Anyway, on my last trip to the farm I ended up with 10 pounds of apples. They're "seconds" so they were cheaper, and not really in too bad shape either. What do you do with 10 pounds of apples? Make apple sauce of course!
(I'd already started cutting up apples and putting them in a pot before I took this picture, but you can see that I have at least a few apples :)
I canned and processed! Now I've got 6 pints of apple sauce....and about 5 more pounds of apples!
So even though it's warmer this season, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to get my fall garden planted in time. Today would have been a great day to do it, but I don't really have a bed set up for new plants. My other plants are still slowly putting out veggies, so I'm not quite ready to pull them up yet. Well, I did pull up the potatoes, but that's in the knotwood infested area that I'm about to (ye gads) spray with double strength round up.
Still, I've done a pretty good job this summer I think. I've managed to squirrel away more than I ever have before, even if I am pretty far from a full backyard homestead.
Here's what I've got so far:
2 large freezer bags of whole frozen tomatoes. These can be thawed individually or a few at a time. I plan to make sauces with them as I need to.
3 small portions of tomato sauce. I'd like to have a ton more sauce, but we keep eating the tomatoes. I started freezing tomatoes to make more sauce, but just left them whole and frozen. I plan to use the frozen sauce for pizzas when I don't really feel like doing a bunch of cooking.
2 tupperware boxes and 2 small zip lock bags of Rainbow Chard. I'm guessing these will go into soups sometime when it gets cooler.
2 small ziplock bags of squash, most likely for soups
1 large bag of carrots, probably for soup, maybe for a side dish.
1 small bag of spinach, definitely for soup, I hate frozen spinach otherwise.
2 small bags of green beans.
9 heads of broccoli (and 3 more growing on the plants as of September). All for soups, I just need to get and freeze some soup to go along with it.
1 pound of potatoes
5 heads of garlic (decedents of my grandfather's garden)
9 jars pickles (and I still have enough cucumbers for 9 more jars if I can get to it)
12 jelly jars of grape jelly (hopefully to be traded or given away as gifts).
6 pints of apple sauce
I'm currently making yogurt, but I don't know if it'll come out alright or not. I read too late that I shouldn't use ultra-pasteurized milk. I had a bunch of raw milk from our Raw Milk Festival outing yesterday, but wanted to experiment with something less expensive on the first try. Oops, guess I should have gone ahead with my original plans.
But instead of worry about that now, I'm going to enjoy the rest of this beautiful day. I've been puttering in the garden and baking, so the day has already been a good one. Time for yoga, or maybe a nap.
But before I go.... Here's the latest wildlife found in our garden. Mama snake and 3 babies. I sure hope they aren't poisonous, and I really hope the cats don't get too interested in making friends with the locals.
2 comments:
I am so impressed! Our garden hasn't had quite the same kind of variety. But we've got quantity. I actually had to compost 6-10 pickling cucumbers at one point because they went fuzzy before I had time to pickle them. But I already have 4 or 5 jars of pickles in the cupboard. I think the one cucumber vine is finally dying off, so I need to cut it back this week to start cleaning up the place.
Now that I've learned how to make tomatoes grow (i.e. water them regularly), next year I'll plant some romas for sauce. We have cherry and grape tomatoes everywhere, and its lucky that the kids like them. I did make a batch of pizza sauce out of them one night (Good flavor, but they don't yield a ton).
We've had 3 or 4 bell peppers (eaten as fast as they were harvested), and a butternut squash (which is due to be cooked this week). And we've eaten 2 moon-and-stars watermelon so far, with 5 more on the vine (one of which is about due for picking...). I have a bunch of green onions that we've been pulling as we go.
As for the warm temperatures, here in St. Louis we didn't get a hard freeze till late November last year, which confused all the spring bulbs. So far this year, we're pretty average (still in the 80's during the day but finally cooling off overnight).
And we don't have room for a fall garden either. The watermelon took over one end of the garden (and is still going), and the cucumber and tomatoes are all over the other side. Next year, vine-y plants get their own space. I've already bought a second rain barrel and am plotting where to dig a second veggie patch for next year...
Sounds like your garden is doing great! I wish I had planted melons and bell peppers... Ah well, lessons learned for next year.
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