Sunday, August 23, 2009

A Small Look Into Our August

Bread raising
Our tomato plants are doing wonderfully...did I say that they were planted from seeds?!?
Some more of the tomatoes, Ralph picked one already and said it tasted GREAT!!! Ralph has really pampered them.

Etna Beans

The Corn, it is now over 10 feet tall!!

Ralph showed us how to care for tools
Hannah sanding a shovel
Alicia cleaning a crow bar

Enjoying a gift from my Dad, he made this when I was a little girl (a cowboy hat chip and dip ceramic bowl.)Alicia and Daddy playing Checkers, I think Daddy won this one. Alicia is a very good checkers player!Alicia and Mom taking blanched peaches out of the pot, ready to peel and pit themHannah making the extra light syrup for the peachesPeeling the peaches in preparation for canningFilling the jars

It was so nice to be able to can outside, we kept the mess and the heat out of the kitchen. We ended up with 20 quarts of peaches (one jar broke during the processing). What a great start for storing up for the winter. We hope to can enough so we won't need to purchase out of season, over priced fruit during the winter.

3 comments:

Jennifer said...

These are by far my favorite kinds of posts! I love to see what you are up to!

The tomatoes look beautful. I think I saw that at least one in a pot? Have you ever brought them in before the first frost and continued to grow them? I had some in a window last year and was getting tomatoes off of it in January!!! Let me know if you do and how it works.

Also, the peaches. Yum! I've got two boxes of seconds in my fridge right now to deal with. Lots of them are really ripe, I think I might make fruit leather out of them or just dry them. Whatever I do, it has to be soon. What kind of peaches did you can? How much did you have for 20 quarts? If I was serious about it, I think we could use at least 2-4 quarts a week, which is (yikes!) 156 or so quarts. By the time I am able to spend that kind of time all of the eaters would be grown up and gone!!! Ok, this comment is becoming a post. Good to "talk" to you.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jennifer,
We have never brought the tomato plants in to winter over, we just usually pick them and let them ripen in the window. We have three in the raised beds, so wouldn't be able to bring them in. My pots are too heavy to pick up with all the dirt, rocks and plants in them. We are talking about building a green house next year and put some in there, for all year round tomatoes, as well as, lettuce, spinach and other salad "stuff".

I used Elberta peaches. It took 46 peaches to fill 21 jars. My goal is to eventually can about 150 quarts of each of our favorite fruits and vegetables, so we won't have to purchase any in the off season. That will take a few years to get that point though where it will be financially feasible. We will need to be growing a LOT more of our own to make it affordable.

Carrie said...

Wow, that all looks so good! Your garden looks like it was VERY productive so far! I have a friend who arched PVC tubing and clear plastic sheeting over her garden and she was able to get fresh tomatoes into November last year...
I got one box of peaches...I think I will freeze a few, but that we will eat most of them...