Salsa Anyone?

We have been making salsa for days it seems.  What else do you do with a wheelbarrow load of peppers and tomatoes?  I think we ended up with 46 pounds of diced tomatoes, and about 30lbs. of peppers.  We have been canning and freezing salsa for what seems like forever!

I think we will have a good supply laid in for winter when we are finished. The above photo is a close up of the salsa in the pan.

The above picture is of some of the jars after being canned.  Looks more like Picante sauce than sala to me, but it will be good no matter what you call it.

I have a batch of lacto fermented salsa in the fridge.  It is a gallon sized jar full.  Then we have 8 qt zipper baggies of it in the freezer.  I have 13 pints canned and probably 25 more pints to can.  I don't know how much we have eaten fresh the past few days on top of the canning and freezing!  We are surely getting our vitamin C with all those peppers and tomatoes.

More news from the farm would be we bought a second freezer.  We bought it from an ad on Craig's list.  Come to find out it came from some old friends of Ed's.  Small world!

We had to get the second freezer to accommodate our meat supply.  Sadly I said goodbye to my sweet old cow Bessy.  She never was going to give us milk, so we called the butcher.   That was a week ago.  I couldn't write about it until now, as I was too heartbroken to think about it.  I never knew I was so attached to that cow.  She was more like a pet dog to me, than a cow.  We will be buying a new milk cow that is actually milking in the spring.

Here are the girls giving Bessy some apple treats and brushing her before the butcher truck came.  It was a sad morning for sure.  They got over it rather quickly.  It was I who cried for two days!  But of course she was my cow, so I had been so close to her.  Bless her little cow heart!

So with several hundred pounds of beef being processed and in another couple of weeks having the pigs butchered, we really needed that second freezer.  We will have lots of meat from the two pigs and the cow.  Plus my freezer already has chicken in it and the produce from the garden and orchard.

The pantry shelves are looking really good.  For the first time since Ed built the pantry shelves for me, I will have completely filled the home canned shelves.

Harvest season is winding down at last.  I have more tomatoes in the garden and my herbs to freeze and dry.  I also have some apples to juice, make into sauce and just can some for pies.  Then there are the berries and some of the other fruits I froze for making jams and jellies.

Kraut to make too.  Then it will be sewing season!  I can hardly wait! 

How quickly this year is passing.  We have only two months left of this year.  Christmas will be here before we know it.

Here is Audrey showing off her pumpkin that we grew in the garden.  How do you like the hat?  It is a big cabbage leaf held on with her headband.

And here is Sally with her pumpkin and her cabbage leaf hat!  The things these girls do to entertain themselves on the farm huh?

Most of the cabbage are hanging upside down in the basement.  We pulled them up by their roots and trimmed the excess outer leaves, then hung them from the rafters in the basement with baling twine.  They should hold up quite well for some time for fresh eating.  The rest of them will be made into kraut.

That is about all the news here at Bountiful Acres Homestead.  Hope you enjoyed your visit!