A Day Late but...

Happy Spring Equinox!

Tulips, Watercolor, by Amy (c)2018

The snow is gone from all but the shadiest spots. The temperature isn't quite warm but looks to be inching back up. Shedding season for Gwyn is on a roll and Saffron is stubbornly holding onto her coat still, which seems normal for her.

The seeds we ordered for our garden this year have arrived and we'll be planting those soon to get the starts nice and healthy before moving them outside. Once the nights stop being so cold we'll move the fish and aquaponics back outside. The goldfish have done well in the basement, the mojito mint just LOVES the aquaponics and the lemongrass did well too. Everything else got bug infested. We kept the spiders around though. Spiders are great garden friends.

I plan on making tea bags out of the mint. We have a dehydrator and I've got fill your own tea bags in my Amazon cart as we speak.

We will be rototilling the garden beds soon to prepare the soil for planting and adding more compost to them to beef up the soil level again, as things have settled through the winter.

Bring on the longer days and shorter nights!

Making Sweet Relish!

So, our garden has been abundant this season! We had collected around 9 lbs of cucumbers (which is a lot of cucumbers by the way) and I knew that I had to SOMETHING with it so that they wouldn't go to waste.  That's really my main goal with our garden; not wasting the food we're growing.

To that end, I grabbed some canning supplies, a premade mix of spices for making sweet relish, and pulled my big pots out from the back of the cabinets. I spent all yesterday morning working hard at the stove to make sure things would be good. The mix estimated that I'd get 5 quarts. I got 7.

So... merry christmas family! You're getting homemade relish for christmas!

First step after washing all the veggies was to chop the ends off and then cut the cucumber up into 1 inch pieces. You then food process those smaller pieces. My processor could only do 3-4 cucumbers at a time.

You then add pickling salt (special salt just for pickling, table salt and kosher salt will leave sediment, apparently), mix well, and let it chill in the fridge for 2 hours. After two hours, strain it to get rid of the liquid.

Then, you use white vinegar, sugar and the pickling spices and cook it for about 10 minutes at a simmer. Then you add the strained cucumber bits and boil for a bit.

Meanwhile, get the canning jars and lids nice and hot and fill them up with 1/2 headroom. Finger tighten the lids. Then set them back in the water bath and process for 15 minutes (we're pretty much at sea level, increase according to your altitude)

Pull them out to cool for 24 hours. Test the seal with the popper on the lid. If any can pop, refridgerate and use within a week. Otherwise, they have a shelf life of 1 year. I labeled the lids with the date and year so we know.

My next project is to make spaghetti sauce with all of our tomatoes and now that I've gone through one canning session with the equipment I have, I know what I need.  For one, a bigger pot. The other jars I have are all full pint size (the relish in in half pints) and my biggest pot will not get an adequate 1 inch of water above the pint jars. Also, the pot I ordered comes with a rack so I can drop the jars in all at once and it keeps them off the bottom of the pot to reduce clanking from the bubbles while boiling. I also snagged a bigger scoop for easier filling (I already have a funnel) and some dissolveable labels.

I'm excited!

Spring Prep on the Farm - Happy Eostre!

Back in January we planted our seeds

We moved the seedlings to medium cups and finally to larger pots!  We have a TON of tomato plants, some peppers, cilantro, parsely and basil. 

Waiting to be transplanted.

We decided that we wanted less grass, and that having the garden near the house would be highly convenient for watering and for tending it. Plus this is a super sunny spot! The plans for a set of raised garden beds were hatched.

We had help with repotting.

We started by removing the rock from the existing garden bed. It will be used to bolster the seasonal creek in the pasture.

Then came rototilling!

This is all getting dug up!  The birds have been having a FIELD day.  I welcome it. The more japanese beetle grubs they eat the healther our trees and plants will be!

Leveling and smoothing out the dirt and removing the sod clumps to be repurposed in some low spots in the pasture.

DANGER NOODLE

Feed me

Saffron is getting more comfortable with me! Today was the first day she let me take nose selfies. AND she was interested in the phone. This is HUGE for a little jenny who would run away from me when I tried to go near her.

She even let Hazel glomp all over her. I swear, all of our animals love Hazel. Even the cats.

My batgirl and her Daddy.

Tomorrow we get deliver of a huge load of cinder blocks and patio pavers. We've got a ton of well composted manure to fill the raised beds plus we'll be able to top off with the topsoil getting moved around in the leveling process.