corn from roughly 10 pints (5 quart) of "wet" corn.

I got some recipes for corn casserole type dishes that I remember as a kid.  I don't know which one I liked though!  Or even if I liked mom's or grandma's  or which grandma's grrrr.

Here are some pictures from mom's recipe books:

Also, while over at mom's, we picked up some frozen black raspberries that mom and dad had put away in the previous years.  Mom doesn't eat them - dad used them for his cereal in the morning.  She was afraid they would get freezer burned if they didn't get used soon.  I took them and plan on making them into jelly.

Whirlwind of harvesting and preservation!

Well, last weekend we got to the farm and saw that pretty much EVERYTHING was ready to harvest!  This cool weather evidently has kicked everything in to ripening earlier than usual.  So, this is a list of what I have harvested so far:

• elderberries - as they ripen.  So far 25 jars (half-pints) of jelly canned!
• beets - all except "remote" patches - turned about 30 lbs of beets into 16 quarts of pickled beets! They are white/yellow beets!  I had forgotten what i had planted, LOL  See pickled beet recipe below.
• carrots - all except "remote" patches - going to pickle the rough ones today - about 30 lbs total picked.
• corn - about 2/3rds through what we have - i think.  So far I have frozen about 15 pints.  I want to try canning some and drying some.
• tomatoes
• cucumbers
• squash - preserved via zucchini relish, zucchini bread,  and dried A LOT of it!
• pumpkins 
• kale - just a little - but way more to come.  preserved by freezing and drying
• onions - red, white and yellow - curing in the red barn now.  Used some yellows in the pickled beets.  Mom says the white ones don't keep well so I should use them first.
• garlic (all 4 plants - LOL)
• peaches (off mom's trees - we only got one off of ours!)  Preserved by canning and jam.

Pumpkin coming in early!

About 35 lbs of beets!  Despite the red skin, these are yellow beets!

First corn from our patch to be preserved!

The Kale in SS produced well and so far has been the bulk of the preserved Kale.

Zucchini Relish.  Katherine made another batch after this one.  She modified recipe from last year to reduce sugar to 3 C.

The first and only peach off my own tree! (I ate it on my birthday!)

Cucks an tomatoes

Curing the onion harvest in the barn on screens on the bed of the trailer.

Kohlrabi!  

This Kale plant was with the kohlrabi!  I didn't notice it and it became Kale-zilla!

First tomatoes (that we didn't eat immediately) were made into salsa using Mrs Wages mix.  Elderberry jelly on right.

Pickled carrots - 9 pints.  There are more carrots to go, just pickled the nasty ones!

First corn off our own plants this year!  Corn took heavy damages from early rainy season - but we are getting ok yields anyway!