notice the two pressure canners. they are checked and queued for their term of duty.
i am making a new label "pantry 08". i'm doing this cause we are trying to track exactly what we need to make it through the winter. we'd like to stay away from the grocery store as much as possible--who can afford that place anyway? last year we did pretty good but didn't document anything. we are starting fresh--with a plan.
i didn't get to work on the root cellar this weekend. i was thwarted by a crazy stomach virus. bed ridden for the whole day saturday and still feel like crap today.
we did manage to harvest some swiss chard.
tabitha picked while i washed every single leaf--both sides.
tristan watched and kept pestering me to stop and thumb wrestle for a while. funny boy.
tabitha blanched and packaged the chard in large freezer bags.
can you believe it took about four bushels to make fourteen three p0und bags?
we'll amend the plants with a special brew--compost tea.
our beans are finally starting to climb the arches in earnest.
here is one of our hungarian black peppers.
isn't she beautiful.
look at the size of these broilers.
they are eight weeks and about 9 pounds.
somewhere during this week (not saturday) i hung this feeder and built the catch trough.
i built the trough today. those cows were waisting our pricey square bale hay. between the three of them they eat a bale a day. one dollar per day per cow. yikes.... ok ok boca will be butchered in three months. and we'll have a freezer full of beef. nimue will freshen in a week or so. we are going to try to sell some milk to offset the other two cows.
lets see..
hay 1 dollar per day per cow
grain 1 dollar per day per cow
that is 4 dollars per day total.
can we sell five gallons of milk per week at six dollars per gallon? we sold about six gallons per week when nimue was fresh before. i hope so.
tabitha just brought in three tomatillos. i wonder what i'll do with them?
14 three pound bags of chard
7 braids of garlic
11 comments:
Karl I would love to hear more about your canning, putting by plan! And thanks for the suggestion for a "pantry 08" label!
Tabitha is just a beautiful pregnant mommma. I just love baby bellies.
Nicole
wow, that is a LOT of swiss chard! how great that you'll have that at hand this winter. And is it me or do those chickens have freakishly long legs? how do you know when to pull your garlic for harvest? do you wait for the tops to die back?
Who won thumb wrestling?
oh, yeah, good lookin' food too! Tomatillo, chile, garlic = salsa! Don't forgwt garlic chicken, garlic burgers, garlic cheese...
glad you're over the stomach funk. that's no fun at all!
everything is looking great. i'm not having much luck this year. everything is sad. i'm going to try brewing up some compost tea and see if that helps at all.
nicole, we hope to document everything that we put up this year. please be understanding if we lapse. tabitha is pregnant and due in less than 6 weeks. it is very important to us so i'm sure some organizational progress will be made.
tabitha is the canning expert maybe i'll solicit her to contribute a canning post. our arsenal includes two large and exceptional pressure canners and one huge water bath canner.
the water bath canner is new and deserves a ode.
gaile, we love love swiss chard. oh yes those chicken are scary--especially their legs.
matt, tristan wins quite often. having inherited my ego he becomes unbearable if he wins too often.
tansy, thanks. tea is always the answer for what ever ails. thanks for the soap links. i am excited to learn all you are willing when you visit.
your chicken, Amadeus, has taken to riding the other cockerels around to get better position for feeding access.
Your place is looking awesome. Your garden is beautiful!
Wow! You guys are amazing! I hope to be able to put-up a bunch of stuff, too, and I'm hoping, this year, to be better with documenting so that I know what we need to get through the winter with minimal trips to the grocery store. I'm still trying to convince my husband that we don't need to go EVERY week. We didn't go this week, and guess what? We're not out of anything, yet! I'd love to be able to limit our grocery trips to once a month.
Your garden and homestead looks awesome... tomatillos! yum. a nice addition to the pico de gallo.
it all looks so lush and fertile.
Love the canners! We have yet to buy ours but we did find about 50 jars at the local thrift stores for about 3o cents a piece. People just don't know what they are getting rid of anymore.
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