Storing up the Surplus

We have started the job of storing up all the produce the garden will yield. Although I've done my fair share of eating it straight from the garden too.

I did my first canning of the season this morning. I was rather resistant to starting all that again. Once I got to it, I did feel very out of practice and probably only remembered 2 of the 10 tips and tricks I learned last year. (That means it's only going to get easier as I relearn them, right?)

About three hours of work produced six jars of pickles and two jars of pickled beets:

That seems like a lot of time to me, but like I said, it should get better...

Later I dealt with what was still left of last year's produce: popcorn. I gave you video of us processing it last Christmas, and it has sat in that rubbermaid tub ever since! (Well, we've eaten a lot of it.)

One bad thing was that it still had a lot of chaff and bits of corn silk so I took it all outside and winnowed it in the wind. That got rid of most of the chaff and we shouldn't have such messy counters when we make popcorn now. (The air popper can really blow that stuff around!) Eating corn silk is not so nice either.

After the winnowing, I gathered up a bunch of the containers Troy collects and filled them with popping corn.

And look at that, I even found a "What's Poppin'" tin.

We put the popcorn on a new shelf in the shop, the beginning of our food storage out there. With the basement being so damp, it does not work well for food storage. So out to the dry cool shop it goes! It feels a little strange to keep food in the shop, but then I realized it's no stranger than keeping a table saw in the dining room.

In addition to canning and pickling, Troy is hot to trot to dry food this year. He has been working on a homebuilt dehydrator, not being willing to spend the $300 they're asking for a lesser model:

He put the finishing touches on it this weekend having built the screen shelves some time ago.

It uses light bulbs to build up the requisite heat and a fan mounted in the base to push air through.

Here are the carrots he put in yesterday afternoon or evening:

Those were "regular" sized carrot slices and now, the next afternoon, they are tiny little pieces, and still drying. (I think we're going to be eating a lot of soup this winter!)

That's all I have for you today. Eat well!

Picking Pears and Other Adventures

The word, "free," being a siren call and having a liking for canned pears, I stopped by a neighbour's on Saturday to pick some pears.

I had picked some there last year and they were good, if a little small and misshapen (like you would expect from a private tree). I only got 5 quarts last year and was determined to get more this year.

I went armed with two boxes to fill and a sheet to lay on the ground to "catch" the falling pears and differentiate them from the rotting grounders. The sheet didn't work out so well, but I filled both boxes and got about 40 lbs of pears!

That was the good part. The bad part?

Well, I was using the pole they have available for people to jiggle the branches and "persuade" the fruit to fall. It's a two-piece telescoping jobbie that I was putting to full use. By the end, I was reaching all the way to the top branches. For one, there were good pears there; for two, I figured I was one of the few that could reach that high to get them, so I may as well do them all a favour.

Well, only minutes after thinking that it would be possible to actually get the pole stuck on a branch, that's exactly what happened to me! (Not exactly doing them a favour.) After jiggling the last (very high) branch, I lifted the pole to unhook it from the branch, and I couldn't get it loose. I'm moving the pole around, pulling, jiggling, etc, and then the part in the middle that holds the two halves together loosens, and I am left holding the bottom while the top hangs many feet above my head. :loser:

I packed up my stuff and ran away. No, I'm just kidding. I went to the house, met their dog, and then explained to the "master of the house" what had happened. Did he have a ladder, or should I go home and get my own to get it down? Oh no, he wouldn't hear of it. He would take care of it. So I left with my tail between my legs, not allowed to fix my own mistake. If I hear on the local news that an old man falls off a ladder tending his pear tree, I'm going to feel really really bad.

Later that afternoon I was doing some much overdue weeding and noticed quite a few bumblebees flying around. One of them landed on my jeans. I stood still so as not to disturb it.

It stung me!

I was so stinking mad. Now, wasps are one thing. But I have firmly believed for a long time that bees were the good guys. Leave them alone, don't freak out and they will go their merry way. And they used to look so merry to me. No longer. It's not nice to have one of your life's tenets wiped away. It's painful. (But the sting hurt worse.)

Finally, I can report that our second canner (purchased at an auction while we were on vacation) works quite nicely. Before realizing that we had tomatoes in our very own garden, I purchased a half bushel at the local market/store.And then I canned them. (My latest method is not skin them, slice with the mandalay and pack tight with no water. I run them through my hand-crank mill before using them; the canning makes them soft enough to go through the mill.)

The second canner is a little different than the other and I was a little alarmed at all the steam escaping by the handle (it was really pouring out). But Troy theorized it was just because the handle lock hadn't kicked in. Sure enough, a few minutes later it did and there was no more steam.

It processed in about the same time as our first one (I can't call them "new" and "old" because our old one is new and our new one is old) which is not surprising since they are very close in size. Very convenient.

So I was able to process all 11 quarts at a time. Nice.

By the way, in case you were wondering, if a pear falls from a very high branch and hits right on the top of your head, it bounces quite a ways up before coming down again.

Reaping What You Sow

The garden is really starting to give back now. We're going to have a hard time keeping up. (An old old story.) I'm not so good about checking things every day to see what's ready. I'm more of a check in once or twice a week type. That is perhaps not the best method.

Today, however, I did go out to check the cucumbers. I hadn't been in quite a while and Troy is begging for more pickles because he really likes them. They're relatively easy so I thought I might be able to do a batch tonight.

The cucumber plants look about done, but they still had fruit to offer up. I picked about two dozen, totalling over 20 lbs. Plus we still have a few in the fridge and basement I'll try pickle. (Troy's not so fussy about the crunch so he's willing to try it.) Troy got the prize, though, when he pulled out one I had somehow missed: a cuke that weighed more than 2lbs on its own! It's about as long as my forearm. I let that get a little big for a pickle!

While I was out there, I couldn't help but notice the tomatoes were starting to ripen. We really hadn't had any until now. (Although once again, I was a little late; there turned out to be a lot of overripe ones I had to compost.) Troy planted Vincent Wats and they are huge. The largest topped 1.5lbs.

When Troy came home and figured out I was harvesting tomatoes, he almost did a little jig. He was very happy. I barely got the first bag in before he was slicing, salting, and forking it down. He hasn't had a good tomato in a couple years; and this one was good. I, myself, don't like tomatoes but was just happy that he was happy.

Then he cooked the bacon while I picked the rest of the tomatoes. The plants really got wild and I don't want to say that it is impossible to pick them, but I'd consider calling it completely impossible. It's nuts. But I managed and hopefully the plants can take being walked on. (Can I get a "git'er done!"?)

The other day Troy picked a watermelon and tried it out. It wasn't great. This was a disappointment as Troy thought it was the first watermelon he planted that he was able to get ripen before the season ran out.

Thinking maybe the first one was overripe, today he picked another one. It wasn't any better. More disappointment. (But with less anticipation beforehand, so not as bad.)

While we were at it, we picked a likely looking cantaloupe (musk melon if you prefer):
It turned out to be quite good. Very very juicy.

We've heard rumours that some people can cantaloupe. They mixed it with peaches. I'm not sure I'm going to try it. I'm scared of wasting a lot of good peaches.

With the tomatoes, cucumbers, and pears I picked (more on that later), I think I have enough canning on the todo list.

And no painting today. Very disappointing. I can report, however, that the window trim is done! It went from this:to this:

Much better, isn't it? And remember all that hoopla and drama about the non-paintable caulk? Well, I must have fixed it good enough because all the paint appears to be sticking in place.

All for tonight!

Fancy Pants & Other Wacky Carrots

Determined not to let the carrots get too big for canning (like we did the kohlrabi and beets), I started to pick them Monday night. Having no illusions of getting them all (there are a lot), I looked for bigger ones and ones to pull to thin out what was left.

I was terribly impressed with how the earth is literally cracking along the carrot row. Convincing proof of how powerful slight but persistent pressure can be.

Because you can't see the carrot, every pull was a surprise. Is it a long straight one (unlikely) or is it another wacky wild one? Yup, another wacko! Our hard, compacted soil is causing the carrots to look like alien mutants. I'm sure George Lucas studied carrots before making some of his Star Wars aliens.

It's hard not to see people shapes. Of course, not idealized Vogue or GQ people shapes; more like everyday people "misshapes." The one on the far right outdid the rest by not only having legs and arms, it also had a bellybutton! See:
And of course, base nature that I have, I found other anatomical parts besides bellybuttons:
And I'm sure I don't even need to actually write a segue to this photo of the longest and shortest carrots in the batch:
Not overly impressive, I'm afraid. Troy assures me it will get better after we've been able to work the soil for a few years. And maybe the ones I left in the ground will be bigger by the time I get to picking them.

Peeling these misshapen carrots was an adventure. Troy helped me with that on Tuesday night. We cut them up into sticks because it seemed easier than cutting them into disks. It's been a lesson in accepting veggies that don't look like the "perfect" super store variety. I'm sure their machines would not be able to deal with any of our carrots! (Or maybe they would all be made into those fake "baby" carrots.)

I'm not a fan of veggies and fruits that are bred to look good/uniform and travel well. (Rather than taste...what a thought.) Unfortunately, even though these carrots don't have anything in the looks department, they're not particularly tasty either. (They're ok, but I would like a little sweeter taste.) We're going to try a different variety next year.

This afternoon I did manage to peel and chop the rest and get them canned.

Eleven pints waiting for Troy to try in his lunch. I'm not really into canned carrots, but it's amazing what you eat after you put the work into it. (Like beets.) Plus they do have the super-easy prep thing going for them. There's nothing like canned veggies if you need dinner in a hurry. Can we say heat and serve?

Vacation Prep?

Is it that time of year again? We are being flooded with beans. Isaac picked a huge bowlful a few days ago, and then when I sent him out last night to pick what I thought would be a few stragglers to fill my last canning jar, he comes in with almost as many as I already had. Phew! All from a half row of plants.

All these beans meant we had to do something with them. And that meant on the first night of my vacation, the night before leaving for a week, I was canning beans. Does that make any sense?

I was happy to find my canning journal and make the entry. (Can I really be that organized?) It was fun to read last year's. I had already forgotten most of the details (naturally) and it was amusing to read notes like "forgot to remove the skins" on one tomato entry. I mean, how could I forget to remove the skins? But apparently I did. I didn't have many favourable remarks about how the applesauce came out either but it all got eaten, so it couldn't have been that bad!

Entry 1 for 2009 is for 7 quarts of beans with 1 tsp of salt. Out of our own garden. Troy figures that's about 3 month's worth of beans. (Cause we're sure not eating them every night.)

Eat well.