August 26, 2013

The past couple of weeks, I've put up a few things.  This batch of bread and butter pickles, for one.

I've frozen 10 qts of beans.  We got 4 qts of our own grapes, and I made a batch of jelly and froze a pint of juice.  

I also made a batch of strawberry/raspberry jelly from last year's fruit from the freezer and bought peaches to make a batch of peach jam. The strazzberry is a hit.  1 cup raspberries and 5 cups strawberries.

I've been chopping what zucchini and summer squash I have to put in the freezer to put in soup.

Mom came this weekend with tomatoes from her garden and we made a huge batch of tomato soup, 23 1/2 pints. 

Today I've done 3 qts of beans for the freezer and have two 5 gallon buckets of huge cucumbers.  Do I give them to the chickens or make cinnamon pickles out of them?  

Stay tuned for further announcements.  

August 1, 2013

Sweet corn season is in full swing.  My folks came a week ago and helped freeze corn.  That time we had 11 dozen ears and froze 44 pints.  They went to a school reunion for the weekend and came back on Monday and we did 21 dozen ears that produced 77 pints.  My mom is a glutton for punishment.  It was a big day, but we will be glad to have the corn.  That is the most we've ever done at one time.   We usually plan to do smaller batches, but with the cool spring this year the first rows didn't sprout until the later ones did, so we had a bunch ready all at once.

Our yellow squash has died, but I am going to freeze zucchini.  I've discovered I like it in my soups.