Canning Abyss

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Not so many of you are posting these days. I know why, too. You have entered the canning abyss. I am there as well, but doggedly attempting to keep up with sharing what I am doing, so that I can do my part in saving the world. Well, my little part of it anyhow.

I keep meaning to fix this photo, I know it's cut off at the right edge, like all of them, but I will probably never do it and I want to post it anyhow. The sweet peas that are making me envious enough to plant some of my own next year.



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Yesterday morning, after Bible study and chores and such, more canning meant a sudden trip to town on a mission to obtain more granulated sugar for 'berrious' endeavors. Also, the chickens seemed to be hungry, so we had to pick up some feed.

On the return home I tackled more jam making. When you've got over 4 gallons staring at you because there is no room in the fridge, you've got to do something quick! So small batches at a time, since I learned that the pectin actually breaks down after too much heat, I made three more batches. The first one was just Hot Blackberry Jam, in which you chop up peppers to spice it up.





Michael doesn't like it too hot, so I put in about a 1/2 cup to 10 cups of berries and 6 cups of sugar. It gives it just a little fun zip, without leaving any burning sensation in your mouth.

In the mean time, Michael once again left for the netherworld of the lower garden. He is like me, in that the trudging up and down the hill is tiresome in the heat. Such babies we are. I am very grateful for our home, but my thoughts do occasionally wander to the luxuries of flat land. A large, green and shady yard off the kitchen door, with chairs and tables to sit in and watch the flowers grow, and a hammock swaying gently between a couple of gorgeously perfect trees. The garden gate just at the edge, invitingly beckoning to...

Never mind, back to reality. Michael grabbed several baskets and went down with the camera.

Here is the melon patch with all the marker flags Michael put in the other day. They really help.





Bob? Is that you? (Inside joke for Veggie Tales fans.)





Now here you see our "Three Sisters" garden.
Where is the first sister, the one with the corn rows, you may ask?
She's been pulled down by her bean-pole second sister and choked to death.

The youngest sister, the fat and plump Squashita, is battling Bean-pole, for dominance, and it I think will eventually win.





This is how it looked a couple of weeks ago.





Lessons learned. 1. There is a reason you don't plant so many beans around your corn. Half as many beans, not half as much corn. 2. Need more space. Need much more space!

Michael is chomping at the bit to get his hands on those broom corn stalks. He took the machete down and checked them out.





Oh, and while we're at it, I took this picture of the grass that is now thickly growing over what used to be mere horse pasture dirt and weeds every summer. Cool!





Back to Michael's photos. Here is that giant pumpkin. There's Michael's size 9 foot next to it. Victory is not so sweet since it looks like there may be some bet welching going on...
Hmmmmm......





So we are letting the plant grow more pumpkins. They'll be nice for more holiday decor.





These beans are fun. We planted a variety of pole beans, as well as a bunch of pinto beans from the store, so I have no idea what beans are what.





My mistake on the melon naming the other day. That honeydew was not a Prescott Fond Blanc. This is.









So this melon was perfect, maybe a little past ripe.





This one was a little under ripe, but still good.





And the PFB was completely under ripe. It's supposed to be bright orange and very fragrant. But we did more reading up and Michael is confident he's got more of an idea now.





Here are the ones he missed before flagging.





Boy at play.













Sadly, that one rolled right into the garden. LOL Volunteers next year!





Back inside, I am making two more batches of jam, but these are hotter and with spices.

I added about 2 cups of Jalapenos to 12 cups of berries and 7 cups of sugar, as well a couple of teapoons of ground cloves. Yummy! I've also done this to strawberry jams in the past. The batch was slightly too big, though, and I cheated and added a little liquid pectin to set it.





I made 15 pints of blackberry jam yesterday.





Then still had more berries to use up, so I made another 3 quarts of blackberry pie filling. This time I cut down on the water to half. I was not pleased with the runniness of the first batch, and I also wanted more berries in proportion to the liquid. Here is a comparison of my first batch on the right, with the reduced liquid batch on the left.





Here is a cooling spot out of the work area of the kitchen. The spare room, which is now canning storage. I turn the overhead fan on to cool the bottles a bit before 'storing' them on the floor.





Then I still had tomatoes to do, and trying to get it all done before we had a movie night. So I used the "Italian Tomato Sauce" recipe from the Ball book and made three and a half quarts.





Here is my canning cache so far.









Michael made stuffed jalapenos again, and I made veggie sandwiches, and we turned off the light, lit candles, and watched "City of Embers", all achy and tired on the couch. Then we watched the light of the full moon through the windows and made up limericks for fun before going to bed.

Sleep was sweet.

~Faith

Swiss Chard Harvest, Greenhouse Construction, Movie Night

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We never did get to those tomatoes, and it won't be today either. Yikes!

The day began with finding out that the reason I've not heard anything about my divorce for several months is that my lawyer never sent the papers off to be served after the judge signed them.

I was a little frustrated by this. As far as I know, once he has been served and the papers signed my support is supposed to kick in. That means two months of support have vanished into thin air, while we try to scrape by on what little he feels like sending and we work nights and weekends trying to support ourselves and make ends meet.

However, all things are in God's timing, so I'm not really worried. Mostly curious as to how this will all pan out.

So Michael did more mowing yesterday morning while I began weeding the garden. I wish I'd taken pics AFTER weeding instead of before. LOL

Mowing around the garden itself was needed as you can see in this photo. The Three Sisters area of the garden is finally showing visible signs of some success.





The whole problem with this has been the corn. We planted it three times and each time was a significant failure. I suspect it is bugs. Ants, possibly, chewing up the roots. They must get them when they are sprouts, and if they manage to get any higher, they chew through the stalks and they just fall over.

So the pole beans and the winter squash kept getting put off for a long time.

The other half of the garden, where I will be doing some weeding.





Seed saving is something I hope to do a lot of. I hope to buy very little seed next year, so I bought 98% of my seed as open-pollinated. Here are the pods to the sugar snap peas, drying nicely.





The next huge project in the garden, getting those tomatoes back up. I planted them too thickly, and the rains and lack of wire held us back from adding wires above the first and second ones. Now it's a mess.





Peppers are finally growing.





Swiss chard, which we decided needed to be harvested. And in there are the sweet potatoes.





Scallions, onions, leeks. Only showing leeks here, I think.





Artichokes.





More peppers.





Summer squash.





Something is wrong with this and one other summer squash.





The rain washing through the garden disturbed a lot of the melon hills.





Our biggest competition giant pumpkin vine.





Cukes that we just lifted and tied up the day before.





Broom corn and peanuts. You are supposed to hill peanuts like potatoes. If I get a spare minute, I'll do that.





Okra. Neither of us like it. But when we were aiming for a market garden we chose to plant some. No market after all, but we need to learn about it's quirks in tandem with our garden quirks, so we planted some anyway.





With the Three Sisters planting being so difficult, I decided to make an experiment plot. I simply planted all three - corn, beans, and a cucurbit all at the same time. I believe I put in small warted mix gourds. I will keep you updated.





Thinning the squash, gourd, pumpkin plantings at every other hill of corn and beans.





Then my mom and dad came by to help with the greenhouse construction project. We had been planning on digging out one of the hoops and burying in a new hoop post holder. But dad made this nifty thing.









First, drive the new, straight hoop post into the ground in the proper spot. This was ingenious. Dad got a metal rod, put body building weight clamps on it, and used it to insert into the pipe and pound it down.













Then put this crane above the old pipe.





It has an eye hook at the top.





Put on a winch.





Add a chain.





Drop chain down into the pipe.





Secure chain with a bolt.





Begin winching pipe out of ground.









Fill old hole with sand, slowly, so you don't accidentally get a pocket.





Awesome! Thanks, Dad! That really saved us a lot of work!

Michael wanted to save this volunteer, but it also has a wild rose bush there, so it got mowed down.





Bad Japanese Beetles. Scourge of the garden.





The field competition giant pumpkin. The ants got this too. We are down to one in this spot, and I'm wondering if it will survive.





Always looks so much better around here when it's mowed.





Harvesting Swiss Chard.





I left more leaves on some than others, to see how they do. I learned a lot about them yesterday. For ourselves, we don't think we need this much, but it will make a great summer substitute for salad greens, growing so much more easily then than lettuce.





Rinsing the Swiss chard leaves and hanging them to dry on a ball return net. We did not want to blanch and freeze, so we're going to dry them for use this winter in soups.





We left to visit friends and help with projects, but they were all done. So they graciously fed us dinner.

We enjoyed the progress of their lasagna style garden.









Visited their new horses, who had been rescue horses about 4 years ago. The mare has never been able to put on weight. I suspect she has organ damage and can't metabolize all she needs.









And then we all took off and enjoyed Night at the Museum 2 at the theaters. It was really good. We enjoyed it.

We stopped by my folks to pick up some lavender clippings, borrow canning books, and visit until 10:30, so we didn't get home in time to bring in the swiss chard leaves. I'll have pics on those and the lavender cuttings tomorrow.

Taking off to go pick up a used pool!

~Faith

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