Monday, August 24, 2015

Crazy Good!

I have wanted to write a blog post for several weeks now but it's been crazy busy around here and I just haven't had the time.

I know, I know it's been quiiiite a while since my last post but as a new homesteader and farm girl I've been a tad caught up in the summer's harvest.

Our freezer is chock full of corn (both on the cob and off), purple hull peas (or cowpeas, if you will), whole okra, green beans, lima beans, sliced & battered squash (for frying), squash fritter mix, homemade chicken broth, blackberries and black raspberries. 


Our tomatoes took a while to ripen but once they started they kept on.  And are STILL keeping on!


We constantly have tomatoes sitting everywhere... in baskets, in bowls, on the kitchen window sill...


We've eaten lots of tomato sandwiches and toasted bread with tomatoes, basil & mozzarella...


We've made and canned spaghetti sauce, stewed tomatoes and tomato juice.

And, no sooner than the jars are out of the canner there are more tomatoes that need to be picked.

Same goes for the okra.


Since the freezer is full we are now watching and picking okra that is the perfect size for pickling.

With all the canning we've been doing we've been using an old cupboard we took out of the old kitchen and had put in the dining room as a temporary storage solution as our pantry.  We relocated it this morning on another wall in the dining room and the dining room, as a whole, looks so much better. 


Love seeing all the jars of home grown goodness!

We still have to dig up the potatoes.  We're working on some long-term storage solutions for the potatoes since we are looking at maybe 300 pounds worth of potatoes to store.  Yikes!

Crazy good!

The elderberries down by the creek also ripened so I made some elderberry syrup.  We will take some of this daily starting next month to build up our immune system for cold & flu season.

 
In between picking and putting up the harvest I managed to finish the guest room quilt top.  I've got the quilt sandwich made now I'm just deciding how I want to quilt it.  Queen size quilt sandwich with black cat named Precious!


I plan on hand quilting it block by block using a vintage pattern I found online.  We'll see how it goes (wink!).

During all the harvesting and canning the farm was full of flowers which attracted loads of butterflies.


Can you find them all in the above photo?


And the other night during the evening's harvest the night sky was quite dramatic behind the ol' farmhouse...


I now understand why homesteaders look forward to winter.  It's a time to slow down, rest and recoop from all the work during Spring and Summer.

Crazy good!


2 comments:

Nanette said...

Looks great, so much hard work rewarded by the beautiful views.
You should get one of those vacuum sealers, it would be a shame to lose any of your bounty to freezer burn. I got that flip down one from QVC it works great and is at a great price.

Nanette said...

Looks great, so much hard work rewarded by the beautiful views.
You should get one of those vacuum sealers, it would be a shame to lose any of your bounty to freezer burn. I got that flip down one from QVC it works great and is at a great price.