Battle Tactics Against Tomato Invasion

We're being assaulted by our tomato beds. Adam has trimmed (hacked back) the plants, and we've cleaned out the beds. They looked like this (well, worse):

 Now they look like this:

(The biggest problem with our beds this year is we put one rope for each plant, when we needed about 4 per plant. Many vines were on the ground.)
They should recover and keep bearing. Quite a few plants were pulled out for disease.

 

We're getting some nice whoppers; this one's a Brandywine. And I took a pretty platter to church for my personal Adopt-Some-Tomatoes program! Still, we have platters of them on our table at all times.

We had twice that many yesterday. How many tomatoes can one person eat?
This morning I rolled up my farmwife sleeves and took matters in hand. I found an online recipe for tomato paste that appealed to my personal brand of laziness. I loathe blanching/peeling/seeding tomatoes. I simply won't do it, bleh! And when hundreds of them are little tomatoes? No way! Here's the recipe that inspired me:
Easy Crockpot Tomato Paste
The tomatoes are oven roasted with garlic and olive oil. They are put through a food mill to remove skins and seeds. They are cooked in a crockpot. This all makes for less work for little ol' me!

 Cleaned yellow tomatoes cooked on 400 degrees for an hour.

 Take them out and put in a tray of red tomatoes, although I'll just process them all together.

I ran the roasted tomatoes and garlic through my cone food mill.

 

This method is fast, and it removes all the skin and seeds, allowing the juice and pulp of the tomatoes (or any fruit) to pass through. Turn the wooden cone and press firmly until all that's left is dry skin/seeds. It gave a lovely, creamy sauce in the bowl below:

 I did the same with the red tomatoes. I put all the sauce into my crockpot before lunch yesterday and cooked it on high All Day Long, uncovered, stirring it about every hour. At bedtime I turned it to low. I woke at 4:00 and turned it to warm and put the cover on. At 7:00 this morning:

 A thick, rich, pure tomato paste. All those tomatoes reduced into this single quart-sized ziploc bag!

My idea is to keep the paste frozen in the bag until I need some. I'll open the bag, scrape out some with a spoon, and return it to the freezer. I could have canned it also, but even a half-pint jar, when opened, is a lot of paste, and I didn't want it to go bad in the frig after I'd used only a tablespoon of it. We'll see how this works. Regardless ... I'm so happy to have turned SO many tomatoes into one quart baggie! The score this morning? MK: 1, Tomatoes: 0

Making Pear Butter

We have a pear tree. Remember when Adam was lopping big limbs out of the top of it?
He's lopped off branches twice now, and will do it once more. This summer I picked fruit from it, although most of the pears are too high for me to reach. I decided to make pear butter!
First I put the pears in the frig for 24 hours, as many websites said to do. Then I laid them out on the guest bed on newspaper for a week to ripen some. Then I washed them in water and baking soda.

 It's not a huge amount of pears, maybe one somewhat full plastic grocery bag.  But I didn't want a huge project, and if the pear butter turned out horrible, I didn't want to waste ingredients and jars.
Pears are bland, so this is perhaps better called "spice butter." The pears are just a carrier fruit. I also put in two apples that were sitting around, unloved. I cooked and processed it just like apple sauce/butter.
Except -- I added more sugar, more spices, and lemon, orange (about 1/2 cup), and lime juice. All recipes said to add citrus for flavor; most instructed to add orange zest, which I may do next time.

 For spices, I used a cinnamon/clove/nutmeg/allspice blend. It needs more spices than you'd imagine, but you don't want a bland spread. And about a teaspoon of salt; don't forget that! And I mean to say ... ohmygoodness, it's worth it!

I'd been taste-testing it as I cooked it (in the crockpot), and was doubtful. It had just a bit of the grainy texture of pears, and the flavor was just a little odd. But this morning I put it on an English muffin with butter. Wowzer! It's better than any jam in our frig! It's better than my homemade apple butter! This stuff is the bomb.
So now we're going out with a ladder to get more fruit, and I'll begin the process all over again. I'll have this yumminess all winter long!
[Two notes: Pears should be picked before they seem ripe. If you wait until they feel ripe on the outside, they'll be rotten on the inside. Also, cooking any fruit butter in the crockpot requires you to cook it on high for an hour (to raise the temperature initially) and then cook it on low for many hours (like 10, all day long or overnight). Do not put a lid on it either time; the thickening occurs as the moisture evaporates from the pot.]

All Those Glorious Tomatoes!

On Monday I did tomato harvesting, which I do every two days right now. They're coming in! I sorted out the most ripe ones and made canned tomato sauce.

 One is a partial jar we'll use today to make a pizza. Making tomato sauce is time consuming! Seriously -- I could go to WalMart and buy 5 jars of Hunts diced tomatoes with basic/garlic/oregano for $5. Or, I can spent an hour and a half in the kitchen making my own. (Sigh) But it's fun, and I enjoy using the skills and using our own produce. So I do it.
These are all small tomatoes, so I clean them in a water with a little baking soda and grind them up thoroughly in the blender. I add: basil, oregano, thyme (from our herb garden), garlic, Worchester sauce, a little canned tomato paste, and salt and pepper.

 I don't blanch or skin them. That would take WAY too much time.
On my table I have a platter of small red tomatoes, mostly Juliets, Cherry Chocolates, and Red Cherries.

 I have yellow tomatoes, mostly Yellow Pears, Green Grapes, and Mini Oranges.

 And I have a big platter of Matt's Wild Cherries.

I don't make the little babies into sauce. We just eat them straight.
Those photos are AFTER I've removed the tomatoes for sauce.
This morning (Wednesday) I went to pick tomatoes again. And now I have tomato overload!  And I won't be at the farmer's market on Saturday, so I won't be selling any, so we must do something with all these tomatoes! I think I have a day of sauce-making in my future.

 I picked these three bags this morning. That one big 'mater on the end will be a sandwich for lunch :)
They are so pretty and golden!

 

That's a table full of tomatoes! Now I go to sterilize jars and pick herbs.

Farm Chores

*Clip hens' wings. The departure of Ruby has worried me to no end. I'm feeling quite despondent about chickens in general. So Adam and I clipped Lucy's and Punkin's wings this morning, hoping to prevent them from flying over the fence. We are thick in the planning stage for a brand new coop for the babies, far away from dogs and with a small yard covered to prevent them from flying off. Speaking of the babies, they are doing fine:

The silkies are gray. I don't know what breeds the other two are.
 If they are hens, I know they will lay brown eggs, according to Mr. Bob who gave them to me.

I have a sweet friend who offered me a couple of full-size laying hens if I want them. I'm befuddled about where exactly I'd put them, and how they would integrate into the situation I have ... which is less than ideal :(
*Tend to baby chicks. I put some sand in their pen yesterday. This morning I added a little dish of layer pellets to their food choice. They've been pecking at the sand and one silkie was taking a dust bath in it. So cute!!
*Mow. Adam is mowing. This time of year, Adam is always mowing.
*Beehive check. The new swarm Adam caught on Monday has stayed in its hive! Yay!

He wears a hat/net now over his head, but no other gear.
He was not stung once.

*Garden check. I walk around the garden each day several times. This week I put my 25 basil plants into a bed. People had stopped buying herbs at the market, so I figured I'd better get them into some dirt.

Tomatoes are doing well. We're getting a good crop of Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes:

 A few large ones are looking good:

Cucumbers are particularly fine this year too:

We've picked about a dozen cukes so far. Adam made pickles.

 Slim bush beans are starting to bear.

 Watermelon plants in their tires are spreading far and wide! Tiny melons have appeared under the blooms.

 I'm happy to report that the sweet potatoes Adam put in are growing fabulously. We hope for a good crop. I love sweet potatoes!

 My luffa -- I know it's a silly plant, but look at it go! Those posts are about 8 feet tall, and it's now flopping over the top.

It's blooming.

So that's the quick garden check.
*Then I put two dill plants from their pots into the herb bed. The more pickling cukes we grow, the more dill we need.
Now I move on to laundry and other homely chores. Have a lovely day and try to keep cool!

Ramping Up the Soap Business

I had a great day at the Oriental Farmer's Market on Saturday. I sold out of Bee Balm and Insect-Repellent Lotion Bars, not to mention selling a lot of soap and some lip balm too. My inventory is at the lowest it's been in a long time. Time to get to work! Thankfully, I already have two batches of soap at home, cured and ready to sell next week.

the soap scents in these new batches

I'm also out of plantain salve, so I picked some new plantain leaves, and they're now infusing into the oils I use in the salve.

It looks like something from the murky deep.
I keep my various body care recipes in the back of my handwritten cookbook. It was given to me as a wedding present 28 years ago.

I'll be making that salve, scented bath salts, lotion bars, and bee balm this week. I'll be ready for those customers on Saturday!
I've also been saving seeds as some of our garden plants go to seed. Here I'm saving radish seeds.

I also saved peas, spinach seeds, and some  Matt's Wild Cherry tomato seeds.
I sold four packages of tomatoes and four cucumbers at the market. We have so many tomatoes coming in.

My tiger lily bed has been just stunning. I failed to take a photo of it, but I did cut many of the blooms for a huge bunch in a vase for church today. They were gorgeous.

Adam and I returned home this evening from town to find chicken feathers in two spots in the pasture. It looks like Ruby became an escape artist and is on the loose. But there's no chicken carcass, and the dogs are not going crazy, barking at a barn bay or up a tree. And there's not enough feathers to indicate any real carnage. We don't know where Ruby is. She's not responding to my cooing calls of love and treats. I hope she turns up. Adam locked up the dogs tonight, and we're hoping we find her strutting around in the morning. We'll see. She's my best layer, and I do hate to lose her.

A Few New Residents Move into the Farm

My farmer friend Bob gave me two chicky-babies (the yellow one and the darkest gray one), and then today my chicken-lady friend Melody gave me too more (the two gray silkies)!!! It's a big chicken day at Red Robin Farm. Aren't they sweet?
I've been enjoying mornings in the garden. We've had several days of deliciously cool temperatures with occasional rain. I love gardening in cool weather.
We took down the peas and I dried the stalks. This morning I collected some seeds for a fall planting.

 

The pods should be very, very dry before you remove the seeds for storing. I hung more pea stalks on the fence so they could finish drying out.

 And I kept the branches from the wattle fencing because surely I can use them for some other purpose now too?

 

And our watermelon plants continue to grow ...
As do our cucumbers ...

 And our bush beans.

 Here's the sweet potato trench:

 

The plants survived the journey in the mail just fine and are thriving. Adam ordered them from Park Seed.
Today Adam dug out and tilled the long middle bed-that-wasn't-exactly-a-bed. We did put some lettuce in there, and some spinach, peas, Swiss chard, etc. But it was never quite prepared as well as the other beds, mainly because we didn't use it last year (esp. the whole middle section). So now Adam is going back and doing it well, as he did the other beds. He will line it all around with metal or tile.

 

We have a cedar tree in the garden with the prettiest tiny blue berries right now.

 In addition to the baby silkies, Melody also gave me some papaya seeds. I can't wait to start them in the greenhouse and find out how they do! I love having farming friends.

That's it from the farm!