Even More Pickles !!!!!!!!!

What do you do when a neighbor brings you 25 cucumbers?? Make more pickles ofcourse! Not that we really needed any more pickles but you just can't seem to eat cukes fast enough to use them up before they start to go bad. We had the mix, sugar and viniger , so why not can them.

Liv's mother , Gracie, cutting up the cukes to fit into the jars.

Finished product, 9 qts. and 2 pints.

And we still had this many left over.

Got to go and start on the pickled watermelon rind, it's gonna take a while. I'll keep you all posted.

We be Jammin !!!

Here is a list of the things we have canned here so far,

1. Strawberry Jam ( This was our first canning attempt )

2. Bread and Butter Pickles

3. Canned green beans the other night

4. Our most recent adventure - Blackberry Jam

Went and picked a few blackberries today, not near as many as I had hoped for. They are not all ripe just yet but I did find a few that were ready. I wasn't sure if I had enough for jam but after some mesurements I found that I did have just enough. Woo-Hoo !!! More canning.

Here Katie tries to make off with the loot.
Cooking up the berries and sugar and pectin mix.
Ended up with 7 -- 1/2 pints of beautiful blackberry jam.

I left the seeds in because I don't have a food mill just yet, this is, just yet. I think the seeds give it a nice look though. All in all, I am very pleased with the outcome. Getting more fresh goodies stocked up for me and the family. Not too bad for an hour of berry picking in the peacefulness of the wilderness. Time well spent !!

Canning Green Beans

As you all know I got my canner in the other day and I am very excited. After reading the instruction book from cover to cover I decided that I was ready to give it a try. I went to the garden today and picked green beans, I had enough for 5 qts.. The canner can handle 7 qts. but I thought this would be a good time to hone my skills with the canning process. All went very well, the only difference was that instead of a boiling water bath the jars went into the canner instead. My booklet said to co0k at 11 lbs pressure for 25 minutes. The hardest part was maintaining the pressure at 11 lbs. It took a little time and effort to keep the canner at this pressure ( very easy to get the pressure to high ) but I guess with practice things will get a little easier. Anyhoo, I canned 5 qts. of fresh green beans and they look great to me. As with most things I do, time will tell. I am very happy with the ease of use of this canner and the great instructions that can with it. If you're interested in this canner check out the amazon add at the left of this blog for more information. I think if you purchase one through my blog I get like a buck or something. haha!! Either way I just hope you all find the canner / cooker that's right for you. I sure did.



Canner holding steady at 11 lbs. pressure.


5 qts. canned and ready for the pantry.

Look what Fedex just brought !!!!

Fedex just brought the 23 qt. pressure canner/cooker that I ordered from Amazon. More on this later, too exctied to blog....hehehehehehehhehe!!!!!!!!!

Ducks in the Garden- Update !!

In a earlier post I ask if anyone had ever had ducks in their garden and Tracy, over at Possum Living, said "I had some Muscovy ducks that also ignored my peppers and other garden plants, until one day it was like a light bulb went off in their heads, and they wiped out most of the peppers". Up until then I had had no problem with the ducks bothering anything, that is up until then. I belive the ducks must have internet out there. That very night after Tracy left that comment they wiped ME out too. 6 peppers plants fell prey to the baby ducks, so they are freerange now and they are loving it. I just kept them up for their own safety. I guess you could say that Tracy knows ducks.

Momma Duck and the babys have made their way all around the yard and found refuge in the goats lot along with our 2 Buff Silkie Roosters.

Freezing Zucchini

Got more free veggies today. Liv's mother gave us 3 medium size zucchini and we decided to try freezing them as per instructions from Pick you own. We love this website because it is loaded with easy to understand instructions for preserving just about anything you can imagine. When I say easy to understand, I mean even I can do it. hehe! We are trying different ways to preserve food and seeing what works the best for us, this is a learning process. We are lucky enough to have a FoodSaver and it is a great addition to any home and has been and will be very useful to us. Here are some picture of our process to freeze zucchini. ( I think free ones always taste better, hehe!! )



Our beloved FoodSaver that both vacums and seals the bags.

Adventures in Pickling

Todays adventure here on the farm was pickling cucumbers. Olivia's uncle Ed raised more than he knew what to do with and lacking the time to pickle any he brought Liv's mother a bunch, and I mean a bunch! She knew that I would be more than willing to pickle some so we went in partners on them so to speak. Mine are a few days away from being ready to pick and these were free and needed to be preserved so this was great for us both. She had some canning jars and so did I, I had the sugar, viniger and pickling mix that I had picked up a few weeks ago in preparation for my cucumbers. We had all the supplies and were ready to go get pickled. hehe!! Found a great site that has all kinds of canning information. pickyourown.org
all kinds of supplies and a list by state of farms where you can pick your own stuff. Check them out and I know that you will be glad you did. Anyhow, thats where we got our pickling receipe. A few things we learned along the way are.

1. Keep plenty of clean dish towels close by.

2. Get a jar lifter or grabber, oven mitt just don't cut it.

3.Give your self plenty of room to work.

4. Pack your jars tight with cucumbers, otherwise you waste space.

5. Keep your jars in the oven to keep them good and hot. 200 degrees works great.

6. Remember that the jars are HOT and don't grab one until they cool.

Below are the ingredients that we used. Sugar, Vineger and Bread and Butter Pickle Mix.

And ofcourse you have to have cucumbers.Pour hot mix into jars of cucumbers with a laddle. Becareful, both jars and mix are very hot. Observe my steady hand. hahahahahahhah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Place lids and rings on the jars and then put them into a large pot with the water just above the top of the jars and boil for 10 mins.These jars are packed correctly.These are not. We thought we had a lot of cucumbers in these jars but they needed to be packed in there. They will still be fine but that's a lot of wasted space.By the time we went through all the cucumbers we had a grand total of 17 qts. Not too bad for veggies that someone gave us. We will be enjoying these for some time. I will be taking Ed a few jars for sure. Wonder how his peppers are doing ????? (Grin )