Tag: garden

More and More Jars -8/7/2019

It is that time of year when part of every day is spent harvesting, prepping for the freezer, or canning. I don’t like to use plastic, so even most frozen stuff goes in jars, then neatly stacked in wire baskets or canvas bags in the chest freezer. Mostly now is canning. The morning harvest wasn’t huge, but since there was 1/3 of yesterday’s tomato purchase plus a couple pounds from the garden, I’m ok with that. The tomatillos are prolific, the cucumbers that I thought were done just provided half a dozen more and more growing.

The product that takes the longest prep are the spicy Bread and Butter pickles, so the cucumbers, peppers, and onions were sliced and salted and stowed away in the refrigerator until time to heat them in the sugar brine and can them. One daughter in law loves them and I usually only make a single batch of 4 or 5 pints as the past few years the cucumbers haven’t produced much. This year there will be 3 batches done by the end of today, a total of 14 pints. One pint was delivered to her when grandson was returned home last weekend.

Once they were salted, the tomatoes that were harvested this morning were blanched and peeled, the frozen ones dumped in a sink of water to thaw enough to peel and chop, dumped in the big pot with herbs, salt, and citric acid and cooked down for canning.

Also from this morning was the start of the pepper harvest and some of them were cut and seeded to dehydrate, 2 were added to the pickles, and 3 were used with the tomatillos to make another batch of Tomatillo Jalapeno jam.

There are still several quarts of pickled Jalapenos from last year, so some of this year’s will be dehydrated and some sliced and frozen to use in chili and casseroles this winter.

The final result today from the remaining tomatoes, and the bucket of produce from this morning’s harvest was 8.5 pints of tomato sauce, 5 half pints of Tomatillo Jalapeno Jam, and 4 pints of spicy Bread and Butter pickles.

I started at 8:30 this morning, took a lunch break and trip to the local village store for more lids, and I ended at 2:50 p.m. with jars and more jars cooling on the counter to be added to the shelves tomorrow. Now time to rest.

The garden had me intimidated earlier this summer, but now that it is producing, the putting by being done, I look forward to enjoying and sharing the labors when the cold winds blow and the snow flurries this winter.

August 7, 2019
Olio- 8/6/2019

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

I arrived home yesterday morning, having left son’s house at 6:15 a.m. when he and grandson left to catch the vanpool for son to go to work and grandson to begin another basketball camp hosted by the University coach. We had the vet due at the farm about an hour and a half later. The big guy can no longer load and unload and he needed a couple of vaccines and a snap test. Since she was going to be here, we had her look at the German Shepherd who has a lump on her snout and also needed the snap test done. Both dogs are heartworm free and the cytology on the snout lump showed no infection so we are on watch mode there. The big guy loves most people, doesn’t mind the vet, seeming to enjoy the extra attention. The German Shepherd is skittish as they can be and has to be on a leash and wearing a soft muzzle for most of her exam, but she allowed the attempt to draw fluid from the lump without too much squirming.

After that visit, I felt like I had already done a full day so we went to town to run errands and get lunch only to find that a huge area housing many of the non fast food places were experiencing a power outage that ended up lasting well into the evening. We decided to get a bit farther away from there and stopped at Zaxby’s. The clerk at the counter looked like either a recent retiree or soon to be retiree. After taking our order, he said, “I guess I could give you the senior discount.” We didn’t know they had one and I quipped, we certainly are eligible. He smirked and said, “I bet I have a year or two on you, I will be 61 in September.” Well, I couldn’t resist letting him know that I have more than a decade on him and hubby stating that he was older than I was. That made me feel good for the day.

This morning, we set out to get a newspaper, chicken feed, and dog food, and they were just putting out fresh produce at the community store. I know it isn’t local nor organic, but my tomatoes aren’t doing well, so we purchased a 25 pound box of tomatoes to bring home. After several hours of standing coring, peeling, chopping, cooking, and canning, I no longer feel young. I got about 2/3 of them done, cored the rest and put them in the freezer to finish with some from the garden tomorrow. My water bath canner holds 6 pints or 8 half pints. The first batch was herbed tomato sauce and ended up with 8 pints, so two were packed in wide mouth jars and will go in the freeze, the other 6 were canned. Batch two was pizza sauce and there was enough to fill 9.5 half pint jars, 8 were canned, one will go in the freezer and the remaining quarter pint fit in an open jar of pizza sauce in the freezer to be used first.

The remaining tomatoes will probably be made into spaghetti sauce and a few half pints of it cooked down to more pizza sauce. We do enjoy homemade pizza with my sauce, local mozarella and local Italian sausage.

Daylily season if my favorite flower season. Of the dozen or so varieties, this one, call Sear’s Tower, given to me by a friend, is the last one blooming, the rest finished a couple of weeks ago.

The old timers here, have a saying that every day of August that has fog will produce a snow during winter. I am not superstitious, if it were true we would never get out this winter. This is the 6th of August and we have had dense fog every morning so far.

Once the fog cleared and I was standing at the kitchen sink dealing with tomatoes, I looked out to see a flock of 8 Tom turkeys grazing across the back yard.

The broody Oliver egger won’t give up. I have tried cold water, isolating her from the nesting boxes and other hens for 48 hours and nothing has worked. This is the third time she has become broody this summer, stopping and laying for a week or so then going back to broodiness. I give up. I guess she will give up eventually, I take eggs many times a day so she is sitting on empty nests. I think this fall, I will purchase 4 Buff Orpington chicks if I can get them and raise them over the fall so they will lay next spring and not try to raise more than that, they will provide enough eggs for us. In the spring, a small flock of Freedom Ranger or similar meat birds that grow to full size in only a couple of months will be purchased and raised separately from the egg laying hens. The cost of pasture raised chicken at the farmers’ market, since we have the facilities to raise them, makes it worth our time and effort.

August 6, 2019
Quiet Monday Back Home- 8/5/2019

The past few weeks have been quite active. Three weeks ago, eldest grandson came for his annual summer visit. We love having his visits for a few weeks. He loves it here and helps out with the garden and getting to drive the riding mower and tractor. Between the last time I saw him and this trip, only a few short months, he sprouted taller than I, though I still outweigh him by too much.

We got some projects accomplished, though not all I hoped for due to persistent heat, thunderstorms, then other activities getting in the way, like a day trip.

Week two, we added two of his cousins to the mix, two grandchildren that live nearby. We had arranged for them to participate in a history summer camp for the week, with eldest grandson and me as volunteeer helpers. I think we all had fun and some history learned. Following camp, the younger two came back to our house til their Mom got off work. During the weekend, eldest grandson and I did get some garden work done.

Week three, we had all three kids all day for the week. During one day when they were “playing” together (not sure that their activity was really play or ganging up on each other), I got some fall vegetables planted in the garden.

Sprouts in the fall veggie bed, but nothing in the cover crop bed behind it.

Machado pumpkins, not a single bloom, but they are keeping the weeds at bay.

Grandson eldest ended his visit with us with a couple of days of basketball camp in Roanoke about an hour away. His camp was Friday evening and we stayed in Roanoke for the three hours, getting dinner and browsing the bookstore before picking him up and returning home. Saturday was all day, I took him in the morning, returned home to do some canning and cleaning and prepped dinner while hubby went to pick him up in the evening. Yesterday, hubby took him in the morning while I gathered belongings, got laundry done, finished cleaning, and drove over to pick him up and drive him 3 more hours to his home. It has been a busy, often hectic three weeks and we loved it. Now for a few days of rest.

Up next will be fall canning, a fall fiber retreat at a new location, and possibly some help with eldest grandson as his family works on a new to them dwelling and move as school starts and jobs conflict.

No more signs of snakes in the coop, I guess the 6 footer was the culprit and he is now far away.

If you have been missing me, the blog has had some technical issues. It looks different now, there are no archives, but there is a “Like” you can use, still a place to comments, and a place at the bottom to subscribe if you are a new reader and want to be notified when new posts are made.

August 5, 2019
Olio – May 8, 2015

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things.

Hardened off veggie plants waiting for the garden that isn’t ready for them.

The last free range time until we get the fencing up around the garden. The fluffy critters ate half of the sweet potato plants I put in earlier this week.

The annual spring Turkey dance. Flocks of 14 or more with the Tom fluffed up with chest puffed out and tail spread like the children’s drawing of a Thanksgiving bird.

Nearly 400 yards of undyed Dorset lamb plied and 200 yards of Coopsworth spun and plied. I can’t decide whether to dye the Dorset or what to do with it, but the Coopsworth is for me. A sweater once the huge bag full is all spun, plied and measured.

The first flowers from our garden.

A nice weekend ahead with plans to deconstruct the compost bins, weed the remaining garden beds and get the seeds and plants in the vegetable beds.

We are half a week from chicks, we hope. Broody Hen is being a great Mom, I hope she is rewarded for her efforts.

Loving our mountain farm.

May 8, 2015
What to do when you can’t garden

I want to get in the garden and get the weeds out, to get the seedlings and remaining seeds in, but it is too soon and too wet and I have a problem with the chickens digging up a couple of beds that I have started. I covered them with row cover and the spring winds keep blowing it off. As soon as the cover is off, one or more chickens are in. I have planted Daikon radishes twice to find them scratched out before they are a couple inches high.

The tomato, tomatillo and pepper seedings are being hardened off with a bit more sun each day and brought back into the house for the night. We are still 9 days from the last average frost date here when we will put them in the ground, plant the other seeds and start on maintenance until the produce starts coming in. Many of the locals haven’t even plowed or tilled their gardens yet.

Before we do this, we are going to reduce the chicken runs so they can have more free range time and use the fencing to keep them out of the gardens.

In the mean time, as we have had a couple of days of rain, I have been spinning. At Hawk’s Nest Retreat, I bought enough if a beautiful Coopsworth 2 way swirl from Debbie Martzell, one of the vendors, to spin then knit myself a sweater. The beautiful roving has been sitting in a plastic bag waiting for me to get my Etsy shop up and running and to finish spinning some fiber I had started. I had 8 ounces of undyed creamy white Dorset lamb from the prior Hawk’s Nest Retreat on too many bobbins that were awaiting my jumbo flyer in order to ply them. That has been plyed and is now awaiting a large skein winder so that I can see how much yarn I actually created, my Niddy Noddy isn’t large enough for the skein I have to create. Yesterday, I started spinning the Coopsworth. It is a delight to spin and the color is so lucious.

My knitting and spinning friends will grin, the color is so me. Someday, I may venture to other shades, but teal and blue seem to grab me most.

On the chick watch, we are on day 4 for 5 eggs and day 3 for the other 5 eggs and Broody Buffy is being such a good Mom. She leaves the coop first thing each morning for a bit of food and a drink and goes right back to her nest. Every evening, as I move her off the nest briefly to check, there are always one or two extra eggs that other hens have laid and she has pushed under her. The second Ms. Broody hasn’t committed to really being broody yet, so we don’t have two sitting. I’m still hoping for another brood of 10 before too long.

May 1, 2015
The Good and the Bad of Spring

Forsythia blooming, Lilac leaves unfurling. Frightful and her sisters have found the perches in the chicken tractor and instead of being Frightful, she should be Frightened as they won’t come out and play in the yard. Apples, Asian Pears and Peaches are blooming. The Buffys are being generous. The Maples are all lime green with flowers and oh the pollen.

The dogs are shedding fiercely requiring daily vacuuming. The garden is going to require some sort of major rework to keep the Buffys and Romeo from scratching up every seedling that is emerging.

I am in a fog. Though I was never allergic to things growing up, I seem to be developing more and more allergies as I age. It started about a dozen years ago with my first and major case of poison ivy, followed by more and more serious reactions to paper wasp stings and this year my eyes are gritty and my head stuffed full from the indoor and outdoor spring allergens.

Because of the reactions to stings, our youngest son with funds we fronted has established a bee hive in his yard in Virginia Beach and applied for a grant that will refund part of what was invested and with that he hopes to get a second hive. He will maintain the hives and we will enjoy our share of the honey they produce. That is a win/win as far that they and we are concerned. I wish the hives could be here to benefit our garden and flowers, but it is not a risk I am willing to take with the nearest medical facility at least 20 minutes away. The same son is a Paramedic and he said that most Doctors won’t prescribe an Epi Pen to seniors due to other risks. I guess I should visit our Doc and inquire.

April 13, 2015
Weekend with the Grands

This is our first solo weekend with the grandkids that are living with us now. During the week, one of them is in school so we still outnumber the other one. Our Saturday morning tradition, even most winter Saturday’s is to go into the town and have breakfast at one of the local restaurants then walk over to the Farmers’ Market to support the farmer’s that brave the cold with their meats, breads, and cold storage vegetables. As we are only two weeks from the full season return of the market, there are still only a few stalls, but more today than in the past weeks, including a new addition to the market with heritage pork. Turns out we know that farmer, so we supported her with a purchase of the thickest pork chops I have ever seen. I hope I don’t overcook them. They are thawing for a meal in a couple of days.

We took the back way home and let the kids see all of the brand new calves in the fields around our farm. This brought us back to speculating about how many we could raise, how much it would cost us to have our field hayed when we kept the hay instead of giving it to the farmer for his work and whether we could make a small profit by raising a small herd for our own meat and to sell maybe 4 or 5 head each year.

Once back home, some chicken chores to add straw to the coop and hay to the extremely muddy run were done while the kids play outside in the sunshine. I want to let the chickens free range, but we just planted some seed in the garden and it is only fenced with two strands of electric which doesn’t even slow the chooks down. I don’t need them digging up my freshly dug, weeded, and seeded beds, or the newly transplanted raspberries, so they will have to remain penned until daughter returns. We will then expand the garden and string plastic poultry fence around the vegetables and let the girls wander again. Or perhaps we can just make poultry netting tunnels over the beds and let the chickens keep the weeds and bugs at bay between the beds. The egg production is up, having gotten 18 eggs in the past two days from the dozen hens. I am hoping that one of the girls gets to feeling broody soon, and I will let her sit a clutch of about 8 eggs to hatch. This will be our first year allowing this and hoping that we will be able to cull some of the older hens and the cockrells that hatch for the freezer instead of raising purchased meat chicks. If this doesn’t happen, I will buy meat chicks later in the summer and raise them until the fall for the freezer. Freedom Rangers or Rainbow Rangers only take about 11 weeks to freezer size and that is what we raised last year and found them to be an excellent table bird.

The seeds we started indoors are beginning to sprout. The flat is on a heat mat in a south facing doorway with a grow lamp. The Roma and Purple Cherokee tomatoes, and the Tomatillos are showing. So far the 6 kinds of hot peppers are still buried, but we hope to see them sprout soon too. Four of the varieties of peppers there are only a couple of plants and they are experimental for us heritage varieties. The others are of many pots of Jalapenos and several Habenos for salsa and chili tomatoes to be canned this summer.

Tomorrow is supposed to be another beautiful day, so perhaps we will take the kids for a walk on the Huckleberry Trail or a hike in the woods if it has dried enough.

Next Saturday we will all drive to Northern Virginia and pick up the eldest grandson for a week too. We will have a house full of younguns to keep us young or run us ragged.

March 21, 2015
Busy Days

Another beautiful day. It was supposed to rain according to yesterday’s forecast, but this morning, it had changed and was a mostly sunny day with only the lightest of sprinkles. I grabbed half a dozen raspberry canes and put them in water as Son #2 would like some of the ones we pulled up. As soon as I can find some cheap pots, I will put them in soil and prune them to give them a chance to establish roots before I can deliver them in April. That was done early when the chicken chores were being completed.

Before Daughter and Mountaingdad got up, I had made two new soap recipes, one with Oatmeal, Lavender buds, and Black Walnut powder. This will be a great body scrub soap once it cures. The other is a Jasmine Green Tea soap. Neither of these soaps have any essential oils or dyes, so they will be good for those with sensitive skin.

After lunch, we experimented with a recipe for Beard Oils for my Etsy shop. Daughter’s husband uses Beard Oil and we thought they might make a good addition to the shop. The lotion bar molds arrived yesterday, so a new batch of Hand Butter bars were also made to add to the shop. The lotion bars, Hand Butter bars and Beard Oils can all be personalized with a customer’s favorite scent or scents or made unscented.

Daughter and I planted the Lacinato Kale, Purple Top Turnips and a 4 X 4′ bed of Daikon Radishes for kimchi this afternoon. They are the last early spring seed.

March 17, 2015
Effort, Disappointment, and a Delicious Surprise

Mountaingdad and I began our morning with a group of others from our county to form the core group of Preserve Giles County to oppose and fight the proposed pipeline. We met for two hours, introduced ourselves and I found that this made me very emotional as we each spent about 5 minutes giving our name and why we were there. It was the first time I have introduced myself to these people and talking about the fact that I was born here, my grandfather was born here and though I grew up in the eastern coastal Virginia, retired here. That our home is a labor of love, Son 1 spending two years of his life doing carpentry and stone work on our house. I installing wood siding, beadboard, cedar and doing flooring and baseboards. That we are invested financially, physically and emotionally in the home we built. The meeting was productive and will move on to a point where we feel we are fighting as a group, not as individuals with a common goal.

The disappointment came when I realized that of the 5 1/2 quarts of broth that I made with the turkey carcass, even though they were chilled overnight in the refrigerator with plenty of head room in wide mouth jars, all 4 that I put in the freezer, broke the jars and all 4 quarts of turkey broth are ruined. The remaining quart and a half were used to make gravy for turkey we have eaten since Thanksgiving. To try to salve a disaster, the remnants of the thighs and the meatier parts of the wings that weren’t really done enough to suit me are currently simmering in another 3 quarts of water. The meat will be made into pot pies and casseroles, the broth frozen in vacuum sealing bags this time for use in soups and future gravies.

The delicious surprise came just a few minutes ago as I went to collect eggs and do a quick survey of the garden plot after last week’s 20 something degrees and the wet snow. The row cover over the garlic had blown free from one end and I wanted to re-secure it. There was kale that had perked back up, not a lot, but certainly enough for a meal, maybe my favorite African Chicken with Hot Greens. And a berry bucket of turnips that weren’t large enough to harvest a few weeks ago. I’ll bet they are as sweet as honey after last week. We will enjoy them within the next day or two as well. The chard is gone, the wormy cabbages went to the chooks with the turnip tops that were too wilted to try to cook. With any luck, we will get one or two more meals of kale, then I guess it too will be pulled for the chickens or heavily mulched with hay for maybe some spring regrowth.

The chooks laid just enough eggs while the kids were here to provide us with a delicious breakfast each morning and to make the pumpkin pies. Yesterday there were only 3 and today 6. It seems that the dozen hens are not really going to be laying enough for me to sell many this winter, but should keep us fulfilled.

Love our life on our mountain farm.

December 1, 2014
A Crisp Late Fall Day

The morning is crisp, actually right around freezing right now, but the sun is warming the day back to normal fall weather after our Arctic chill of the weekend. Even on days like this when the sun is out, the little alcove on the south deck is toasty, sheltered from the NW breeze. The view from the porch swing is stunning, though most of the leaves are gone now and the trees bare until spring. It is a great place to sit with a cup of tea and watch the chickens free range and look out for deer and turkey or listen for the hawks call.
The morning chores are done, fresh hay in the coop, chickens fed, their water and the garden hose thawed. I guess I should bring it in for the winter though that makes chicken chores more difficult as I then have to haul the 5 gallons of water from the yard hydrant to their run.
In spite of the shortening days and frigid nights of late, I have another broody girl. She has plucked her breast feathers as the weather chills and I fear for her winter health. She isn’t being allowed to sit eggs, I am removing them several times a day from the coop instead of just at lock down time. I’ve tried removing her repeatedly during the day, set a bag of ice under her, removed her to a perch at night, blocked off her preferred box (she just moves). Today I will dip her backsides in cold water if the temperature rises enough and put her in the meat bird pen alone for the day.
Romeo has nearly finished his molt and doesn’t look nearly as ragged as when he arrived. His neck feathers are glossy and darker than the hens and his tail feathers are coming back in. He isn’t as beautiful as Cogburn was but still a fine looking rooster and calm and nonaggressive toward people.
The greens in the garden perked back up, a mess of them and a roasted pumpkin are on the menu for tonight.
The reknit of the sweater is progressing and last night I ordered yarns for grands sweaters for Christmas.
It looks to be a good first half of the week, perhaps I’ll finally get the garlic planted or there won’t be any next year.
Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

November 3, 2014