Sisyphus Acres

Porkchops and Applesauce...lol...

Well this weekend was spent doing a little more "putting up" as it were.  I blanched and froze my brussell sprouts, ended up with 3 pounds, not too shabby, not as much as I wanted, but ok nonetheless.  I made and canned 2 batches of applesauce, 13 pints in all.  I also used the rest of my tomatoes and made about 3 quarts of sauce to freeze.  I still have to wash and wrap some cabbage, process my beets, carrots and make apple pie filling and apple jelly.  Ahh but the shelves look so nice ~ I was actually a bit impressed.  Plan to take and post pics.  First batch of onions dried up and are in their bags (dad prepped those), looks like about 8 pounds and we have another batch drying.  Last Sunday I made a Boiled dinner (Bouille Choux) with pork and beef, homegrown cabbage, carrots, turnip and potatoes.  It was great on a brisk day.

I moved my bedroom around this weekend, pulled everything out of the nooks and crannies, and am now weeding through it ~ plan to clean/purge and get it all in order over this week.  Have to run laundry when I get home too.  Did linens over the weekend, but between canning/processing, church and youth group, time slipped away so the rest of the laundry remains.  I would like to be able to hang it this week, but the weather seems to be conspiring against me ~ we'll see though.  We got new wooden racks to sit under the front porch roof, so if it's only rain I may be able to get away with that...but if it's going to get really cold I may be using the dryer again.

The first gardening catalog of the 2009 season showed up a week or so ago, my Fedco tree catalog.  Getting 6 more patriot blueberry bushes (which completes the blueberry patch at 24 bushes), and will be replacing 2 failed nectarines with something, chances are a pear and maybe a cherry ~ tempted to do another apple, but with 5 trees, we should have enough apples when they crank into production...though there is a variety I'd like to try...SHeeSH... this is dangerous!!!  I could plant myself busy in the spring ;-)  doesn't seem like alot now, but in the spring it adds up quickly!  We will be ordering another 25 balsam fir for the windbreak I believe, so that will be enough work .  Although now that my thornless blackberry is producing, I think I want to get a few more of them!!  I love blackberries and raspberries ~ but especially raspberries attract japanese beetles, and I don't want any more of them!  I am thinking about another grape plant too ~ my valiant produced well this year, but the Concord is still a slacker ~ no fruit again!  I may buy a seedless table grape to replace it, or maybe two and start a new arbor entirely! Hmmm... now that's an idea!

After I am done putting up this year's harvest I will be able to sit and analyze what needs to happen for next year's planting.  The goal is to grow enough produce to supply ourselves for the year by the 2010 garden.  I know we reached it on some crops, are close on others and WAY off still on others.  I'll share my findings when I am done.

I can't wait for this business to pass a bit, my friend has asked if I could crochet a sweater for her little piggie, and I would like to be able to do that for her soon.  I am working on a sweater for myself too, and would like a little more time to play with that.

Well time to get back to work, toodles,

val

This weekend's harvest...almost done...

Well this weekend I pulled in the rest of the garden...almost, everything except the leeks and a few onions I'd like to leave a little longer to finish bulbing up, so, here is the tally for this weekend.

10 Brussell sprout plants, not sure how many lbs. yet, but looks like about 8

30 onions, white, yellow and red

12 or so sunflower head, all over a foot accross!!

10 celery bunches

10 cabbage heads

1 pound broccolli ~ still producing, but we need to put the garden to sleep before the ground starts to freeze, the snow is halfway down Mt. Washington now, so it's only a week or so away from snow...

This weekend started getting harvest decorations up, finished in the garden, we had our annual church harvest dinner, I was in charge of the dining room this year (nervewracking!!), and yesterday after church rested ~ my knee was throbbing ~ notsomuch from gardening, but the church dinner is served in a hall w/ cement, and I was on my feet there for 4 hours after being in the garden for 4-5 hours...can we say overdoing it?!

I packed up the cranberry beans, finally all dry ~ packed up the edamame for freezing.  Tonight I plan to bake the chocolate zucchini bread and make ketchup ~ yes ketchup ~ I was talking out loud to myself about what I was going to do with the tomatoes, whether I was going to just can them off or if I was going to make sauce and my dad asked, can you make ketchup?  so I looked up some recipes and I'm going to try it tonight, we'll see.

I may try barbeque sauce too!

Well, need to get back to work...toodles!  val

More garden pics...

Later in the season...God blessed us with such great bounty from the garden this year!  In between the rows there is a deep grass mulch as you can see in this first picture...

Herte are the Paste tomatoes, ripening and spilling off the vines...we harvested about a full wheelbarrow full after the first killing freezes...some ripe, and some green...processing them as they ripen...

Here is the some of the spring crop of broccolli, some heading and some flowering off, with onions planted near to keep cabbage moths in check...

An here are some of the cabbages, 14 heads in all!  We planted point one (pointy heads) and some savy cabbage, more onions for the cabbage moths and brussell sprouts to the far left ~ now that frosta have arrived, brussell are in their growth spurt...

And the kidney beans drying on the vines...we got about 5 pounds of these total...looking forward to lots of chili!

And last but not least, the sunflowers!!!

YIKES ~ it's almost 10 feet tall !!!!  There's my father, showing it off...lol...he and my mom took pics of themselves next to the sunflowers to send to my sis in TX...me and dd haven't done that yet ~ there is a sunflower that got knocked over in a wondstorm, and then continued to grow, curl around and blosson, I plan to take my picture with that one

Well, hope you enjoyed this little tour of my garden...can't seem t locate any pics of the herb garden, I'll try to get some posted soon...

toodles

Garden Pics, better late than never...

Here are some pics of the garden mid growing season, and some on the later side, may end up being more than one post to fit them all in :-)  It's hard to guage the size, but the veggie garden is 40' by 70'...

Soybeans in the foreground, then beets and turnips/rutabagas...

This is the upper end of the garden...

This is the lower end of the garde...you can see the pea fence and the cuke fence, and the rain barrels...the sunflowers are just emerging...

Here are the pumpkins/squashes, we used the trellis to ensure air circulation to ward off powdery mildew ~ seemed to work, we had a brutally wet summer, and no mildew appeared until September ~ and then is was minimal...

Tomatoes...in flower but not yet going...

Snap peas, waiting to be plucked...

Oops, looks like dd decided to go for the sweet peas instead...

A little to early to pick, but she ate then all the same...lol!

Next post will have some later photos...

Edamame...mmmmm....

Well got the soybeans shucked off the plants yesterday...6 gallons!!  My mom brought 3 to her knitting group last night as we'd never eat them all.

Hannah (dd) and I cooked some up last night, and WOW!  Makes me wish we hadn't sent any off to the group, they were so yummy!  Not like what you find at the store at all, they were sweet and buttery tasting, all we did was boil and salt 'em, what a great and nutritious snack.

I actually had shelled what we ate before cooking last night, not fun, they are hard to break into ~ so from now on, we'll do the more traditional cook and squeeze 'em out.

We had to pull in the rest of the tomatoes cuz of the hard freezes this week (it's been 32 or below 4 nights so far).  There are a wheelbarrow full for me to sort through, last year I had them ripening through Halloween.

Pulled in 11 small sugar/snack jack pumpkins, 4 spaghetti squash, 5 more zucchini, 4 "fooled you" jalapenos...4 ears of corn...and two onions for...

...Stewed tomatoes!!!  I used the pressure canner for the first time and made 8 pints of stewed tomatoes, seemed to work pretty good for the first time through...I was a bit nervous, but it all worked out.

Oh, we shelled almost all of the hard beans, got about 5 pounds of kidney beans and about 3 pounds of cranberry beans (still have some left to shell, they are still drying out, so we'll have about another 1/2-full pound of the cranberry beans).

The kidney beans are my next canning experiment with the pressure canner.

Still have to make the jelly ~ hopefully tonight, should be quick.  And I need to clean my bedroom, fold laundry, wash some more laundry, make zucchini bread, ummm...hm...there's more, more than I can do.  I would need to take 2-3 days off to completely catch up, and it's crossed my mind!

Started crocheting a sweater for myself, got most of the Christmas shrugs done...I have one in process that I need to finish, but it will only take a day or so to finish up.  When my folks went on their vacation (for their 40th anniversary) my mom picked up some lighted crochet hooks for me, they are so cool to use, especially with dark yarns

Well, I have to get back to work, breaks over...lol...