October updates

Time flies when you are busy!  Since the last post in September, we have been very busy.  Sally turned 8 years old.  I am going to share some photos of her party.  We actually had it outdoors this year.  Usually it is raining already on October 3rd.  This year we had a dry Fall.  That was so good as it allowed our garden to finish producing.  We had a late start this year so we needed this extra time to let it grow.  Thank you Lord for a bountiful harvest!

 This is a Swinson family tradition.  The birthday person gets the first bite of cake.

 This is how she looked after her first bite!

 The cake before the first bite.

 Sally, behind her is Jadeyn and behind her is little Samantha.

 This is Jadeyn, Sally, Gabriel, and Audrey.

From left to right, Gabriel, Sally, Adam, Josie, Jadeyn, and Lily.  Grandma is in the background. 

These are the birthday girl photos.  We had the party in the Gazebo.  She had a pinata along with the pretty pink cake!

Stay tuned for more photos of the harvest!

How many greenbeans?

I had forgotten to write about just exactly how all those green beans got canned.  Yes, that was 131 qts.  No, I did NOT do it all by myself.  If that were the case, I would probably still be canning them.  : )

On the first picking, Ed and I picked, with the help of my sister Mechelle.  My Mom and Dad snapped them all.  Took them 4 hours that day.  Then  I washed them and Mechelle  put them in jars and I canned them.  Then Ed and I washed all the jars and put them in the pantry.

The second picking Audrey and I did the picking with Dad doing some.  Then Mom and Dad snapped them all again.  There were even more this time!  It took me a couple of days to get them canned that time.  Ed is always so helpful to unload the canner for me and to carry all those jars to the pantry.

It is a group effort and I am so thankful for all the help.  Next time we pick beans these will be for Mechelle's family we will can up.

According to the weather report we will have a couple of dry days on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.  That is when we will be picking more beans, and probably peppers and tomatoes and more cucumbers.  I am thinking we will be ripening some of our tomatoes in the greenhouse.

I will be sure to take pictures and keep you updated with all that is going on here at Bountiful Acres Homestead.  May the Lord bless your day today!

Today's accomplishments

When I looked at these peppers I immediately thought Christmas!  Aren't those the prettiest green and red peppers you have seen?  The red peppers are Paprika peppers.  the green ones are an Ancho pepper.  Today was pepper day at Bountiful Acres.

I canned 23 pints of pickled banana peppers.

Ed helped me chop them all up yesterday.  That was a chore!  Plus we did onions and tomatoes and all the bell peppers, Anaheim peppers and some garlic and cilantro.  That turned into salsa.

Here the salsa is mixed up and waiting for jars.



A close up of the yummy salsa.

And another close up of the pretty Christmas peppers.  : )

These green peppers got canned in pint jars.  This made 4 pints.

Then I got 16 pints of salsa, and 23 pints of pickled peppers.  So I have a total of 43 more jars on my pantry shelves today.

I think tomorrow I will have a day of rest.  Even the good Lord rested after creating the universe.  : )



What's Cooking?

Remember the beautiful cauliflower from my garden?  The purple, the cheddar colored and some white?  Here is a quick recipe for all those garden veggies available to us now.



I took some yellow crookneck squash, zucchini, assorted peppers, the yellow and purple cauliflower and chopped them.  I heated my big cast iron skillet and added about a tablespoon of coconut oil.  Then I cooked the veggies quickly in it.  Added a bit of sea salt and some pepper.  Meanwhile, I boiled some whole grain seashell pasta.



When it was finished cooking, I drained the pasta, added the veggies to it and a tad bit of butter and more sea salt.  Ta Da!  Lunch is served at Bountiful Acres!  I love cooking with fresh produce from my garden.  Sort of makes all that hard work worth it.

Speaking of hard work, here is what has been going on the past several weeks.

This is how our garden looked in June.

This is the garden in September!  It is so big and lush I had to take two photos to get the whole thing in view.  This is the view from the left side.

This is the view on the right side of the garden.

Here is a kettle full of summer squash.  I am going to blanch and freeze some of these.  We love to eat the small zucchini and crooknecks sauteed in butter with a fried egg for breakfast. 

Here we have a milk crate full of peppers.  The two big yellow things are lemon cucumbers.  The red pepper are my paprika peppers.  I love to dry them and then grind them for my own paprika powder.  It is just sooo good!

One big batch of my bell peppers and Anaheim peppers.  These were made into salsa today with my other big batch of peppers shown below.  I also used a big batch of tomatoes from the garden in this salsa.

Aren't those such pretty peppers? 



This is a photo of some of my apple juice and applesauce we made last week.  The apples are red, so they make a pretty pink color when cooked.



And the Lord really blessed my green bean harvest this year.  I took this photo during a bean canning session.  So this year thus far, I have 131 quarts of green beans canned and in the pantry from the garden.  Yes!  I was completely out of them. 

 Now you know why I haven't been online and blogging much.  I have been doing so much harvesting and putting food up for winter.  : )

I will share more with you as I go.

Looking for a house to buy? : )

On the off chance someone is looking for a house to buy on the beautiful Oregon coast, here is a link to a house we are selling for a friend of ours.  : )

It is located in North Bend, Oregon

http://www.winsorhouse.blogspot.com/

Catching up

Tomorrow will be the 1st of September.  It seems like Summer just rushed through here before we knew it.  We had such a long wet cold Spring this year.  Our garden never got planted until after the 4th of July!  That put everything about a month behind schedule. 

But, thank the good Lord, we still have veggies coming on in the gardens.  Canning season is on!  So far this month I have made pickles.  I made 21 qts of bread and butter pickles, and some sweet spicy spears, and 7 qts of pickled peppers.  Also we juiced some blackberries and canned 3 and a half qts of blackberry juice.

Next we will be canning green beans and making some dill pickles.  The cucumbers are really producing.

We picked some cauliflower from the garden.  Look at this picture of the three varieties we grew this year.

We planted purple, cheddar and white cauliflower this year.  Isn't it pretty?  ( I don't know why that one photo never finished downloading.  I can't seem to fix it.)

We took the girls camping this year.  Yep, bought a tent and went camping!  The photo on the top of the blog is a picture of the stream that flows into the lake where we camped.

This is the campground sign where we camped.  Welcome to the campground/pick up your dog poop!  :)

Here is the new tent all set up.  Not a bad tent for the price.  Measures 16' x 10' and six feet tall.

The picnic area and campfire pit.

Pretty nice fire pit.  I kept my tea kettle on the grate and kept the water hot for washing up or making tea.

Audrey took this photo of us sitting around the campfire the first night.

The girls and Ed getting cozy around the fire.

Ed and Duke walking on the beach.  The ocean was just about half a mile away from the campground and the lake.  So we took the half mile hike to the beach the next day.  This was the first time Duke has been to the beach. 

Ed, the girls and Duke strolling along the beach.

Strange looking things on the beach.  They looked like ping pong balls.  Well it was seaweed.  I thought they looked fascinating.

The big long one I believe is called bull whip kelp/seaweed.  When I was a kid and we went to the beach, my younger sister Mechelle would always try and smuggle some of these big long seaweed home.  I can remember her sneaking one in the trunk of the car.  When they get hot and start to decay they really can make a stink!  : ) 

This is the sunset the first night.

Two sleeping girls.  In their sleeping bags with their quilts I made them on top for extra warmth.








Sally snoozing away.
Audrey all snug as a bug in a rug.

This is a photo of the little pocket area where you usually put your flash light or something.  You can see this is where toys took up residence including Barbie.

We had a fun time.

I promise to keep updating more often.  I have lots of photos I have taken this summer, just never had the time to post much.

 

Good bye dear Toby

My beloved cat Toby has died.  He was hit by a car this past week.  He was 15 years old.  I got him from the Animal Shelter in Fairbanks Alaska in Sept. of 1995.  He was a tiny kitten, so small he could sit in the palm of my hand.  I became his new mother and he was my baby for the next 15 years.  He was so precious to me and my heart is breaking because he is gone.  I am thankful that Ed found him and we were able to know what had happened to him, and I got to pet his precious little body once more. We had a  little funeral yesterday to bury him.