Fall Zinnias

I'm still a little out of commission...and delirious.  So how about some fall zinnias?

Happy Monday everyone!

First Frost?

I think we had our first frost. I need to note this for my records....of course, later this week it will be over 70* so anything could happen.

These last few tomatoes might make it.

In other news. Remember last year when I wonked up my hip? Yeah. I think I did it again. So I'm hanging out on the couch.  I don't end up in urgent care with those quacks again. I'm not even sure they would let me back in.

In the meantime, that pig escaped the freezer. For now.

Anyway. Happy Sunday everyone! Did it frost where you live?

This is what happens....

This is what happens when you don't pay attention at the produce auction.

 Peppers. My victory at the auction.

A while ago I went running up to the auction at the last minute. Now that we were largely at the end of the growing season there were going to be heaps of bargains to be had. I got there late but across the parking lot I could hear them selling off boxes of peppers for $1.50 and $2! I had to get in on that action. I ran faster.

I shoved my way thru the crowd to see the boxes they were selling. Bushels. Bushels of green peppers and the bidding was stalling at $3. I elbowed my way thru the crush of bargain seekers to see inside the boxes.... and then caught the auctioneer's eye and nodded. Sure, I'd pay $3.50 for a bushel of green peppers!

They were beautiful so I had to have them

Someone else was biding against me. I knew that guy...I knew his weakness...I knew his "tell"... I could win this. My hand shot up first for $3.75. The crowd could smell blood in the water and they started to murmur... this could get good. Everyone loves a good bidding match. 

My bidding opponent got in a twist at my confidence and sent the price sky high to $4.00... then $4.25... and that's where I started shaking off the auctioneer.... going once.... going twice... sold. To me!  I was so excited! Look at me scoring a bushel of green pepper for just $4. All you suckers who are paying $1 per pepper at the store remember my victory! Ha!

I smugly walked off noting the nods of approval from the onlookers. They knew I played for keeps.

Later I scored some tomatoes for just $2.25 per peck. Considering that I saw someone buy tomatoes for $20 earlier that summer I was overjoyed. However, I got skunked on the Chinese cabbage by an older Amish lady with a stone cold poker face and blood in her veins. She won the bid. Dang.

I admitted defeat and went to cash out. My tab was significantly more than I expected.

"Ohmigosh! What did I buy!" This was a legitimate question at the auction where stakes are high and the game moves fast.

I snatched up my tickets.... scanned them... oh geez.

Turns out I didn't buy just one bushel of green peppers... I bought two. TWO BUSHELS!?!?!

That's two bushels.

I quickly did the calculations in my head... that's... that's.... about 40 pounds of fresh and delicious green peppers.

Ooops.

These things happen.

On the way home I tried to figure out what I'd do with 40 pounds of perky peppy goodness. When I got to town I started handing them out to all my friends. I tried foisting a bushel off on the local burger guy but he had seen my sad story before.

Of course, my big concern was not the extra $4 for an extra 20 pounds of peppers.... it was what was I going to tell The Big Man. My husband got quite a laugh the last time I came home over loaded from the auction. We refer to it as The Great Spaghetti Squash Mistake of 2014. It was a lot of spaghetti squash.

Instead he laughed and whooped excitedly that we were gonna have so much pizza with those peppers. So I was off the hook.

But now I have a lot of peppers to process. Forty pounds to be exact. Um... anyone want some peppers?

Happy Saturday everyone! Whatcha buying at the auction? Are you getting any end of season deals?

Pig Butcher Day Prep Part Two - Tools

I'm still sitting around on the couch thinking about our impending pig butcher day. Folks usually ask me what tools we use so here is my list. Note: you probably have most of this stuff. But if you don't, now is a great time to get your tools lined up.

My tray of tools.

* We love our Bacon Wagon of Doom.. otherwise known as a garden cart. Get the extra heavy duty one. This trolley is great for hauling a huge hog carcass up the hill. Plus if you put the sides down it's a great work surface do skin the pig. Then you can just hose the whole thing off. Easy-peasy.

* Sawsall. Yep. You heard me. Sure you can use a meat saw- and I think everyone should have one of those especially for the parting up day - but the sawsall with a clean blade makes taking off the trotters, cutting off the head, and opening the chest cavity a breeze. We love this kit - it includes a bunch of hand dandy tools for general farm work including the Sawsall.

* A couple of good knives. I'm completely gaga for my Henckels knives that I've had forever. But nothing makes you feel like you've smited your enemy and thrown his ruin upon the mountainside  like this bad boy.  A warning tho, a scimitar is not for the novice. So keep your eye on the end of that blade and tell everyone to stand back.

* Lots and lots of heavy duty half sheet pans.These are better than the average cookie sheet from the store. They are extra heavy duty, can take a beating, and keep your fridge from being filled with bloo..er.. pig juice. I have a stack of these and use them for everything. 

 And it helps if you have a couple of good dogs as back up.  Remember when Kai did such a great job?

My Excellent Good Dog with the Bacon Wagon of Doom.

So that is pretty much all of the tools that we will use for the first day. We still need to figure out exactly how we'll get that carcass cooled... but we think we'll be OK. Today I'll go down and get a bunch of ice for our biggest cooler and then make as much room as possible in the fridges. We think it will work.

Happy Friday everyone! What do you think - what tools do you need for your butcher day?

 Editors note: Gosh, it's been a while since we've had any affiliate links to my Amazon store - so I've loaded up this post with sales links. These are tools that I actually use and have right now.  Do you need anything Amazon? You can support this blog by just clicking one of these links. Or using the black Amazon search box on the right side of this page. This gets me a tiny percentage of the sale and doesn't cost you once cent more. If you like this blog, or if I've helped you at all in your farming efforts, just make a purchase from Amazon from one of the links, my store, or the black Amazon search box on the right side of this page. You can order anything you want and need to purchase anyway. I never know who orders what. THANK YOU for your purchases!

Pig Butcher Day Prep

I've been a little under the weather the last couple of days and have been spending a lot of time on the couch. It's given me plenty of time to think about our upcoming Hog Harvest day. I'm very excited.

You'll remember our big plan was to butcher one of the three little pigz sometime during the summer. But then that plan kind of got thrown out. It was too hot, we were too busy, and then before we knew it...the pigz were too big to put in the fridge to cool. So now we have a lot of pork for two people.

At some point we need to get on with it. This could be the weekend.

The problem is that it's not going to be particularly cold for a while but we can't wait any longer. Usually you need a night, or day, colder than 40* so you can cool the carcass. Since we won't have that we'll have to do some fancy shuffling around to get as much meat as we can on ice and also in the fridges. And I need to call the butcher guy to see if we can bring him some fresh hams to be smoked and cured.

Can I do the hams myself? Yep. But if we off load the hams we'll have more room in the fridges and coolers for the rest of the meat.

The next couple of days will be about figuring out the logistics, cleaning out the fridge, and finding a lot of ice. In the meantime I'll be reviewing some of these posts for how-to's.

Happy Thursday everyone - are you getting ready to butcher?

Got the garlic planted

Yesterday I got the garlic planted. It might be a little early but we have been in a mad scramble to get things done. I can't believe it's already October.

I had a nice pile of bulbs. At least some of them were sprouting!

I couldn't believe it when I checked some left over garlic bulbs from this harvest last year! I should have planted them last fall. Some of them had little sprouts coming up. This despite the fact that they were carelessly kept in the unheated garage over the winter.

 Sprouts! Can you believe it?

Then the bulbs had to endure the Fire Swamp Summer....and I think one of the hens thought she should use the pile of garlic for a nest. These little bulbs have been thru a lot. All they want to do is grow. There is a life lesson in there somewhere

I have a small patch of garlic going.  This bad pic is so that I'll remember where it is.

To make sure we actually have a harvest I will purchase some additional bulbs but I don't know - this could work. I used this method that I wrote about here. Although this time my spacing was a little wider to allow for bigger bulbs at next spring's harvest.

We'll see what happens. I'm confident about some of the sprouts and if nothing grows then I'll still have this deeply mulched little patch of friable soil ready for next spring.

Happy Thursday everyone! Have you planted your garlic?

Freezer Fail

One of our three chest freezers failed. I went to check the peppers that I have been freezing and while some of them were very cold - they had not frozen solid.

This is how Nicholas reacted to Freezer Fail 2014.

Then I checked the rest of the items in there..... and it was the same story. Some were frozen, some had ice cystals, and some were just plain thawed out.

Thank heavens we found out BEFORE we butchered the pigz!

So what do we do? I've been sorting thru everything trying to figure out what I can save. The worst is that about 8 or 10 pounds of parted up chicken looks to be lost. That would be the last of our meat from the creepy meats. So we are now kind of in a pickle.

This is one of those instances where you can clearly see that canning some of your harvest absolutely makes sense. You should not, literally, put all your meat in one freezer.

We defrosted, drained, and turned off the freezer overnight. Then we fired it back up again to see if it even worked. It did. So then we put a container of water in it and that has been consistently frozen the last couple of days.

We think that the lid may not have been all the way closed which is what caused the freezer to fail.

At this point the only thing we can do is hope for the best and keep checking to make sure the freezer continues to work. We'll keep testing/check it for several more days.

Happy Wednesday everyone - have you checked your freezer lately? Maybe you should go and see...