Life on the Farm

Cisterns 

One of our longest beds at forty five feet.

A planting of mustards with calendula at the ends for pest control

A decent harvest of yellow and red potatoes 

We planted mizuna and bunching onions in the bed where the potatoes were. 

Small 425 gallon water tank with our A-frame greenhouse under shade cloth. 

Solar Panel used to charge a battery to power the farms irrigation pump. 

Popcorn with grapes and marigolds.

Arm yourself for the revolution!

Making hot sauce with some freshly harvested red cayenne peppers.

Homegrown Pickles

Dill fresh from the herb garden

Grape leaves from our mountain grape vines and garlic peeled, cayenne peppers and dill heads.

A nice harvest of pickling cukes. 

Water bath

Fermenting Food

African Daisy 

The harvest: Pickling Cucumbers and Purple Pole Beans

Wild fermentation

Pickling cucumbers in hot water bath

Grape leaves keep the pickles crisp

Cucumbers chilling in ice bath before processing for ten minutes.

Finished product

More Canning and More Coldframes

 Did four more quarts of some nice yellow and red organic tomatoes. (all free by the way)

Canned Tomato Sauce

Canning Tomatoes

25 pounds of fruit makes roughly 18 pints. (3 - 3 1/2 lbs. per Qt.)

Know Your Farmers, Know Your Food

Homemade Dill Pickles

Pickling cucumbers chillin'

Putting Up Kale

Kale to be harvested:

Will Work For Food

Went to work up north today. Earned mostly credit for fruit. Spent most of my day getting ladders up trees to get the fruits weighing down the branches and in some cases snapping the branch/ trunk. Lots of pruning to be done, and thinning of fruit was never done so these trees are loaded. The benefit to not thinning is the variety of ripeness and sizes. Most commercial orchard operators will thin fruit in the spring so everything is uniform later for harvest. There is some good stuff going on in this great state agriculturally speaking and after being invited up to many many people's farms I have finally made the time to do so. Brought home 8 Lbs plums and 4 lbs white peaches.

Summer Time

dehydrating mini apricots from a friend's tree downtown:

thank you rain:

tomato canning

ended up with two and a half gallons of canned roma tomatoes (ten quarts)

busy busy bees

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aphids! they have dominated a few corn plants, but nothing we can't use to our advantage for next year's crop. plus we have dried a bunch of our sweet corn

lovely, lovely Tuesdays...

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such a busy day.....not sure where to begin.
....to start.. not posted on last Saturday's high desert home garden blog****************** many pictures of squash blanching, cold ice bath and individual quick freezing then vacuum sealing and put into deep freeze
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Sunday harvest of many many lemon cucumbers...all organic!!!homegrown...started from seeds. nothing is more rewarding than a bite of that...six and a half pints of pickles....tomorrow we are gonna buy cases of mason jars...everything from half pint jam jars to half gallon jars for pickled cucumbers....also tomorrow we go to get the freezer and start filling it up for the long winter...
along with my firewood I am seriously preparing for the worst cold...if we just burn more wood
. we could keep our electric bill around fifty dollars a month instead of last winter using heat baseboards spiked our bills to a hundred dollars...more work for me but possible savings of three hundred dollars..that could be a week off work!!

new Vaccum sealer and maybe soon a freezer

Awesome clouds outside our house the other night

foodsaver in action!

day trip to o'keefe country, trip to the market, and a lesson in home-canning

At the farmer's market we got a bunch of cucumbers for four dollars and some of Tom's good good garlic. Also got some fresh dill. We really wanted to prepare to preserve before it's too late. Seeing as we already have watermelons, tomatillos, peppers, now the cucumbers are growing little cukes too. Corn has it's female flowers also now!!!