Friday, August 14, 2009

More harvesting and preserving



We're starting to get a few more tomatoes but so far have only had enough to enjoy fresh. Unfortunately, we'll be racing against the blight that seems to already be started. I'm low on home-canned tomatoes so I'm really hoping for a good harvest before the blight takes over.




The first of our cukes are finally ready to pick. As with the tomatoes, Clarence grows them on fencing so they can climb, rather than spread all over. It's fairly effective, although the tomatoes, in particular, still seem to spread out quite a bit.




This is the strawberry tower, planted with beans this year. Clarence and Allison picked the beans last night and enjoyed picking them while standing.




Last night's harvest wasn't huge, but I was able to can 5 quarts of beans. It's a start.

Yesterday I also made a batch of bread and butter pickles. I'd never made them before but the girls' adopted grandparents shared some with us a few months ago and we all loved them.

Wednesday night they gave us a couple bags of cucumbers so I tried using her refrigerator pickle recipe, but followed the instructions in my Ball Blue Book to process them as I don't have a lot of refrigerator space to store them in. Hopefully, they will still be good. I'm afraid they won't be very crisp after being processed. Anybody know?



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5 comments:

  1. Sounds like the harvest is coming on good. And it all sounds GOOD!

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  2. Ahhh, bread and butter pickles. My childhood favorite. I know NO one who makes them any more. I think I would enjoy knowing you. How did they turn out? They look beautiful, as do the beans!

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  3. Ladybug,

    We cracked open the first jar of them for lunch over the weekend and they were as good as we had hoped. And crispy! Yay!

    Hopefully, we'll have enough cukes to make more because 7 pints won't last very long.

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  4. those b & b pickles look yummy . . . glad they are crispy.

    happy harvest :)

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