Ready for a giveaway? Read all about it and how to sign up.

I am having a give away for a $35 gift certificate sponsored by CSN stores.   There are 200 stores with just about anything you would want or need.  They have everything from furniture, kitchen items, toys, baby gear, and even a leather briefcase and much more.

I personally like their toy store.  They have some wonderful toys with super great prices.

Or how about some great cookware.  My favorite frying pan is this cast iron one.  I use it every day!



Emerilware Cast Iron 12" Skillet

So now you are wondering how you can win?  It is really easy.  Just leave me a comment on this post.  Tell me what your favorite post on my blog has been and tell me what you would buy if you are the winner from CSN Stores.  I will put all the comments in a program that randomly draws a winner. I will announce the winner after 6pm on December 1st.  You will have 48 hours to repsond, if I don't hear from you in that time I will draw a new winner.  Make sure and check back!

 

You have until Dec. 1st at 6pm Pacific time to get your entry in.  Good luck!



Hello!

Just wanted to post a short note to say I have lots of plans coming up.  I will be doing a How To post soon on making pumpkin pie from the pumpkin to the table.  Also I have a give away coming up right after Thanksgiving. 

Ed and the girls picked the last of the apples today.  Right after we had a snow storm.  We actually had snow last night and this morning.  It doesn't last as the ground is too wet, but the girls had a blast playing for a bit.

The pantry shelves are pretty full and so is the freezer.  I just have pie fillings to make and can and jelly and jams. 

Here are a few photos of the latest harvest work.

This is my freezer slaw.  I shredded some of my carrots, red cabbage and bell peppers.  Then I used a recipe for making freezer slaw.  I put 10 containers of this in the freezer.  It is really good!  That is what I did with half my cabbage harvest.

Here is what I did with the other half of my cabbage harvest.  It is kraut, fermenting in quart jars.  This is really simple to make.

Here are some of my beets.  I use my turkey deep fryer for cooking them.  I hose them off to remove any garden soil left on them.  Then they go into the cooker until they are done.

This has been the best buy we ever made!  We bought it from a person on Craig's list for $45.  It is all stainless steel and we use it for so many things.  We cook crab in it, use it for cooking big batches of things like the beets for canning, we use it for scalding the poultry on butchering day.  Yep, a great buy!

After the beets are cooked part of them are put into really cold water in the sink where I slip the skins off them and cut the root and the tops off.

Then into the big silver bowl they go.  The really large beets are sliced and the smaller ones are left whole.

Then they are put in with the seasoning and syrup solution.  Oh what are we making?  Pickled beets!  Sorry, I forgot to tell you what we are doing here. 

Into the boiling water bath canner they go.

And here they are cooling on the table.  I believe I got 29 qts of pickled beets.


I also got the carrots finished up.  We had 28 qts of carrots to put in the pantry.

We also butchered the turkeys, and a duck.  Still have roosters and more ducks to do.

Our turkey we are having for dinner on Thanksgiving weighed in at 30 pounds after being dressed.  Good thing we have a big turkey, we will have 18 for dinner on Thanksgiving day.

See you all tomorrow with the pie how to post!

Our visit to a local cranberry bog

 This is a photo of the bog we got our cranberries from.  It belongs to Marci and Dave Murray.  They have been so generous in showing us their bogs and giving us some really great cranberries!  Thanks Dave and Marci!

 This is Dave and Chad loading the truck with cranberries from the bog.  There is a ladder they go up and during that time most of the leaves and debris fall back down.  Then they are pumped out and they make compost from them.  It is used to put back into the bogs to feed the plants.

 Ed and the girls looking at the cranberries.

 These photos don't show what a pretty sight this is.  It is so much brighter and pretty in person!

 Two 5 gallon buckets of cranberries they dipped out of the truck for us!  They are safely in the freezer now.  I made some juice from them too.  Soooo good!

 In this photo the truck had left to take the cranberries to the plant.

 This is a bog that hadn't been harvested yet.  You can't see the tons of berries in this photo.  Trust me they are there!

 Marci was kind enough to take this photo of us.  It was a beautiful day!

 Here is a photo of the machine that thrashes the plants and the berries float to the top of the water.  From there they use floating booms to corral them and bring them to the edge where they run them up into the truck.

 When we were leaving, we met the truck coming back from the plant going back to the bog for another load.

 Close up of the berries.

 And here they are all washed and pretty looking in my kitchen!

This bowl is huge.  I know it doesn't look like that in the photos, but it is holding one bucket full of cranberries!

Another day we went back to the bog and Marci let us pick from her dry baby bog.  It is where they grow replacement plants for another bog.  They don't flood it, so they have to be picked by hand.  That day we got another bucket full!  I have been so happy to have fresh cranberries!  Thanks again Marci and Dave!

The continuing harvest

These photos were taken on September 29th.  I have since processed them.  Some are pickled, some are canned, some are in the freezer.

 Some of our carrot harvest.  I had actually forgotten I planted this mix of colored carrots.  What a surprise to dig them up!  Aren't they so pretty?

 They were very tasty too!  The strange thing about eating a white carrot was I kept expecting them to taste like parsnips, but they don't.  They taste just like a sweet carrot.

Nice looking corn.  We didn't grow this but our neighbor did and gave us this batch.  It was tasty!

These photos were taken today in my kitchen.  The jars are full of tomatoes.  The one bowl is full of tomatillas that were a freebie in my garden.  They had seeded themselves last year.  I will be making some salsa verde with them.

 These are some sweet banana peppers and the hot peppers I have no idea what they are.  I planted a hot pepper mix.

 Jalapeno and hot red cherry peppers.  So pretty together!

 Some of the banana peppers..........

 Bell peppers, Anaheim, pablano and more banana peppers.

 This is one five gallon bucket of beets, I have a big box of them out in the shop waiting on me.  They will be pickled beets soon in a jar on my pantry shelf.

Stay tuned for a visit to a cranberry bog.

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.  : )