2010 preserving

The last day of the year seems like a great day to post our 2010 food preservation list. This was our third year of preserving in our little homestead. We've kept lists of the past couple of years of what we preserve, the quantity, and then make note of what we actually use. We then designate if we eat the food, or if we give it away as a gift. We keep a list on our fridge and then check off boxes as each item gets used. It is a pretty good system.

Where did all of this produce come from?

• David and I joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) this year, so we got a box of produce each week from a local farmer of our choice. We decided to go with The Kretschmann Organic Farm. Much of what we preserved came from these weekly boxes.

• It may come as a surprise that David canned chicken stock this year. As part of our CSA, we broke our usually vegetarian diet to enjoy 5 pasture raised, organic chickens. Actually, we have only had 4 chickens, because we are saving the 5th chicken for a yummy meal this winter. Besides the fact that the chickens were delicious, we also loved that that we got to send our payment directly to the grower of the chickens we were eating. Here's a link of a photo of grower, Steve Misera and his family with their chicks. A description of the chickens from the Kretschmann's:

(The chickens were raised) without the routine antibiotics which are ingested with every bit of food or water consumed by a typical conventionally raised chicken. They aren’t rushed to slaughter, but allowed to mature to a reasonable weight—about 6 pounds. These are what used to be called “roasters”. You’ll find that you get far more meat per pound than you are used to getting because it’s not all skin and bones. They are great roasted whole—stuffed if you like—it’s like a mini-turkey but doesn’t take so long to cook.

• We got the apples for the apple butter the strawberries for the jam at the farmers' market. Between May and November in Pittsburgh you can find an almost daily market in one of the neighborhoods. I highly recommend checking them out if you haven't already.

• A great deal of our preserving involved tomatoes; we are pretty thrilled with the 47 quarts of pasta sauce we'll be enjoying all year. I'm pretty excited to say that most of the tomatoes we used this year came from own very own garden. We kept weighing the endless tomato harvest this year and the final count was around 316 pounds! I smile every time I think about it.

• The bushel of peaches came from David's parents, when they visited us this summer from South Carolina.

• The mulberries were from trees around our neighborhood.

2010 Preserving
Frozen:
Mulberries - 2 quarts
Greens - 2 bags
Pesto cubes (spinach, garlic, pea shoots)
Oven dried tomatoes with olive oil - 9.5 (1.5 pints)

Dried:
Mint - 3/4 cup
Oregeno - 1/2 cup
Tomatoes - 3 (1.5 pints)
Zucchinni - 1 (1.5 pints)
Apples - 2 quarts

Canned:
Strawberry Jam - 17 (8oz)
Peach Butter - 18 pints
Peaches, raw packed - 10 quarts
Peach juice - 4 quarts
Tomatoes, raw packed - 5 quarts
Pasta sauce - 47 quarts
Chicken stock - 6.5 quarts
Green Tomato Pickle Mix - 12 pints
Apple butter - 5 pints, 3 (12oz), 7 (8oz)

Ferments:
Mixed Veggies - 1 quart
Sauerkraut - 2 (1/2 gallons)


Let us know if you want to try some of what we preserved. We really enjoy giving and trading our canned goods. 2010 was an eventful year for our little homestead! We are already searching through seed catalogs for next year, daydreaming of fresh produce, beautiful blooms and dirt under our fingernails.

May you and yours have a blessed start to 2011!
Cheers!

handmade gifts

I was excited to knit some Christmas presents this year.
I made my mom a pair of the French Press Felted Slippers
and I made David a pair of fingerless gloves, using a free pattern on Ravelry by Susan Letourneau. Ravelry link for slippers. Ravelry link for gloves.Both recipients seemed really grateful!

{this moment}

and we all settled down for a long winter's nap.

deep peace

deep peace of the running wave to you
deep peace of the flowing air to you
deep peace of the quiet earth to you
deep peace of the shining stars to you
deep peace of the gentle night to you,
moon and stars
pour their healing light on you
deep peace to you

— a Gaelic Blessing

handspun dry leaf

I joined Cosy's falkland fiber club and I'm glad I did. Yesterday, I finished spinning the beautifully dyed fiber and it turned out like this.

It was a bit thinner than I wanted it to be, so I decided to ply it with this beautiful yellow wool yarn that my mother-in-law gave to me. If I remember correctly, she bought it in Scotland when David's family lived there many years ago.
It turned out pretty neat.
The colors are gorgeous and I spun over 150 yards.
I'm excited for it to finish drying, so I can start knitting with it!
I love my new spinning wheel!

lots and lots and lots of knitting lately

Finished putting on the buttons and blocking my first sweater (go everywhere go with everything cardigan out of Stitch 'N Bitch).

Also finished the Lovely Liesl by Ysolda.
And I finished a pair of socks.

guess what I got!

Today, I picked up this cute Louet S15 Spinning Wheel!! It is single treadle, with a built in metal lazy kate. Found on Craigslist (thanks for pointing it out, Cosy!) It works beautifully - at least so far...I've learned a lot already after practicing on it for just a short while.

In other news:
~we are canning apple butter today
~I finally learned how to turn a heel on a sock
~and I have two sweaters that I blocked yesterday drying in our attic.

I'd call that a full weekend.

{this moment}

A sunday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
~~inspired by amanda soule

{this moment}

A sunday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
~~inspired by amanda soule

what we've been up to

Made more sauerkraut, using cabbage from our CSA.
Baked a mulberry/apple crisp that was delicious; I modified a recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, Simply in Season. David picked and then froze mulberries from trees in our neighborhood and the apples were from the farmer's market.
Happy (early) birthday to me. Thanks Mom and Ron for the handcarders. They work beautifully.
I carded some of Godiva's fleece and started spinning. Lookin' pretty good.
Not sure if you've had any of this ChocoVine yet, but it is really tasty!
cheers!

end of season gardening

Yesterday the weather was gorgeous, so I did some work in the garden.
The kale plant is gearing up for the colder weather. Gotta love this hardy plant.

The globe artichoke is also looking pretty good still; hopefully we'll be picking artichokes next year!

Our apricot tree seems to be unaware of the changing seasons and she is still hanging on to her leaves.

The end of the season always means we've got to clean up the garden. I took the umbrella down, put the grill under our back porch and went to work on the plants. After un-staking the tomatoes, I chopped off the tops of the plants and left them on top of the soil to act as mulch. Since we are trying to build up the soil, I left the roots of the plants intact and in the ground to hopefully minimize the loss of organic matter.

Before the first frost, David went out and picked about 63 pounds of green tomatoes, so we are trying to keep up with them as they ripen. I made more oven dried tomatoes and I've also made a couple batches of really yummy Roasted Tomato Soup (my mom sent me the recipe).
Thought I'd share that with you all. Enjoy!

Roasted Tomato Soup

Toss together in a bowl:

5# tomatoes, stemmed and quartered

6 garlic cloves, smashed

¼ c olive oil

salt and pepper

Transfer to a casserole dish and roast about 40 minutes at 450 degrees until very soft.

Saute in 2T olive oil over medium heat:

1 c onions, chopped

Stir in:

2 c water (if tomatoes are dry; otherwise, don’t use it…I did not)

2 tsp sugar (I used honey instead)

½ tsp kosher salt

¼ tsp red pepper flakes

roasted tomato mixture, including all of the juice

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Puree the soup in a blender in small batches (no more than halfway full) until smooth

optional: add ½ c heavy cream (gradually so it doesn’t curdle).

{this moment}

A sunday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
~~inspired by amanda soule

{this moment}

A sunday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
~~inspired by amanda soule

{this moment}

A sunday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
~~inspired by amanda soule

{this moment}

A sunday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
~~inspired by amanda soule

new gloves in motion

I am really happy with how this new handspun turned out and it made the warmest fingerless gloves! I used one of Hobbledehoy's batts called Tigerlily and I still have some leftover! If the gloves weren't so nice, I'd be wearing them while I plant our bulbs in this cooler weather.

{this moment}

A sunday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
~~inspired by amanda soule

drying food

Several years ago, my mom got us an electric food dehydrator, which is a lot of fun and really easy to use. Our favorites have been dried apples and tomatoes. We've dried several quarts of apples so far this season. I just thinly slice the apples, taking out the seeds. Dip the slices in a little lemon water and place on the dehydrator. These guys will dry out pretty fast, so you've got to rotate the trays every once in awhile, taking off the thinner slices that dry more quickly. I need to make some more since I've already eaten so many. :)

We've also used the food dehydrator to dry several quarts of tomatoes this summer. We are still picking baskets full of tomatoes from our garden and David (as the primary sauce maker) has declared that he is done canning sauce for the season. After canning over 40 quarts of sauce, who can blame him?! So, I took it upon myself to use up some of this week's harvest with a new method of drying. I followed a recipe for Oven Dried Tomatoes posted by Heavy Petal, where you just cut the tomatoes in half, drizzle with olive oil, and then place them in a 250 degree oven for 5-6 hours. The dried tomatoes can then be frozen. I made about three quarts worth and it was difficult to stop eating them right off the pan! YUM! Taste like candy! Can't wait to eat these things all winter: mixed in pesto over pasta, on crackers with cream cheese, on pizza, with goat cheese! yum, yum, yum!

{this moment}

A sunday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
~~inspired by amanda soule

Alpacas!

Gotta love the Internet. I posted some pictures of yarn that I had spun on Facebook and one of my high school friends saw my pictures and got me connected me to her parents, who just happen to own an alpaca farm. David and I went on a little road trip today to visit Dan and Kim at Day Star Alpacas and I brought home two bags full of gorgeous fleece.
I believe the alpaca below is Ooh La La. All of the alpacas were really curious about us and most of them came right over to visit. Ooh La La was especially friendly.
Aren't they amazing?! The little fawn colored one isn't even a week old yet!
and I saved my favorite for last. Meet Godiva! She's got a memorable face and incredibly soft fleece. I plan on spinning her fleece into some gorgeous yarn.

made especially for David

The pattern is by Jared Flood called Turn A Square, which I found on Ravelry. I was hoping that the hat would be a surprise, but when I asked David for color recommendations at the yarn store, it just was easier to tell him that I was making him a hat. I think it looks great on him! Seeing as how he hasn't taken it off today, I think he really likes it, too! :)

{this moment}

A sunday ritual.
A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
~~inspired by amanda soule

"He who plants a tree plants hope." -Lucy Larcom

Today we planted two trees: a Sango Kaku Japanese Maple and a Norway Spruce. We planted the spruce in the front left side of our garden and the Japanese Maple is in the back.



This particular kind of Japanese Maple is famous for the red bark that we are hoping will add color to the garden - especially in the winter.
Speaking of color - here are some other new additions to the garden. We are adding an aster and a creamy yellow rose bush. The plants were on sale and I couldn't resist them when we bought the trees today.