OOOOOPS!

Forgot to tell you all:

This recipe was taken from The Doubleday Cookbook by Jean Anderson, published 1972 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.-------------one of the best cookbooks I have ever used.

The House Smells Soooo Good!

This is where I start my canning. I purchase the very best products. These really do make a difference in how your end product tastes. That is the reason I can. Because I like my food better than anything I can buy.

I'm going to demonstrate here Pickled red cabbage. It actually is more a sweet and sour red cabbage. Right now you can buy red cabbage for practically a song, especially at the local farmers markets. Or try www.localharvest.org and look for a farm in your area.

Last night I thinly sliced 5 quarts of red cabbage and put all in a large stainless steel bowl with 2 1/2 quarts of water and 1/2 cup of kosher salt (pickling salt-NEVER iodized salt). I let that soak overnight.

Today I washed 8 pint jars and put them in the oven at 250 degrees to sterilize them until I needed them..

The lids I put into boiling water and then turned it off.
I then proceeded to make my syrup of 2 1/2 quarts of vinegar, 2 1/2 cups of organic cane sugar, and 5 tablespoon of pickling spices (4 broken cinnamon sticks, 2 Tbl. mustard seed, 4 tsp. peppercorns, 2 tsp cloves, 2 tsp whole allspice, 2 tsp dill seed, 4 bay leaves) that I put in a small muslin bag. (You can also wrap it all in cheesecloth or tulle or whate
ver)in a stainless steel container. NEVER use aluminum.


I brought that to a boil for 10 minutes. While that was boiling I filled my jars.

Never pack too tightly nor too lightly. Too tight and air gets trapped. Too lightly and you use too much syrup and there is 2 inches of juice on the bottom.
Next I turned off the syrup and quickly filled the jars with syrup within
1/4 inch of the top.

Working quickly to prevent the jars from cooling off I wiped the rims, put on the hot lids, and sealed with the rings tightly.

Now I will cool them overnight and check in the morning to see if all the lids have compressed in the middle. If they haven't I would pour it into a pan and bring it to a boil, resterilize my jar and a NEW lid and put it all back into the jar again, cap it, and see if it works that time. Tomorrow I will label them and put them in a dark, cool, dry place for 4-6 weeks. That will give them the time they need to pickle. Yummy!

Woah Nellie!

I have been so busy! Canning has taken over my life! Every year I am getting better at stocking up the harvest. I hate to let anything go to waste. But then in a sustainable garden nothing ever goes to waste. It goes to compost! I'm desperate to get everything from the garden in before the apples and pears have to be put up. Because WOW! there's a ton of them.

I don't need anymore jams but I will probably make apple butter and pear butter just to do it. I want to dry alot of apple slices and make spiced cinnamon apple rings and spiced pears. I also came across a recipe for spiced crabapples.
I usually take Brandy for her walk about a mile and a half from here. There are monstrous athletic fields with trails through the bordering woods. It is there that I found all my black raspberries (quarts and quarts) and wild grapes. And the wild crabapple. Also I discovered hackberries and one other fruit tree I am working on identifying. I read a quote today that said, "90% of yellow and white berries are poisonous, 90% of blue or black are not, and with red it is 50-50. This is a tree with black fruit like small cherries clustered tightly together. It could be choke cherry I suppose, but then I have to wonder what I was seeing just a few weeks ago in the same area. Those could have been a wild cherry(quite bitter) and these could be choke cherries.
Guess what? It's a choke cherry! I just found it online. I'll have to go back and find a small twig with leaves from the "other" tree and compare that with pictures online.
There is one other tree I am interested in. It reminds me of the Russian olive trees from New Mexico. It is even putting out what look like olives. I understand that they are edible, kind of sweet, but mealy. We'll see. It is an invasive plant but I do love the sweet fragrance of its spring blooms.I'll take pictures tomorrow and see if anyone knows what they are.
All this to say that I am driving myself crazy trying to keep up with getting everything done. I need children!

A day of rest (almost)

I love Sundays. Most of them are beautiful. Today was no exception. Duane has been pretty sick with the flu this week so we took the time to stay home and rest. We listened to John MacArthur teaching on the Second Coming of Christ over at http://www.oneplace.com/ and he helped me get the garden watered well.

I am thrilled to see the muskmelon are finally producing. They have overrun their space and are going to overtake Brandies dog yard any minute now! When you have any squash family plants or viney types you can tell the female flowers from the male by the swelling just behind the blossom. It looks like she's pregnant! If it is pollinated it will become fruit, but if not, it will wither and fall off. You can assure pollination by doing it for yourself. Just take a small artist's brush and take some of the pollen from the stamens of the male flowers (those are the little stalks sticking out of the middle of the flower) and then depositing the pollen you have collected onto the stamens of a female flower. But we have so many bees around here (it really is amazing) and wasps that we can see them buzzing around continually during the day by the hundreds just above the plants.

The above photo is the muskmelon patch. We put up "ladders" and attached chicken fence on both sides so the melons would have a way to climb. We were hoping to save some space that way. The picture is actually a little over a week old and the plants are up and over the top of the ladders and in -between them and through the fence surrounding the whole thing! It is an 8x8 patch of mostly sand. I think we have 4 plants on each side but I can't remember and there's no telling now. I wanted to use knee highs to tie up the fruit for support but we have lost the battle with the overflow that has entangled itself in the fence. Awww, too bad--NOT! This muskmelon is called Swan Lake. The picture looked so refreshing and beautiful I had to try it. We bought the seed from Seeds of Change out of New Mexico. http://www.seedsofchange.com/

The little plant in front of the chain link fence is actually 4 gherkins in a 3 gallon pot. They are growing nicely along the fence now. They went in late but I have already had one and there is now an abundance of flowers. The leaves are showing a sign that the plant is in need of magnesium. The veins on some leaves are very green and stand out while the rest of the leaf has a yellow tone to them. I put on a good organic fertilizer today and hope that will do the trick. I wish my compost was finished so I could use that but it will be a couple of weeks yet. Then I will screen it and put into the new pile the larger unfinished stuff.

OK. I tried to put the top picture just above this paragraph but it didn't work. I've got a lot to learn. Sigh That picture was taken from the roof of half of the backyard. Actually, at the back of the yard are 3 apple trees and a pear tree that you can't see. They are loaded this year. God has given us an abundance! There is a banana tree to the west of the patio. It now has 8 leaves. It is a dwarf canvendish. I am hoping it will flower and produce for us. It has three babies at the bottom we need to remove and transplant. And you can see the blue barrel at the edge of the house. We actually have a water catchment system. Duane is able to get these food grade barrels from work. Then he has put good size brass spigots on them and connected six of them around the back of the house at different points. That way we don't have to keep unhooking the hose when one is empty. They drain into the last one on the chain. Or we can use them individually if we don't want to drag the hose around one side of the house to the other. He set one barrel on top of another at the front of the house also. They look like a nice splash of color against the light blue of the house.

You can even see my clothesline that runs diagonally in the back right corner of the dog yard. It is a godsend in these times when gas is so expensive. I love a good clothesline!

Main Garden

I promised a sweet friend of mine last night that I would get these pictures posted. This first one is of the main garden. It is split in two so that we could put garden equipment we were using in there.

There is chicken wire all around the perimeter and twine every foot above that x's 3. That is because of the deer. Supposedly, and I don't doubt it, this garden sits directly in a deer corridor! So far we haven't seen any, but I just remembered I left the gate open, so excuse me while I go close it!

Ok, I'm back. I opened the back door and right away I smelled a skunk. I came back in and went through the garage so it would hear me banging around and get the desire to leave. I have a garage door on the back of the garage as well as the front so I banged and opened it slowly. I shined the flashlight all around before I went out. Didn't want to stumble into one of those! Didn't see a skunk but I did see an opossum running away from the apple tree. Lots of dropped apples for her. (That's a guess on the gender)

So anyway. I'll post more tomorrow.

Here is our herb garden with plenty of flowers. I love white petunias! On the patio are potato plants in pots. I've been wanting to try it so since we had so many sprouters left over from last year we decided to give it a try. They are starting to flower and should be mature in 4-6 weeks. Yukon Gold. The herb garden was rocky hardpan clay! Covered in weedy grass. We both feel lawn is a waste of space and since many herbs are irradiated these days, we planted dill, garden sage, tarragon (French) thyme, oregano, 4 different kinds of basil, 2 different kinds of lavender, pineapple sage (I just like the bush and it smells awesome), echinacea, calendula, spearmint, and a knock out rose in the middle of it all. Petunias and marigolds round it out. I love it. I have always desired to put one of these in. It was a lot of hard work. After turning it up and shaking the dirt off the grass roots (which we added to our compost pile) we picked out multitudes of rocks. This is right near the house so the soil is full of rocks from when they built. We amended the soil with Michigan peat and composted cow manure. Then tilled it again and pulled more rocks. Since herbs can take or leave rich soil, they have flourished. But many flowers and herbs I planted did not come up. Maybe next year with finished compost on it. I used some of the dill last night in a "dill crock". I bought a 2 gallon crock and followed Euell Gibbons directions in my thrift store buy, "Stocking Up" by Rodale. We used dill, cauliflower, green beans, garlic, more dill, onion chunks, pepper flakes and more dill on top. Then we put 1 measure of salt to 10 measures of water and mixed it until the salt dissolved then added it to the crock, put a salad plate on top, and weighted it down with a glass jar 1/3 filled with water. The food must stay under the brine or it goes bad. This a.m. I added 1/4 cup of salt on top of the plate and skimmed off a little scum. It should be ready in 2 weeks. We are keeping it in the livingroom which stays between 70 -80 degrees. We'll see! Oh yeah, I also put in little rock hard green tomatoes. I hope it works. The art of fermenting foods (way better than pickled stuff) is almost lost. I'm going to learn this, I really am.

Well, where have I been?

Been gone forever! Much has been going on. We moved. Center St. was nice for the winter but we needed a place to move around in and grow stuff! We found a 3/4 acre place in the county and moved in May. We had to dig up a lawn to put in a garden and of course that brought a slew of bugs. But I am running ahead of myself.

I'll post pictures tomorrow. We are only renting for six months, but that could turn into an added year and a half. Depends on whether we stay in this area or not. We have been seeking new employment for Duane but so far the LORD is not giving him something new. Those trials some other time.

The LORD is good to those who seek Him. I just read that and I can't remember where the verse is from. I want to say Jeremiah. That's the problem when you aren't reading in order. You can't give the chapter and verse so others can keep you on line. I've been enjoying a lively chat lately about Revelation with an old Amish friend. That is an exciting book to be sure! And yet I have heard "Christians" say that it scares them and noone can understand it. God didn't write it so people would be confused, but comforted and blessed. In fact, He begins and ends the book with promises--check it out! Of course, you have to know Him to understand it. And there is only one way to know Him. Not know that He exists, everybody knows that. But to know Him and believe in Him the way that God has designed it, not us. God, not us, has determined how man may approach Him. And that is through His beloved Son, Jesus Christ. To say there is any other way, is arrogance. God is not amused. It is the same sin that got Satan kicked out of heaven and Adam and Eve kicked out of the garden. And it is the same sin that brings condemnation at the moment of death. Listen, in Psalm 19 verse 7 it says, "The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul. The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple." It continues on: "The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes." These words of His are "more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. MOREOVER, by them Thy servant is warned, in keeping them there is GREAT REWARD." Then we read in Acts 4 what else God has to say, and it is about Jesus Christ: "And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we MUST be saved." Since the opening of Genesis God has shown man his need for a Savior. And that He has it taken care of it. There is no way for us to take care of our sin ourselves. It can't be done! We are to weak and unable to even see who we are. If He doesn't wake us up to the fact we won't even see it! Why? Why? Because "we are dead in our trespasses and sins" Can a dead man see? Can a dead man hear? Can a dead man do anything? No, a hundred times, no. Can a dead man make any kind of decision? No. And until Christ awakens you to your sin you will never seek a Savior. Do you hear Him? Is He calling you to awake, to arise from the dead? "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" For Christ died for the sinner. It is He who came at just the right time. To give His life for a ransom. To pay the penalty for your sin! To set you free from "the body of this death". Don't tell me you don't see it--your need to have the ugliness taken from you, to have your sins washed away, and be made a new creation in the eyes of God? Don't you want hope? Don't you want to be free? Then look toward Him who is more merciful than any. More patient, more forgiving, more knowing of you than you yourself, for He made you. Won't you seek for Him? For He says, "You shall search for me and find Me, when you search for Me with ALL of your heart." Open the New Testament and see how Christ calls all to repent from their sins and believe (not just mere assent, but wholeheartedly following)on Jesus Christ in order to be saved. No other way. No other person. Get alone with Jesus, today. "For today IS the day of salvation."