Fall Done Fell

In the space of a week we've gone from humidity, thunderstorms and 80 degree temps to falling leaves and pea soup fog in the mornings. Fall has arrived in Boggy Hollow, and with it, as ever, a nearly-endless list of stuff that needs doing, yesterday.

As a bit of strategery, I am posting my to-do list here in the hope that the threat of an on-the-record public shaming will serve as motivation for me to get my crap together and not, say, take a nap with my puppy.

Hope springs eternal.

Chelle's end of Summer/Fall To-Do list:

*Finish harvesting the garden - tomatoes, tomatillos, basil, lemon balm, garlic chives, runner beans, pumpkins, cylindrical beets, sunflowers, chamomile, calendula, breadseed poppies, Fall raspberries

*Forage - apples, crab apples, pears, walnuts, hazelnuts, hawthorn berries, rose hips, dandelion roots, mushrooms?

*Can/Freeze/Dehydrate - Spaghetti sauce, tomato paste, tomatillo salsa, pumpkin puree, hard cider (apple, pear, hawthorn, etc.), wine (rose hip, hawthorn, raspberry), egg noodles (using beets, basil, etc.), pumpkin ravioli, chamomile, lemon balm and calendula for tea and soapmaking, dandelion roots (for bitters), pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, beet chips, beet greens, compound herb butters (basil, lemon balm, garlic chive), Scarlet Runner beans, 3 "surplus" roosters, 2 tom turkeys.

*Ferment - Cider (for ACV), wine, sauerkraut

*Make - At least 2 more batches of soap - one with goat milk and one vegan, re-batch soap trimmings, knit at least 2 dozen more dishcloths and 6 pair of bike helmet earmuffs

*Set up/Organize - The new pantry/storage room shelving - oy. This will probably involve a trip to IKEA, better known in our family as the Yuppie Modular Cattle Chute from Hell. Uff da.

As if that weren't enough, in addition to my regular Mom duties, a friend and I are in the process of starting a new business that entails real estate deals, meetings with bankers, tons of market research, paperwork and spreadsheets out the wazoo and a big, fat, healthy dose of sheer panic. Good times!

So, there you have it. My next 12 weeks, chock-full of farm housewifferey (did I just invent that word?), lava-hot mason jars and self-imposed stress and deadlines. Hold my feet to the fire to get this stuff done, guys and gals, because that nap is looking better with each passing minute.

Coming Soon...

...after the last wheelbarrow full of tomatoes is canned, the last of our three-roosters-too-many are culled and sent to the stock pot, and I've had a day or two to straight-up veg out on the couch, I'll be posting a long overdue giveaway!

Because I'm still presently freaking out all a-tither over getting a ton of produce picked and put up, I don't yet have my lineup of goodies selected, but don't be surprised to see some jam, salsa, sauce and maybe a knit or two in there. More details and the pics of the goods are forthcoming... soon (I hope.)

This represents a wee sampling of what I'm working on these days. Mercy!

Can-o-rama, the Second Act

My homegirls and I started an informal monthly food preservation-fest last Fall that we dubbed The Bitchin' Kitchen Collective. I think we met maybe three times last year, before scheduling conflicts, Holidays and general chaos tore our little gathering asunder.

I'm bringing sexy jammin' back.

Yesterday, my girl Kristin and I had a little fiesta de salsa. The 25 pounds of free tomatillos that I was able to get via Craigslist were our launching point. She and I both hunted around for a good salsa verde recipe that could be made with the hot water bath canning method, and settled on this one, with just a few minor tweaks. Our bounty of tomatillos meant that we had enough veg to make eleven batches worth of salsa. Dios mio! Times like these are when it is especially handy to have a hubby who is into home brewing and willing to share his giant brewpot and propane burner with you. I also owe my guy some serious props for being willing to shuttle jars back and forth from the kitchen to the water bath canner bubbling away on the covered porch because a) it was raining, and b) he had to bob and weave past two very excited and curious Great Pyrenees both ways. Canning is not for sissies!

Our efforts yielded 10 pints and 36 half pints of salsa, over the course of a 7 hour-long, mellow Sunday spent with one of my bestest girls, drinking wine and shooting the breeze. Life is pretty darn good. :)

Next up - more jam and jelly and probably a little wine as well, made with apples, pears, rose hips, hawthorn, rowan berries, and whatever else we might forage or stumble upon.

The Weekend Loometh

Maybe loometh is too dark a word? The weekend... cometh aggressively(eth)? Let's just say we're packing a whole bunch of homesteady-type activities into the next 48 hours.

On Saturday - We're trying our first batch of homemade goats milk soap. I'm still on the hunt for the perfect recipe. I'm leaning toward something creamsicle-ish with sweet orange oil and vanilla beans. We'll see if chemistry is my friend!

Also on Saturday, we'll be planting a few trees and medicinal perennials - Beaked Hazel (nut), Echinacea, Yarrow and a few others. I scored big at a closeout sale on water-wise plants. Not that a shortage of water has ever been a problem here (this is Boggy Hollow), but plants that don't mind a little accidental neglect on my part will most definitely do better in the long run.

Lastly, we plan to list 3 or 4 of our goats for sale this weekend, which could translate to the unparallelled joy that is wrangling disgruntled goats during an epic downpour. Yay?

Sunday, it's salsa-jam 2012. My girl Kristin and I scored 25 pounds of free, perfectly ripe tomatillos via craigslist, so we're going to devote the day to making enough salsa verde to feed a small army.

Free tomatillos. Thanks, Kathy!

Spending the day chopping, stirring and jarring up salsa may not sound like hard work, but after 8 or 10 hours of salsa fest, me and my good friend, giant jug o' red wine, would beg to differ.

Here's to a rainy, drainy, productive weekend!

The 4th Annual Jam-o-Rama

Someday I'll work up the courage to try "real" canning. By which I mean, using a pressure canner, rather than just a hot water bath to safely heat and seal my jars. After all, water bath canning limits you to canning higher-acid foods, since it isn't able to reach the intense temperatures that a pressure canner can. I've pressure canned salsa and a few other odds and ends before, but only with my Mom present. She has a dandy old pressure canner, which I happen to be terrified to use alone.

Firstly, because there is a right way and a wrong way to use a pressure canner. I have an inordinate amount of fear that I will miss a step and somehow manage to blow up my kitchen. After footing the bill from my car accident, I'm not sure that my insurance agent would be super keen to learn of my dabbling with super heated liquids encased in immanently breakable glass jars either.

Secondly, I'm not a huge fan of mopping my ceiling. My husband's beer brewing mishaps have seen well to that.

So, I'm primarily a jam kinda gal. In fact, my very good friend Jen and I have a yearly summer canning fest that we've dubbed the Jam-o-Rama.

This year, Jen got a great deal on a case of beautiful, locally grown peaches, so we're making three kinds of peach jam/preserves - Spiced Peach, Raspberry Peach and Earl Grey infused Peach. This jam-o-rama is definitely an all day affair, but sooo worth the trouble.

Our jammin' lasted a full 10+ hours this year, and resulted in a total of 78 jars of gorgeous, delicious jam.

My share of the goods

Spiced Peach, Raspberry Peach and "The Earl"

After four years of hardcore jammin', we gals finally seem to know what we're about. I daresay that "The Earl" is our best effort yet. Alas, because this was our first time trying our heavily modified/improvised recipe, we only made a double batch (as opposed to our usual, quadruple), and therefore ended up with just 9 half pints each. We'll definitely make a bigger batch next year, but after peeling and chopping 30 pounds of fuzzy golden orbs, I think we're all peached out for now.

Still on my to-do list: Blueberry, Hawthorn and Apple and maybe blackberry. We'll see how long this wave of enthusiasm lasts. ;)

Last Call for Granola Giveaway #2!

If you haven't yet entered my drawing for a package of homemade goodies delivered straight to your door, do so now! :)

I've finally gotten around to doing a little much-delayed canning this weekend, including the very interesting corn cob jelly that I've been ogling over at Chickens in the Road. And so, now that I feel confident that I can send out a varied assortment of jams, jellies and all things knitted, I'm about ready to draw names.

So enter here or enter there and tomorrow evening I will draw a winner.

Thanks again for stopping by and for your comments - they make my day!

:) Michelle

I will can this weekend...

...I will can this weekend. I will!

Because I know a certain soldier, far away from home, who has specifically requested some blueberry jam, I will get my act together and make the jams that I have been putting off making. And then I'll drag my lazy butt to the post office and send those jars on an exotic journey. Hold me to it, people. Otherwise someone on the other side of the planet is going to be eating some dry mess hall toast, and that's just not cool.

Gotta Whole Lotta 'Cots

Today was a tag-team jam-o-rama. Jen and I made no less than 48 jars of apricot jam & conserves, with apricots to spare. In case you didn't know, 24 pounds of apricots is A LOT of apricots.



Even after we canned the bejeebus out of our 'cots, I was still left with four pounds of fruit. Since I'm a little apricotted out at the moment, I'm thinking of using the rest of mine to make some Apricot Schnapps. It takes a few months of steeping and "aging" for the schnapps to be properly drinkable, by which time I will hopefully have regained my love of the lovely "cot".

Jammin' 'til the jam is through

Oh yeah! We be jammin' alright. Cherry jam and raspberry jelly so far this week, and apricot and peach are up next. My organic fruit man at the Farmer's Market says that he can get me a sweet deal on a case of #2 apricots for jamming and canning - $24 for 24 pounds. That's going to be a lot of 'cots!

I've had a little help with my preserving efforts. Here we have Scarlet working the Cherry Chomper -



Which resulted in -


12 Pints of Skeena Cherry Goodness

Factoring in the price paid for the cherries (organic), sugar (also organic) and pectin, my cost per 1/2 pint jar ends up being somewhere around $2.58. Not bad, but I could have done better if I had taken the time to go to Costco for 10 lb bag of organic sugar instead of using a bunch of 2 lb bags from my neighborhood grocery store. (I should also mention that, with both the raspberries and cherries, we ate some of the fruit plain, which, if I could subtract that from the cost of the ingredients, would lower my price-per-jar a bit.)

The raspberry jelly was my first attempt at a jelly, having always made jams previous to this. The price per half pint on it came out a bit higher, at $2.72 per half pint.



It gelled very well and came out only slightly cloudy, because I apparently squeezed the berries too much, according to the pectin package. Um, how does one juice a berry without squeezing it in some way or another?

Anyway, slightly cloudy or not, we now have a total of 30 half-pints of preserves put up so far this year. Brace yourselves, people. By fall's end I'll be giving this stuff away left and right.

Can All You Can

I came upon these old war-era posters from Good Potato via (not so) Urban Hennery.

I sure wish that more people felt the same way about farming and conservation these days. Why does it seem to take times of great need or strife to get people to do what they ought to do every day anyway?

Enjoy the images, and check out www.good-potato.com for more neat old posters.

Getting Sauced with my Mom

Believe it or not, Mom & I managed to use up our all of our apples in just one day of industrious peeling, simmering & canning. Approximately 35 pounds of apples yielded just over 25 pints of applesauce for us, and could have made more, had we opted to add sugar, which, in spite of my daughters persistent pro-sugar lobbying, we did not.

We were fortunate to have willing and energetic helpers in my girls, who had great fun using our apple peeler, then feeding the resulting yards-long, skinny apple peels to our chickens. I would love to have documented our three-generation applesauce making effort in pictures, but unfortunately, my darling husband hijacked our camera for a hunting trip and it has not been seen since. :(

Despite a few technical difficulties and a cranky, arthritic knee that makes such long days on my feet somewhat punishing, the process was relatively easy and the sauce turned out delicious. The best part of the day, of course, was the experience of making food the old-fashioned way with my Mom and my girls. Pictures or no pictures, I have a feeling that my girls will remember this day for a long time, and hopefully, will someday make applesauce with their grandchildren too.

The Apple Man Cometh...

...tomorrow! Mom & I ordered a 40-pound box of Fuji apples as part of a Lions Club fundraiser, and they're due to be delivered tomorrow. I'm thinking applesauce for sure, but does anyone have any other tried-and-true canning or freezer-friendly recipe suggestions for an abundance of apples?

"You're being like a squirrel!"

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am currently in the grip of what might be fairly called a harvest mania.

Besides some of the great books that I have read on the importance of good food and living sustainably, and a natural inclination to take advantage of Mother nature’s offerings (free is good!), I am very lucky to have several like-minded friends who have abetted and otherwise encouraged my grow it/pick it/freeze it/can it frenzy this year.

I guess I should have noticed the warning signs that I was spinning a little out of control when I would post to my Facebook page “Going back to the blueberry patch today!” and my friends would playfully harass – You’re obsessed! You’re addicted! Out of control! Maybe when I nearly put my shoulder out of joint grinding tomatoes, or, when I began obsessively scouring Craigs List on a daily basis in the hunt for an affordable chest freezer… I probably should have realized that things were getting a little nuts.

As it was, it wasn’t until I was weighing, measuring and preparing for freezing yet another small mountain of zucchini that I was brought up short by my 9 year-old.

O: “Mama?”
M: “Yes?”
O: “You’re collecting a lot of food for the winter. You’re kind of being like a squirrel.”

It wasn’t an accusation; it was most certainly a fact. She was trying to let me know, in as gentle a way as she knew how, that I needed to put the zucchini down and back away slowly.

Since our little chat, I have tried to take it down a notch. I scrapped the spaghetti sauce canning and opted for bagging and freezing it. I have completely stopped my jam-a-thon – for now, and I’ve been giving away increasing amounts of tomatoes to friends and neighbors instead of trying to consume, dehydrate or can every last one by myself. The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. Therefore I say with a mixture of pride and shame: I, Michelle, am being like a squirrel.