Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

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And just as soon as my headache goes away I'll begin looking for it in earnest. But for now it aches and I am hitting roadblock after roadblock in trying to can. It's beginning to look like we'll miss yet another get together tonight with friends because of the hangups.

I dug out jars and washed them all up. :)





I borrowed my mom's old pressure canner and water bath canners.





I bought the official canning book of the world and a utensil set.





I even got this, but I'm not sure what it is anymore.





I took a good look at the old racks...





And decided to buy a new one.





Then I discovered that my glass top stove is not suitable for canning. So I borrowed this camp stove.





Then I realized that was going to be a pain with all the rain we've been getting - 4 inches in two days was not going to be outdoor canning weather. So I dug out a tiny little pressure canner, and was able to to 5 pints of pie filling yesterday.









I had to go buy lemon juice and corn starch and I saw this small stock pot. Excitedly I brought it home, only to read.... "Not suitable for glass top stoves."





This morning I bravely began to can in small batches. I figured one little step at a time will get me there eventually, right? :)

But after all my prep, I discovered why my MOST DELICIOUS caramel from last Christmas never would set... My stove will absolutely NOT get anything above 205 degrees before the regulator shuts it off, to keep it from shattering.

I now have a giant pot of unjelled gooseberry jam on my stove, surrounded by splatters of pink goo everywhere, and no way to complete the process.

So looks like I'm heading to town to borrow my parent's kitchen. I don't mind it, but the thought of dragging everything is annoying the heck out of me right now. LOL

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Good thing yesterday was so nice. :)

After the pie filling, which siphoned due to my impatience in getting it out of the pressure canner before leaving, we went to town to do errands and meet friends. We missed the sewing class, but arrived just as it was over and we met with two families for the afternoon at the lovely home of one of them we'd not had the chance to go to before.





I am going to share pictures of this place. Gary built it himself, from trees he cut himself. It's just beautiful, and sits on 14 quiet acres. This is the family we are having the giant pumpkin contest with. :-D

The front door. It has a story we got to hear. :)





The LR. Yes, he does rock work too.





The hall, and I refrained from taking pics of the bedrooms, though they were gorgeous.





The kitchen.





Look at the detail.





While we oohed and ahed over the inside, the kids all went out to the back porch and played checkers. It was sunny, with amazing clouds, a light, cool breeze, and about 88 degrees.





The girls had the same idea I had. I tell you, these are the most wonderful kids for Michael to have as friends. We are truly blessed to be surrounded by great kids.





Here's the back porch from a distance.





Angie made music for us.





We took a walk about. The place is amazing. And they bought it without even looking it over. It was sort of a happy accident that turned out REALLY well! LOL The chimney work.





The matching garage with apartment over it.





Which even has a back deck.





In leau of crown molding, they used this cool rope.





The end of the house, taken from the deck of the apartment.





Some teak root benches. That one on the right is not a dog, but it sure looks like one.





Going down the driveway to the open field where we went to see the garden, the portable saw mill, and the kids riding the 4-wheeler.





The house, from below. That's a full length porch, complete with rockers and a swing. MY swing! LOL





Heading to the garden.









Hmmmmmmmmmm.... Our rival giant pumpkin plant. Must get more fertilizer!





The mill.





Having way too much fun! They all took turns giving each other rides. Angie was even able to join in, despite having arrived in a skirt and sandals. :)





Dear friends.





We love them so much. :)





So I swung on the swing, and they rocked. And we chatted a bit, and we listened to the birds a bit, and we just enjoyed the beauty.





Playing Curses.





Ginseng and Cohosh, I believe.





Then we were off to Michael's Court of Honor.





OK, I better pack it all up! :)

Whew!

~Faith

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Pies and Drowning

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We spent almost all day inside yesterday.

It was strange! LOL

But nice. I worked in the kitchen mostly, but for a collapse on the couch and falling asleep while Michael continued to de-stem gooseberries.

It is so nice to have all the things you need for a project, because if you don't, you spend your day like I did, feeling vexed and not getting a lot done.

It showered off and on very lightly, most of the day, but then we got a real gully washer that dropped an inch and a half within about 1/2 hour. I have not gone down to check the garden for damage yet. I might be avoiding it....





So the idea was to process all the gooseberries yesterday into something or other.





I had pies to make and pie filling to can.









I make big pies, so I actually got those berries into 4 groups, rather than 6, but only made half. I don't know that I like the recipe, though I am not very familiar with gooseberry pie. I pretty much doubled the tapioca it called for and it was still too runny for me. It's also quite sour, though my dad says it is supposed to be. I'm thinking cornstarch added in would be good.

I never got any further.

Since I'm not supposed to can on my glass top stove, I was planning on canning outside on the camp stove, but it rained all day.

We brought in all the canning jars I had available and washed them. I guess I spent most of the day trying to just organize how I was going to approach this whole thing.

I believe I will have 2 half gallon jars of pie filling to do; we de-stemmed only about a gallon of berries to try to make a whole berry jam for about 6 pint jars, I think; If that works I may do the rest that way or I may even see about making jam with the stems on as well; I'm going to give away a couple of bags today; and all the bags in the freezer I will make into jelly as the berries are a little bland looking after being in the freezer for a year anyhow.

Sadly, today, I'll be gone all day long at sewing, visiting friends, and boy scouts. Not that those things are anything but fun, but my gooseberries are still on the counter! No room in the fridge due to lettuce. LOL

Maybe I better learn how to ferment the berries?

Faith

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No Pictures!

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Nope, not a one!

I do want to share a giveaway that a fellow blogger is doing. Her DH makes some very nice quality chicken next boxes. Check them out over there! If you are going to need boxes, I love to encourage home businesses. That's the way America was born, on the shoulders of hard working families who worked the land and supplied each other with what that needed. We need to go back to those days.

A friend from church stopped by on Saturday and fixed our pool leaks for us! YAY!

I just did not have enough teflon tape on some connections and some were not tight enough.

I had tightened them so much that I actually had CRACKED the skimmer case at one point, so I am VERY surprised that was the problem, but by the time I came back from the tool shed with a flathead screwdriver, he'd already done it. LOL

Sunday was church. Late again....sigh.... What was supposed to be 15 minutes of quick watering in the winter squash seeds turned into an emergency of recovering seeds that had washed away, and spreading straw over them so watering again would not be necessary.

Tried to catch the Benjamin Netanyahu speech at my folk's house, and was thoroughly annoyed that they showed only the first minute, then cut it off. I'd been waiting all week long!

We grabbed a 5 dollar pizza for lunch and went to clean the dental office, then back to church last night for the end of a world view series and discussion.

Went back to my folk's house to visit and to borrow canning stuff.

Today I try to can, and listen to the speech online.

I better get busy! :)

~Faith

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Gooseberries and Lettuce! Oh, My!

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I just noticed, all of my pictures are cut off on the right side. Must be the layout. When things slow down, Cyn, I am emailing you! LOL

If you saw my refrigerator, you'd gasp, then laugh. All you can see is bags of lettuce! A quick visit at my parent's home yesterday evening turned into two hours of harvesting and washing their lettuce crop. And if you'd seen my dad's puppy dog eyes, you'd have come home with all this as well. LOL





Dad wanted it washed up 'just so' as he always does. My dad's perfectionist tendencies used to annoy me. Now I just appreciate his attention to detail and that he cares enough to do everything he does in the best way possible. I like that as well, but I do my best to find balance. However, he was his house and his lettuce, so we washed a lot of lettuce in a particular way which took longer.

All that being so, we got home much later than anticipated, didn't get to the things we'd planned on, and I spent several hours attempting to dry lettuce and find a way to store it! This pile was 5 feet long and a foot high in the middle. On the way home we picked up some of those 'green bags' so it would not all go to waste.





So I was up til midnight last night, and still had to leave most of the lettuce out. I kid you not, I was BLOW DRYING LETTUCE! LOL

Today, while trying to do a day of rest, instead I find myself trying to figure out what to do with about 20 gallons of gooseberries.

But it has been so long since I've even had time to post that it has been bugging the heck out of me. So I quit working on 6 pies, turned off the audio book of Gulliver's Travels (Have you seen those cool Playaway pre-loaded digital audio books? We checked one out of the library.), and am coming to sit down and try to put in all the stuff we've been doing all week.

I'll try to get in the highlights in one post here...

Last Friday we had a different sort of get-together. Movie night!





Some even dressed the part. I loved this!





Of course we had to look at the garden first. This is what tired people who don't want to trudge up and down a hill do...





And a great movie, complete with popcorn and general silliness.





Last Saturday we did pretty well with resting. I am sure you can all imagine how hard it is to not do anything when it is this time of year! (Today a great example!)

I did walk around and document every crop we had going. This is the only journal I have at this point, so I am keeping track of what is planted and how it's doing by weekly photos. I won't bore you with them today. LOL

Except.... I am getting excited about trying fennel bulbs. I also think I may try to naturalize some of them. I hear they grow in the wild like crazy, so it would be nice to be able to harvest the bulbs without taking up garden space. 'Nother experiment to try.





Monday morning we finished picking cherries. Not enough left to warrant another trip. I decided to try Cherry Cafloutie - sort of. I changed up the recipe and threw it together in the blender. It ended up being rather custardy and needed more custard to the cherries, in ratio, but it was delicious!





More pruning and training the vineyard. It's looking pretty good! Stopped for a one-sided swallow tail butterfly.





And to see how that nest of eggs in the kiwi arbor is doing. Not sure what kind of bird this is. I wish I knew more bird species.





Then we decided to tackle the gooseberries.









We got two gallons off the first bush. They really produce well. They are only about 3' high and 3' across, and I give them no care. After this, we decided to let them mature just a little longer, as I felt they were still too unripe.





We got a grain mill in the mail when we came in! Michael could not wait to try it, so he got some rice out and gave it a spin! Our kitchen counters are too thick, so we tried it on the desk.









THANKS KELLE!

After a hard days work, we went ahead and swam, even though we have still not been successful at getting the filter system in and working. It still leaks after 4 attempts. I hope to get that fixed some time soon.









Ah, that water feels SO good! :)





Wednesday we had our first big basil harvest. I am going to be inundated by basil, I can see. I did not know how much to plant or really what to expect, so we have about 30 plants in a 4 by 4 foot area of the herb bed. We really LOVE weeding those plants, the aroma just fills the air. LOL This is how much we ended up with, after trimming the top third off the plants.





Still plenty left growing out there!





I bagged some up to give away to friends later that evening.





And set about to drying the rest.









Michael wanted to try grinding the leaves in the grain mill, but he discovered that the morter and pestle work much better.









And we ended up with a cup of dried basil.





The question remains... what will we do with the next 20 weeks of harvest???

Back to what really prevented me from posting much this week... When we came in for rests, we sat down and did things like clean gooseberries! It took hours to de-stem and de-blossom the 2 gallons from that first bush.





It was done, but we are not doing that to the rest!





The current progress on the shady lettuce bed.





YAY! We are getting cukes!









Broom corn and peanuts are growing.





A good day's work weeding.





And here are the rest of the gooseberries we picked on Thursday! Help me! I still have 11 gallons of frozen ones from last year. I am going to do something with them, just not sure what yet.





Finally getting the pumpkins and winter squash scarified and soaking for planting on Friday.





And we spent several hours collecting scrap wood from the hill and cutting boards to finish up the potato boxes.

It was the first time I'd used the saw since my accident last year. I have to admit that I felt a twist of nerves thinking about turning it on. So I grabbed it and chased them away. I did fine until I had to rip a very long board, which was how I ended up cutting through my fingers, and I didn't like doing that. But it was a perfect chance to chase away the rest of the ghosts, so it was done.





Charging up the fence battery, it's monthly thing.





While picking up the battery from down below, we checked the chickens. Our rooster, the one that had been attacked by the hawk, was dead in the house. I don't know why. His skin was blue-green. A few days after the attack we noticed a blue-green spot on his skin. I wonder if it was gangrene? We may have a rooster to replace him, but I'm not sure. I miss his crowing, and he was very beautiful. :(


Oh, we had some really nice compliments last week. We were cleaning the dental office when the owner came by. I went out to chat with him and also asked if he was pleased with our work, or had he noticed anything he would like us to do better.

He not only said he was very pleased, but told me that they'd had a staff meeting the week before and he had asked the staff what they thought. They all were pleased. As a matter of fact, one had set a 'trap' to see if we'd get it. She said the whole time the other cleaning lady had been there, she'd never gotten it, but we did the very first time. (I wish I knew what trap she'd set. LOL)

Well, those are some highlights of the last week. I am undertaking canning.

Wishing I had a canning mentor...

Faith

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