2010 Garden & Canning

The 2010 growing season got off to a late start due to having snow all the way into June.


Wednesday, June 9, 2010:  When are the rains going to stop? It's making it hard to get a garden in. So far we've planted all sorts of tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, cucumbers, potatoes, zucchini, yellow crookneck, corn, and beets. We still need to plant asparagus, tomatillos, butternut squash, and acorn squash. I also have my herb boxes to plant.


Saturday, June 26, 2010:  Spent three hours in the garden this morning and it didn't even make a dent.  I uncovered my peppers and weeded a circle around them.  The best thing growing in my garden are the weeds. If only we could eat them, can them, pickle them, etc.

Thursday, July 8, 2010:  What's true love???  Your hubby picking the first tomato out of the garden and insisting you have it.  ♥


Saturday, July 10, 2010:  Pulled weeds for a couple of hours this morning.  Ugh.


Monday, July 12, 2010:  Strawberries from the garden.

Cherry tree we inherited, I have no idea what kind of cherry. They're kind of tart. Steve said they're perfect for baking so we (Cheyenne, Chrissy, and me) picked two huge containers of them. I pitted one container. We usually don't get any of cherries off the tree since the birds get to them first. But our cats have been taking care of the bird population and we have plenty of cherries this year.

Our neighbor, Rod, said he was going to till his peas over this coming Wednesday and that we should pick all we want. I went over this evening and braved the misquitos that were out and got quite a bit. I'll be going back tomorrow. :)

Chrissy and I shelled the peas and we got a container full of them. We'll have more tomorrow night. And the peas are very sweet. :) Well, the tinier peas were sweet, the larger ones were gross.

**There's a story behind these peas, check out my blog on "Poisons and Legs".

Saturday, July 31, 2010:  Today I'm pickling a bushel of beets.

Thursday, August 5, 2010:  Had the day off from work yesterday and spent time making BBQ sauce and it turned out very yummy. I was excited that it was made w/o high fructose corn syrup and then found out the ketchup had the corn syrup in it.  Next time I'll be making my own ketchup too.

Saturday, August 14, 2010:  Ordered a half a lug of pickling cucumbers. I'll be making dill pickles in about 10 days. I can't wait!!! And yes, the cucumbers were grown on a "poison free" farm. ;)

Monday, August 16, 2010: Spied some acorn squash growing in the garden. Now I'll have to look for the butternut squash. :)

Saturday, August 21, 2010: Steve has this weekend off so we've been in the kitchen canning 16 pints of peach jam. Nap time and then we'll be canning raspberry jam. YUM! :)


Sunday, August 22, 2010:  Some of 2010's bounty. I've got me two acorn squash ripe, many more little baby ones in the garden. I spied little baby butternut squash too! Steve planted FOUR yellow crookneck squash so he's got them coming out of his ears. I told him only two next year.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010:  On my way to Ogden to pick up pickling cucumbers. This will be fun!


Thursday, August 26, 2010:  Ok, so 6 plants were supposed to be bell peppers and 18 plants were supposed to be jalapenos. They all turned out to be bells, no canning of jalapenos from my own garden for me. :(  There are a few cucumbers from my garden in this picture.

Friday, August 27, 2010:  Today I purchased 10 dozen ears of corn and 2 bushels of tomatoes. I'm going to can corn for Steve since I don't eat corn. I think I'll can salsa with the tomatoes. I'm wishing I bought a couple more bushels of tomatoes. Love them farm stands along my Highway 30 and 13!

Thursday, September 2, 2010:   Is sooo salsa'd out. We've been canning salsa all week and finally finished last night. Steve's such a trooper cutting up the onions and peppers for me. 

Saturday, September 4, 2010:  Why oh why am I still canning? I told myself I was done and I needed to get ready for D.C., I have some sewing of backpack straps to do. Instead I went and got a bushel of beets, red bells to add to the jalapenos Steve chopped to make hot pepper jelly, and I bought 24 lbs of jalapenos so I can slice and can them for nachos. CRAZY!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010:  Purchased three flats of strawberries for $6.99 each yesterday. As if the beets, hot pepper jelly, and jalapenos weren't enough to can this weekend. But, I did stitch the backpack straps on 116 of the 200 backpacks I needed to stitch. Went to my parents last night for a BBQ and processed 11 pints of strawberry jam so each family could go home with 2 pints each. 

Wednesday, September 8, 2010:  Ten more minutes and the last batch of strawberry jam will be done. Three flats yielded 51 pints. I spent $21 on strawberries, another $14 on sugar, and $10 on pectin for a total of $45. I never include the cost of the jars since they're reusable, although this session of jam making is for Christmas presents and had sugar in it. Nonetheless, it cost $.88 for a pint of strawberry jam. :)  Thanks to my ex-Sister-in-law Vicki Rasmussen for coming over and helping me hull two flats of strawberries. It sure made for a quicker evening. I only put in ex to let everyone know how great she is!!! Other than that she's referred to as my sister. 


Sunday, September 19, 2010:  Let's see what's in our garden after neglecting it for 10 days while we were in DC. I see butternut, acorn, and yellow crookneck squashes, cucumbers, tomatillos, tomatoes, bell, banana, and jalapenos. All in all we picked 33 pounds of produce just moments ago and we had more tomatoes and didn't even touch the potatoes and onions.

Monday, September 20, 2010:  Bought little half-pint canning jars at lunch time. Now I can bottle up my salsa verde I made last night and tonite I'm going to pickle the banana peppers for sandwiches and salads. No rest I'm telling 'ya!

Wednesday, September 22, 2010:  Has some peaches, pears, and jalapenos to take care of. 

Thursday, December 9, 2010:  Going to the Ogden Cannery on January 26th to get me some frozen berries! I hear time slots are going fast. Dates for Jan are: 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28. All 4lb berry bags: black $4.40, blue $8.40, rasp $8.00, and straw $4.40. Limit 10 bags each patron. Call for appt 801-399-3723, don't leave msg, talk with real person.

2009 Garden & Canning

Saturday, May 9, 2009:  Our berry patch is along one side of the property line. We got the strawberries in this morning. Last year or the year before we planted blackberries, raspberries and blueberries. I think our blueberries need some help.

This is what 37' x 88' looks like. I've got tomatoes, peppers (Anaheim, Jalapeno, and Bell), and potato starts to get in the ground. We'll end up with that and corn, green beans, peas, carrots, onions, garlic, shallots, kale, fennel, beets, cucumbers, radish, zuchinni, yellow crookneck, artichoke, and asparagus.

Besides the berry patch and the vegetable garden I have an area selected for my herb garden and another area selected for my salad greens. Then I spied another growing area for watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, and the different squashes, i.e., butternut, acorn, etc.  

**In the end all of this paragraph was wishful thinking, not a one of these were planted.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009:  Our first harvest. I call the yellow squash our Munster's squash. The other squash and red potatoes are from our volunteer plants. We did plant other red potatoes and will have them coming out of our ears.

There were lots more but they made it to my mouth before picture time. :)

Saturday, September 5, 2009:  This morning's harvest. Peppers anyone? I didn't even check the potatoes. 

Monday, September 7, 2009:  Our greenhouse. This was Steve's big ticket item last year and he's just getting this assembled.

Not too big and we should have spent the extra money to get the bigger one. Can't wait to use it though and get a head start on the growing season. :)
**We never did use this because the panels kept popping out and then the track to the door got crunched by one of the animals.

Sunday, September 27, 2009:  Jalapenos anyone? This is from our garden and it filled the largest Tupperware bowl and then some.

A different view for the "and then some". Getting ready to can them. :)  Canned jalapenos are the best and we can't seem to grow enough to keep up with our eating.

Sunday, October 11, 2009:  My cute little mutated red potato.

Our yield minus a few we dug up earlier in the season and about 8 we ate yesterday. 

To grow potatoes you need to have at least two eyes growing from an existing potato and bury it in the dirt. We learned that you can cut up a potato and plant with just the two eyes. Some potatoes were cut into quarters. Each plant yielded 3-4 potatoes.

Next year we'll plant yukon, russett, and red. And we'll plant them closer together with the rows being the spacer. :)

Raising our first steers

In May of 2009 Steve and I decided to raise our first steers for meat.  We went down to the local dairy and plunked $20 on a jersey mix bull who was just three days old.  Steve named him Red but my daughter Cheyenne called him Sirloin.  About two weeks after we bought Red, Steve went back to the dairy and picked up a second bull, which we named Karma.

Meet Red, born May 19, 2009, he's three days old in these pictures.

One of the first things Red did when he learned to eat grass was to get a spur (I think that's what they call it) in his mouth.  It puffed up so bad.  We had to give him antibiotics and the infection went away.  On Sunday, June 14, 2009 we banded the boys to turn them into steers.  My Facebook notes show that Red turned from a bull to a steer on Sunday, July 5, 2009.

Friday, July 10, 2009:  I received a phone call from my daughter, Cheyenne, who was in California visiting her dad for summer visitation.  She called to inform me that my two calves and three goats got out of the pasture.  Apparently, the neighbor kid texted her, she called me, I called the house where Steve was napping.  Gotta LOVE technology!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009:  Red loves to come to the gate to see if I have anything for him.  I bring table scraps to the animals on a regular basis.  No waste in this family.

I have no idea why, but both steers liked to suck on each other's ears.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009:  Our neighbor Jeremy Eddings helped up burn the horn nubs off the steers.

Saturday, October 24, 2009:  Went out to gather the eggs and the steers popped their heads into the coop when I wasn't looking and mooed at me, startling me.  =D

Monday, November 16, 2009:  Steve worked on building some feeding troughs for the steers.  Our neighbor, Rod, came over and helped him and donated some horse feeding troughs that we placed on top of a tractor tire.

Thursday, November 26, 2009:  Woke up this morning to the two steers and two goats out.  It looks like a goat got its horns stuck in the gate and got the chain link loose while untangling himself.  It made a big enough opening that all the animals got out.  Luckily they stuck close to the back area and all of them were corralled back in easily.

For 17 months we fed these steers alfalfa hay, molasses grain, and pasture greens.  When it came time to butcher them we asked family members if they wanted to purchase some cut and wrapped homegrown beef for $2.25 lb.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010:  Sold all but a 1/4 of the beef that we had up for grabs. Thinking about trading it for some pork from some people in the ward who raise pigs.

Thursday, October 7, 2010:  Looked for a leather tannery to help take care of the two hides we'll be getting in a couple of weeks. I've been unsuccessful, looks like a bunch of places have gone out of business. 

Friday, October 15, 2010:  We said good bye to our steers this morning. One of the steers was super, uber friendly and I wish I was keeping his hide to make leather. But my instructional DVD has not come in yet and I'm too busy with the Magna house to cure and tan it. What I will have, as well as 5 other families, is some yummy beef!

Friday, October 15, 2010:  Well, the job's been done. I was out there from the beginning to the end and learned a lot. Most of all I have learned to respect animals and what they go through to sustain us. My son took pictures and I'll be posting them so beware if you don't want to see them.

Friday, October 15, 2010:  Gave my parents some fresh liver. I hate liver, Steve loves it and there's plenty to go around.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010:  Picked up 985 lbs (hanging weight) of homegrown beef! YUMMMM!

Thursday, November 4, 2010:  OK, so the 985 lbs of hanging beef ended up being 529.4 lbs of butchered meat. And no, I don't have 529.4 lbs in my freezer, I ended up with 156.3 lbs, the rest was sold off. I learned a bunch through this raising our beef process. We'll be doing it again, but not with dairy cows (steers).

Thursday, November 11, 2010:  I've been racking my brains on where I went wrong on my sales. I was supposed to raise two steers, sell of 1 1/2 and have almost free beef, that's how it was SUPPOSED to work.  But it ended up costing Steve and I a little more than $10 lb for the beef we kept, while everyone else paid just $2.25 lb.  Not only that but the beef tenderloin ended up missing between the slaughter guy and the butcher.  NOT HAPPY AT ALL!  However, the beef we did get is the BEST beef one has ever tasted!!!

Sweet wonderful garlic

This year our garden is going to have many "firsts".  We are trying our hand at growing garlic.  Sweet, sweet garlic, how we love thee, on garlic bread, granulated and cooked on many meats, chopped garlic on just about any sauce or casserole (so much that we go through a little over 3 of those big Costco or Sam's Club sized containers a year), roasted garlic cooked in foil with a drizzle of olive oil.   GARLIC, GARLIC, GARLIC, we LOVE our garlic!!!  Come back to this spot to see different pictures posted during the growing and harvesting season.

On Sunday, March 13th we planted our garlic.  I had purchased some garlic bulbs at Lowe's and were given one from my sister-in-law who had grown her own last year.

Progress and here's where we were on Friday, April 1st.

Here's where we were on Friday, May 20th.

Canning Chicken

I was hoping to transfer "today's farm moments" from Facebook over to this blog, but I haven't yet, and time's a ticking away.

I purchased a couple of 10 lb boxes of chicken from Lee's Marketplace in Logan, UT for $14.81 a case.  My friends have been raving about how good their canned chicken turned out so Steve and I gave it a try.

First we prepared the pint-size mason jars, dug out the pressure canner, etc.  Then we trimmed the fat and cut the chicken into cubes.

Then we added 1/2 tsp mineral sea salt.  On the second batch we added 1/2 tsp granulated garlic with the salt.  Put the lid on the mason jar without adding any liquid.

Then we loaded up the pressure canner with 8 pints.  And cooked at 13 lbs pressure for 75 minutes.

Your canning project should look as yummy as this when you're done!

We ended up with 19 pints of canned chicken with one chicken breast left over.  Not bad for 20 lbs of chicken!  


**On a side note, Steve got a kick out of me throwing the chicken fat scraps out the back door.  He was at the right angle to see me do the throw, I was not in view of where it landed, but Steve said the scraps landed square in the face of runt, our gold little boy kitty.  :D


Sources:  http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_05/chicken_rabbit.html