You Win Some, You Lose Some

Does anyone remember my Great Potato Experiment of 2009? Well it was not as successful as the Smartpot claimed it would be.

I ordered these cloth pots from Gardener's Supply this past winter. Their sales pitch sold me and it made sound, logical sense to grow in a container that would do the root pruning for me and yield 10-13 pounds of potatoes per bag. Hah!

My pototes grew beautifully and I was so sure that they were full to capacity in there.  They got so tall I was worried they would fall over before they were supposed to.

The directions say that when the greenery starts to die back they are ready to harvest. So harvest we did.

Doyle dumped the grow pots into the wheel barrow and Maecy and I dug for the potatoes I was so sure were in there. Of course like most teenagers, Maecy wasn't on board with helping but my hubby reminded her that this was just the same as Easter but the eggs were under the dirt. Reluctantly she agreed to be helpful. Sometimes my husband cracks me up. Sometimes, not so much.

I will say that we had plenty of marble sized tubers in there. It was a sad day in potato land for sure. 

We ended up harvesting 27 pounds of Yukon Golds, Red LaSodas, and Red Norlands. Not great but not a total failure. 

Next year we will plan to plant them in the ground. I can hill potatoes the old fashioned way. My lazy man's way out was not what I had hoped. Sometimes my experiments are first rate and a staple for me and sometimes they aren't quite what I had them chalked up to be. This was one of those ones. But oh well, I do live in the Potato State, I can probably find a decent potato if I have to. Better luck next time!

Homemade Fruit Roll-Ups

 

I took another canning class this past Saturday and they capped it off with info about drying fruits and veggies to preserve them. I can honesly say all I have ever dried was cherry raisons so I thought it would be fun to have a new dehydrator. The one I was using only had a heating element in the bottom and for the ultimate in food safety it also needed a fan as well, so we bought a new one.  In this picture I have pureed the cherries, strawberries and homemade applesauce. It was yummy just like this, actually.

 

 Then I spread the fruit smoothie onto special fruit leather trays that I bought for this dehydrator. That way the pretty fruit stuff doesn't fall through the tray spokes.

I then turned the dehydrator to 135F for 14 hours and taadaaa.... I have fruit leather. One wants to have the fruit dry enough to be pliable but no longer wet in any way. It will be sticky. Instructions come with each specific dehydrator, I am sure.

Then while they were still warm, I tore them in half and rolled them into plastic wrap. Now I will store them in an airtight container and my hubby and daughter can take them for snacks. I think they turned out quite well. They are kind of tart but I did not add any additional sugar to them, so only the fruit sweetens the leather. Heather Lawrence, Domestic Goddess. Haha.

Chickens' Grand Adventure - The Search For Bugs and Worms

Last night we decided to let the chicks out of their run. We have always planned to allow them free range but they needed some size to live through it first. None of our animals are vicious but cats will be cats and bird dogs will be spanked. Just kidding!

Yes, you see shade cloth on the west wall of the chicken run. It also wraps around to the south for about six feet. It just got too hot for my little peeps so I created a sun block. Clever, huh? Here they are wondering why I left the door open for them.

In this photo you can see the ones in the back wondering what the hold up is. "Run for it, would ya?"

Here they are actually realizing there are bugs in that grass! Grasshoppers be gone! Gone I say~

And of course the goats have to come check things out! They didn't stay long as they really weren't sure what the heck the chickens were. Ollie could not have cared less, he used to live in a coop with the chickens in his last home. I think he was staying away so we didn't put him back in. Maybe he likes other goats more now.

And of course, Monica is still the only photogenic bird we have. She poses for pictures and then jumps in your lap. She isn't shy. Love her!

So all in all, I think they girls (and two boys) had a wonderful time on their first adventure. Shooing them back in wasn't too difficult but it helped to have two of us. We were even rewarded with the sound of a rooster crowing this morning. Anyone want a rooster? Free to good home!

First Corn Harvest

This morning it rained. Yeah!!! Which, I might add, makes it the perfect day to put up corn for the freezer. This is our first year in many that we grew our own corn. We stayed pretty basic with our variety and only planted Bodacious. Next year we will try something different. Doyle picked them and shucked them outside and then brought them to me to clean the silks off and blanch.

 

Here they are ready to go in the big boiling pot of water to blanch them. The corn was really quite pretty and so far not buggy.

After blanching, we plunged them into an ice chest full of ice water and cooled them down. Then onto a towel to dry for a minute. Then Doyle used the electric fillet knife and a bundt pan to remove the kernels.

 

I bagged the corn into pint sized Foodsaver bags and vacuum sealed them. This tends to work best for us.

When it was all said and done, we put away 32 pints bags of corn and that seemed a great start to the corn harvesting season. Of course we tried it after it was taken off the cob and it was yummy. Fresh corn is so far superior to what one can buy in the supermarket. We will definitely grow this again.

Blackberry Mojo

It's been a good day for picking blackberries! Last night I found an ad on Craigslist for U-pick blackberries, $1 per pound. So bright and early this morning I gave them a call and made arrangements to pick. I drove 1 1/2 hours to New Plymouth, Idaho and spent about 90 minutes picking these monsters.

 

I plugged in my MP3 player and listened to my e-audio book while I picked. I did not know these folks so I let plenty of people know where I was going and a time I thought I would be done. Turns out the folks were very nice and even charged me tax so I was fairly certain they were trying for a legitimate self pick farm.

 

It didn't take too long to fill all the buckets I took with me and I ended up with 21 pounds of berries. I have honestly never seen blackberries like these before. They were huge. The owners told me they were planted 2 years ago and that they were a variety called Apache. They were truly the ugliest blackberries I have ever seen but they were firm and juicy and the vines were thorn less.  Well, maybe not really ugly but not attractive, just giant. I am freezing them on cookie sheets now and will vacuum seal them with my foodsaver in a little while. I plan to render them into juice when the other things I am harvesting are finished. I love using the steamer/juicer and then can them so I have a while before I need to make jelly out of it. It sounds like a lot of steps but it really does save me time.

Tomato Time Around Here

It's finally tomato time around here! I planted 38 tomato plants this year and I am so excited to start making stuff with them. Last night was my first official harvest and I weighed 17 pounds on the scale. Not to shabby for the first picking.

 

More than half of my plants are Roma-style tomatoes and the others are a combination of Celebrity and Better Boys. Since it was hot and I was tired I decided that I would make simple crushed tomatoes and can them. Now that I am set up again, the next batch will be salsa or juice or sauce or something interesting. But for this one time it was easy.

 

I did not season the crushed tomatoes nor did I salt them. I am sharing my harvests with my mom and they don't like salt. I tend to add it to most things I cook in the form of spices anyway so I left it out. The recipe called it optional and I took them seriously. I canned pints using the boil bath method and added 1 TBSP of lemon juice to each pint jar before I added the crushed tomatoes. This assures the proper acidity for this method of canning. Last year I used up all the jars I had canned and this year I ought to have tons of tomato products lining my shelves. And yes, I am still thinking hard about making my guest room into a pantry. No one uses it much anyhow. The guest can just sleep in an awesome pantry. That would be a novel story to tell all their friends when they leave my house.

Idaho Huckleberries

 

This weekend we finally left the house. Whoohoo! We went camping and it was  very nice to get out for a minute. We didn't go far, only about an hour away but it was 20 degrees cooler and no one was around. We have created the little farm and big garden we always wanted but that has meant that leaving for a couple of days is somewhat of a fiasco. We watered and mowed and watered and thanked my mom profusely for keeping an eye on things. I don't think she knew what she was getting herself into.

 

These pictures are of huckleberries. This berry is the Idaho state fruit and darn fun to pick. They are generally smaller than a blueberry but similar in shape and appearance. They turn dark purple when they are ready and grow wild in the mountains of several western states. Mine is one of them. They are quite tart and tangy when you eat them fresh off the bush but are the most delectable thing ever when added to homemade sourdough pancakes. We make muffins with them too but the pancakes are my favorite! 

  

Even one of my dogs, Marley, appreciates just relaxing in the woods.

Our camping trip ended up just being Doyle and I and it was nice to just read and pick berries and sit in the shade without the guilt associated with knowing I should be doing something else. I got three novels read and a stack of magazines looked through and didn't think once about not having internet until Doyle asked how I was doing without it. Then I missed it. I know that I love camping (in a nice camper) but I could never be shipwrecked on a deserted island without modern conveniences. No world wide web access would kill me. For sure.