Green and growing!

 We couldn't be happier with our little garden corral! Everything is green and growing and even producing blooms. We worry about the deer finding it, so we did put up a perimeter netting and so far <knock on wood> they're leaving it alone. 

I enjoy going out and watering it every day it doesn't rain. The tomatoes are in grow bags and those can dry out quickly. Next year, the plan is to get the tomatoes into five-gallon buckets. I didn't want to be a hoarder and purchase every food-safe bucket I could find, a notion that may bite me in the ass come next year, but there it is. 

Last year we started with five grow bags and had an encouraging harvest.  This year we've gone a bit bigger and instead of having just a few peppers, I hope to have enough for several batches of Cowboy Candy, pepper jelly, and more. We had enough cucumbers to eat and make a batch or two of refrigerator pickles, but not enough to store in the pantry. I love, love, love bread & butter pickles and hope this year to put my great-grandmother's recipe to good use. 

Then there are tomatoes. We seem to be cursed when it comes to tomatoes, but with over a dozen plants, we have hopes of some scrumptious tomato sandwiches. Considering we're growing old-fashioned Beefsteak tomatoes, it may happen. 

And so we wait and hope our little garden corral will do us proud. And we also hope our energy doesn't fail when it's time to preserve our harvest. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

The garden corral

In an effort to thwart the local deer, my veggie garden is a container garden located in what I'm calling The Garden Corral. 

The garden corral is located on what was our pool pad. To our sorrow, the Lord of the Manor can no longer safely get in and out of our little pool. Well, he can hold his nose and fall in, but it's the getting out we're not sure about. It's one more thing he's lost the ability to do as his overall health declines. Fifteen years ago chemotherapy saved his life, but the damage it did has lingered long after the cancer was dispatched. Life is a series of trade-offs. 

My little garden space is a work in progress. I started this year with grow bags and quickly graduated to 5-gallon buckets for the peppers. Next year will require something different for the cucumbers and radishes. The much-anticiapted strawberry grow bags are, in my opinion, a real bust. I don't like them so the strawberries have already been replanted. 

So on we go. 

I have fifteen buckets with peppers, thirteen grow bags with tomatoes, five grow bags with cucumbers, one with beets, one with carrots, one with a bush pumpkin, one with a bush watermelon, and one with sugar snap peas. 

The peppers are what I'm most interested in this year. With any luck, Cowboy Candy, pepper jelly, and a good amount of salsa will be added to the pantry. Past eating fresh tomatoes and making a few batches of salsa, I'm not sure what will be done with the tomatoes. We'll eat the watermelon, and I'll likely freeze the pumpkin puree. I tried canning pumpkin last year and never again. If I'm going to end up with mush, I'll just freeze mush. 

Will the harvest make me sorry I went on this journey? Perhaps, but the idea of having even a small amount of food in my pantry that I know has no preservatives in it is worth a little work. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Canning "homemade" chili

Observing my grandmother as she home-canned food was one thing. Doing it myself is something altogether different. Mam made it look so easy - and it is, up to a point. I never appreciated the time that goes in to stocking the pantry with a variety of homemade foods, but I know it's worth every minute spent.

Mam used to pressure can venison. That's not something I'm likely to do unless the world keeps going the way it is and we can't purchase beef. At that point, the small herd of deer that passes through the manor every day on their way to the creek might be at risk, but that's another story. Today's story is about canning homemade chili, or chili con carne if you insist. 

Our chili is homemade only in that we open the store-bought cans at home. We start by browning two pounds of lean ground beef and then draining and rinsing it before dumping it in the pot. Then we add beans - kidney beans, black beans, and white beans (cannellini or great northern). After that, in goes diced tomatoes, one can of cream of tomato soup, and lately, a can of chili starter. Seasonings to taste follows as the chili warms.  As you can tell from the picture, I'm not brand specific. I look for bonus buys and advantageous bulk buys on canned goods. 

Into the stockpot it all goes until everything is heated through. Since this batch was to be processed, I didn't allow it to simmer for hours. Once in the jars, it needs to be pressure canned for ninety minutes and I think precludes the need for simmering. 

I ended up with enough chili to fill six one-quart jars, so I added a jar of water to fill up the canner. This becomes a jar of sterilized water which is handy to have for first aid or water-quality failures. Think about that one. You'll note I used a Tattler lid on the jar of water. 

Canning a batch of chili was a labor-intensive process, but well worth it. I'll do it again once this batch has been consumed. I won't tell you how to do it. I recommend you go to the food preservation website and read the information on canning meat found there.

What I will tell you is that I continue to be in awe of my maternal grandmother. She taught me so much without me ever realizing I was getting a lesson. Sometimes I'm sad I have no one to whom I can pass on her knowledge, but that's the way it is. I have no connection to the future, only the past. Which makes my life a rosy place to dwell.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Vegetable soup ala the Ball Book

Vegetable soup is a staple in the country pantry. In my grandmother's house, leftover veggies were never discarded. Dropped into the massive chest freezer in the "old kitchen" and forgotten, yes. But tossed out - never. Every fall Mam would dig all the leftover bits of vegetables out of the freezer and make a huge vat of vegetable soup to can. I can't speak for other family members, but I always thought it was pretty cool to come from work and open my mailbox to find a quart of home-canned soup waiting for me. 

I've made a lot of vegetable soup in my life but I've always frozen it. Until recently, I didn't own a pressure canner. Having worked outside the home since I was sixteen, I needed to take the quick route to get food into the pantry and that's freezing it. My time is spent differently now and my priorities have settled more on a home-based lifestyle. 

The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and Canning is an invaluable resource. I do wish I'd gotten the spiral-bound version, though. I'm not in the affiliate program so don't be afraid to click the link to Amazon and check it out. It has recipes and canning times for a lot of foods. If one is going to can, one should READ the book and learn. 

Yesterday was the day I decided to make vegetable soup. I used the Ball Book recipe as my guide, but I did add a few extras. I had a beef shoulder that I cooked in the Instant Pot and shredded to add to the soup. I also dumped in a twelve-ounce can of V8 juice to pump up the flavor. Same with the four cubes of beef bouillon I tossed into the mix. The soup was a great way to use up quite a few little baggies of leftover veggies. 

The soup made and into the jars, the canning process took a couple of hours. The canner has to come up to pressure in a particular order, then process at the correct pressure for ninety minutes (for this soup), and then bleed off pressure slowly. I ended up with seven quarts of soup, which is what my canner holds for one processing. I used one wide-mouth jar with a Tattler lid and six regular jars with the standard Ball lids. All six of the Ball lids have sealed and I'll find out about the Tattler lid after twenty-four hours are up and I can remove the ring. The was no siphoning from any of the jars so I'm pretty sure the Tattler sealed, too. 

It was a good day's work. I had time to take Deuce on a walk while the soup simmered. I also finished the powdered spinach and tossed a load of laundry in the washer, not to mention composing three blogs. Yes, there is always something to do here at the manor, and I love it. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor