Farm Fun Day

My favorite day is one on which I don't have to go anywhere away from home. Today was such a great day! The weather felt like early October ... in late July!? What's up with that? "Weather Perfection," that's what's up! Adam went out at 6:30 a.m. and started by scything the field. He hasn't been able to do that since he injured his hand, but now he can grip strongly enough again. Then he proceeded to weeding sweet potatoes and mowing.

While weeding, he unearthed a couple of early sweet potatoes. At least now we know they're down there!
I went out later, picked tomatoes, green beans, and cucumbers. I canned 3 pints of tomato sauce.

I yanked a big basil plant out of the ground and picked/cleaned its leaves.

 With olive oil and salt, I pureed it in the food processor.

 That huge plant yielded one 1/2 pint jar of ... basil sauce? It's not exactly pesto. Anyway, I topped it off with a layer of oil and put it in the freezer. Then I did a second one. Since I had 25 massive basil plants in the garden, that means only 23 to go!

 I had a bit of leftover tomato sauce and basil sauce, so I boiled up some pasta for lunch, and it was quite delicious. Fresh picked items give such a burst of flavor.

I rested up after lunch, and then started on the cucumbers.

I used the recipe at this link to make over four quarts of refrigerator pickles.

 The cayenne pepper and dill are from our farm too.

 And we finally picked the big watermelon we'd been watching grow for many weeks. It's cooling in the frig. It was a volunteer plant.

A farm work day is quite fun when it's productive, when you can look around you and see the fruit of your labors. It's quite satisfying. Adam sees a tidy lawn, a neat potato bed, lots of tall grass prepared for compost. I see jars of fresh foodstuffs preserved for later use. I know this work can be wearying when you do it for 40 years, but for us, it's still new and fresh. Thank you, Lord, for such a beautiful day!

Egg-Layers, Sick Hostas, Mason Jars

My henny-pennies are doing their job! Other chicken ladies say that they have fifteen nesting boxes for 40 hens ... and all the hens use the same two boxes, haha :) Well, I have three hens laying so far. Two nesting boxes (below). And nobody, but NOBODY, cares to share the space. One lays in one box. One lays in the other box ...

And Ethel hunkers down in the dirt between the nesting box and the wall, and deposits her daily egg there. Good grief!

The is Punkin. She's crazy. She's laying about every other day. This is an old ant mound in their chicken yard, but now it's their bath.

Hostas in the front flower beds were an utter failure. I really wanted them to thrive there, but it was clear they would not cooperate. Too Much Sun. So we took them out, poor things.

We moved them to a shade bed on the side of the house.

The one above survived the best. The one below -- argh!

Here's where we put them, near the three hostas that have loved living here:

In their place in the front beds I put lantana and echinacea.
The three healthy hostas had flowered, and the stalks with seed pods were hanging around. Normally I'd cut them off and throw them out. But then I wondered ...

What if I harvested the hosta seeds and started my own hosta plants next year? Does anybody do that? Well, yes! I found a only-slightly-long-winded-and-annoying youtuber who told me how.

Hosta seeds are light-weight, flat, and black. Each pod has about a dozen, I guess.
I'm waiting on some of the green pods to dry, but I already about about 100 seeds. I put them in a half-pint Mason jar with a cloth lid.

It would be lovely to have my own hosta plants to put in the ground here; we have so much shade. And I love hostas.
Just this afternoon a good friend gifted me with many, many canning jars, Ball and Mason.

That's 23 quart jars in beautiful condition that I washed. There are that many again of wide-mouthed pint jars. I'm so excited! I may not need them this year, but I do hope in the future to can lots and lots of green beans and other veggies from our garden. Yippee!!
Today was hot and somewhat miserable outside. 90 degrees :(  But we know that autumn is coming soon, so I'm already burning candles ...

That's a Bath and Body Works "Pumpkin Woods" 3-wick candle, and the one behind is called "Clove and Chestnut." They were 1/2 off, plus a had a coupon for a free one!

I even sprung for a new autumn tablecloth from WalMart. I love pumpkins. The fall farm is looking quiet and comfortable.

What to Do with Too Much!

Even after the farmers' market, I still had lots of small tomatoes left over today.

These are only a few of them.

 I've made tomato sauce. Now it was time to dehydrate some tomatoes. Adam's working on the BIG dehydrator, but we do have a small electric one, so I used that.

This is the BEST tomato ever! It's called a Garden Peach tomato. It's so pretty, very firm flesh but without a real shiny "skin" like most tomatoes. It has a sweet, zippy flavor as a tomato should.

 I capped this one and ate the whole thing like an apple.

All the tomatoes fit in there. Yay! The bad news, however, is that if I went outside and picked tomatoes (which I really, really should have done today, but I didn't) I'd have that much again. Sigh.
We also have figs coming out our ears, as they say. I've made preserves, and the dehydrator was already full, so I found a new recipe ... fig chutney! I chopped all the figs. (I sold two big packages at the market.) These are only the ones we could get from the bottom of the tree. There's more than two pounds here.

 I washed, stemmed, and quartered them.

I put together two recipes I found online, and I'll give it to you as I made it. I used coriander seed!! Yippee! A use for all that dried up cilantro! I ground it up in a mortar/pestle with some peppercorns.

Fig Chutney:

Into a heavy sauce pan (I used a cast iron chicken fryer), heat two tablespoons veg oil. Add a medium thinly sliced onion and saute for five minutes on medium. Turn down to simmer.
Add:
1 cup white raisins/sultanas
1 cup dark brown sugar
a cinnamon stick
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. ground allspice
1/2 tsp. ground  peppercorns
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
juice and zest from one lemon
2 tsp. grated fresh ginger
3/4 cup - 1 cup very good balsamic vinegar
Simmer this mixture for about 30 minutes, uncovered, depending on how dark and how thickened you want your chutney to be.
Add the chopped figs. I had over 2 pounds, I think. Cook on simmer (but the chutney should be bubbling) for another 15-20 minutes. The longer you cook it, the more translucent the figs will become.

Mixture before adding the figs

finished chutney

Okay, you say, but ... what do you do with it? 

Looking online, it seems chutney is not used on buttered toast for breakfast, so it's not a jam :)

It's more like pepper jelly -- good on cream cheese and crackers, good to marinate pork or beef. 

Some put it on crusty bread with a strong cheese -- sharp cheddar or Roquefort.

Someone makes chutney and peanut butter sandwiches!

The taste of the chutney is complex, rich, sweet, spicy, and a bit hot -- the ginger does that.

This batch made 2 and a half pints.

Yay for using more figs!!!

Disclaimer: I didn't really measure all those ingredients. I'm estimating what I thought I used. The online recipes had measurements in metric ... ugh!

Experimenting with Fig Preserves

The figs are ripening each day. We have to get them before the birds do!

I picked a few on Tuesday and made some preserves. Yesterday Adam got a ladder and picked another bowlful.

Fig preserves are the easiest preserves to make, I think. You need no pectin. Whether you have a pound of figs or you have great piles of them, you can make preserves. For each pound of figs you need 3/4 cup of sugar (roughly) and a lot of thinly sliced lemon (with the rind), about one lemon per pound of figs. That's it! Stir it well, let it sit for about 1/2 hour, and then start cooking it slowly until it boils.

On Tuesday I had some lovely preserves going until I was waylaid by Facebook! Shame on me. I smelled an awful smell, ran to the kitchen, and sure enough -- my fig preserves had burnt on the bottom. Not one to waste anything, especially something I'd worked for, I gently removed and lifted the good preserves from the burnt stuff on the bottom, and canned the good stuff. I made about a pint.

Yesterday I fared better. The only secret is to cut each fig in quarters so the preserves aren't too chunky, and to cook it a long time -- maybe an hour, stirring often -- until the fruit becomes translucent and the sugars thicken into a syrup. This ensures good texture and good taste. 

Yesterday I got two wide-mouth pint jars from my canning, plus extra in the frig. Today I'll do more. It's not a hard job, and for preserves I do not use a hot water bath. Because the sugars are so very hot, all you need to do is turn the jars upside down after you've filled and sealed them. Leave them upended for about 20 minutes, then turn them right-side-up again. They should pop/seal quickly. I'll be eating these preserves up so fast, I'm not sure it would matter!
We have two other fig bushes across the yard, and they give a totally different fig - I'm so tickled! I'm not sure about the big fig tree -- it's probably a Brown Turkey or a Papa John -- but the other two bushes might Italian Blacks. I'll be preserving them today.

Do you have figs in your yard? Do you make preserves? Do tell!

Canning Little Tomatoes

In desperate need to do something with all these tomatoes, this morning I started canning. The only tomatoes I didn't can were these -- the smallest cherry tomatoes. They're small as the end of your finger and so delicious.

I take those little tomatoes and put them in a bowl. I spoon on a little of this 1:1:1 dressing: one part veg. oil, one part good vinegar of your choice, one part white sugar. What a pop of flavor! I gobble them up.

Last night we picked a lot of tomatoes, and this morning I picked even more. In this photo you see garden peach, besser, black cherry, white cherry, juliets, yellow pear. I also picked lots of cherry chocolates and green grape. None are what you'd call "big, full-sized tomatoes." You can't make BLTs with these.

I put on big pots of boiling water, one to sterilize my jars, lids, and bands, and one for the hot water bath. The two pots on the back are two kinds of tomato sauce: red and white!

I separated the white and red tomatoes from each other, thinking it would be neat to can some white tomato sauce. What do you think? Might be tasty and interesting a couple of months from now on pasta.

I capped all the tomatoes and put them (skins and all) in the blender and pulverized them to a creamy liquid. Then I heated them well on the stove -- steaming but not boiling.

The white sauce above, the red sauce below:

I'm determined to get a good seal on these babies so they will stay safely canned for months. I turned them upside down (for 15 minutes) after removing from the hot water bath (for 20 minutes).

I'll keep them on the dining room table and check their seals several times a day. They've already "popped" down. So much fun!

Do you enjoy canning? Do you do it each year? Next canning project: fig preserves!