Freezing tomatoes

It took me less than an hour to get two ice cream pails of tomatoes into the freezer. 

I washed, cored and slit an X on the bottom.

They went into the boiling water for 30-60 seconds just until the skin started to curl like this.

 

I put them into ice water and was able to slip the skins right off. 

Then I chopped them up and put 2 cups into a ziploc freezer bag.  It’s a good thing I did not have a salsa mix on hand because this pan would not have made it to the freezer.  Freshly chopped garden tomatoes is a delicious smell.  Yum Yum!!

Super easy way to take care of some extra tomatoes.  These are great for adding to any hotdish, stew, or chili.

Frost

The weather forecast is calling for a very chilly night……freezing temps or very close to it.  It is 9pm and I really need to find some blankets, tarps and a flashlight.  There is a lot of stuff left in my garden and I don’t want to lose it to the frost.

It would be really great if the frost would hold off for just two more weeks.  I don’t have a big enough blanket to cover up all these guys!!!  They just need a little bit more time.

So I am off to take care of my garden.  Stay away frost!!

Green Peppers

This year I planted way too many pepper plants.  This is the third batch of peppers that I have cut up and froze.  There are just way too many of them.  I don’t know what else to do with them right now.  We are going to be eating a lot of chili this winter!! 

I started with about three ice cream pails of green peppers.  I washed and cored them.  A few went straight to the chickens because their skins were really thin or wilty.   Plus I just have way too many so I threw a few more to the chickens.  And the chickens love the green pepper cores.

I diced a bunch, sliced a few and left some in half.  I sliced these a different way this time.  The other bunch I sliced the long way. 

I have been using sandwich bags to divide these up into serving sizes.  Usually one cup of diced or about one pepper sliced.  Then I put a bunch of these baggies into a foodsaver freezer bag and vacuum seal it.  As I need peppers now, I just cut open the bag right below the seal, take out my little baggie, and reseal the bag with my foodsaver machine.  This seems to work really great for me. 

Sundays…

The last few Sundays have left me really tired of my garden.  It seems that Sunday is the day that I get to deal with all those goodies.  Today was another one of those days.  I took care of some tomatoes, peppers, beets, and onions.  I will post later this week on how I did each one of these. 

Luckily the kids were so good while I was working on all this stuff.  They played with play-doh for two straight hours with not one complaint or whine from them!!  I was so impressed. 

Compost pile

I am new to composting.  I was tired of throwing out all the vegetable and fruit peelings so I decided to start a compost pile.  I started this pile mid June with grass clippings and various stuff from the kitchen.  I threw in a Bobcat loader of horse manure.  I mix up the pile every so often.  It needs to be mixed up again and have a layer of grass clippings put on top so some of this stuff starts decomposing better.  I am surprised that it does not smell bad at all.      

The chickens love all the kitchen leftovers too….so I have to split up the goodies between the chickens and compost pile.  I did read that chicken manure is a great addition to a compost pile. 

It looks like a wandering cow found her way to the garden and compost pile last night.  There was evidence in front of the pile…..with a pile of her “stuff”.  I just scooped it up and threw it in the compost!!These little prints are too small for a cow.  So I guess her calf was along too!

Refrigerator Dill Pickles

Here is the recipe for the refrigerator dill pickles that we made from that HUGE pile of cucumbers.

The recipe is for a gallon jar, so scale it based on the size of jar you plan on using.

Sliced cucumbers.
2 heads of dill
2 large onions sliced thin
5 cloves of garlic sliced
1 qt bottled water
3 cups of vinegar
1/2 cup canning salt

Boil the water, vinegar and salt just until the salt is dissolved.
Pack the jar with all the vegetables.
Pour hot liquid over vegetables.
I let the jars cool a bit on the counter, then put wax paper-lid-lid ring.
Cool on the couner and then store in the fridge.
Wait at least 24 hours before enjoying.

Visitor

I spotted this little visitor in my tomato patch this morning  This big pheasant must have been sleeping because he was in the same spot for at least one hour.  We did joke about whether or not tomatoes are good with pheasant….

Cucumbers

I obviously have not been picking cucumbers lately!!  Yesterday we picked 5 grocery bags full of cucumbers.  We made 7 batches of refrigerator pickles.  If the recipe is good…I will post it later!

Garden Update

Here is a little update on how my garden is doing.  The tomatoes are about as tall as 3 1/2 year olds.  I have noticed dry rot on some of the green tomatoes.  I have never had this happen before so I have been trying a few different things.  

 

The green beans.  I dread looking through these because every time I do I end up with 3 ice cream pails of green beans. 

The beets!

Canning

I spent my Sunday afternoon canning green beans.  I had one pressure canner full. And I made a dilly pickled bean recipe too.  So I had both the hot water canner and pressure canner going at the same time.  And I had both kids home at the time…..and they were not napping.  The only incident we had during this time was 3/4 of a toilet paper roll was stuffed into the toilet.  Other than that they just ran around while I was dicing beans and pouring boiling hot water. 

Garden

Update on how my garden is doing.
This is the garden that is just behind my house.  I am pleased with how well it is growing considering how late I planted it.   This is one of five garden spots that we planted through out the farm.  I will post pictures of the other ones soon.

Two full rows of tomatoes.  I think there are around 60 plants here.  These plants looked fairly sick when I first planted them.  There are only two of them that did not grow well.  The three small ones on the first picture are the cherry tomatoes and seem to be somewhat stunted.
Four patches of green beans.Here are the beets.  This is the first year that I have ever gotten beets to grow.  The last three years the rabbits beat me to them once they came up.

My Garden

I have been trying to get my garden planted for the past 5 weeks.  But it has been raining and raining and raining.  When it is not raining we are mowing.  When the ground is dry enough to work in then we are in the field trying to get the crops in.  So my garden has been waiting.  Today we were determined to get the rest of it planted.  It has been two days since a hard rainfall…..oh wait…..I think it rained again in the middle of the night.  I can’t keep track anymore!!
Back to the garden.  About five weeks ago I planted the potatoes, lettuce, radishes, and peas. Then the garden took a hard hit from about 20 cows and never really recovered.  Last week we tilled it again and I finally planted the tomatoes, peppers and onions that have been sitting by the house.  Then it started raining again.  We had about 2 inches in like an hour and rain showers on/off all week.  I think everything is still in the ground.  Today we tried tilling again.  My mom got the tractor stuck!!  Bucky insisted on getting a picture of this so there would be proof that he was not the only one who got stuck this spring….He has gotten stuck three times.
So…..the garden is still not planted…..

The 4-wheeler didn’t budge the tractor so we had to bring in the pickup.