Pioneer Woman at Heart

One Flourishing, Frugal and Fun Family!

One family learning to live off the land, cut back on expenses, and to live a simpler and a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Adopted Motto

"Eat it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do,
Or go without."
~A Pioneer Sampler, by Barbara Greenwood~

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Garden Surprised Us Again ~ Long Canning Day

Yesterday I canned another batch of Queen Anne's Lace Jelly.  I kept looking out and seeing it all over, so it blessed us again. I really didn't have much to can from the garden, but today was another story.

I picked over 50 cucumbers this morning, along with a Kohlrabi and a bowl of green beans.  I also cut 2 zucchini.  After I prepared cucumbers, that later made 8 pints of Bread and Butter pickles, I dug up many beets.  Those will make Spiced Pickled Beets, and then I get to cut up more cucumbers to try yet another pickle recipe.  And after all of that, I am roasting the remaining picked beets with onion and rosemary for dinner.  

Very early this morning, I had already prepared my soaked navy beans for homemade baked beans using locally made sorghum.  I will either have to cook up my green beans for another side, or blanch and freeze them too.  We are going to be trying our 2 types of canned relishes on hormel hot dogs at dinner also.

And in between all of that, I heated ingredients for homemade ice cream, which we will be hand churning later tonight.  It is 100° here today, but the heat index feels like 110°.  The ice cream will be a nice treat.


I had to send my daughter to the store for 2 bags of ice. I've had to chip ice 3-4 times a day.  We give it to the chickens to keep them from dying of heat exhaustion.  When our watermelon is in, I'll treat them to that also.  The goats were treated with chipped ice today and they gobbled it up.

3 comments:

Candy C. said...

My goodness, how many cucumber plants did ya'll plant?!? Seems like you are swimming in them! LOL!!

The 3 Foragers said...

Your garden sounds wonderful. We live in an apartment but mange with a few tomato plants. I see your heat is worse than ours!

Unknown said...

I give my chickens an old pie pan full of ice chips too. And LOTS of bowls of water around, keeps the girls cool! And a mister near the coop works good too- $5.00 from Home Depot, uses very little water...