A typical pick in Week 28 has a little bit of everything :D
The garden has taken precedence over everything now, so we are combining two weeks into one blog post again as we haven't had a chance to do anything else but tend to our garden. Our daily routine for the past two weeks seems to be the following:
5:00 am: Get up and have a breakfast. We enjoy having a nice relaxing breakfast together, so we always get up early to enjoy some quiet time together, watch the news and have a coffee.
6:00 am: Open up the chicken coop to let the chickens out and give them some food and water. After this is all done we go to work. If it's a Saturday or Sunday, the chickens may not get let out until 7:00am.
During the day, we work in the garden, unless we are at work, then it is all done in the evening. This includes weeding, picking veggies, pruning plants, and, because we actually had rain this summer, cut the lawn once a week. If something gets harvested, then comes the decisions on what to do. So far these past two weeks we have had a ton of peas, zucchini, beats, yellow and green beans, cabbage and potatoes.
We have finished our peas completely for this year. The only thing we ever did with them was eat them out of the pod and add them to our supper occasionally.
In the last two weeks we also pulled out all the beets. We pickled 16 one litre jars with our whole crop.
Our beets from our third and last pick from Week 29
Pickled beets recipe we used:
Pick the biggest beets, give the little guys room to grow
Trim tops, leaving ½ inch of leaves, do not trim “tail”
Rinse off dirt in sink
Boil for ½ hour in plenty of water
Drain and rinse well, cover in cold water and let soak 10
minutes
Peel and trim
Slice to ½ inch thick with mandolin slicer (8 cups of beets
= 4 x 1 litre jars)
Slice 1 large onion very thin with mandolin slicer
Prepare brine – 5 cups vinegar, 2 cups water, 1 cup sugar, 4
tbsp coarse salt, 2 tbsp black peppercorn, 12 whole cloves, 1 cinnamon stick
Bring brine to low boil and simmer for 10 minutes
Sterilize clean jars in boiling water for 10 minutes
Heat canning lids in very hot water
Fill sterilized jars with beets and sliced onions to 1 inch
from top
Pour pickling brine through sieve, filling jars to within ½
inch from top
Cover with lids and tighten rings to finger tight.
Place jars in canner with water just to top and process for
½ hour.
When done let cool for 24 hours, test lid for seal, remove
rings and store in a dark cool place for up to 1 year.
We also dug up all our potatoes. Needless to say we dug up enough potatoes for a whole year easy. We gave some away to family and friends as they will not last a whole year if it is just us two eating them.
The great potato pick of 2013 in Week 29. Notice chicken in the background
I think we might have enough potatoes for a while
Our cabbage is coming along nicely. So far we have picked around 6 heads. Besides giving the cabbage to Marianne's Mom in hopes she will make coleslaw, we have also made our own coleslaw and added it to supper.
Every other day we are picking green and yellow beans. In week 29, our second crop of yellow beans that we planted two weeks behind the first crop is starting to show as well. We usually have beans with our meals but we have also given some away to family and pickled some as well.
Every other day we pick about this many beans. I'm sure week 30 will be at least double if not triple this amount!
Hot pickled dill beans recipe we used:
Grow way too many green ‘Blue Bush Beans’ and mix in some
yellow wax beans for variety
Clean and trim 8 cups of beans so they are shorter than the
500ml canning jars standing up, makes about 8 x 500ml jars.
Prepare brine – 5 cups vinegar, 2 cups water, 1 tbsp crushed
red pepper, 4 tbsp dill seed, 4 tbsp coarse salt, 6 cloves garlic cut in half
Bring brine to boil and simmer for 10 minutes
Sterilize clean jars in boiling water for 10 minutes
Heat canning lids in very hot water
Fill sterilized jars with beans
Remove garlic cloves from brine and fill jars to within ½
inch from top
Cover with lids and tighten rings to finger tight.
Place jars in canner with water just to top and process for
15 minutes.
When done let cool for 24 hours, test lid for
seal, remove rings and store in a dark cool place for up to 1 year.
Our homemade pickled beets and pickled beans :)
Then there is the zucchini. With nine plants, it is impossible to keep up with what is being produced. We have made zuchinni bread to bring to Marianne's family reunion, shredded some that went into the freezer for later, added it to our meals, and given it away. Even after all this, we still have tons of zucchini sitting on our counter. Next year, we probably won't have to plant so many.
A single day's pick of zucchini in Week 29, with many more to come!
Other happenings around the farm include having around10 inches of rain this summer thus far. I wish we actually kept track since we have a rain gauge, as it would be interesting to take note of the total rainfall and compare it to future years. The chickens are growing ever bolder of their surroundings. We now open up their run so they can explore around the yard while we are at work. In the evening they still return to the coop, except for the one we always have to fetch out of the small cedar tree. We also have a mama turkey and seven little ones visiting us once in a while. :)
Mama turkey and chicks enjoy a cool dust bath after Aaron rototilled the garden where the potatoes once were.
