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!

A day on the farm

Today was an easy day on the farm.  I did my normal barn chores, cooked breakfast for Ed and saw him off to work.  Then I cooked breakfast again for the girls when they got up.  I straightened up the house a bit.  Then I made more laundry soap.  Fixed some lunch, put the eggs in the cartons, wondered around looking at the garden, taking note of what needs picked and processed next......can we say tomatoes????  : )  Then I took some pictures of the greenhouse being built.  Picked some raspberries, yes, we have raspberries in October!  Took a handful of them to Mom and picked one of the last roses to put in a vase for her too.

Yeah, I was very lazy today!  I took some photos of the day to share with you all.

Laundry Soap recipe

2 cups Washing Soda
2 cups Borax
1 bar Fels-Naptha soap
1 bar scented soap

Here is what you need to make some laundry soap.  In addition to water, a bucket and something to grate your soap with.  I cheated and used the food processor.  You can grate it on a cheese grater by hand and that works fine too.

I use the extra bar of soap for a thicker product and it smells nice too.  First you grate your bars of soap.  Add 2.5 qts. (12 cups) water to a pan.  Then add the grated soap and heat and stir until the soap is melted.

This is what it looks like when you first add the soap to the water.

This is what it looks like when the soap has all melted and dissolved into the water.  Turn the heat off.

Then add the Borax and Washing Soda and mix until dissolved.

Next, add 8 cups of hot water to your empty clean bucket.  (I use a 5 gallon one I bought at the hardware store just for making soap in.)  You can see I used my coffee maker to heat the water.  Make sure don't use the measurements on the coffee carafe as those "cups" are 6oz. ones.  I measured the 8 cups of water into the coffee maker with a regular measuring cup.

Next add the soap, Borax, Washing soda mixture from the pot into the bucket with the hot water.  Give it a good stir.

Then  add 2 gallons, plus 3 qts. of tap water to the mixture.  Stir thoroughly again.  This is where I add some essential oils for scent.  I usually use a lavender  or citrus oil of some sort.  Stir again.  Then you let this sit overnight.  It will gel up nicely.  I then pour it into my gallon jugs that I made labels for.  Use a half cup or up to one cup per load, depending on size, and the level of soil on the clothes.

Here is how it looks when all mixed up.

You can see I have almost a full bucket of laundry soap now.  This will last me several months.  It costs only pennies on the dollar.

If you want to read my original post about making laundry soap you can read it here.

Then it was time to fix some lunch for my family.  We have lots of fresh veggies to eat from the garden,  so that is always good place to start.  Earlier this morning I had washed and bagged up my spinach, crookneck squash, onions, broccoli and cauliflower.  So I grabbed those out of the fridge.  Chopped them up and put them in a pan with some olive oil.  Looked like this.

It looks pretty good, but I think it needs something to jazz it up a bit.   So out to the garden I go.

Oh yes, lets pick some flat leaf parsley and some curly leaf parsley, that is always so good!

Oh yeah, how about a couple of tomatoes for color and zing?  Now we are cooking!

Now that looks much better.  To this I added about 3 cups of cooked rice.  It was a scrumptious lunch if I do say so myself!

The next chore of the day was to put eggs in the cartons.  I had two baskets full.  This is several days worth.  How many dozen eggs do you think are in these two baskets?  Go ahead and take a guess!

Okay, I will tell you the answer.  It was 9 dozen with one egg extra!  Aren't those such pretty eggs?  We sell what we don't use for our family.  The price for a dozen eggs is $3.  So when we sell this many eggs, that will buy two bags of feed.  We try and sell enough eggs to pay for the chicken feed, and the feed for the ducks and turkeys.  That way we break even.  One day it would be nice to sell enough to actually make some money on them.  But for now this is good.

We buy 150 blank egg cartons at a time from a place online, then I write our name and phone number on each one.  They are not too expensive.  Sometimes folks bring their cartons back so we can reuse them.  The only trouble is, most people have a habit of cracking open those eggs, dropping them in the pan, then setting the empty eggshell back in the carton.  Which in turn soils the carton with raw egg dribbles.  Or they leave the carton next to the stove and spatter that bacon grease over it.  Sound like your house?  Mine too, until I started selling eggs.  : )  Now I am a fanatic about keeping my egg cartons super clean!  We can't really reuse a carton that is not in pristine condition.  But I do have another use for them.  They are great filled with soil and used to start your seeds in.  Just set them in something that is waterproof so you don't soak what ever it is you have it sitting on when you water.

Here is a photo of my greenhouse being built.  My dad (on the left) and Ed are almost finished with one half the floor.  The girls of course were right there being supervisors to the project.

The greenhouse will stretch another 16 feet towards the gazebo when it is finished.  The dimensions will be 12' wide by 32' long!  That just might be big enough to grow a few plants!  Plus the citrus orchard will live there during the winters.  You can see the stack of windows behind Audrey's head in the picture.  That will be the main part of the walls.  I am so excited to be getting a greenhouse again!

Psst.........want to hear something funny? Guess what the girls were doing out there?  Clipping their finger and toenails!  I thought that was pretty funny!  Beats having them clip them on the carpet in the house right?  : )

And that my friends is how my lazy day went on the farm today.  Tomorrow will be back to the canning.  Oh, and  doing some laundry now that I have soap again! 

May the Lord bless you where you live.

Beans, beets and birthday party!

Saturday was Sally's 7th birthday.  Our youngest is now seven years old.  Time sure flies!  We had her a party at the local pizza parlor.  She had a blast, got lots of gifts and at the end of the day told us "This was the best birthday I ever had!" 

The birthday girl having her pizza.

Sally and her friend Naomi.

On Sunday we canned our small harvest of shell beans.  I got 9 pints of them.  I was happy with them as it was my first year to grow them.  I didn't know they were pole beans, so they never had anything to grow on.  Next year I will be prepared and they will do much better.

 

We did 27 quarts of pickled beets on Sunday.  Then yesterday we did 71 quarts of plain canned beets!  We are stocked up on beets in the pantry.  Here is a photo of some of them cooling after coming from the canner.

I am giving that new stove a workout with my canners this year!

It has proven to be a good purchase.  It is wonderful for canning.  I love how the grates are across the complete top.  Make it easier to set the canners evenly.  Plus I use my power burner for the bigger canner that takes longer to get up to pressure because of its size.  The big canner holds 14 qts jars and the small one holds 7 qts.  So I can do 21 qts at a  time.  Sure makes it go so much faster!

What is next on our list of things to can?  Probably pears, apples and more tomatoes, salsa, peppers, and if I am feeling energetic enough, more pickled beets.  Yes, I have another row of them in the garden waiting on me to do something.  Maybe the pigs would rather have them?  We shall see.

Happy October!

Can you believe it is October all ready?  Time sure flies when you are busy!  The photo above is my first batch of tomatoes.  Remember the photo of the wheelbarrow of tomatoes and peppers?  That amount of tomatoes resulted in 30 pints of diced tomatoes.  I am so happy to have tomatoes on my pantry shelves again!  There are more ripe tomatoes in the garden waiting on my to pick them.  : )  Thank you Lord for answering my prayers and giving us good tomato ripening weather!

This is what is next.  A wheelbarrow load of beets.  This was just one row of beets.  I planted two.  : )  We will have lots of pickled beets this winter to go with those grilled cheese sandwiches.  Mmmmm!  I will also can some plain.  My family loves beets.  

I have a recipe for canning spaghetti sauce and home canned salsa I am going to try.  Also a lacto fermented salsa.  Thanks to Crystal at The family Homestead.  Here is the link to her website if you care to visit.  She has lots of goodies to read about there.  http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/

I have some photos to share of the garden and the orchard too. 

This is a picture of Ed and the girls digging the beets.  My garden is a mass of green by the end of the season.  We put straw between the rows for mulch last year.  Guess what happens when you do that?  The next year grass grows so nicely where the seeds fell out of the hay!

Aren't these pretty apples?

This is a picture of the branches hanging down on the tree where the pretty apples are on the photo above.

Same tree, different shot.

This is another tree that is loaded with apples.  Sorry the photo isn't very good.  We have 5 more trees  that are loaded with apples.  See what I mean about having more apples to do?

Can you see the little fellow on the grape leaf?  We have lots of these little green frogs on our place.  Probably because we have so many bugs for them to eat!

Autumn Blessings

Just wanted to share my pretty Autumn bouquet with you all.  Aren't these such pretty colors?  The yellow flowers are from my Jerusalem artichoke plants also known as sunchokes.  The red flowers are from my pineapple sage plants.  And the light lavender colored flowers are my comfrey plant.

The sun was actually shining for a few minutes this morning when I took this photo.  This is a close up of the flowers.  I am so happy God created such beauty for us to enjoy. 

The header flowers are some Jerusalem artichokes.  They grow like sunflowers and are just so pretty and bright!  Guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.  : )

I pruned my big rosemary bush today

The plant is just getting bigger and bigger.  I had to prune it back like I always do.  So I ended up with a big amount of lovely rosemary.  I am going to freeze some of it and dry some too.  But I have had this idea of making something from it for a room decoration.  So here is what I did.

I took a wire coat hanger, some side cutters, a pair of pliers and some florist wire and my big bunch of rosemary and a few lavender flowers.

Then I cut the hook part of the hanger off and formed a circle.

Next I sorted my rosemary into long, medium and short lengths.  An this is where I got to playing and forgot to take photos of the process.  I arranged the branches of rosemary on the circle and used the small florist wire to attach them to the hanger.  I just kept adding some and wiring it down.  Then I bunched the lavender flowers and some foliage and put it on the bottom and up the sides a bit.   And then I took some wire edged ribbon and made a bow and put it at the bottom of the wreath.  I also made a tab at the top to hang it with.  And this is what my creation turned out like.

You can't see the lavender very well as I am not the best photographer in the world.  (Hmmm, maybe I should buy that book I saw called Digital photography for dummies, or some such title like it.)

 This is a close up of the bow and the lavender.  It should dry nicely and make a dried wreath.  If it doesn't dry nicely and all the leaves fall off the twigs, it will look like a Christmas tree that was kept too long and all the needles fell off it.  It sure smells pretty right now!

So there was my crafty fun thing I did today.  Yeah, I know I should have been pickling peppers today instead.  But sometimes you have to do something creative and just for fun right?  : )

Wheel barrow loads of peppers and tomatoes!

I just finished putting the jars of plums away and thought I had better pick the peppers.  Oh my!  What a bountiful harvest!  This is the second picking of peppers I have picked.  (Say that 3 times real fast.  lol!)  While I was out in the garden I thought since it is supposed to rain tomorrow afternoon, I should pick the few ripe tomatoes so they don't split.  Few????  As  you can see by the photo there were more than a few.  I will not have a shortage of things to do while it rains for a couple of days now will I?  I am so thankful for the ripe tomatoes.  I really need to add them to my pantry shelves this year.

Plum season is over for the year.  I am so happy to be finished with them.  We ended up with 72 quarts canned, two dehydrators full, and one gallon sized ziplock baggie full in the freezer!  Not to mention the many many many we all ate fresh!

The peppers and tomatoes will be canned next.  I have been pickling the peppers, and oh boy are they good!

The big dark green peppers you see are pablano peppers.  They are put into the freezer.

I am seeing the end of the harvest season at last.  The beets and some dried beans are still out in the garden to be pulled and picked.  The cabbage is wanting to be made into kraut and there are a few ears of corn out there to be eaten.  I will let the tomatoes go as long as the weather permits and get as many sun ripened as I can.

Remember my citrus orchard?  Here is a photo of my lime tree.  Aren't those the cutest limes you ever saw??

Here is a picture of one of my grapefruits.  Now wouldn't you believe it?  As soon as I clicked the button a fly landed on my grapefruit and ruined the shot!