Late Winter/Early Spring Chores

These days my time is consumed with garden cleanup when we get the occasional warmer day, quilting when the weather does not permit gardening and canning. We have so much wood and prunings to burn from all the fruit tree pruning and cleanup we have been doing. We struggle to get it all burned since we still have to get state burn permits until April and with winds they have not been issuing them. 

My sweet potatoes in water are sprouting all over the place and soon I will be starting to root them. Dug out seeds for green peas, spinach, carrots, mustard, spring onions, beets, cabbage and lettuce. Peas and spinach can be planted when soil reaches 40 degrees. March potato crops and bulb onions will go in. The beds are weeded from a few winter weeds that managed to sprout in my beds. The peaches, blueberries, plums, black currants, Nanking cherries and blueberries are all pruned while still dormant. I still need to dig and separate the rhubarb crowns as they are getting too thick. A good 2 inches of compost has been spread on both large asparagus beds. The compost piles that remain from last fall have been turned. I also stuck out a dozen black currants cuttings to root and planted a small patch of potatoes that had sprouted in the pantry. So with a week of rainy weather approaching and 5 inches of rain in the forecast I will wait till the impending storms go through and plant some peas and cool weather crops. About 8 weeks out from average last frost date. 

My time has also been used wisely canning bone broth and I also canned 2 cookings of dried cranberry beans. As I find produce on sale I continue to can in small batches as the opportunity arises. I have about a third of my quilt left to quilt and then bind it and I will be done. I am aiming for the end of the month. As soon as that one is done I have another top ready to go on the frame. Early spring here is usually very rainy and I am hoping to get a second quilt out before summer gardening and canning goes into full swing. 

In the near future as well I hope to spray with dormant oil spray the peaches and plums to help prevent pests. I will also spray under the tree with Neem. 

O Wise One and I remain healthy and Covid free at the moment. We concentrate on each other, the crops, gardens and animals. We continue to eat clean and exercise as often as possible as weather permits. O Wise One in his seventies now and me not far behind yet we remain active, productive and blessed. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter 

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Lots of Apples

It's been a busy week or so here in Hickery Holler. In the spring we watch for the apple blossoms to return and hope that the frosts do not come late in the spring and knock all the blossoms off. 

During the summer we watch with bated breath and pray that the rains come regular and there is no drought that year. We try our best to keep the deer away from the trees and watch for pests. And if we are very very lucky come fall the temperatures start to cool and the leaves start to fall and we are rewarded with a bounty of apples. This year the weather has been kind and the trees are heavy with ripe fruit. 

We just heard yesterday that our neighbor who is in his 70's is in the hospital after falling off the ladder picking his apples. He broke 6 ribs. We are trying to be careful with our picking. 

O Wise One has kept the apple peeler whirring peeling all that fruit. 

And we have managed to pretty well stock up for the year and have shared with several neighbors and friends. 

Lots of apple sauce for the grandchildren. 

And apple pie filling for those winter pies. 

Now we are working on keeping the walnuts picked up. The mower is back in the shop and we are sure glad that the weather is cooling and the grass not growing very fast. 

And lots of apple pies to go around to everyone. 

How's your apple harvest going?

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Plum Preserves

While the blackberries and peaches were a bust this year due to a late frost/freeze the Lord has still provided in other areas. The plums and apples are loaded. With the plums ripening quick it is race with the birds to see who can harvest them faster. I think we have both managed to get our fair share. With them so plentiful I really don't mind sharing with the feathered friends. 

I spent the weekend making preserves my mothers way. Cooking down pure fruit and sugar slow and easy over a low flame to get all that great natural fruit flavor. No pectin just fruit and sugar and a little lemon juice. This is how my mother made all her preserves. Whether it be figs preserves, pear preserves, peach or strawberry they were all made the same way. The three day method. This was the way her mother made them.   

Friday I peeled and sliced 8 cups of plums away from the pits. Then I added 4 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup lemon juice. I let that mixture stand in my non reactive pot for several hours until the sugar had dissolved somewhat. The sugar will draw the juices from the fruit and start to melt and form a liquid. I stirred it every so often.

Now don't forget to add a few slightly less than completely ripe plums to this mixture to help add a little natural pectin for thickening. 

Friday night after supper I brought this mixture to a boil on low heat stirring almost constantly to prevent sticking. Once it came to a boil I reduced the heat just a touch and let it boil on a low boil for about 15 minutes. Then I turned it off and let it cool and put the lid on and forgot about it until morning. 

Saturday morning I got up and repeated that same process after I had prepared breakfast. Bring it to a boil for 15 minutes let it cool and walk away from it. You can see in the photo it is starting to thicken. 

Saturday night after supper I again repeated the same process. By this time it is really thickening and I keep the heat really low and stir constantly. The preserves are starting to sheet away from a metal spoon. Again I cool it and walk away.  

Sunday morning the preserves were at the exact consistency after they had cooled the night before that I wanted. If not I could have cooked them again that day for a time or two. If you like your preserves thinner don't cook them as many times. If you want your preserves not as chunky cut your fruit smaller. The bottom line if you cook sugar and fruit long enough it is going to thicken as long as you don't burn it. If you over cook it this will set up like glue. Remember it is always a little thicker when it cools. Once you do this a few times you will develop a knack for telling when your preserves are at the exact stage of thickening that your family likes.  

I brought my plum preserves just to a boil and let it boil for about 5 minutes to heat it completely through and put it in hot jelly jars and put hot caps and lids on them. 

I put my jars into the hot water bath canner and brought it back to a boil and processed them for 10 minutes to again heat them through and get everything good and hot. Then I took my jars out and let them cool. This made 8 half pint jelly jars of beautiful preserves with a small jelly jar left over that I just put in the fridge for everyone to sample.  

And for the last 40 years that is how I have made preserves. 

My family loves it thick with lots of chunks of fruit and it makes great peanut butter sandwiches. I'll only make a couple of these batches because we just don't eat much jam and preserves any more but I like to have some for when we want a little something sweet on that buttered toast or biscuit. Raspberry preserves made like this makes a great filling between cake layers. 

When I was a child my mother made the best fig preserves from the fig tree in our back yard. She would bake homemade biscuits and my father would split those biscuits and put those thick fig preserves on those biscuit halves and then drizzle the preserves with fresh thick cream from that jersey cow we milked. This is truly a taste to remember even decades later. Who needed fancy desserts.  

Sunday the neighbor came over and I gave her the recipe and a 5 gallon bucket of plums to go with it. May as well share the blessings. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

A Year Round Endeavor

Welcome to Hickery Holler here on this Monday morning. It is snowing this morning !! As most of you that follow this blog regularly know we try to produce as much of our food here on the farm as possible. Not everything because I truly don't know that it is possible but most. When you do that food production and preservation is truly a year round endeavor. Even though we did not produce anything during the cold months of deep winter we spent most of the winter cracking and picking out the nuts we had gathered in the fall. We are down to half a 5 gallon bucket of walnuts left and 1 five gallon bucket of pecans left. For us it is not unusual to have a tray of cracked walnuts or pecans sitting on the dining room table all winter. Our spare moments are spent sitting there picking them out to freeze for later use in my baked goods and such throughout the year. We are blessed to have not only walnut but also pecan, hickory and chestnut here on the farm.  Nuts are so expensive to buy we really try to beat the squirrels to as many as possible. 

The shelled nuts are then put into bags

or jars and frozen. 

It usually takes us all winter to get them all cracked, picked out and frozen.

The nut trees on our property have paid for themselves many times over and have been one of our better investments. It does take a few years for them to bear but once they do it is nice not to have to buy nuts.  

And yesterday O Wise One brought in a surprise for me. Our first bowl of asparagus spears for the 2014 season.  For the next 8 weeks there should be steady supply of asparagus to can, freeze, dehydrate and pickle. 

So the gathering begins again for another year. As one seasons work runs into the next season and we work to finish up the fall nuts just in time for the spring asparagus pickings we are thankful for our bounty and the health to forage and gather it. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Just Kiddin

Over the weekend they predicted frost in low lying areas and temperatures dipping in the 30's. SO we scrambled to get all the apples picked before a frost. 

And the watermelons that were still in the field. 

So O Wise One spent Sunday delivering baskets of apples and watermelons to neighbors and people he thought could use them.  We kept a few for us too. We certainly have gotten used to our nightly small bowls of chilled watermelon. It has taken the place of any baked goods these days as a dessert. 

I continue to dehydrate apple chips for the year. They are in bags, jars and gallon jugs until I get finished.   

So instead of taking my usual Sunday off I spent the day washing and sorting apples. I saved some for my own family and will store them in the drawers of my refrigerator. 

I filled my crock pot with the last of the horticulture beans from the garden before he pulled up the plants and fed them to the goats. I made beanie weenies. And with fresh potatoes, yard eggs and my homemade dill relish I made a bowl of potato salad to go with it. 

I put a bowl of bread dough on the heating pad to rise. 

The extra french bread will be sliced and frozen for garlic bread in the future. The sandwich loaf we will use for breakfast toast and sandwiches for the next couple days. 

And part of a loaf will go wonderfully with our barbecued beans and potato salad. Cold watermelon for dessert and we will have a last summer meal before that frost gets here. By the way the frost warnings did not come to be. We have missed the bullet for another night or two. 

In the meantime we will continue to deliver apple baskets to our friends and neighbors until they lock the doors and hide. There was a time when the house was full of kids and there was  a need to feed many mouths. Now that this old farm produces more than we can eat and the children are gone, maybe it's  just a new opportunity to help those who do need it. 

So as O Wise One pulls up and stores tomato cages and I struggle to sort and deal with these amounts of fruit I thank God for the opportunities before us and  we continue to work preparing for the eventual cold that will arrive. 

I must admit I am ready for a few winter days under my quilt frame, needle in hand. I have grown weary of the canning this year as It seems to have all fallen together at the same time. The spring crops were late and the summer early making them all come ready together which makes canning particularly tiring when it drags on for weeks day after day. It is time for a rest. 

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Knowing Your Food

Monday morning started out like most Mondays. After our Sunday day of rest O Wise One and I make the rounds finding what crops need to be dealt with. For this Monday it was bell peppers, apples (still), peas and potatoes. For many feeding your family requires that weekly/bi-weekly/monthly foray tot he grocery store and their food supply comes to them neatly washed in plastic/paper grocery sacks. But O Wise One and I made a decision long ago that as much of our food as possible will come in the back door in buckets and baskets. I like a saying that Katzcradul, a friend and follower of this blog makes, " If you don't grow your food, you don't know your food". Needless to say from seed to our bodies we know our food intimately. What kind, how it is grown, what's on it and in it, or more importantly what is not in it and on it ! 

One of the trade offs of this lifestyle is that we spend hours weeks and months growing, maintaining and harvesting gardens and fruit trees. And even after the food is harvested we spend hours and days each week washing, sorting, peeling and preserving what we do grow. 

For many this seems like huge amounts of food but think about the amount your purchase over a whole year or more at your house. This year we have a bumper crop of apples, next year we may not. So while we have them we expand that preserving job to encompass a 2 year supply of apple products.  In the picture above you will see a tart pie apple in the bucket on the left and a sweet red eating apple in the bucket on the right. What amazes me is that I do no spraying on these trees other than soapy water around the bottoms and on the trunks. Rarely do I lose a crop to bugs. That is not to say that yo will not find the occasional insect damage but the percentage is small and we have enough to share : ) 

A perfect example of crop loss this year is our walnuts. We like to include walnuts in our diet because they are good for your heart and besides that O Wise One loves them in baked goods and even as snacks. With a late spring snow this year there are no walnuts on our trees. Thankfully we froze last years bumper crop and still have plenty in the freezer. If not we would do without or be forced to buy walnuts. And they are not cheap. 

On the flip side the pecan trees are loaded!

On the list this week is to can all those little tiny potatoes we are digging. The size of golfballs no matter how good you are at growing potatoes there are always a few of those little golfball sized potatoes and there is a limit to how many you can eat fresh. So the little ones go into jars and the ones that may have bug holes or are marred by the potato fork or such will not keep for long and will have to be dehydrated. 

Many things such as these peas will become parts of dinners for the week.

The apples this year are some of the largest we have ever grown. Thinning makes a huge difference not only in reducing the weight on your trees but also in the size of your apples. 

Saucer size apples that are sweet and crunchy make it into our meals often these days. O Wise One loves his apples  sliced with a little peanut butter on the side.  

And even though we have put up enough pie filling and sauce I continue to dehydrate apple pieces for my morning oatmeal during the winter. A little honey and cinnamon and these added to my oatmeal give it a wonderful taste. They can be used for many other things too and will keep forever this way. 

And my refrigerator stays stocked right now with cold sweet watermelon pieces. 

So for now my food preservation continues although not at the frantic pace of a few weeks ago but with some urgency to get it done before first frost.

So for another week I will be in my kitchen, washing and chopping vegetables, filling jars and dehydrator trays in preparation for another year of meals for my family. Freezing, canning and dehydrating all at one time. 

And for now every morning the food stream just keeps flowing in that back door.  

For this Monday morning the first thing I did was to make supper and slip it in the refrigerator ready to pop in the oven. Baby O's favorite Pizza Casserole. 

What's flowing in your back door these days?

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter