Egg!

 This is just a quick note to say: the chickens are now laying! The little chicks that I bought this spring have reached the age where they now lay eggs. We celebrated with corn.

Black walnuts

We have several black walnut trees on our property. A handful of them grow right along the road, making collecting the nuts much simpler. It was nice and sunny yesterday so we donned our rubber boots and work gloves and set to collecting. We like to remove the husks while they are still fresh. This makes harvesting the nutmeats once they are dry much easier.

Here's our haul:

 I've read that you can pry open the dry nuts with a knife or a screwdriver but I haven't had much luck with that method. Generally, my dad cuts them with his scroll saw and uses the sliced shells for crafts. 

Do you have a trick for collecting these nuts? 

Birdhouse gourds

 I decided to experiment in the garden this year and planted some birdhouse gourds. I'd hoped to harvest maybe a dozen of them. This is what we got:

There are two piles because they grew on either side of a fence.

Obviously, they won't all dry. Everything I've read says that some of them will rot before they can cure. But we got enough that I think we'll have some for crafting next year.

Who can say no to free pears?

 We've been buying our apples from the same orchard my entire life, so we already knew the owner fairly well. More recently, we've started growing dill that he sells from his stand alongside his cucumbers. He knows us well now and a stop for apples usually includes a long conversation. 

We stopped yesterday for a quarter bushel of apples, just enough to eat fresh.  As we were leaving, Bob offered us a bushel of ripe pears. For free. Now, we had just been talking about how we didn't really need any pears this year but we'd be fools to turn away free food. Into the truck they went. 

Does it mean that we spent a couple of hours yesterday making pear sauce and the bulk of today canning, drying, and baking with pears? Sure. Do we regret it? Absolutely not.

Cucumber chips

 My Armenian cucumbers have been producing abundantly. I've frozen, pickled, made countless salads, and given them away. And still I have a bucket full of cucumbers. So today I dried some. 

 

just a few of the many

 Dried cucumber slices are crispy and have a surprising depth of flavor. Slice your cucumbers nice and thin (a mandolin slicer helps if you have one). 

 

Lay out the slices on your dehydrator trays and season lightly if desired. I sprinkled a little chili lime on these.

Close up the dehydrator and let it run, usually about 6 hours depending on the thickness of your slices and the humidity in your space. Store them in air tight containers. We always have an abundance of empty glass jars around, so my veggie chips are often kept in old peanut butter jars. 

Pizza sauce

 It's canning again at the homestead today. The garden is probably at peak right now so we are actively harvesting and processing everything we can get our hands on. Today the job was pizza sauce. We use a recipe that my Great Aunt Nellie passed to my mom when my parents were first married.

Start with tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, onions, and garlic.

Chop and boil everything but the tomatoes until it's soft.

Cut the tomatoes into  manageable pieces.

Run the tomatoes and stewed vegetables through the food processor.

Dump it all into a pot with your spices and cook it down to about half. This takes a while. Like, all day basically.

Then it's a simple matter of jarring up the sauce and canning it. 

Pickled beets

 I'm a big fan of beets in nearly every form. But a special favorite is pickled beets. Our beets are ready for harvest this week, so it's the perfect time to do some pickling. 

 

the skinny ones, Cylindras, on top are the ones we'll use for pickles

 We use an old guide that my grandmother gave my mother when my parents were first married.

 

clearly, it's seen a little use

 

It's surprisingly easy to make pickled beets. First, boil your beets around 15 minutes, just long enough to loosen the skins.

Trim and slice the beets and fill your jars. 

 Then add your brine. Ours uses vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. Top with lids and close with rings. Then put them in your canner, first for 10 minutes under steam, then 15 under 5 pounds of pressure.

And that's it! 9 lovely jars of pickles for winter.