More canning..

Sorry I have fallen off on my posting, I'll try to remember to get on here more often and write something.

I did some more canning this weekend, salsa and marinara sauce. I am going to pick up some quart jars and try making a "chili starter" type thing this week. I'll cook down a bunch of tomatoes into sauce and add all of my chili spices and some roasted hot peppers, then this winter I can just brown up some meat and add a quart or two of the sauce to it and have "instant" homemade chili. Seems like it should work, anyway. I'll let you know in a couple of months.

We sold a duck yesterday, that was nice, that was the first of our animals that was bought and paid for. I hope it tastes as good as the one we had a while back. I made an appointment today to have the hogs butchered, October 9th is their final day. The meat locker is only charging $20 to kill them, so I think I will just have them do it. It will be very different without our pigs around, but I am looking forward to that bacon! The turkeys I will be processing myself, probably the Monday of Thanksgiving week. That day is going to be a lot of hard work, but it will be worth it. I imagine the last of the ducks will meet their doom that day as well, so the farm will be free of livestock at that point.

The garden is nearly done. There are still dozens of tomatoes yet to ripen, I have just started harvesting some of the soybeans, and there are a few melons and squashes still growing, but that is about it. I harveted our first cantelope yesterday, it was smaller than a baseball! But it tasted pretty good, all 4 bites we got out of it. It looks like the soil in our garden patch was pretty poor after all, but we did the best we could and got quite a bit of food out of it, next year will be even better!

Pickling day

Yesterday we did a "test run" at pickling and canning. We did just a few jars of sweet pickles, sweet/spicy pickles, pickled kohlrabi, pickled beets, and spicy green beans. I also made a small jar of fresh salsa just to test the recipe. Hopefully we'll be borrowing a pressure canner in a week or so and start putting up some soups and stews. We are going to have bushels of ripe Roma tomatoes soon, so salsa and spaghetti sauce are on the agenda also.The pickled stuff all looks pretty good, can't wait to eat some of it.

All of the animals are doing well, the big pig is over 200lbs now. We might end up butchering the pigs sooner than I was originally planning. We were looking at late October, but late September may be possible now. The turkeys have really hit their stride, they look bigger every day.

We had a talk about what animals we might raise next year. We both agreed on turkeys, probably not more than a dozen of them due to space considerations. Nikki wants to try 4 or 5 chickens next spring, which is pretty funny because she was dead set against chickens earlier this year, but I guess after having ducks anything seems easy. We will probably raise a quick growing "meat bird" and if they aren't too much trouble we'll get 4 or 5 more during the summer. I haven't completely decided on pigs yet. If we do raise them, we will probably get 3. I'd like to get a different breed, something that isn't white so that they are better protected against the sun. I think that would probably be it.

Home again

I took a 4 days off last week and headed up to northern Wisconsin with some friends to drink a lot of beer and do a little fishing and successfully accomplished both things.

I came home to find that the turkeys looked like they had doubled in size and a garden that had sprung to life. Green beans have appeared, as have pods on the soybean plants. The Charentais melons are the size of a softball, there are a lot of large tomatoes with a hint of orange, and there are carrots in all different colors ready to be dug up when needed. I think I will dig up a parsnip this weekend and see how big they have grown.

Breakfast somehow got a cut right underneath the base of her tail, she must have scratched against something sharp, but it is healing well and it doesn't seem to bother her at all. The pigs are enormous and growing fast, they are getting pretty bossy around mealtimes, so we have been working on the best strategy on feeding them without getting knocked over or shoved around too much. I am afraid that one of them is going to hurt itself climbing up the fence or onto the other's back, trying to get their face into the buckets while we're filling them.

The 3 ducks are doing well, it is so unbelievably much easier to care for them now. I still don't think we'll ever raise ducks again, though. Around this time next month they should be capable of laying eggs, we shall see. .

And then there were 3..

I got the last 3 Pekins butchered on Sunday, with a little help from Nikki with the stubborn pinfeathers. So if you asked for a duck, they are ready for delivery. Now we have just the Mallard hen and the two Indian Runners. Makes the chores a LOT easier not having so many ducks around. It's quieter, too.

The turkeys have had another growth spurt, they are getting BIG. Still not anywhere near a thanksgiving turkey size, but for the first time I believe they will be a decent size bird by the time November rolls around.

Still no big slicing tomatoes from the garden, but I did get up there on Saturday and rig up a new support system for thje plants using some old cattle panels from down in the barn. We are starting to harvest onions and hot peppers now . I have never been very successful at raising onions but this year they did marvellously. Especially the red onions.

I am already getting excited about next year's garden. I have done a good job of keeping next year's plot weed-free using my rotating composting system, and all of that organic matter should really loosen up the clay in our soil. I'm hoping for tomatoes the size of volleyballs.

Some relief from the heat

As you can see, the sunflowers are doing pretty well! I am 6'4" and I believe the plant on the right side of the picture is almost twice as tall as I am by now. "What are you going to do with the sunflowers?", you ask? I have absolutely no idea. I just like them.

Some other new pictures are posted in the photobucket albums at the link, you can see how big the turkeys and pigs are getting.

Speaking of the turkeys, it looks like we have just one more left to sell as a pre-order for Thanksgiving. I want to keep a few turkeys as backups in case anything happens to any of the pre-ordered birds. It shouldn't be too hard to sell the extras the week before turkey day if it turns out that we have extras. I think all of the ducks are spoken for too. I have decided to try to keep a couple of the ducks to see if they will lay eggs, especially now that I discovered that at least one of my Runners is a female.

Yesterday I discovered that our Pekin ducks can fly! Well, that is they can fly if they get a running start. And if they are running downhill. With a headwind. Okay, they can jump pretty far while flapping their wings. It was slightly impressive. The mallard hen took right off but then looked slightly embarassed that she made it look so easy and landed just a little past her cousins. Luckily the ducks always travel in a group so I shouldn't have to worry about her taking off on me.

The garden is doing well, picking lots of cherry tomatoes now. It is definitely zucchini season, we had zucchini lasagna and fried zucchini slices for dinner last night. The weather is suposed to be nice and cooler this weekend so I should be able to get some work done on the lawn and in the garden. And I'll have to find time to butcher the last 3 Pekins for those that have asked for them. Should be a good busy weekend.

Comments

Sorry, but I had to turn on the feature that requires you to type in a verification word to post a comment. It isn't too much of a hassle and it (hopefully) keeps advertisers from making fake comments like the one posted yesterday.

Not much new to report. We are supposed to get a break from this heat tomorrow, so that will give me a chance to catch up on some things I was putting off due to the heat.
I did learn one thing yesterday, how to estimate the weight of a pig. All you need is about 5 feet of string and a calculator.

How To Measure A Pig:

Measure the length (in inches)of the pig from the top of it's head to the base of it's tail.

Then measure around the body right behind the front legs. (Note: throw some corn or other treat in front of the hog to distract it!)

Multiply length x girth x girth and divide by 400 and it gives you the approximate weight in pounds.

By this calculation Breakfast is around 180lbs and Lunch is about 164lbs right now!

Another heat wave

It has been crazy hot here again, as it is everywhere this week it seems.

I didn't get much done last weekend because I was having back problems, just starting to get better now. We went to the county fair on Sunday and had a good time looking at all of the 4-H animals and eating deep-fried food. Looks like we are doing just fine with our pastured pigs, they have the same general shape as the ones we saw at the fair. I'm guessing that Breakfast is pushing 200lbs now. I need to take some pictures and get them posted soon. The pigs are doing just fine in the heat. I fill up a big mudhole for them every morning and then I give them a nice cool shower with the hose when I get home from work.

The garden is going along pretty well, picked a few zucchinis already and some cherry and pear tomatoes. We almost have enough cukes picked to start pickling them. There are a few canteloupes getting started on the vine, no watermelons yet though. Seems late, but we'll see. I'm thinking about sticking a few more seeds in the garden yet for a late crop of radishes, carrots, beets and few more things maybe. Not until this heat backs off a little though.