September 2007 Archives
I harvested the jalapeno peppers and the chili peppers. The heated goodness nearly filled a four gallon bucket. Another pink bucket harvest!
They recieved a nice cold bath before I sorted them in to lots of reds and greens so the hot pepper jelly would not have a motled color. While the peppers drained I then made sure to put on a good pair of kitchen gloves. Peppers will give you a chemical burn that is in no way fun. I have burned my hands before and I do not ever want to do that again. Seriously. With the amount of peppers I handled had I not worn gloves I would be unable to type and would be in severe pain right now. If you make hot pepper jelly make sure you wear gloves.
I took off the stem ends and split the peppers down the middle. I wasn't aiming for take your head off hot so, using a small spoon, I scooped out the majority of the pith and seeds which toned down the heat.
I ran them through the food processor. I like bits of peppers in my jelly so I did not puree them. I just don't like green pepper water. It can also make the jelly look cloudy that way. So just a few pulses. This measured out at 4 cups chopped peppers. To that I added 6 cups of sugar. Over slow heat I began to bring it to a boil. If your peppers are not super juicey you'll have to add a little water to help melt the sugar. To my mixture I added 3/4 c. water.
I let the peppers boil for about two minutes. Then I added 1 box pectin to make sure the peppers jellied. Stir without stopping after adding the pectin for another two minutes. Remove from heat. Carefully pour the hot jelly into your scalded jars.
Heat your lids in boiling water to sterelize them.
Place the lids on the jars and seal tightly with rings. Process jars in a hot water bath for 20 minutes. Take out and set on a cloth to begin cooling. You will hear the lids pop as they seal.
Red and green pepper jelly. It is so pretty and festive it makes me think of the approaching holidays and how I need to get busy with my plans and preparations. I also made a batch of cranberry-pepper jelly which I will share with you later.
The best part of making pepper jelly is the really cute little helper who is far too busy for his own good. Since he was so cute and sweet and really needed something that wasn't hot pepper jelly I baked him a pie.
What was left of the peppers I set about and pickled them.
Totals for the day - 9 pints red pepper jelly - 9 pints green pepper jelly - 8 jars cranberry-pepper jelly, 1 quart hot pickled peppers, 2 apple pies.
And how did your day pan out?
Searching through the old posts here please note that when the journal entries where imported into this new version of Movable Type the formatting was lost. Therefore all of the old posts look like I don't know a thing about sentence structure and paragraphs. I am not totally complainly. I am happy to have the entries available. O'kay I am complaining a little bit.
(Another) One of the things I love about the approach of fall is the anticipation of the apples. We have apple trees. We have very few apples this year due to the snow storm that came just before Easter this year and killed most of the blossoms on the trees.
We will harvest our apples this week. First on the menu is apple pie!
Back in March (I did so much in March!) we planted three fig trees. The summer drought did nothing to help them. They have struggled and made it through to fall. How very surprised I was to see one of the tiny trees baring fruit. Figs! My mouth waters at the thought of the deliciousness we will hopefully harvest next summer.
I probably shoudl knock these off and wait until next year but I can't. I want to taste just one, just one this fall. Hopefully the birds won't get them.
As soon as October shows its face around here I am headed off to the mountains. This year I plan to acquire more than a few Stayman apples. If you have never had an old Virginia stayman apple you have missed out one of the best apples to be eaten. I discovered these apples last fall at an open market and fell in love with them.
Our diet is filled with apple and pumpkin dishes during this time of year. I look forward to cool nights where I serve pork roasts marinated with rosemary and roasted with apples, prunes, squash, pumpkins, onions and potatoes followed by apple desserts - baked apples, fried apples, apple pie, apple tarts, warm apple sauce with cream - mmmmm or pumpkin desserts. After that comes sweet potato and collard season - a different kind of ymuuy.
Does your diet change seasonally? What's on your supper table these days?
I cooked the very last of the purple cabbages and red beets for our supper last week.
The cabbage was the last thing that came out of my garden from the spring plantings.
The peppers are prolific this year! I have never had such a harvest.
The way they are producing I can't justify pulling out those plants no matter how tired of them I am and replacing them with something else.
From here on out the hot peppers will get canned by pickling or jellied and the bell peppers (as they ripen to red) will be chopped and put in the freezer.
It was nice to say goodbye to most of those spring time plants. It was even nicer to say hello to all the new things I have planted for fall. I still have room in my garden for a few things.
I plan to put in an asparagus patch this fall. Asparagus for fall planting isn't available until October 30th. So I have plenty of time to get the beds in tip top shape while waiting for their arrival.
I also am hoping for a garlic patch. Garlic is available now. I do have my beds ready for planting. I am thinking on a softneck variety that I can braid into long beautiful displays to hang up -and use!
I also plan to expand the artichokes but I think that really has to wait until spring.
Rosemary is in the dehydrator. This is my second batch. It dries out after several hours. Then I strip the stems and seal it in a airlock bag.
Today I will try to work with the peppers getting them harvested. We are still in a drought and my new little garden for fall is so very thirsty. I am watering for 20 min. in the mornings rotating sections by the day. I hope things survive.
In other news, and I have no idea why I am telling you all this - especially YOU, you crazy animal lovers out there. We have been over run by stray and/or feral cats and kittens. I have no idea where all of these beasts have come from. We are setting cage traps and taking them off to the county animal shelter one by one. For all of you who think I should just keep the pretty kitties, kiss my @$$. I mean that in the nicest way. LOL
There are upwards of 15 cats -some with kittens. After the sun has warmed my front porch all day the bricks are giving off radiant heat through most of the night. This is where these strange animals gather after dark. During the day they lay in wait in the hedges and try to ambush birds and rabbits -which is a good thing because rabbits would eat my garden - however, these things breed like rabbits which is a very bad thing.
I am not and have no desire to be a crazy cat lady. This place is not a feline farm either. So, out of here is the way they are going. If you want a cat I have some free ones if you want to try and catch one.
As if you haven't figured it out by now -
I don't like cats. At all.
I do tolerate one for the barns and keeping down the mice population come fall and winter.
In more other news and developing saga I have ordered my meat birds for fall. 25 cornish cross rocks. These birds will grow to giant size in eight weeks and be ready for the freezer. They should arrive next week. I plan to keep close accounts of them because of the speed of their growth. I think charting the development will be an interesting project. These birds when dressed will easily weigh around 4lbs each. Those that have to wait to the end while we process will be 5 -6 lbs. Like small turkeys!
Before you send me bunches of hate mail let me remind you that we operate a small scale farm. Every thing here has a job and a purpose. Animals are part of the food chain. The dog is a pet and if she didn't exist before my time she would not be just a pet. She would be a working dog.
Now I am off to do my weekly volunteer duties at the local food bank.
I have told you all before that I am a crochet gal not a knit gal. I can and have knitted but it just doesn't hold my interest the way crocheting does. It has been so long since I have even tried to knit something it would be a very huge learning curve to even attempt the mood to want to knit.*
Right now I am looking at this glorious shawl that would be so very wonderful to wrap myself in during those late fall evenings when we still find it too warm to even think about lighting a fire but something needs to be done to ward off the chill.
Isn't this just devine? Don't you want one? I do. The question is do I want it enough to actually try to knit it? Or do I want to search out something in a chrochet pattern to whip out while we watch tv in the evenings?
The pattern is a free pattern over at The Wooly West.
When I look at this shawl I think old fashioned. This is the shawl that any pioneer woman would throw around her shoulders to walk to church. Or pull around herself while she stood outside on a cool fall evening and looked at the stars while wearing a wonderfully full, long sleeved white night gown.
Romance. That's the word I'm looking for. This shawl has the look of old fashion romance when days where simplier (even when the work was harder) and life's pleasures came in simple forms.
Since starting this post I have taken a break from it. I have searched out the internet for some of the best crochet patterns available for shawls. Shawls. Not stoles. Not one long skinny crocheted rectangle. A real honest to goodness shawl and NOTHING along the lines of what Caroline Ingles wore in Little House on the Prairie tv series. You cannot stay warm wrapped in something with a thousand holes it in!
This is what I have found so far.
Pretty close but not quite. The pattern is a freebie. Yes, I saved it, too. Just in case I go back to find it and it isn't there any longer. Looking at the two patterns I am still attracted to the knit the most.
I also found this pattern. It would be a very big project but one that would last through a fairly large chunk of winter evenings. I would finish it just in time to put it away and wear the following winter. But I do like this one alot. It would a fun wrap to through over jeans, a turtle with sweater and a very cool pair of boots.
Now I have to decide on the yarn and the color. I think camel would be lovely or maybe a deep rich tobacco brown. What color would you choose? I am not interested in black but a charcoal grey would be lovely.
What kind of yarn? Wool? Cotton? I am leaning toward cotton.
So many decisions for a simple winter craft project.
While I have been trying to decide on color, type of yarn and searching out the best price for supplies I have made a discovery. You know, there are some pretty bad crochet patterns out there. I applaud other people who make and wear their own things but seriously some of this stuff is a waste of time and good yarn. Hidious creations lie behind many links throughout the internet.
Do you knit or crochet? Are you currently wrapped up in a project? Do you have a future project you are excited about starting? If not how do you see yourself spending those cold winter nights?
I'll be sitting by the fire sipping a warm drink, wrapped in a long flannel gown with slippers on my feet and hopefully this crochet project in my hands.
*Honestly, I don't see the attraction that seems to draw so many people to world of knitting. Somewhere along the way it seems to me that crochet has become the poor man's hobby and knitting is the elite of yarn craft these days.
For anyone who might be interested here is the pattern for that poncho Martha Stewart wore upon leaving prison.
My mood is very light today*. Start the video below if you want a taste of the mood that has filled me inside out this afternoon. It's music to read by.
I was out on the front porch watering my plants. Gracie and Steven were in the driveway, Gracie pulling him along in his red wagon, their voices punctuated with bursts of laughter. The cool breeze in a grey sky stirred the leaves on the trees making the hanging baskets swing gently back and forth as they dripped water from the long soaking drink the shower hose provided just minutes before.
I love my front porch. I love the rockers. I love the plants. I love everything about it (except maybe those aweful lamps at the front door but those can be changed one day when I remember to pick something new up from Lowes. Perhaps this but with a brighter brass finish to match the hardware on the glass door. There are some very high priced things that I love but, get real, I am not spending that kind of money on some outdoor lights when these will work and look just as nice.)
There is something so completely southern and victorian and charming about ferns on a long front porch of a big white house. It is gentile. Even on a very hot day it looks cool and inviting. White rockers, white wicker, green ferns and tall glasses of lemonaide filled with cracked ice, sweating into cool puddles on the side tables as the creak of the rockers make harmony with the birds and crickets - soothing and serene is how my brain interprets it.
My grandmother always had tons of plants on her front porch. It was like a jungle. Passersby would see a big white house with a long white front porch filled with baskets and baskets upon baskets of various plants. She had pots of mother-in-law tongues, wandering jew (varigated and purple), swedish ivy, rubber tree plants, string of pearls, peace plants, bridal veil, spider plants, several types of begonias (angel wing is my favorite begonia), corn plant, hen and chicks, moses in the cradle -just to name a few. Her plants where monster sized. She fed dozens of plants weekly with a drink of water mixed with Peter's plant food (back when it came in little white cups). I can see her now with her gallon milk jug full of blue water and a large tumbler in her hand. Every plant got a full tumbler of water.
I remember that during the winter the room she kept them in had lots of light and was filled to brimming with her collection of plants. She would see something she liked somewhere and would pinch off a piece and bring it home and stick it in a pot of soil. She would plants seeds from her grocery store fruit just to see what she could grow.
My grandmother had a green thumb beyond belief. The vining plants she grew were amazing. Some of the plants would hang from their pots and measure over five foot in length. She would eventually get around to snipping them off and starting yet another plant or give them away to someone who was awed by her plants.
My grandmother never had ferns. I don't know why. I never asked her and she never actually said but she never had ferns on her front porch. I have always loved ferns. Especially boston ferns.
The boston ferns I picked up in early spring when it might have been a bit too cool for them to be outside. I had brought home two ferns and I broke them up into four pots. In this area ferns are at a premium in price. You could have knocked me over with a feather when one plant nursery had theirs marked at the low discount price of $19.95 each. Um, no thanks. Not interested. I found my two little baskets at walmart's garden center and repotted them myself. I have spent the summer periodically breaking them up and setting new pots. Now I have eight ferns in various stages of development.
I have no idea where I will put them when the weather changes and they need to be brought in. I love the hanging baskets they are in. The baskets are lined with cocoa fiber so watering them in the house will be a mess. It is a nusance to me to have to take all the plants one at a time to the tub and water them and then have to wait for them to drip dry before rehanging them.
The large ferns on either side of the door are two I picked up at Lowes garden center. The plants had been marked down for clearance for quick removal. I always try to have something large and green on either side of the front door. It just looks inviting to my eye. These two large plants need to be broken up and put into at least 20 inch pots. Where I would put 4 twenty inch pots so that they get good light and are easily accessible for watering? I hate dripping mess after watering plants but I love the plants. LOL I don't mind all the care they need when outside I just dread bringing them in and the leaf dropping and dripping water mess they can create. Any suggestions?
On the wicker tables are peace plants, I started those from 2 little tiny $2 pots (small small plants lol). They should be transfered to larger pot also. I don't know if a larger pot will as nice on those tables. I guess I need to break them apart and make new pots, too.
I don't think I can justify the need of new (more) flower pots to Steve. He won't understand that the square ones on the chains are outdoor pots and just won't do in the house. Also have you looked at the price of large pots? Plastic ones just will not do either. Added to the problem is the need for them to match the decor in the room in which they are to rest over the late fall and winter. See? Always something in need of beautifying. He completely won't understand and will suggest some of those old ugly green or white plastic pots most hanging baskets come from the nursery in. I want something ceramic and lovely to set on a dresser or side table upstairs. I want something fullbodied to set in the downstairs hall which floods with light. I can hang two of the plants in the kitchen in new hanging baskets but the rest will have to be transplanted to regular pots with a drainage saucer. Steve just wouldn't understand the need of it.
You know, you could save me from all of this headache and send me one of your own lovely 10 inch pots and take the chore right out of my hands. Email me at big red couch (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll tell you were to send them. Haha! Just kidding! I am not scarfing for free flower pots! Who am I kidding? Yes, I am! Ummm ...
See this little rocker? I know someone is going to ask me where I got it. This is one sweet deal. This is a rocker for Steven. At nine years old Gracie is still able to sit comfortably in it so it isn't as small as you might think it is. I had seen these rockers at Tractor Supply in early summer. I refused to pay the price they wanted for it. Nearly 100 bucks. The hell? It is a small rocker not an adult sized rocker. Every time I would go in I would look longingly at them but just could not pay the price for them. I watched and waited. One day there were two left and the store had marked them down 25%. The price was still not nearly good enough for me to bring one home with me. I was waiting and watching every time I went into the store until one day there was one left and it was marked down to 25% of the original price. Score! So I brought it home.
I love the look of my front porch. It makes me happy to be out there. I love water the plants and wonderful smell that rises with water, wet soil, plant food, and the fresh air. I even like the chore of sweeping the porch as I wait outside for Gracie to be picked up by the school bus.
Now that you have seen my front porch would you show me yours?
Post a photo of your front porch (or back porch or side porch or patio) and leave a link in the comments section of this post. I'll come visit and post your link here in the main body so others can come visit your porch.
*This post was written early saturday afternoon
It will grow.
Really. It will.
Back in March I had gotten pineapples from the grocery store. I cut the tops off and stuck them in some empty pots of dirt. This pot is 18 inch diameter. Just add water, sunshine and the occassional plant food and voila!
Some of you might remember the pots of herbs I started in tiny pots in my kitchen when snow was on the ground.
They long ago outgrew those pots.
I am clipping some of the herbs and tying them in bundles to dry for use this winter. I might even pull out my old food dehydrator and see if it still works. Most hearbs dry in about 4 hours in the dehydrator. Drying herbs in the dehydrator causes their aroma to be released into the air. It can be perfectly delicious.
I love the scent of rosemary the most. I am thinking about using some of it to make a batch of homemade rosemary soap. Mmmmm. The scent of romasemary - sigh ... This aroma is one that tends to stimulate the more sensual receptors of my physical being. It is going to be a pretty interesting day here on the farm. :)
Is there an herbal scent that gets your motor running?
I always eagerly anticipate the planting of an early spring garden. I love spending the summer harvesting and enjoying the fruits of my hard work of keeping the weeds at bay. I love being able to share the first fresh leaves of lettuce, lovely yellow squash and cucumbers. I eagerly wait for the very first red tomatoes.
By the end of summer I have begun to tire of some of the things in my garden. A body can only eat so many bowls of salad before it begins to revolt. I was actually sort of happy when the lettuce began to bolt in the coming heat of July. We haven't had a craving for or the want of a salad since then. I know very soon I will be dreaming of those crisp fresh leaves of lettuce to go with the last of the struggling tomato vines trying to make it until the first frost comes in November. So for fall lettuce is a must have.
This week after cutting the grass and mowing and cleaning up around my barns in preparation for the coming wintry months I got busy with the overrun plants in what is left of my summer garden. Out came all of the dwindling eggplants, okra, cabbage, squash and bean vines. I tilled the earth, turning it over fresh and clean.
A new canvas was ready to paint with the beautiful colors of fall seedlings. Rows of purples from cabbage, deep greens from collards, vibrant bright green from romaine lettuce and the mixed blue-ish greens of brocolloi, kale and brussel sprouts.
The tree on the edge of the garden is a mulberry tree. The kids love the fruits in the spring. So do the birds as is evident by all of their mulberry colored and staining poop. I have another mulberry tree much larger close by the garden as well. I am told and from what I read my larger mulberry is defying the laws of mulberry trees and should have come to the end of its live by now. It is a very large tree. I trim the low branches to keep them out of my way when mowing and tilling. I then take the branches and put them in the goat field. The goats can clean an entire limb of leaves in just a couple minutes. They eat like hogs!
Yesterday morning I began filling that clean slate with some of the vegetables that grow so beautifully in the fall.
I planted:
9 hills of brussel sprouts, 9 hills of broccoli, 9 heads green cabbage, 9 heads purple cabbage, 27 hills of collards, 27 heads of romaine lettuce
Yeah, I am planning on my appetite for salad to return in full swing very soon.
Are you planting a fall garden? It's not too late to get started in most parts of the country. Even in more wintery places there is something that will grow even in a cold frame or long flower pots in a sunny window.
I have grown lettuce in hanging baskets in front of a big bay window. I have. LOL
You can, too.
Badger is my almost birthday twin. I was born August 20th and she was born September 20th. Go spread some birthday wishes over at her journal today.
While you do that I am going to make some photos of what is going on at the farm as fall rolls in. Yesterday I cleaned and tilled the fall garden spots. Today I am planting my fall veggies.
Having an UBER geek husband has many advantages. He fixes things that are broken and helps to save the day when there is no hope in sight for an old blog.
He also has uber geek friends. UBER geek friends that code PHP (for fun!) and fix the broken things that should have imported everything from the old version of MT into the newest version of MT (which still sux in my opinion but I am going to have to learn to live with it for now) because MT decided to no longer support Berkley DB and use only MySQL instead so that NOTHING would import from one database to the other.
So, for the most part Home Grown is up and running. And so far without 10,000+ spam problems to contend with. Which is a major plus!
My recipes will be up maybe tonight or tomorrow. We have to run the same scripts and work on the import files some more before we can initialize the install. But I have them all. They are safe and sound and coming to a web page near you soon.
*****
Some of you have been asking about the eggs I was incubating. The results are not good.
The incubator ran like a charm. Maintained heat and humidity as if it were proffessionally built. My problem hatching is due mostly to the United States Post Office.
The morning I received the eggs was not good. Many of the eggs in the box where broken although they had been carefully packaged. It was clear that the PO did not handle the box with care. The fragility of the contents didn't matter. I picked up the box from the counter, walked out side and the sickening drip of egg yolk began from the bottom corner of the box.
The seller of the eggs and myself suspected the box had been shaken up and damaged to the point that so many eggs had busted the intact eggs most likely would not hatch. But I crossed my fingers and set them anyway.
The eggs are very hard to candle to test for growth when they are as dark as the welsummer eggs are but still we plotted on for the entire 21 days and even let the eggs go an extra 4 days just to be sure.
We will try again in a couple of weeks and see what happens.
*****
I am working on changing the look of this journal to something more in line with my personality but for now this is what I have to work with. Everything is so very different I have to learn how to write the new snippets of code and where to put them to make things work. It is a giant learning curve here on the farm. I don't know how much time I'll have to work on new templates and shemes but I'll get around to it. Please bare with me while construction is taking place.
I am still stumbling around with this new version of MT. I am nearly sick at loosing over 4 years of journal entries. I hesitated several times before installing this new version but gave in to the nudging that I would still have my journal but just a new updated journal with better software.
Four years. It's like crying over spilt milk, isn't it?
I still hate MT and will NEVER give money to them for this hunk of mess they seem so proud of.
XXXXX County Public Schools
XXXXX County Administration Center
123ABC Road
XXXXXX, Virginia
Dear Steve and Angie XXXXXX
Your daughter, GRACIE, earned a perfect score of her Standards of Learning tests (SOL) last school year.*
Blah blah blah blah special awards ceremony by school board blah blah blah blah.
Blah lots of big smart words to describe my child's genius.
Your child's advance range qualifies her to register for the Center for Talented Youth, CTY, screen at Johns Hopkins University.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah award ceremony time date and place blah blah blah
Respectfully,
Some Guy Paid to Write Letters
Director of Something Which Sounds More Important Than It Is
The reason I am posting this is - Gracie goes to school, she enjoys school to a point but mostly it is her time to make a fashion statement. Ha! Yes, I said Fashion Statement.
She could care less about anything else at this point. We have to stress to her the importance of her education.
Her response?
Do I have to go? That's when my show is on.
*Tests where taken at the end of May a couple of weeks before summer break.
If you use Movable Type and are thinking of upgrading to the new 4.0 version - don't do it if you want to keep your old stuff intact and accessable.
MT says that you can install over your old installation and import your old blog entries. They lied. Once installed the import faq says something along the lines of 'helping you spring clean and start over fresh' which really means we screwed you over and told a lie to get you to upgrade your blogging software - our bad.
I am so very angry at this moment. The only way to have all of the past content available is to import it 1 post at a time manually.
That is so not funny. If I didn't already hate wordpress so much I wouldn't even begin to use MT again.
I have this fabulous love-hate relationship with MT and right now I am hating it. I also want a divorce from it and refuse to kiss it goodnight. Nor will I show it any good manners today. For now I wouldn't donate a plug nickle to that six-apart outfit if they gave me a dollar to give them a nickle in exchange.
I'm screwed and so is my old blog :(
