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Every vegetable in those jars grew in my back yard. I feel pleasure and pride just caring of this little organic urban patch.
Who shares the same primitive values?
How is your tomatoes, this year?
Lots of beans, a few tomatoes, enough radishes to make them worth planting, a few peppers of various varieties, fresh peas for one salad, and basil out the gazoo.... of course, this is at 7000 FEET in the sw UT desert, so guess I shouldn't complain, eh?
[Edit: btw, nice to find someone else who CANS these days! *salud*]
hannamyluv, are you in the British Isles?
no, Cleveland, OH, USA. We've had freakish weather here for 3 years. (Drought, too cool, too cool) Even now, it's too cool to really grow tomatoes.
I don't can, I freeze. I canned too much food with my mother as a child. Can't do it now. *shudder*
But I love my garden. Next year, I will just put in all raised beds. I have found that it's the only way to go here.
What with the fire situation, I'll trade "here" for "there"....
The one really NICE thing is that I will be able to pick green tomatoes just before the hunts in October, and have them ripe for Thanksgiving....
Cheers,
Shane
But you can still consider yourself lucky in a way. We have to wait until mid june before the soil reaches the right temperature before planting tomatoes. So replanting is no option during the short season.
I do some canning, but I freeze a lot too. Canning is mostly for all kind of tomato stuff, chutneys, ketchups, pickles, jams, winter salad, pesto and the likes. The rest goes in the freezer. I use one of those magic vacuum gizmos to seal the bags. Does a great job.
>>find someone else who CANS these days!
Home canning, what a great way to share your favorite home grown flavors with family and friends. Plus every lid popping in, tells my rebel side "you beat the system".
vkaryl, you live up a mountain somehere in Utah desert, I guess it's as complicated to do home canning where you live, than boil an egg on top of Mt-Everest? So do you use a pressure cooker or do you put the jars in the oven? I am curious about canning low acid foods (never tried). Most recipe I read, uses an oven heat treatment, but the homecanning jar manufacturer says not to do so. Any hints?
What I like about gardening is that you really disconnect from the rest. You just go get dirty doing simple primitive manual jobs away from all the rest. It is *almost* a spiritual experience. Learning from mistakes can be part of this experience.
The first time I planted zucchinis, I was under pressure. The girl I lived with then, just liked zucchinis. I had no idea what a zucchini plant looked like or how productive these little b*st*rds where. So I just planted 12 of them weirdoes in a 6' square patch!
We had zucchinis for breakfast, lunch, dinner, baseball practice, target practice, green manuring, building hydro dams, alternative rocket fuel, thermo nuclear experiments, and just any other plain zucchini fun for the next 2 years. :)
My stepfather did about the same thing the first year he planted a garden... It was years before I could stomach the idea of eating zucchini again. ;)
Myself, I have a terrific ability to kill plants, so I just try to be friends with people who have gardens. What I need to do is start raising meat animals, so I have something to barter the green-thumbs with.
What I like about gardening is that you really disconnect from the rest. You just go get dirty doing simple primitive manual jobs away from all the rest. It is *almost* a spiritual experience. Learning from mistakes can be part of this experience.
It's the only thing I do where my brain shuts off. Your brain needs to shut off once in awhile. I just pull weeds or dig in the dirt and I don't have to think about anything.
Haaaah, at least two hours a week, just playing in dirt, away from the screen and phone where people with MBA tell : "I want the documents shipped via UPS, since we dont have any active account with FTP"...
NO zucchini. At harvest time you can just drive by a large farm and they'll give you a bag of zucchini if you buy a jar of honey or a couple bushels of corn.
>>start raising meat animals
I have two cows, named T-Bone and Sir Loin and a hog named Porkchop. Kids realized pretty soon that although the critters names didn't change from season to season, their colors did. ;) I keep a few goats and some chickens and ducks. Critters are less work than a garden. By the way, barbecued goat is a staple at cookouts down here...
I was never fond of the garden when I was a kid, seemed like a lot of work then. Only thing growing in my field now is Timothy hay.
Mivox, I'll trade ya some steaks for some homebrewed beer. :)
It's certainly not some urban patch you deal with this year, mind to describe a bit where you live now?
>>Mivox, I'll trade ya some steaks for some homebrewed beer.
Heheh, now she is confined again! :)
Out in the boondocks. :) Found an old unused domain to slap some pics up on. Plenty of room to grow some veggies.
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You really should NEVER oven-process, ESPECIALLY low-acid foods. Quickest way I know of to get a REALLY bad case of ptomaine poisoning! If you ARE going to do this be very very sure you ROLLING-BOIL jar contents for a full ten minutes before tasting, and DO NOT TASTE PERIOD if the color or odor is even the tiniest bit "off".
This is akin to cooking a stuffed turkey overnight in a 200° (F) oven - it will be beautifully brown as you die from a case of food poisoning because it never gets hot enough to kill the organisms....
A good pressure canner costs around $80 US these days. Will hold 24 pints or 16 quarts, double layered. If you can a lot, it's a bargain. Just add up how much grocery store produce will cost you for a long winter....
ROFL!
barbecued goat
I was invited to a goat-roast this past weekend... had no idea the little guys tasted so good! And they're super easy keepers too, we used to have a dairy goat when I was a kid. Gives me something to consider when I go browsing the barns at the county fair this week.
steaks for [...] beer
Hmm. Difficult to ship without breaking on my end, expensive to ship quickly enough not to thaw on yours... ;) Pick a more difficult trade, eh? Maybe radioactive material in exchange for illicit chemical substances?
Beautiful property BTW. :) One think I really miss up here: big hardwood trees.
[edited by: mivox at 11:04 pm (utc) on Aug. 11, 2004]
This is a photo taken from our deck looking slightly north-east....
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Nowhere near as green as your place, unfortunately, though for August it's doing pretty well - the creek isn't dry yet, and the meadows down below are still fairly green....
Favorite meat is elk though - better than beef. We have a couple of tags this year: I could be persuaded to "hand-deliver" (because I'm retiring so we can travel, you see!) in exchange for home-brews.... *laughing*
Well, I could just send a live cow and you could send a keg of beer. ;)
>>Hardwood trees
Maples, ash and hickory all over the place.
Vkaryl, I live in TN, almost on the Alabama state line. Love the shot of the double rainbow.
About a half a mile behind that red barn in one of those pictures, I'm building a falcon roost. It's on top of the hill. Picked up falconry a few weeks ago. Goes hand in hand with gardening. Watch out bunnies!
>>Elk vs. Moose
I've got some deer and some beefalo...
mivox: Alaska is on our list - planning a whole summer up there probably 2006.
digitalghost: I love your part of the country. Flying from here to there is a "catch-in-the-throat" when you cross the Mississippi - we just don't understand the word "green" until we do that.... (like Germany, even in January - I was literally in tears....) I was born in Missouri, lived in the midwest and southeast until 1954, moved to California (still green at that time for most of the year where we lived - Ojai for those of you from that state), then we moved to Nevada.... I'm NOT a fan of anything but sunrise, sunset and double rainbows in the deserts of the southwest....
I want to live where it's green and wet. That's probably apparent by now....
Edit: digitalghost, we just do bunnies with a .22 - falconry is too hard to get into out here. Speaking of which, do you know of Mercedes Lackey?
Last one I read was "Take A Thief". Great characters.
>>green
Oh yeah, it's green. Mow the yard twice a week green. Hummingbird feeders all over the place and I see at least two deer a day. Coyotes will sing you to sleep at night. My horses are still getting lost in the woods after the move. This place made me rethink moving to Rhode Island, although, staying on topic, (yaright), RI is great for seafood and you need the right veggies to serve up a proper seafood meal.
[edited by: digitalghost at 12:13 am (utc) on Aug. 12, 2004]
Hehehe. I like the exchange rate on that one, as long as you're paying freight on the cow. ;)
Let's all just take off for Alaska
Sounds good to me. :) We can have BBQCon, since PubCon will never make it this far north. I'll have to invite the folks who had the goat roast last weekend.
Look me up in 2006 though, for sure! I'll still be here.
green and wet
Lived in Oregon for 16 years. I'm personally glad to trade "wet" for "sub-zero" after that. hehe
digitalghost: funny how some things remain almost constant. I see deer every day, the coyotes are a "moveable alarm clock" at 4:30 am, the broad-tails and rufous hummers keep me buying sugar all summer (well, the canning etc. causes some of that!), and my horses WOULD get lost in the woods if they ever got out of the meadow!
Plus ça change, plus ça la même chose.... and maybe I need to stop wishing for something I don't have?
Seriously though - they're very useful when you're like me and use chilli for everything you cook. Pick'em when they're green!
[OF COURSE a "chili bush" counts!]
live in NM, do you?
Nope - Brisbane, Australia. I was just thinking that it's funny how the possums won't touch the chilli bush - I guess they must have learnt the hard way. :)
You'd love it in NM. The deer, the possum, the chipmunks/ground squirrels et al won't even touch GARBAGE with chili stuff in it!
Ayup. Or you can toss in a spent shotgun cartridge. They won't come near that either.
We got tired of the neighbors calling the police who then called us because the weeds were too high. OK, it was becoming a fire hazard too. 60 yards of dirt and a bag of seed later, and now I'm watering every day and waiting for the first green blade to show up.
I'm worried, though. All my life I've had this "brown thumb". Yes, I *can* kill a cactus plant. So, what if this stuff doesn't grow? Eh, it all looks the same once the first snow arrives :)
(I used ammonia to keep the riff-raff out of my garbage)
Also, my partner just read The Orchid Thief and is now dangerously thinking about orchids. Ack! If you read the book, you'll know what I mean. It seems that orchids can take over people's lives. We have one now, bought off eBay, but I fear a whole family of them moving in.
