Fat Chicken update

Our Lovely 12 ladies are now on garden clean up so today I was able to sneak picture of our gold lace wyandotte  and silver lace wyandotte chickens ready for winter along with one of our ISA browns in spring we will get 6 new hens and our ISA's will make their way to the stew pot. This week one of our silver lace girls started breaking eggs of the other chickens so she might also go with that group of chickens.

Next years chicks will be Orpington or Golden Comet.

Mushroom Harvest

 In the fall on our property, we are lucky we have a wet boggy spot in the woods that turns into exciting new foods for us. This year I took 3 people out to show them and share with them all the wonderful mushrooms we have on the property because a home is not a home unless it is shared with others. I feel like because I know the ones on our property we can eat I should share that with our neighbors so if in hard times they need to eat they can. It is also the reason I started blogging to share with others and hopefully help.

First is the hunt 

These are the 2 kinds we usually get and I like to eat giant puff balls and elm oysters ( you can get kits for oysters in the store)

Next clean and cook with them 

Puffball powder good to mix in gravy and breading 1 filled dehydrator 12 hours at 130* in the blender and stores for a year.

Peeled sliced and buttered gives ya fried mushrooms 

Mushroom lasagna just sub the noodles for mushrooms in your favorite dish ( ours is just ricotta, cottage cheese and mozzarella layered with my jar sauce 1 hour at 375*)

Mushroom Rissoto pre-prep , so this is just the cheese and mushrooms you can saute and add to your rice for a yummy risotto, I freeze it for easy meals quick. 

                                                        75% of that came from this ! 

The Elm oysters I dehydrate or freeze and use in stirfry.

Tomato Jelly.. Red and Green

Things you will need for this one 

2lbs of tomatoes 

1/2 cup of sugar ( brown or white does not matter)

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar 

pinch salt 

1 tsp paprika 

When you end up with this many tomatoes at the end of the season and you have sauce, salsa, ketchup,and frozen tomatoes to last your family all winter you get creative 

Today I took some of our green and leftover red tomatoes and brewed them down in my instapot ( pressure cook high 45min and saute for 30 )

add in  the apple cider while cooking it down

when you move to the saute add everything else

when there is no liquid in the bottom of the pan you are done, You can water bath can this or it keeps in the fridge for 2 to 3 weeks.

I also make this green and add green apples to it for a chutney same steps just add the apples when you add the cider.

 

Summer catch up

                 Sorry everyone for the delay in posts there will be a ton I am playing summer catch up with the garden and the blog, This summer our harvest doubled what we had last year and I can not even think about how big it will be when we have the trees ready to harvest. I will do a blog for each of the process methods we use to save things for winter. This is a preview of the harvest I was working with these past few weeks as we went full blast into fall.

Vacuumed seal saves time and can in a lid shortage

                     The canning world has been rocked by tons of preppers and new to food preservation add to that a supply chain problem this summer we ran into an odd problem no lids or limits on lids.

We can a lot at any given time there are 20 to 30 cans in the fridge, basement, or shelves. so a lid shortage at the peak of the season was not ok and we started looking into other ways to save our food usually I use my vacuum sealer for dried goods and snacks also I use it to save seeds but it was put into action fast to freeze the million of tomatoes we got out of the garden 

This year we filled our freezer with our harvest so the little vacuum sealer paid for itself the first year keeping our food fresh.

Crab apple can work like big apples

 




                While waiting on our big apple trees to do their thing we have some trees that came with our house and we are using what we have till we can make more. I found out you can use crab apples like regular apples people think they are bitter but that is because they leave the seeds and stems on when they cook them down.

Today we went out and picked as many as we could of our crab apples before the birds ate them all.

                                                        First, we rinsed and cut the apples 

Then we tossed it in the instapot with 5 cups of sugar and some cinnamon sticks 

Then we smash them up or drain them off to make apple juice or apple sauce just like big apples!

Pickles

 

We grew 2 kinds of cucumbers this year one was a round stubby one and the other the standard pickling cucumber the 3 little O's love to eat them and I just had enough to stash back 8 jars of pickles. They had a cucumber a day from Mid June to late Sept out of the garden so to even get one I could jar was a success. 

I like to use wide-mouth jars and I use the water bath method because I use acids with them. 

                                                            This book is my canning bible,

                                             I get everything I know about canning from this book
                    My words of advice on canning get a book you trust and follow it to be safe. 
                                

You will need

• 3 1/2 lbs pickling cucumbers (about 14 small to medium) 
• 2 1/2 cups vinegar (5% acidity) 
• 2 1/2 cups sugar 
• 1/4 cup Ball® Bread & Butter Pickle Mix 

 

Directions

1. Slice ends off cucumbers then cut into 1/2-inch slices. 
2. Combine vinegar, sugar, and Ball® Bread & Butter Pickle Mix in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. 
3. Pack based on ENJOY NOW or FRESH PRESERVE steps below.       

ENJOY NOW (Refrigerate up to 3 months):  

1. Pour hot pickling liquid over cucumber slices in a large bowl. Cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes. 
2. Pack cucumber slices into jars. Ladle pickling liquid over cucumbers. Place lids & bands on jars. 
3. Refrigerate pickles. For best flavor, allow pickles to stand in refrigerator for 3 weeks.      

     OR 

FRESH PRESERVE (Store up to 1 year):  

1. Prepare boiling water canner. Heat jars in simmering water until ready to use, do not boil. Wash lids in warm soapy water and set aside with bands. 
2. Pack slices into a hot jar leaving a 1/2-inch headspace. Ladle hot pickling liquid over slices leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Wipe rim. Center lids on jars. Apply bands and adjust to fingertip tight. Place jar in boiling water canner. Repeat until all jars are filled.  
3. Process jars 15 minutes, adjusting for altitude. Turn off heat, remove lid, let jars stand 5 minutes. Remove jars and cool 12-24 hours. Check lids for seal, they should not flex when center is pressed. For best flavor, allow pickles to stand for 4-6 weeks. 

                                                This year I am trying a pickling croc too!

Grape Jelly

 

More Jelly and juice 

                As summer peaked the grapes on our wild grapevine went crazy, I was under the weather so I missed a lot of the harvest but we were able to get 5-gallon jars of juice and 2 jars of jelly 


How to make the jelly and juice  

• 4 3/4 cups  Grape juice  ( you can stop here for juice )
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 box  powdered pectin
• 7 cups sugar

• Measure out 7 cups of sugar into a medium bowl and set aside.
• In a large pot combine grape juice, lemon juice, and pectin.
• Bring to a full rolling boil (will not stop bubbling even when stirred).
• Once boiling, add sugar all at once, stirring well to combine.
• Bring back to a full rolling boil and boil rapidly, stirring constantly for 1 minute exactly. Immediately remove from heat, skim off any foam and ladle into hot sterilized jars, filling to 1/8 inch from the top.
• Place sterilized tops and rings on jars and tighten rings firmly, then wait for the pop sound to tell you they are sealed 

  

  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  

Mulberries for days

 

We have been busy 32 oz of berries picked every day for a week now we have 8 16 oz jars of jelly 32 oz of dried berries and some fruit roll-ups we are making more in the morning. Our berry trees are going crazy this year. 

Mantis Hatchlings

 After 6 very long weeks, our Carolina Mantis cases have hatched. We tried these this year as a natural bug killer they eat all the harmful bugs that go after my garden year after year. It was a little long for the girls as every day for the last 3 weeks I have gotten have those things hatched yet. 

Today was the day we came downstairs for breakfast and I saw hundreds of them covering the top of the hatching box. We let them out and the girls carried them to different parts of the garden. I think we might do a different bug every year for our land. Now that our bug hatcher is free this afternoon we will go looking for Monarch again !!! We hatched one last year and it was a great learning tool.

Clover Jelly

 Eating the bloom jelly is the way we make it through till the berries are ready it is so easy even the girls have gotten it down  

2 cups flower petals 
2 to 3 cups water 
2 cups sugar 
2 tbs lemon juice 
2 tbs pectin 

make the tea brew for 45 mins ( flower and water ) clear the flowers , mix in the rest let cook for 10 mins water bath jar them for 10 mins take them out, and let them zing for 24 hours

this only makes 1 to use, 1 to share, 1 to store in our jelly making we could up the water content and sugar to make bigger batches but this works for us ( this one little E added 3 cups water) 

Can Not wait the berries are coming

 It is almost berry picking season while looking at our flowers to pick and make our jelly with I always check our berries and they are almost ready to start picking I can not wait for our summer picking to start this year. We have worked hard for our food forest and looking into what to help make it thrive.

Mulberry trees, we have 12 or so mature trees we pick from to make our jam with I also freeze these and put them in bread and muffins because they are tart .

These guys are gooseberry they turn a dark purple and almost taste like grapes, We love them in Jam and mixed in with apples. We have cultivated 3 big groves of these and are working on higher yields of these by giving them more sun and area to grow. This bush is in the chicken yard cause the ladies love them too.

More and more mulberry this one is in the creek and better for short pickers

These are the patches we are really working on this year we have 4 big groves of raspberries we are working on this year so we get more then we did last year and watching close so we pick for a longer season.

Spring Garden Update

 We Have Sprouts

It finally got to spring in Zone 5 ... and we have started to sprout some of our very large gardens and are so excited. Weeding and planting have taken up a lot of our May.

This patch is our bush-type plants, peppers/eggplant, sprouts, and bush beans the one above it is bushy things like cauliflower and broccoli  In front of it you can see a bit of our multi tomatoes 

Soon we will add the climbing stuff to this bed it's our climbers , beans, and cucumbers 

Tea Garden, strawberry bed, and tomatoes 

Close up of the tea garden it is going so well.

Trashcan potatoes are filling to the top in no time .....