Plum Wine: The Beginning

Summer fruit season is winding down and I was able to snag a couple boxes of plums from the local farmer's market at an excellent price of $40 for 40 pounds.  Not a bad deal for fresh, perfectly ripe plums.  I threw a couple of jars of my home grown pickles into the deal and it was sealed.  The next day the work began.  I was planning on making a full six gallon batch of wine from this venture, so I was going to need at least thirty-six pounds of plums to get started.

One round at a time the plums were weighed, scrubbed, pitted and chopped and then tossed into the primary fermentation bucket.  Once the chopping was finished, I topped off the fruit with a couple gallons of boiling water to bring the grand total to six gallons.  I mixed in half the sugar that the recipe called for, then let the mix cool down for several hours.

Once it was cool enough I added a few extra ingredients such as tannin, an acid blend, and nutrients for the yeast and allowed that to stand for 12 hours.  Last but not least I added the yeast and gave it a good stir.  The next morning when I checked the bucket it was pretty obvious that fermentation was under way.

The deep red mixture had taken on a pink froth as the yeast had actively begun to break down the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.  Over the next week, this mixture will get stirred up daily until the fermentation slows down a bit.  Once things calm down in the bucket I will strain out the remaining fruit pulp and then transfer my fermenting fruit juice into the glass carboy where it will finish the process of becoming wine.  It should take a few months before this wine will be ready for bottling.  I'm sure the taste will be worth the wait.

Garden Guests

My garden is becoming quite the popular place among the local wildlife.  As the season progresses I keep finding more and more varieties of critters large and small hiding among the foliage.  Granted some of the guests are unwanted, for example the squash bugs.  I will not be having a winter squash crop this year thanks to their activities.  But to balance things out I have come across plenty of other busy insects in my garden.  This newly molted praying mantis for example.

I found this lovely creature hiding in my green bean bed.  I almost mistook it for a grasshopper, but I let it be because I know that this insect will eat lots of potentially harmful insects in my garden.  I wish it a long life and many offspring for the future.

I have also been seeing plenty of bees making the rounds in my squash and cucumber beds.  They happily hum from flower to flower gathering nectar and spreading pollen as they go.  I am not sure where they are coming from, but I am more than happy to share my garden with them.

Other critters I have seen in the garden include a few toads, plenty of birds, and the occasional cat hiding among the foliage.  I am happy to keep finding a multitude of earthworms in my soil too.  Their presence shows that I have lots of organic matter in my soil that can feed them.

A Busy Weekend

The garden is going crazy and this weekend was an exercise in planning and canning.  My fridge was full of cucumbers waiting to become pickles.  My table was overflowing with ripening tomatoes.  In the garden my peppers, beans and broccoli were laden with produce just begging to be picked, and I had a bag of ripe apricots from the farmers market that was intended to become jam at some point in the near future.

When I got home from work on Saturday night I started to prepare for a canning day.  I began with the cucumbers.  I went out and picked every good sized cucumber I could find and added them to my already overflowing bowls of cukes in the fridge.  Then they were all scrubbed and trimmed and tossed into brine to soak for the next twelve hours.  The next morning it began.

First I prepared the canner for pickles.  The canner takes awhile to heat up, so I began to prepare what I could ahead of time like gathering the dill heads and chopping garlic.  Once the first round of pickles went into the canner I took the time to start gathering my ingredients for salsa.  I had two batches of pickles to can that each took at least 40 minutes from start to finish, so I took the down time to clean up the kitchen and start chopping veggies for salsa.  

First I washed and chopped the biggest ripest tomatoes until I had enough for one batch of salsa.  Then I picked and chopped a variety of peppers and onions to add to the tomatoes.  Once the pickles were done processing I prepared the canner for the salsa.  I added the rest of the ingredients to the salsa and started cooking it down until it was ready for canning.  Then my third round of the day went through the canner.  

While that was cooking I cleaned up the kitchen once again to prepare for round four of canning.  This round was going to be the apricot jam so I set up the counter for peeling and slicing apricots next.  It was only a small batch of jam, so things went fairly quickly with that.  By the time the fourth round of canning was done for the day I was exhausted and called it a day to the sound of pinging jars as they sealed while they cooled on my table.

The next day the work started all over again, though with less canning in the plans.  I went out to gather cucumbers and was surprised to fill another large bowl, so I prepared them for pickling when I brought them in.  They would make another seven quarts of pickles before the day was done.

I also took some time to gather more tomatoes.  I was going to make another batch of salsa today, but I didn't want to spend all day in the kitchen again canning salsa, so I sliced up the largest, ripest ones and laid them out on the dehydrator instead.  I still have plenty of tomatoes left over that may still become salsa in the next few days, but today I moved that chore to the bottom of my list.

I also managed to pick and freeze another small batch of green beans and a good sized batch of broccoli florets.  I may have to rearrange the freezer soon so I can keep track of what I have in there.

I had several hours to fill before the pickles would be ready to can so I took the time to bottle my strawberry wine and rack my two batches of cherry wine that are fermenting.  Since that didn't take very long to finish I decided to top off my list of accomplishments with cleaning out one of my garden beds and planting some fall crops too.  

I had a long list of things that I wanted to get done this weekend and I am happy that I was able to check so many things off that list.  With all of my crops doing as well as they are I expect that I will have several more weekends much like this one before summer is over.  Hopefully I will have the energy to keep up with it all.  I am not totally exhausted yet, but I may already be looking forward to that first frost.

Yankee Boy Basin Hike

My time for hikes has become limited lately due to all the work I have in the garden, but I still manage to squeeze one in here and there.  This week I had an early meeting at work, but wasn't scheduled to actually work until later in the afternoon, so I decided to challenge myself a bit.  This hike is just a little ways outside of Ouray so it was still close enough that I could fit it all in if I pushed myself a bit.  It partially follows the jeep road that winds through the mountains around Ouray, but then veers off and becomes a bit of a choose your own adventure hike.

Near the trail head I found a nice view up the valley.  

The trail itself is an intermittent game trail that rises slowly up the slope as it follows the curve of the mountain.  At one point I marked my goal of a high saddle between peaks and made my way uphill towards it.  This hike began at an elevation of around 10,500 feet so any uphill climb involved many stops to catch my breath and take in the view.

Once I reached the saddle the views become incredible.  I certainly wasn't at the highest point around, but I was up very high.  I believe I had reached a little over 12,200 feet by the time I got  here.

To the south of the saddle the view is of Governor's Basin.

The view to the north is the Sneffles range.

 I spent a nice chunk of time on top of the saddle and enjoyed the views on either side as I ate my lunch.  Had I not needed to head back to go to work, I might have spent the afternoon here just taking in all of the abundant sunshine.

The way back was a little rushed as I was cutting it close for time, but I managed to finish a 7.3 mile hike in just 4.5 hours.  Considering the elevation I was hiking at I think I made great time.  I even had enough time to stop and enjoy the detailed beauty that surrounded me.

The main flower season has already passed for this area, but there were a quite a few stragglers along the trail, and all the flowers were busy with numerous butterflies and honey bees.  These high mountain meadows are only accessible during the warmest couple of months of the year, so I always try to make a point of visiting them when I can.

Dehydrating Strawberries

This year I want to have more varieties of things that I can snack on that I can also take with me when I go backpacking.  Dried foods of many kinds fit the bill for this so I will be experimenting with different foods as I go along.  This weeks experiment is dehydrating strawberries.  I have tried to dehydrate strawberries in the past with limited success.  The problem was that I was slicing the berries too thin which made them extra difficult to remove once they had dried down to little rock hard sheets of strawberries.  This attempt I tried slicing most of the berries in half, while the biggest berries were sliced a couple more times.  I tried to keep them consistently about 1/2 inch thick, which sounds large, but when strawberries dry, there isn't much to them, so a thicker slice should yield a better result.  The berry slices laid out on the tray looked lovely.

The smell that filled my home as these dried was delicious.  I only dehydrated two pounds of strawberries which resulted in only 3.5 oz of dried berries.  It wasn't even enough to fill a pint jar all the way.  The sweet concentrated strawberry taste is divine.  The dried berries can be eaten as is, or reconstituted and added to yogurt, oatmeal, or any number of desert dishes that call for strawberries.  I am probably going to make a dried fruit trail mix out of my recent batches of various fruits including these strawberries.  The next thing I want to try to make with strawberries is a fruit roll up.  That should be as easy to make as the peach leather was and I'm sure my food processor is up to the task.

Canning Salsa

Garden harvests are coming in very well and I am finally getting enough tomatoes and peppers to make salsa again.  The first round of salsa used several of my large Siberian Pink Honey Tomatoes.  Most of these tomatoes are as large as my hand and they are very fleshy.  It didn't take very many of them to make the ten cups of chopped tomatoes required for this recipe.

The peppers I used were a variety of colors ranging from a deep purple to a bright orange.  They definitely make a rainbow of color when all of the ingredients get mixed together in the pot.  

Everything was harvested fresh right before it was washed and chopped and thrown into the pot.  I think there is something to be said about using the freshest ingredients possible.  Nothing in the world tastes better then something just harvested off the plant.  Even the onions were just pulled before they became a part of this mix.

I let the mix cook down until it had thickened a bit and then I scooped it into pint jars and canned it in a boiling water bath.  When it was finished I ended up with eight pints of mild salsa and a little extra for fresh eating.  I like to use this salsa mix to make chili or season tacos, or even just to snack on with some crunchy chips.  In the coming weeks I expect I will be making several more batches to add to my winter stores.

Freezing Broccoli

This summer has been so hot that my broccoli are not producing the dense heads that I would like.  The stems start to stretch before the flower buds can grow dense enough, so I have to harvest them before the flower buds get too big or start to open.  Luckily leggy broccoli is just as tasty as dense broccoli and I don't really care what it looks like when it is all said and done.

These plants will keep producing side shoots long after the main head has been harvested.  Every few days I will trim off any florets that are large enough.  There is no way that I could hope to eat all of my broccoli fresh, so I will be storing as much as I can in the freezer.  I start by removing the big leaves from the stalks and trimming them into bite sized pieces.

From here they get a good rinsing and then they go into a boiling water bath for about three minutes or so.  Once they turn a nice bright green color I stop the blanching process by transferring them to a ice water bath where they cool right down.

After a few minutes they are cooled down completely.  I drain them for a little while before they are portioned into double servings and frozen in ziploc bags.  This is another one of those crops that I only preserve a little at a time, but those small numbers of bags will add up by the end of the season.

Planting For Fall

Even though the heat of summer is still at it's height, my thoughts have turned to autumn crops.  A few of my beds are done from their spring plantings, and even though I am plenty busy processing my summer harvests I needed to find a little time to clean these beds up and put in some crops for fall.

The first bed that I worked on was the garlic bed.  I hate giving the weeds a head start so I planted this bed as soon as I had pulled all the garlic from it.  I choose to plant cabbage, turnips and rutabagas in this bed.  The turnips were planted down the middle as I expect those to mature first.  I should be harvesting those just in time to give the cabbage and rutabagas time to fill in the gaps.  All three of those crops are frost tolerant so they should be fine growing at the cooler end of the season.

The second bed that I worked on was the bed that held the spinach and a variety of lettuces and radishes.  I had already collected seeds from the spinach and lettuce, so all that was left to do was to remove the overgrown plants and weed the bed thoroughly.  In their place I planted a round of fall peas and carrots.  I hope the peas have time to flower and mature before the weather gets too cold.  The carrots should be just fine under a layer of mulch this winter.  If they grow fast enough I may be harvesting them well into the colder months of the year.

The bed that contained my spring peas will be my next project.  There is a row of carrots hidden in this bed so I will have to be careful when I am cleaning out the old plants.  I have harvested some of the dried peas from the finished pea plants and used them to plant my fall bed.  When I get around to cleaning out the rest of the bed, I will finish gathering the dried peas to save for future plantings as well.  I plan on replacing the peas with spinach which will hopefully provide me with fresh greens this winter.

The last crop that I will be planting this fall will be my garlic.  Garlic does best when planted after the first frost, so I will be saving my largest cloves until then.  I am still deciding where I want this crop to grow next year, but chances are they will be going where the summer squash are growing currently.  Those plants will die back at the first frost and once I clean out the bed all I will need to do is plant the cloves into the soil and cover them with a fresh layer of mulch.

Preserving a box of Peaches

This week at the farmers market I decided to get another box of fresh and delicious peaches.  This week's variety were semi cling, so still not quite what I wanted for canning peach slices.  Instead I decided to try a couple of new things: peach pie filling and peach jelly.  Those recipes only used about half of the box, so I decided to dehydrate the rest for more yummy sweet snacks.

Round one of canning was the peach pie filling.  I skinned and sliced up the peaches and added chopped apples, raisins, sugar and spices to the mix.  It smelled amazing in my kitchen while this was cooking down.

The end result was seven pints of peach pie filling.  I am sure that these will become dessert in no time and I should make a few more for good measure.

The peach jelly was next on the list, but it takes a two step process.  The first step is getting juice out of the peaches.  This is basically boiling quartered peaches until they are soft and then collecting the juice with a strainer overnight.  The next step is making the juice into jelly.  For this you need to add sugar, pectin and heat.  The end result of this process was five half pints of beautiful pink peach jelly.

Last but not least was dehydrating what was left of the box of peaches so they wouldn't go to waste.  These peaches were so perfectly ripe that the skins came right off with hardly any effort from me.  I sliced the flesh off the pits and filled my dehydrator trays one by one.  When I was done I had reduced several pounds of peaches down to a few ounces of dried slices.

Freezing Green Beans

The weather has been warm and humid lately and the garden is thriving in this summer heat.  I am picking green beans at least every other day to keep up with growth.  In the past couple of weeks I have noticed a sizeable increase in my harvests.  Now each time I pick beans I am getting enough for several meals. Since I can't keep up with eating them all fresh, I have been processing them and freezing them as they come in.

Because I work in small batches I am able to trim and wash the beans as the blanching water heats up.  Once the water starts to boil I dump the whole load of beans into the pot where they blanch to a lovely shade of green in about two minutes.

From there the beans take a cold plunge in some ice water to halt the cooking process.  Once they have cooled back down I divide them into servings and freeze them.

Little by little my freezer will be filling up with each bowlful of beans that I harvest.  What is growing great now will be feeding me well once the weather turns colder.

Pickle Season Has Arrived

It is the end of July and the cucumbers are coming on full force.  The blooms appeared several weeks ago and I had been picking a few here and there as the earliest ones grew big enough.  This week I had finally picked enough to make a full batch of pickles.

 From now until the first frost I will probably be canning pickles every few days to keep up with the harvest.  The plants are still loaded with new flowers and I can see dozens of tiny pickles all over the vines, so I think I will be plenty busy between harvesting and canning them all.  The process will become part of my daily routine for the next couple of months.  In the morning I will pick all the pickles that have grown to a good size.  They will be washed, trimmed and soaked in brine for 12 hours and then canned in the evening.

For this first batch of the year I am adding fresh grape leaves to each jar.  I have read that they help the pickles stay crunchier, and a neighbor that lives up the street will let me take whatever grape leaves that I want from their small vineyard.  If they really do make a big difference I will likely make it a regular part of my recipe.

My goal for this year is to can over one hundred quarts of dill pickles.  I have a tried and true recipe and know several people that are willing to buy pickles from me until I run out, so this will be an opportunity to make a little extra money for my homestead too.

I am always excited to can the first batch of pickles for the year.  Canning pickles is becoming one of my favorite summer traditions and I hope to be able to continue it for many years to come.  I have a feeling that if I can keep it up, I may find a viable market for one of my favorite homestead crops.