local ketchup

one local summer is very important because it makes people think and maybe it'll carry over to further than just this summer. we at the pile of o'melays hope to save some of our local bounty for winter. tabitha has been making ketchup from our tomatoes. twenty five pounds of tomatoes converts to six or seven pints of ketchup. we have no hope of making enough ketchup to displace our current ketchup intake but every little bit helps right? our tomatoes are doing sorta alright but we had such high hopes of completely offsetting all of our tomato intake--ketchup, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, barbecue sauce and salsa. the salsa is one of the things that we'll probably make enough. the only reason for that is we love green tomato salsa. at the end of the year, we'll have all those green tomatoes still on the vine. they will have no hope of vine ripening. we'll pick them all and go into green tomato salsa production. thanks farmgirl for the recipe

i made my first attempt at excommunicating the fledged chickens from the garden. they are so destructive. i saw one from afar ravaging a tomato and went into a rage. shoring up the fencing could wait no longer. i bought a roll of big hole, two feet tall, chicken wire and encircled the garden. the chickens can no longer just wander in and out. any interloping chicken will have to make a special effort to enter. there will be repercussions. of course i'll chase them out the first few times and make a few further upgrades the fence. ultimately they have until sunday and any interlopers beyond that time will meet an unhappy demise.

i just took the ketchup pot to the spare fridge and opened it--it smelled soooo good. she is using a conglomeration of several recipes but mostly based on this one.

rosie has been a naughty dog the past few days. i'm not sure what her deal is. i'll spend the next few days working with her. i'm sure she'll turn around. she's probably just seeking attention and most of the pile has been too sick to spend any time with her.