Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Plentiful Fall

Fall is plentiful–plenty of work to bring in the summer bounty and fall harvest, plenty of work to prepare for winter. Plenty of beautiful days with blue skies and gorgeous fall colors on the mountain sides. Plenty of rain and moisture to nourish the last of the garden–broccoli, cabbage, carrots, lettuce and spinach.

Each year I try to plant something new and different in the garden. This year it was sunflowers and Resina Calendula. They both did well. These are florist type sunflowers-no seeds. But we used several with blue Bachelor Buttons for centerpieces at our Bible Bee reception at the close of Contest Day the end of August.


Late summer and fall are very busy here with wood-cutting, ours is done, my parents' is not;


Canning and freezing from the garden. 
 (I thought I'd include my totals so I could see next year how much we used.)

Frozen:
17 1/2 cups peas
1 qt bag of Pesto cubes
5 qts of peaches
beet fries
10 qts corn
strawberries
raspberries
Snow Peas

Canned:
5 pts Strawberry-lemonade syrup
15, 1/2 pts Strawberry Jam
1 pt beets
48 qts peaches
11, 3/4 qts Parkinson Salsa
49 qts pears
24 pts tomato sauce
2 qts, 66 pts green beans
42 qts applesauce
1 gal apple butter
12 qts Apple Pie filling
4, 1/2 pts Roasted, diced, Green Chilies
3 qts 7 pts Cherry Juice

Also:
1/2 batch Mexican Carrots
1 cabbage into Sauerkraut
1 gallon of Beet kvass

 Plus 2 pear cakes, 2 apple pies, 1 beet cake, 4 qts dried cherries, frozen hash browns and oven fries. And there is still more to do with the onions drying in the garage and potatoes and apples in the storage room.



And now that it is hunting season: son has bagged his deer and Mr. Wonderful his two antelope. I've been making Breakfast sausage with the ground antelope using this recipe:

For 30# meat:
1/2 cup salt (I used coarse Light Grey Celtic Sea Salt)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup dried sage
3 Tbsp coarse Pepper
2 Tbsp Cayenne Pepper

Mix into the meat pieces and then grind to get the best flavor distribution.
You can mix the seasoning together and then use 1 Tbsp per pound of meat for smaller batches.

To fix-I make a "hamburger" type patty and fry on a fairly low setting in a pan rubbed with coconut oil. We also use it crumbled and cooked part way on pizza. If you cook it all the way before putting it on the pizza it will be too dry when the pizza is done.

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