Independence Days: End of Season Wrap Up

Sometimes I wonder if I'm really cut out for this. My husband keeps telling me for all my time and effort {and stress} that it would just be easier to go buy the food from the grocery store. But it really makes me sad to see fruit trees go unpicked, or garden produce going to waste. Especially since Mother Earth is so generous.

But then I take a good hard look at myself and I've let produce go to waste before I could get it preserved somehow, and I've burnt the lid of the dehydrator {long story, don't ask!}, and I've let the water burn out of the juicer not once but three times, ruined the pan and have probably poisoned the juice with burnt pan chemicals that will poison my family with botulism or something worse! {I should probably throw those bottles down the drain!}

The kitchen carnage of that poor ol' juice pan is what has me throwing in the towel of surrender this year. I'm officially declaring my canning season over!

But then I also realize it has been a HUGE experimental year filled with learning all sorts of new things.

I have finally figured out how to manage lots of hot bottles for the canner. I've learned that juicing is easy if you pay attention to the water level in the steamer section. Making sauces {like apple or pear sauce} is easy also. So is dehydration. I can handle those.

I've also learned that prep work is time consuming as is the actual processing time and that it requires my full attention. I can't be trying to do three or four things at once which ends up ruining a perfectly good juicer pan. I've also learned that if I'm not careful it can overtake my life while other important things are ignored or forgotten.

I've learned a lot about gardening too. I learned a ton about my property and its quirks and where the sun hits. I've learned about soils, compost and pruning.

So in the end, I'm grateful for the Independence Days challenge, it taught me a lot, but I did have a lot of troubles along the way. Someone please tell me it will get easier someday and that all my problems will be but distant memories come next year when we're ready to try this again!

And now, I need a good vacation!

Independence Days: Snowfall Edition

Yes, the snow really did fall this weekend. Good thing I got the tomatoes in. There is still a lot to be done around here though so it's also a good thing the weather is supposed to warm back up again into the 60's and 70's. Gotta love crazy transitional weather!

I've been busy dehydrating apples and banana chips but they're disappearing about as fast as I can make them. The toddler LOVES them! We've also been busy picking and making grape juice. Yum! Yum!

Still need to do:

• Get and plant new fruit trees {and decide final locations}
• Clean out the rest of the beds
• Fortify the raised planters so that dirt and water don't escape next year through the cracks
• Clean out cold storage room
• Put in new shelves for root cellar
• Get baskets or containers for root cellar and buckets for food storage
• Pick the rosehips and dry them for winter vitamin C drinks
• Order seeds for next year
• Figure out how to make my basement not smell like onions and potatoes from the root cellar

I'm sure there's more, but thats what I could think of for now!

End of Season

Snow flurries are in the forecast this weekend so I picked the remaining green tomatoes. Look how pretty they are! I was going to hang them up but then I read Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables by Mike and Nancy Bubel and it said they didn't need to be hung necessarily, so I just went ahead a picked a whole box.

We're working on getting our "root cellar" set up this weekend. I bought 100 pounds of potatoes, 50 pounds of onions and some pumpkins from my local farmer. Plus I have a bunch of apples that need a home down there too. It's very exciting!

More Ideas For the Fruit Trees

Well it's no secret that I love espaliered fruit trees.

Unfortunately, I don't think anything like this will work on my property either. What a shame!

Maybe I'll just have to plant a regular ol' peach tree in a regular ol' kind of spot. Nah, there's got to be some exciting landscaping I can do with it!

{top image via English Garden, 2003; bottom image via English Home, 2003}

Fruit Trees

I went to the nursery today to buy my peach tree. I was going to plant it where my other tree died. But while I was at the nursery I saw other fruit trees that I'd love to have too~~like an apricot and a plum! So then I started thinking about the restoration garden again and creating my own sort of courtyard with a bunch of fruit trees.

It was overcast today so I went out to try and get a better shot of the restoration garden without the shadows in the way. You can see the design a little better now.

Here is a picture of my house where I was thinking about creating a courtyard sort of effect to plant more fruit trees.


Problems I see are:

1. My space isn't as large as the restoration garden.
2. I would have to convince my neighbor to create a courtyard on their property too so that it would be balanced.
3. They just planted a tree, a nut tree of some sort, that I have a feeling will grow humungo.
4. There are tons of electrical wires that run to the house in this area.
5. I'm sure there are other things I'm not thinking about

So I don't really know if this is feasible but it would be fun if it were. Maybe I should just keep thinking of other places to plant my fruit trees. Which then made me think of some other fun ideas I've run across . . . .

. . . . so stay tuned for the next installment in my fruit tree dilemma!

Scones Are On!

I decided to pull out some of the cherries I dried this summer to make scones. And wouldn't you know it, the one piece I decide to photograph doesn't even show any of the cherries! Oops!

Cherry Scones

2 cups flour

1/4 cup packed browno sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/3 cup chilled butter, cut into small pieces

1/2 cup dried cherries (or other fruit)

1/2 cup milk

3 tbsp maple syrup

Preheat oven to 400. Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl; cut in butter with pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add cherries; toss well. Combine milk and syrup; add to flour mixture, stirring just until moist. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface and need 4-5 times. Pat dough into 8 inch circle on coated baking sheet. Cut into wedges, cutting into but not all the way through the dough. Bake at 400 for 17 minutes. Serve warm. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.

Enjoy!

Independence Days: What We've Been Up To

Lately I've been helping my brother get some of his food storage all set up. His is looking better than mine! They completely cleaned out their storage room just for food storage. My storage room has to share with other things still. But I'm proud of what they've gotten done in a short amount of time! Good job guys!

Meanwhile, over here I have been canning some peaches, apples and pears. I was going to pick grapes to make juice this weekend but it has been too rainy. So I guess I will get to that during the week instead.

I'm also getting ready to bring in the rest of the tomatoes. There are still tons of green ones but we're getting real close to our usual frost date so I need to get them taken care of soon. I've never brought tomatoes in before and I'm not real sure how to hang them up, so if anyone has ideas, hints or whatever, let me know!

I'm hoping to go pick up a peach tree from the nursery this week to plant now that the trees are going on clearance. I also need to prune my espaliers too {I think} but I need to research it a bit more. I don't want to prune them the wrong way and kill them off or something.

I'm pretty sure the Idaho potatoes are ready to pickup somewhere and I also saw the local onion farmers trucking off huge truckloads recently so I know it is time to get some for the root cellar.

Speaking of my root cellar, I found a cool apple rack in one of my old british decorating magazines {that I love to read whenever it rains for some reason} that my cute hubby said he could help me build. I'm so excited! I will try to post pictures of that soon!

So that's what has been going on over here!