First Attempt at Salsa

I don't bottle and preserve as much as Sheepy does, she bottles or dehydrates almost everything that her farm produces. She doesn't have a freezer (Taco kept unplugging the chest freezer when he was young and she got discouraged loosing all that food!) so she puts lots of food in bottles.

I'm trying to preserve more.

Last year I dehydrated lots and lots of tomatoes. I still have half of what I dehydrated!

Since Son1 spent two years in Mexico, he likes SPICY food and this year I decided to try to grow tomatoes and peppers to make some salsa for him.

The hot peppers aren't ready but I found a salsa mix at the local farm supply store.

Here is my first attempt (including mistakes!) of making Son1 salsa.

6 lbs of tomatoes from our garden. Hubby picked them last night!

I know there are 6 pounds because I weighed them!
I love canning recipes that tell me the weight of produce I need
instead of how many cups.
I ran across Mrs. Wages Salsa Mix at the local farm supply store and
decided to give it a try. 

Tomatoes in boiling water for 3 minutes. I think it was about a minute too long because the skins had really split wide open and the tomatoes were starting to get mushy.

Ice bath ready to cool the tomatoes quickly after they come out of the water bath. The bowl is sitting in the sink because sinks are easier to clean than counters.

Chillin' tomatoes! Waiting to be peeled and put in the food processor.

After the tomatoes went through the food processor they looked almost like tomato puree. I think that was partly because the food processor is the cheapest one I could fined (Black and Decker) and because the tomatoes were in the boiling water just a little too long.

Mrs. Wages spices and 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar.
Simmer for 10 minutes (that was easy!)
Vet2Be said it smells delicious!

I love my new funnel. One of my friends gave it to me for my birthday. It covers the lip of the jar so I don't have to wipe off the lip with a rag before I put a lid on.
I put my clean jars on a towel because I make such a gloopy mess. This saves me some clean up time, I throw the towel in the washing machine and it does the work.

Only 5 jars. Hmmmm..... probably because the food processor processed the tomatoes until they were almost puree--my fault. I'll have to figure out how to cook the tomatoes less as well as work the food processor a little better. I hate using so much water for so few jars but my other pot isn't tall enough to cover the jars with water.

Outside canner set up: many people who can in our area use an outdoor propane canner because it keeps the heat outside. These are able to put out alot of heat quickly, too, which means that the water doesn't take forever to heat up.

The bottles are processing for 40 minutes now. The salsa should be done and cooled before Son1 comes home for the weekend.

He can be the guinea pig. He likes "Five Alarm Salsa",

the rest of us like "No Alarm Salsa".

All done!
I like making paper labels for my jars. I hate the sound of jars rattling, the paper helps with that. I can send anyone down to the storage room to find something in particular because each food has a color label and they are printed in large type! And printing labels is much faster for me than writing on each jar.

(Yes, the jar in the front on the left is shorter. It is an old Mrs. Richardson's Fudge jar and lid. My dad taught me to re-use lids and jars until they don't seal anymore--not USDA standard, but it works for us.)

Saturday's List

It's time to get ready for winter and we were able to get a bunch of things done on Saturday!

First job: finish constructing the new tarp garage for all the yard equipment (tiller, mowers, extra barrels and buckets, shovels, rakes....) so we would have room for hay in the barn.

Second job: We took down alot of trees this year and there are still lots of branches that need to be burned. We got through one more pile on Saturday waiting for the hay truck.

Third job: 297 bales of hay. No hay elevator, but 3 strong boys and hubby willing to unload and stack! 

Fourth job: seal the driveway. If it has a new coat of sealant the snow will melt much faster in the winter.

Beautiful! 

Clean gutters, too! Yay!

We also cleaned the poultry pen and covered the wire coop with new tarps. And finished building a new pen for breeding (we have 2 bucks visiting, plus Vet2Be's buck--so we needed 3 pens this fall).

There are still more chores to be done (aren't there always!) Weeding the flowerbeds, spraying more weeds, and planting grass seed in the dry lot by the barn.

It keeps us all busy and out of trouble!

A Yellow Caterpillar Brightens the Day

As I was processing pints and pints and pints of chicken on the patio on Friday I noticed this little guy/gal crawling along the cement.

I haven't seen a cute, fuzzy caterpillar is such a long time! This one brought a little more sunshine this afternoon!

I found another photo of him/her at Butterflies and Moths of North America. Apparently s/he is a Banded Tussock Moth or Pale Tiger Moth.

Too Many Canning Rings!

Aaaaggrrrr!

I hate canning rings! And I hate storing them in our little house. They are worse than feral cats! They multiply and are unruly and I find them everywhere!

Here's my new idea!

 I cut a hole in the top of a yogurt lid the same size as the fabric roll that I happened to save from a roll of fabric.

I cut slits from the edge of the circle to the center.

Then I pushed the cardboard roll through the top of the lid and put the lid on the container.

I wrapped duct tape around the wedges that were pushed up as pushed the cardboard roll through the center. This gave the roll a bit more stability.

I have one for large rings, and one for small rings!

Now if I could make sure I could keep my camera level when I take photos... you wouldn't have to tilt your head to see the rings on the cardboard polls!

If you have any ideas for improving the design, leave a comment! Or if you have a particularly helpful way of storing your rings, please let me know that, too!

Bottling Chicken

Yesterday I bottled chicken. I still have lots and lots to bottle. One of the local grocery stores had a great price on it and I wanted to stock up on pre-cooked chicken.

Canning meat is one of the easiest things to do, as long as you have a pressure cooker.

Here are the instructions from the Ball Blue Book

Raw pack chicken:
Pack meat into hot jars leaving 1" headspace.
If you wash the jars in the dishwasher and then leave them in there until you are ready to process the chicken.

Ladle hot water or broth over meat, leaving 1" headspace. Remove air bubbles.

Place lids and rings on jars.

Process pints for 1 hour 15 minutes (I process for 1 hour 25 minutes because of our altitude).

1 pound of chicken fits in a pint jar

That's it! Pretty simple.

Then I always have cooked chicken on hand for chicken enchiladas, chicken soup, or any recipe I might need shredded chicken for.

Here's a link for 40 different recipes using shredded chicken (I haven't tried them all--but they look delicious!)

Sold!

Vet2Be needed to sell some goats. We knew that four would have to find new homes.

Earlier this summer I put them up on the local online classifieds and only got one response.

I put them up again last night and someone called just as I finished posting.

They came to get them all last night.

Poppy, she won 1st place at the County Fair! She is a beautiful doeling and very sweet.

Lilly, she's pretty, too. But not as pretty as Poppy. What she lacks in conformation she more than makes up in personality. A total sweetheart!

Lucky, we thought we were going to keep him because he is adorable! But he is also an escape artist who manages to get out of the buck pen at least twice a day. He gets his head caught in fences, and under fences. And he is a big tease when we try to catch him. So we're keeping his brother, Banjo, instead.

Jack is a 2-year old wether. We can't keep too many goats and Vet2Be decided to  keep Banjo, so Jack needed a new home. He's personable and easy going. Doesn't challenge fences, likes people without trying to run them over--a nice all around pet goat.

I listed them extremely cheap ($50 for each doeling, $25 for each wether). The first person that called wanted to know if they took all four.....

I said, "Please don't ask me to go any lower on the price. These are spectacular animals at an extraordinary price." I probably should have hung up on her at that point.

They seem like nice people. The goats will have 100+ acres to run on, but really!?!?!? Lower the price?!?!?!

Another family called while I was talking to the first family. Vet2Be wishes I would have sold the goats to them. Next time his phone number is going in the add and he can interview the people that call about his goats. He's right, the family that bought them have no idea of the quality of the goats they just bought.

Turkeys!

Vet2Be got a call in late July from his FFA advisor.

"Want to raise some turkeys?"

We decided a few years ago to NEVER raise turkeys again because we couldn't keep them in the yard. We found them 2 1/2 blocks away once!

Well, we decided that since these were the fast growing turkeys and they are raised specifically for an FFA contest, we would give it another try.

These turnkeys are about 8 weeks old.

They grow really fast! Vet2Be will enter two, one hen and one tom, in the FFA show in late October or November. They process all the birds and then judge two of them.

I have no idea what will happen to them after that.

But I really, really, really want at least one of them for Thanksgiving! And maybe another one for Christmas!

Home-grown turkey is sooooo tasty!