Last week, I pulled up the last of the green beans. I decided that I wanted to try pickling some of these beans. So I dug out the recipe for Dilly Beans and made up a batch. These are a lot like dill pickles, but with beans. They are very easy to make.
Posted in preserving
Tagged food, garden, harvest, homestead, preserving, recipe, vegetables
Welcome to this week’s homestead update. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of pictures to share today.
I had to get the grass mowed this past weekend. It was getting deep because of all the rain. I got out there Saturday morning and basically raced the incoming weather front. I was able to get the yard outside the fence mowed. I put the mower put away and the rain broke loose. It poured for a couple of hours. Then just drizzled all night long. Continue reading
Posted in weekly
Tagged food, garden, homestead, planting, preserving, salad, vegetables
Corn cobs
Last week, I posted about how to freeze corn. After cutting all that corn off of the cob, I was left with a bunch of corn cobs. That sure seemed like a lot of waste, so searched the Internet to see if there was something I could make out of them. Of course, I found suggestions of making corn cob pipes or feeding them to the animals to get the last of the corn off of the cob. But I recalled hearing about corn cob jelly. So I did some searching and found a couple of recipes. Continue reading
Posted in preserving
Tagged food, garden, harvest, homestead, jelly, preserving, recipe, tips
6 dozen ears
As a rule, I don’t grow corn. For me, it just doesn’t pay off. Each corn-stalk produces just a couple of ears. Corn has to be planted in blocks. Corn is a heavy feeder. In season, sweet corn is pretty cheap. So I choose to use my valuable garden space to grow other stuff. But we like to freeze corn for use over the winter. That means we have to hit the farm stands. Last weekend, my wife stopped at the farm stand up the road and bought 6 dozen ears of corn, we counted it and there were 80 ears total. Today I’ll talk about how we go about freezing corn for future use. Continue reading
Posted in preserving, Uncategorized
Tagged food, harvest, homestead, preserving, tips, vegetables
Actually, there really isn’t much I can say for this week. I just haven’t gotten much done on the homestead this week.
As I mentioned, last week we were on vacation. We went to the Outer Banks and had a great time. We had a house right on the beach, so there wasn’t any time spent lugging our beach stuff down to the beach. It also made it very convenient to hit the beach multiple times on the same day. We are definitely doing it again next year. Continue reading
Black cherry tree
Since we moved into this house 3 years ago, I’ve been watching a tree grow fruit throughout the Summer. I figured it was just some junk tree that the previous owner planted. Like all the black walnut trees and holly trees and bushes. This year I decided that it was time to figure out what it was and if the berries were edible. After a little bit of research, I found that these are black cherries. Since I’ve been harvesting all the other edible plants on the homestead, I decided to see what I could do with these. Continue reading
Last week I posted about how I make salsa and tomato paste. Both of those start with peeling tomatoes, so I figured I should post how to do this. I would guess that a lot of the folks reading this blog already know this, but since I didn’t know it until a couple of years ago, it needs shared.
Cut the X
First step is to cut a cross into the blossom end of the tomato. There is no need to cut deeply into the tomato, make it just deep enough to cut through the skin. This line is where we will begin peeling the tomato once it is ready. Continue reading
