August Garden Update

Well it is the last day of July and with August just around the corner the garden still has lots of promise. There are plenty of blossoms on the row of flowers that I planted to attract pollinators and for cut flowers. 

Sunflowers, zinnia, marigolds and dill. Just a row of every color blossom you can imagine. 

The okra continue to put on those pale yellow blooms that remind me so much of hibiscus.

And plenty of goodies yet to pick.  Cantaloupe ripening in the sun. 

Pumpkins for that Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. 

Lots of field peas for the animals and the farmer alike. These will become seed for next year and the plants will become enrichment for the soil.

Butternut squash make great winter pies

Sweet potatoes for winter storage. Sweet potato pie is one of our holiday favorites.  

And melons of every size, color and shape. Maybe some watermelon rind preserves!! 

So even though summer is winding down the garden continues to produce. And we continue to struggle too with the daily flow of food from it. With potatoes still in the ground and grapes hanging from the vines still. Looks like I may even have some apples that will make on our tree despite the drought and hot weather.  

Right now we are enjoying our cucumbers and tomatoes daily along with okra, squash and

zucchini. The pantry and freezers are filling fast. The first of the young turkeys are not far from  butchering for the freezer. We hope to make breast cutlets and grind some as ground turkey to use in place of beef. We like ground turkey in our spaghetti and also chili.  The remainder will go into jars as broth or meat and broth for soups and gumbos. Several will be allowed to get larger for a holiday bird for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We also have 15 pound of Boston butt roast curing in the refrigerator preparing to go into the smoker for buckboard bacon.  We caught a sale on Boston Butt for $1.38 a pound. Bacon starts at about $3 a pound on a good day. So we will cure and smoke the Boston butt as buckboard bacon for the freezer. The pigs are growing quickly and we should also have those holiday hams taken care of.  

Although not as plentiful as fall harvests of the past we are still thankful for our many blessings. Unfortunately we are struggling getting up seeds for any other fall crops and it is getting really late in the season but with a little luck and a little rain it might still happen. 

How is your fall garden shaping up?

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Monday Morning Gardening

We woke up this morning to a wonderfully cool morning. The skies were cloudy keeping the temperatures down some for the morning. And with two small rains last week the ground moisture was good for pulling weeds and taking care of the garden. 

This time of year it is always hard to keep up with the weeding and canning too. And I had been canning so much that the garden upkeep had suffered. 

So with a cloudy Monday morning it was the perfect time to catch up on the weeding and pruning as well as picking what was ripe. 

Yellow tomatoes, cucumbers and cherry and pear tomatoes

Squash, okra and those big Brandywine slicers.

By noon the sun has popped back out so I am catching up on weekend laundry and taking care of the vegetables harvested today. Supper tonight is spaghetti sauce and garlic bread and oven fried breaded yellow squash. 

Had a really quiet weekend and got lots accomplished with canned tomato sauce and clipped and groomed both dogs and hubby too. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Canning Field Peas

Well nothing says southern more than peas. Not those fancy little green English peas. No I'm talking about those salt of the earth regular old field peas. Also known as cow peas, crowder peas, or maybe them Mississippi purple hull or even pink eyed purple hull. You know when your garden is "comin in" when you sit down to a plate of Hoppin John or maybe just some peas cooked down in ham hocks. Sit down to that and some sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, maybe throw some okra in them peas, some sweet buttermilk corn bread and a glass of sweet tea and you have a meal fit for a king. A southern king maybe but a king never the less.

And indeed my peas have come in. So Baby O, grandson Hank and I spent Thursday morning shelling peas. Once Hank's mom came and picked him up it was time to can peas. First I wash my shelled peas and pick through them good. 

While I am washing my peas I put my spaghetti cooker on to boil and also put on my jar lids to warm. 

Once my water is boiling my peas go into my cooker for 3 minutes and then I dump the hot peas into my giant colander. 

They are rinsed again and allowed to drain well. 

And there you have blanched peas. At this point if you wanted you could spread these on cookie sheets and freeze to bag later in Food Saver bags. But with a pig to butcher in the fall and 40 turkeys to go in the freezer. Not to mention chickens and a deer or two. Freezer room may be at a premium. Therefore I am going to can these field peas.  

So I take and fill my quart jars about 3/4 full with blanched peas and add 1/2 teaspoon of canning salt to each quart jar. 

Then I fill each jar with boiling water

Then remove air bubbles.

Wipe rims with a clean dish towel.

Then finger tighten hot lids and rings and place in pressure canner. Each 7 quart jar batch is canned at 10 pounds pressure for 50 minutes. 

While I am waiting for the pressure to go down on one batch I get the next batch ready to go in the canner. This evening while Baby O was on a babysitting job and O Wise One was at a Township board meeting I managed to can 18 quarts of peas. I also managed to fill up the roaster with another cooking of tomatoes for sauce. So that's my job for tomorrow. I'll finish cooking down and canning tomato sauce. 

If you would like to follow along or maybe try your hand at canning peas you can find this recipe on page 68 of the Ball Blue Book (100th Anniversary Edition). This method is used for blackeyed, crowder or field peas. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Laura Williams Canning Carnival

RAIN

I feel like we have been blessed. It rained last night and O Wise One estimates about half an inch. Not enough to end this drought but we will take all that we can get. Atleast it is a little break from the oppressive heat this morning as the clouds still linger. 

Baby Hank spent the night last night while his parents attended a birthday party for a friend in the city. This morning He and Grandpa are enjoying grits and butter biscuits with strawberry jam. Both seem pretty pacified at the moment. 

On the canning front I got another dozen jars of tomato sauce canned yesterday before Hank arrived. Today the agenda is to shell field peas to be canned as soon as Hank goes home. I don't like to can with a toddler underfoot. 


O Wise One has already picked another bucket of squash and zucchini to be dealt with and the tomatoes and okra need picking again.


Well Hank, Baby O and I are off to shell peas. Hope everyone that needed it was blessed with rain as well.

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter 

Corn

O Wise One was curious on the ride home from the post office today. He wanted to know what the corn looked like in the large commercial farmer's fields along the roads. As most of you know we live in Northern Missouri. The land of farms, windmills, white clapboard farmhouses, gravel roads and corn, wheat and soy beans and did I mention CORN. He stopped and picked an ear to see what it looked like. Most of the stalks had no ears at all. He did find the one pictured above. Notice how few kernels are on the ear. 

This is what field corn ears are supposed to look like properly filled out.

Hundreds of thousands of acres of corn

Same with soybeans

Now intermixed with all this grain you will find a few small family farms sprinkled here and there. And a few pastures with small herds of cattle.  And occasionally a hog farm. 

But initially the area is pretty well dominated by corn, soybeans and wheat. 

Makes you wonder what will happen in the future doesn't it!

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Still Freezing

Tuesday July 24, 2012

We continue to harvest despite the drought. Okra native to Africa seems to actually thrive in this heat. You can tell the crops that originate and thrive in those hotter climates. The sweet potatoes, field peas and okra are just continuing to grow. We are harvesting okra everyday now and blanching and freezing small batches as we go. We may not be picking bushels but that freezer and pantry are filling never the less. 

The red beans are done. I shelled all day yesterday and they froze over night after being blanched. We are up to 20 bags in the freezer which is great since I have a good 10 bags left from last year that will need to be used first. Believe it or not they were still blooming but we pulled them up to make way for the next crop of something. Now to move on to the field peas. 

Like okra the squash just keep on going. We have been supplementing water every other day though.  I think those squash plants have had every kind of garden pest known to man at this point. The newest is squash bugs. Lets see we started out with blister beetles, then cucumber beetles and now squash bugs and a few aphids as well. I also am starting to see a few white flies I think. They are still going though. I have some other newer plants planted away from them so I will let these go until  they expire or are eaten. Hopefully the bugs will let everything else alone. I am still freezing 4 or 5 bags every other day though. 

The roaster is full of tomatoes cooking down again back in the laundry room. Hopefully another batch or two of tomato sauce. Also have about 10 bags of tomatoes frozen in the freezer to be processed. 


Grass fires off in the distance today had everyone a little nervous. I think they have it out now for the most part with only one home and a couple out buildings lost. Unsure how many acres burned. Too busy canning to go find out : )

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Monday Morning

The Sunrise was beautiful this morning! Projected high temperatures for today are 105. We spent most of the weekend watering animals several times a day and trying to stay cool. O Wise One is picking another row of red beans as I write on this Monday morning. He picked and I shelled a row of them yesterday. I am trying to pick and shell a row a day. Once the red beans are done then I will start on some field peas. We continue getting lots of okra, tomatoes, cucumber, squash and zucchini.  The watermelons and cantaloupe are growing and getting big. I can't wait for fresh melons daily. 

With onions to chop and freeze or dehydrate, new potatoes to can, peas to can and tomatoes to cook and can my posts will not be as often for a week or two. I will try to take lots of pictures and do a couple of tutorials as I go for all you new canners but for the most part I need to quickly knock these things out and get done with them. Although I love you all..... getting my winter stores put up and feeding my family has to be my priority right now. 

Our drought conditions continue here and the local news are filled with warnings. Extreme heat warnings, fire warnings and such. The farmers are starting to sell off stock. Many soybean farmers are starting to bale their soy beans as hay to feed their cattle. The radio warns local farmers not to feed their cattle their ruined corn stalks because of high nitrates. Hay is up to $65 a large round bale. It is scarce and one neighbor said that as he baled his field there were 3 different people that stopped and tried to buy it straight out of the baler. I am afraid most of the local crops are lost. Our own last sweet corn crop has not filled out and we are feeding it to the turkeys/chickens and pigs. Ours is not high in nitrates : )   If we had cattle it could be chopped for silage as in days gone by was a regular practice before high nitrate fertilizers. I can remember my grandfather chopping corn stalks and mixing the chopped pieces with grain and molasses for the cattle.  

Like rebellious teenagers our 5 turkeys would not go in last night to roost with Mama Hen. They decided they were going to roost in the tree above her cage. There was no coaxing them down as they stared at us from a good 30 feet above us on the branches. So we reluctantly left them knowing that they would probably not be there in the morning. This morning there were only four and a pile of feathers beneath the tree. The owls had found them. From years of experience we know that everything must be secured at night in predator proof pens to survive here in The Holler. So now our 4 remaining turkeys will have to remain in a pen no longer able to roam freely. We were lucky they only got one. I will miss them following me around the place begging for me to throw them treats and Mama Hen struggling to catch up.

Rocky and Bullwinkle the new baby goats are now tethered out EARLY every morning to forage near the weed patches around the farm. Once the sun comes out and the day starts to heat up they are returned to their pen for the heat of the day to eat feed and rest. Then late in the afternoon they are allowed to forage again before they are returned to the shed and locked up at night.

All of the animals including the chickens, turkeys, pigs and goats are enjoying daily feedings of fresh vegetable peelings and scraps from the garden and also from the local farmers market vendor.

So as you can see we have fallen into a summer routine of early morning taking care of the animals, watering and harvesting. Then spend the rest of the day replenishing water supplies and canning or preserving what we harvested that morning during the heat of the day. Then repeating our watering and animal care late in the evening at almost dark. Lots of sunscreen and lots of water and staying in the air condition as much as possible.

We continue to pray for a break from this heat and RAIN.......but are ever thankful for what we have harvested and will hopefully continue to harvest in the future.

Blessings from The Holler
The Canned Quilter

A Day Of Canning

The grapes were ripe and I knew that if I didn't deal with them the birds would. Since I already had chicken stock in the refrigerator that had to be pressure canned I figured that I might as well start. So first thing Wednesday morning I picked what grapes that were ripe and brought them inside to make grape juice. 

First I strained the fat off my chicken stock made from the leftover carcass of a baked chicken we had eaten the day before. The bones and fat were boiled down with lots of onions, garlic and celery to make a rich chicken stock to use in soups and casseroles. I canned it at 10 pounds pressure for 25 minutes and started picking my grapes off the stems and washing them. 

Once clean and washed I let them drain while I put a big pot of water on to boil and started my jar lids heating.

Then I put 1/3 cup sugar in the bottom of each jar. On top of the sugar I put 1 1/3 cup fresh cleaned grapes and then poured boiling water over them and sealed. 

Then I pressure canned the quart jars for 10 minutes at 5 pounds pressure. Remove and let cool. When ready to serve simply shake and open the jar and strain out the grapes and chill. I served this to my grandkids throughout last winter and they loved it. 

And I added another 5 jars of chicken stock and 28 jars of grape juice to my pantry. I tried this recipe last year for the first time and will never go back to making it the old way again. My family loves it and it so much easier. This recipe originated over on the Lehman's blog.

I have about twice that many grapes not yet ripe still on the vine and one vine that I haven't picked at all yet so we should have plenty of grape juice for the winter. I think I will send some over for my daughter to put in her basement for the grandkids.

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Laura Williams Carnival of Home Preserving

Daily Farm Update

Thursday July 19, 2012

Early start this morning hoping to beat the heat. Cleaned out the goat yard and also the shed where they sleep. Lots of straw and goat poop dumped on the garden : ) Let the house dry out and we put down new bedding late tonight when we lock them up for the night. 

Weeded the fall green beans. They are really struggling in this heat even with watering. Temperature projected today of 107. That is just not fit for man or beast. Our day will be filled with trying to stay hydrated ourselves and trying to keep all the animals cool and with plenty of fresh water. 

Watched Baby Hank so not alot of canning going on that's okay though because I could use some time off. Spent the day just being a grandmother...: )

Blessings from The Holler 

The Canned Quilter