The gardening season is coming to a close. Beans are done, cucumbers are done, summer and winter squash are done, (having never gotten started because of bugs) and the tomatoes are finally getting red. I've put up a a dozen jars of juice already and today 10 more quarts. We bought one of those thingys that spit out juice and pulp one way and skins and seeds another. It makes the whole process a whole lot faster.
Part of today's.
These have been our best producers. No bugs or cracks.
Aaron and the boys (enthusiastic helpers) cut 6, SIX, mind you!! Walmart bags stuffed with elderberry heads After reading that the stems are toxic, I painstakingly stripped the berries off to get 12 cups of the tiny berries to make jelly. I got syrup because the recipe called for sure-jell (powdered pectin) not Certo (liquid pectin) which Jim has been eating enthusiastically on toast. So I did it all again, 3 hours of picking over (no help from Jim this time) and using sure-jell, I have beautiful jelly. I wish I could taste it. Mom has been unenthusiastic from the start, saying she had elderberry jelly when she was a girl and it was awful. I wonder if it was really elderberry, or less sugar was used, or as om said, she was a girl, not grown up.
This is how I froze most of my apples.
Jim has half the potatoes dug. I like the Yukon Golds the best of any we've ever planted. They keep well, too, as well as you can expect any to keep in our less than ideal conditions. We have no cellar and our basement being walkout and our storm cellar damp, we are lucky to keep any.
August is usually dry and it seems to be heading that way into September, at least for us. Others around us have had some rain.
