Phew! More Cucumbers

Well, I don't have a photo, but I canned another 8 quarts of 3-day pickles this morning.  

Yesterday I picked another 27 cucumbers and will be gifting those to others for now.

Yesterday I picked 2 pounds of broccoli, blanched and froze that too.

These are all previous, and very hot (in the 100's) canning days.  I took the beet juice and used it to dye some material.  It's not the color I was looking for, so I may try tea-bags next, along with canned blueberry juice.

The kids hand cranked the ice cream on one of our hottest days - 102°, heat index up to 115°.  They were sweating, but really enjoyed the ice cream.  Delicious! 

As you can see, we are back to up and running with a new computer tower, and a bit poorer in the pocket book. 

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.