Canning and Preserving

 

I'll pick my garden once more this morning and then summer gardening is over for me. The garden is still producing, but I'm off to Colorado for a month. Emily will continue to pick vegetables, while I'm gone. And while I'm gone, I'll be dreaming of and planning a fall garden to start on my return home. 

You may remember that this was my first year gardening at the lake. Even with the learning curve of gardening in a little different climate and completely different soil, I consider the garden a complete success. The fruit trees were a sweet treasure and gave us lots of fruit to enjoy and preserve. The discovery of our Granny Smith apple tree was the best and although it only had two apples, I'm sure that next year there will be even more. 

I'm going to leave you now with a few pictures of our rewards.

Our peach tree was loaded this year, but the two cold snaps we had in early spring stunted their growth, I believe. They had their fair share of bird pecks, a few had worms and we had a branch break from a combination of a lot of peaches and the branch being weighed down by rain. The deer and squirrels finished those off. But all in all, we harvested quite a few peaches. And with the plums we picked earlier, I was able to put up quite a few jars of peach and plum jam. I, also, froze a few bags of peaches and made a couple of peach cobblers.

 My tomatoes did really well, this year. 

This tomato came from my garden and I probably have a dozen lying on the kitchen counter with that many more in the garden ready to be picked this morning. I've enjoyed quite a few tomato sandwiches and I'm surely going to miss them. And although I didn't plant enough to can, I bought enough from the farmers market for that. I canned 21 jars of tomatoes. Oh my gosh, we are going to enjoy tomatoes and rice this winter. 

21 jars

By the time I took this picture, I had already given away quite a few of the 31 jars of peach and plum jam that I preserved. That's a table full of hard work right there.

I planted one zucchini plant and it took over a 4 x 4 raised bed. The thing was a monster and grew monster fruit.....well, mostly because I didn't get to them in time. 

I was away for a week and when I came home, I had two gigantic zucchinis. You can see one of them lying there behind the zucchini bread. I really thought they weren't any good, but after cutting the seedy part from the middle, there was plenty of flesh left on the sides. From those two zucchinis I blanched and froze four bags, made two loaves of zucchini bread, grated the last one and got enough to make six more loaves of zucchini bread or maybe add to a pot of soup, this winter. 

 6 cups grated zucchini

 2 cups in each bag and each bag will make 2 loaves of zucchini bread.

For the zucchini bread, I followed this recipe. The only change made was that I used pecans instead of walnuts. It was delicious....more like cake than bread. I will make this recipe again. 

 

And lastly, while Cliff, Sawyer and I were at lunch yesterday, we must have had a heck of a storm blow through because we had a fallen tree across the drive, when we got home. 

My posts will take a turn, now, to our adventures in Colorado. If you don't mind, I would appreciate it, if you would whisper a prayer for safe travels. You know I can't stand to fly!

Talk soon, 

Laurie

Take It To The Tree

Our plum tree is loaded this year and the fruit is huge! I've been waiting for them to ripen and noticed that they were turning yellow. "Oh my gosh", I thought, "they are going bad before we ever get to pick them". I didn't know, but found out later that the yellow ones are the ripe ones. HaHa! Steep learning curve, here, apparently.

I'm going to apologize now for the poor quality of the photos below, but I was in a hurry to capture the moment and they ended up being sort of blurry. 

Anyway, it appears that our feathered friends know better than me. This blackbird had a hankering for some sweet fruit. He picked up a plum from the ground and took it over to the side walk and dropped it there. Now mind you, the front yard and sidewalk slopes down towards the lake.

So, when he dropped the plum it rolled. He trotted after it, grabbed it and dropped it back on the sidewalk in a different spot....and, it rolled again. It was so funny!

So then, he would hold it with one of his feet in order to get a bite and once he let go, it would roll again. HaHa!

Finally, he said to heck with this and picked up the plum and flew into the tree. I guess his learning curve wasn't as steep as mine.

In the end, he got his fill of the sweet plum and learned a valuable lesson....round plums roll down sloping sidewalks, so just go ahead and take it to the tree.

Laurie