Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Collards

I enjoyed using my Christmas gift from Lee for the first time yesterday.
He got me a pressure canner for Christmas. I know my neighbor is glad I'm not asking to borrow hers anymore.
It's so nice to have a garden and eat out of your garden year round!!
Some of the things in the garden like lettuce we have to use immediately but we also have collards, Swiss chard, kale, turnips/turnip greens, bok choy, kohlrabi & cabbage that can be canned or frozen if one chooses to.
I don't want anything to go to waste so I picked a laundry basket full of collards. At the time, that was a huge amount of collards but I was able to get 8-quart jars out of that laundry basket.
This was another huge undertaking.
First, I washed the collards and "picked them over" (as my Granny would say) then I cut the stems and did a double check on them. Next the fun part. I blanched the collards (to the point of wilting) for about 3 to 5 minutes. I did this in batches of about 1 pound.
After blanching, I roughly cut the collards and put them into the heated jars, added hot water and processed them for 90 minutes.
I started at 3 PM and finished up at 6:30 PM.
I know it will be worth it but I was so tired and I still have more to pick and go through all of this again!!!

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Strawberries

We have a small patch of strawberries this year & they are delicious.
Charlie has been helping me pick the strawberries. Well, he picks one and eats three but he is helping me. He just likes to pick it doesn't matter the size or if they are red he just likes to pick. If you walk in the strawberry patch you will see the not quite ripe strawberries with a small bite taken out of them laying on the ground.
Lee wanted me to make some strawberry jam so I got out my canning cookbook and looked for the simplest recipe I could find. It can't get much easier than crushed strawberries and sugar. So I began the task last night of making my first batch of strawberry jam.
It's not hard to do just time consuming.
Of course, you have to wash all the berries and then cut the tops off (hull). Then you combine the strawberries with the sugar and bring to a boil over medium heat while constantly stirring. Well, I stirred. I wouldn't say constantly but in between changing poopy pants, getting the bath water ready, cleaning up supper dishes, switching the clothes from the washer to the dryer..... you get my point.
I processed the jars in a water bath canner & left them overnight to cool down.
They were all sealed this morning and looked yummy! Maybe we'll it for breakfast tomorrow morning!
I had some strawberries left over so I decided to dehydrate them. You need some really big strawberries to do this! They were good but some of them shriveled up so small that I couldn't get the off the dehydrator tray without ripping them apart.
Speaking of dehydrating things. I tried turnips last week. Don't bother!!
You may ask why turnips? Lee wanted the turnip greens but I did not want the turnips to go to waste so my bright idea was to dehydrate them. I guess from now on I'll see if the pigs will eat the turnips!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

3's

Well, they say things happen in 3's.........
I think we are on round 3 of 3's!
I broke my toe, Charlie had a piece of metal removed from his eye, we had a freezer go out, the boys were both sick AT THE SAME TIME.....this was all in one week.
Plus, Freckles (my dog) was at the vet twice in 2 weeks.
Just as we get over all of those thing....
I get a really, really, really bad case of poison oak. I have band aids all over me so I will not scratch the spots and my skin is a nice Calamine lotion color. I have been taking Benadryl every 4 hours to help cut down on the discomfort.
I think we will kill everything in that flower bed and start from scratch. This is the 2nd time I have had such a severe reaction to the poison oak. Both times I have had to go to the doctor for a shot of steroids. Not fun!
JUST A QUICK NOTE:
Cupcake is still at our house being bottle-fed 3 times a day. I hope to get some pictures of her and the boys this week-end. Rosty loves to let her out and she will chase him around the yard, she will even get in the sandbox with the boys. It is so cute! She has gotten so big. We will probably let her stay with us another month and then let her join the other sheep.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Farm to Fork Summit- Raleigh, NC

Did anybody in Raleigh see my husband on News 14 on Tuesday???
He is getting to be quite the celebrity now isn't he!

Friday, May 8, 2009

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Wild Turkey Farms is in the news again!

I know everyone gets tried of hearing me say that we have been really busy at the farm.... but we have been really busy!


http://www.godanriver.com/gdr/lifestyles/local/article/raising_animals_naturally/10643/


Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Happy Mother's Day

Mean Moms


Someday when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a parent, I will tell them, as my Mean Mom told me: I loved you enough . . .
to ask where you were going, with whom, and what time you would be home.
I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover that your new best friend was a creep.
I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your room, a job that should have taken 15 minutes.
I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment, and tears in my eyes.
Children must learn that their parents aren't perfect.
I loved you enough to let you assume theresponsibility for your actions even when the penalties were so harsh they almost broke my heart.
But most of all, I loved you enough . . . to say NO when I knew you would hate me for it.
Those were the most difficult battles of all.
I'm glad I won them, because in the end you won, too.
And someday when your children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates parents, you will tell them.
Was your Mom mean?
I know mine was.
We had the meanest mother in the whole world!
While other kids ate candy for breakfast, we had to have cereal, eggs, and toast.
When others had a Pepsi and a Twinkie for lunch, we had to eat sandwiches.
And you can guess our mother fixed us a dinner that was different from what other kids had, too.
Mother insisted on knowing where we were at all times.
You'd think we were convicts in a prison.
She had to know who our friends were, and what we were doing with them.
She insisted that if we said we would be gone for an hour, we would be gone for an hour or less.
We were ashamed to admit it, but she had the nerve to break the Child Labor Laws by making us work.
We had to wash the dishes, make the beds, learn to cook, vacuum the floor, do laundry, empty the trash and all sorts of cruel jobs.
I think she would lie awake at night thinking of more things for us to do.
She always insisted on us telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
By the time we were teenagers, she could read our minds and had eyes in the back of her head.
Then, life was really tough!
Mother wouldn't let our friends just honk the horn when they drove up.
They had to come up to the door so she could meet them.
While everyone else coulddate when they were 12 or 13, we had to wait until we were 16.


Because of our mother we missed out on lots of things other kids experienced.
None of us have everbeen caught shoplifting, vandalizing other'sproperty or ever arrested for any crime.
It was all her fault.
Now that we have left home, we are all educated, honest adults.
We are doing our best to be mean parents just like Mom was.
I think that is what's wrong with the world today.
It just doesn't have enough mean moms!
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!!!