A little Advertising...

Check out Suzanne's new Etsy shop! Her blog is At Home With the Farmer's Wife. She has got some CAAYUUUUUTE stuff on there! I may do some early Christmas shopping... check out this apron - they are so original and I especially like the pink/brown one.

I aim to go back and do some more lookin. I know Suzanne would love to have you come by - she's such a sweet and interesting gal, and I love reading her blog! She takes us on road trips all the time and it's always fun to see what her agenda is at her Monday Morning Staff Meeting!

Have a great weekend ya'll!!!

PUCKER UP FOR PICKLES, YA'LL!!!

(BLOGGER IS NOT LETTING ME DOUBLE SPACE BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS! SORRY!)


Are ya'll ready to make Mamaw's Spicy Pickles??? I finally got around to makin' 'em Friday night. This week's been busy. Okay, here's the ingredients: one batch is about 4 quart jars. sliced up pickling cucumbers - I don't know how many - I had about 2 1/2 gallon size ziploc bags full. onions - slices or quarters

fresh garlic cloves - about 2 per quart jar

celery - 3 stalks cut into 1" chunks

jalapeno peppers (or serrano if you want it spicier) - cut into quarters or smaller if they're big

apple cider vinegar - 1 quart per batch

1 pint water

4 c. sugar

1/2 c. canning salt

dill seed/fresh dill

Like on the jelly, I take my jars fresh outta the dishwasher, all hot & steamy - 4 quart or 8 pint jars at a time and set em on a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan. Into each jar (I'm going with quart, if you use pint you'll use a little less of each of the veggies) put a couple of sprigs of fresh dill, 1/4 to 1/2 t. dill seed, several pieces of onion, 3-4 pieces of celery, a couple of cloves of garlic, a piece of jalapeno, and as many slices of cucumber as you can stuff and squeeze down in there and still get a lid on. (When that hot vinegar solution hits those cukes, they'll shrink up alot)

Oh yeah, before all this, remember to wash your lids and bands, and put them into a pot of water on the stove, bring to a boil, and then simmer and keep steaming hot to seal your jars with.
Ok, see in the above picture, I've got my jars all packed & ready with the funnels for the vinegar solution. Here we go:

In a large stockpot, put your quart of apple cider vinegar, 4 c. sugar, 1/2 c. canning salt, and 1 pint of water. Add 1/2 t. dill seed to this solution and heat on medium high heat. Stir and get all the sugar and salt melted and bring the solution to a full rolling boil. Open the windows and turn on the fans!!! It'll open up your sinuses for sure, peel the hair off your head and make your eyes water worse than onions!!! Keep your face out of the steam! Hey it's a great way to run your kids outside if you're tired of 'em being underfoot! Mine used to scatter to the four winds.

Sorry, I got carried away with the vinegar stench... It gets to me sometimes... After your solution has boiled a couple or three minutes, turn it on low, get you a cup with a spout on it to scoop, and start scoopin' the vinegar into the jars & use your jar funnels if you have em. Go ahead and fill all the jars to within 1/4 inch or so of the top. Wipe off the mouths of the jars, and get your tongs or your nifty magnetized lid and band picker upper and put the tops on and then screw the bands down real tight. I always use a couple of wet, squeezed out dishrags to handle the jars. They'll be VERY hot and sticky. I invert the jars and set em on the cabinet for awhile and then turn em over later when they've cooled a bit.

Here's my disclaimer again - This is the way my mamaw taught me and I've always done it like her and will continue to do it like her. Some people at this point may want to put the jars in a canning bath and that's fine. But we like our pickles crispy and if you do the canning bath, they cook some more and get kinda soft and floppy. It's probably not by govt. standards but I figure the vinegar takes care of the pickling. We've always eaten em this way - no problem.

That's up to you. (As you can see, I had enough cukes to make 2 batches.)

You can eat em the next day, but the longer they SET, the better they'll be. I usually go open a jar about 2 weeks after or so, and they're great. They won't last long. I've got scads more cucumbers getting ripe, so I'll make some more. And with the big green ones that are too big to slice, well they're getting made into sweet pickle relish. I put up some green tomatoes like this, and they were good, too.

Good luck! Let me know if you make some - hope you like em!

Big Red Tractor Shed

HEY PEOPLE, I HAVE A QUESTION?????Anybody out there have a barn or shed that is a RED metal building? Tony's fixin' to have a building built at the farm because he's buying a tractor. We want RED metal (I'd rather have a wood barn, but the pasture fire we had last year scared us a little) but we have heard that the RED oxidizes after a few years and starts lookin' chalky. One manufacturer told him that their red doesn't fade, but all the other ones have only a 3-5 year guarantee.

Does anyone have any personal experience with this??? I'd love to hear --- if it fades, we'd do another color, but we'd really like red. I hate to have some ole ugly color shed out on my farm, but oh well.... maybe a light yellowish with dark green roof? I just don't know...

I have to go to the farm this afternoon. We had some strong thunderstorms move through last night and possibly more this evening and my corn is FLAT on the ground. I have to go stand it back up. We've had to do this in the past and it usually works okay. Thank goodness I don't have a whole pasture of it! Tony was out there last night during the storm and he said there were limbs on the ground and some of the other garden plants look a little battered. But, hey, that just goes with it I guess. I shan't fret.

I will be making pickles tonight. Stay tuned because I'm going to do a tutorial and take you through the process. Once, again, it's Mamaw's recipe and man is it great! I'm so glad I learned some stuff from my grandmothers before they were gone!

Lemme know about thuh rayed color thang, ya'll!

(PS - I can't get Blogger to double-space between paragraphs this morning!@$^*(^^&$@!~$^@%!!!!

Plum Jelly

Good morning! Are you ready to make jelly? Are you Sure (Jell) ?????
(disclaimer: I'm doing this the way my mamaw taught me - if it's not by the book or doesn't meet GOVT standards, I could care less - I ain't sellin' it)

I used the 8 oz jars cuz they're a good size to give away, and the jelly doesn't turn to sugar before you eat the whole jar. I run all my jars and bands through the hot dishwasher before the canning process and take them hot right out of the DW and set them in a big jelly roll pan so the juice won't get all over the cabinet. Also, put your bands and lids into another pan covered with water and keep them just under boiling.

Ok get your stuff ready - the biggest stock pot you have, a canning strainer or a colander with little bitty holes, your magnetic lid & band picker-upper (if you don't have one, you can use tongs), cheesecloth, your ingredients.... oh, about 5 lbs or so of fruit (plums), lotsa sugar, a few boxes of Sure-Jell, lemon juice, butter... I think that's all.

1. Wash your plums and get all the junk off of 'em. Put them in your stock pot and add about 2 cups of water, just enough so's you can see the water in the bottom of the pot. 2. On medium heat, cook your plums about 15 minutes or until all the peelings come off and the fruit is cooked. Stir around a few times so they don't stick to the bottom - you don't want burnt-tastin' jelly.

3. I didn't get a picture of this next part cuz I needed both hands to do what I needed to do. Ok, squish your plums around just a little with a potato masher or something to loosen up the pulp. Then get you a big bowl or another big stockpot and place your canning strainer over the pot and put 2-3 cups at a time into the strainer and let it drain through into the pot. If you have a canning squisher (seen in the above photo - wooden), roll it around in the pulp and get a little bit of that into the juice in the pan. Not too much, you don't want your jelly to be pulpy, you want it to be clear and red - it's pretty that way. Also, you can use cheesecloth inside your strainer if you want to get more pulp out, especially if you don't have a canning strainer.

4. Discard all the pulp, peelings, and seeds in the trash. You should have quite a bit of juice left now. Wash your big stockpot out a little or use another one (you WILL make a big mess making jelly, so just get ready for it).

5. Now, cuz my Mamaw taught me this way, I put 5 and 1/2 to 6 cups of the juice back into the pot. I add 6 & 1/2 C. of sugar, sometimes 7. I don't measure very well. Then, add 1 T of lemon juice, one box of Sure-Jell and 1 big pat of butter (keeps it from sticking so bad). On medium high heat, cook this mixture and stir until everything is dissolved. Keep cooking, say for 10-15 minutes, at a soft rolling boil, stirring occasionally - don't let it stick.

6. Get you a plate and set it beside your stove while you're cookin' and every once in awhile put a drop or two of the jelly mixture onto the plate and let it cool. When the little dabs start getting thick and gooy-er or setting up (it's still going to be liquid-y, but gooey), then it's done. Turn off the stove, and get a scooper - a glass measuring cup works well. I use a 2 cup glass.

7. Scoop up jelly mixture out of the pot and carefully pour into your jars one at a time up to about 1/8" to 1/4" from the top. Make sure that you clean off the top rims of the jars. Then get your magnetic lid picker-up or your tongs and take lids out of the steaming pan and place carefully on top of the jars, and then place the bands on top.

8. I then have two damp washcloths, and keeping the jars level, screw the bands down real tight and turn the jars upside down on the cabinet. Be careful, the jars will be hot! I usually have a little jelly juice left over that won't make an entire sealed jar. I keep an extra jar to the side to pour the leftover jelly into and keep adding to it with each batch. Then I can put a lid on and place in the fridge and that'll be the first jar we'll use.

Inverting the jars while they're hot helps the lids to seal better. Turn them over after awhile and you can sometimes hear them pop. If the lids are not sucked down kinda concave, then it didn't seal good, and you'll need to put in the fridge to eat first. I got eight 8 oz jars with leftover juice. I will be making some more probably tonight or tomorrow night. I gotta pick some more plums. If you don't have time to do the whole thing, you can cook your fruit and get the juice out and freeze it, and then do your jelly later.

Now, the directions on the Sure-Jell package are just as easy, only you cook your juice for just a few minutes and jar and seal and then you have to put them in a canning bath. I do that for other things, but for jelly, this way worked for Mamaw for 50 years, and it's worked for me for 15 years and I'm stayin' with it. If it ain't broke...

Sorry this is so long, but there you go. I've made this recipe with peaches and left more pulp in them to make more of a preserve and they turned out great. Also, with some of dad's concord and muscadine grapes - I love muscadine jelly and it was the prettiest pale pink color!!! I'd like to make some jalapeno jelly this summer, too.

Ok time to sign off. I've wasted (enjoyed) this last hour here at work, and I need to get busy!

Happy Jelling! NOW GO CLEAN UP YOUR BIG MESS!!!

Goat Milk Soap, Farm Bounty

I'm doing a little advertising here for Annie (she doesn't know) at www.anniesgoathill.com and her blog is http://anniesgoathill.blogspot.com/. I've been wanting to try the goatmilk soap and lotion, and ran across her blog. SO, awhile back, I ordered some! I've already about used up one of the soaps even tho they do last longer than a regular bar of soap. I ordered some honeysuckle scented soap and lotion and some lavender scented. She also sent me a sample of plumeria.

Let me tell you, I love them! The soap lathers well and smells wonderful, and you feel squeaky-clean, not dried out. I have to hide it from my husband so he won't use it. The lotion is one of the best I've used. It slips on easily, feels smooth and satiny, and I've started wearing it under my make-up. It doesn't make me oily and feels better than my regular face lotion. When you're 52, you need all the moisterizer you can get. This is good stuff, people! Just wanted to give you the heads up. (sorry I took this picture on my un-made bed as I was running late out the door this morning!)

New topic - can you stand another post about my garden? Well, you're gunna haf to ennyway. I am having so much fun (and work) in my garden and I have been bringin home produce the last few days. Here's a pic of what I got yesterday:

I put up 5 quarts of green beans, there's onions of course, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, peppers, broccoli, I dug a few new potatoes to cook with some beans, and two big Walmart bags of plums! Guess who is making plum jelly tonight!!! I do this every year. I have a little plum tree but Dad has a huge one and I make it nearly every year. Gardening and putting up stuff is a project that my Dad and I do together. I've also got plans to make my Mamaw's Spicy Pickles. I'm saving up my cucumbers AND I grew some dill this year for that little project. I also have some garlic growing and I'll add the peppers to the mix for spice!

This isn't all the bounty. I've gots lots more beans, peppers, broccoli, onions, etc., in the garden. The okra is doing well, but I didn't buy enough plants. Same for the eggplant. I'll do more next year.

I don't know if I'm at the point that I'm saving any money yet on produce. I bought alot of started seedlings and small plants this year because I don't have a place to start them. Tony says that he's going to build me a greenhouse at some point. We had lots of rain awhile back, but it's beginning to taper off and we're having to water. And when you add in all the work, I don't know if it's been very cost effective this year. We'll have to see how we can cut corners in the future, but for now, we can enjoy our home grown veggies and know where they came from and how they've been taken care of.

My plans are to photograph the jelly and pickling process and share with you. They are both great recipes that I've had much success with!Look how purty these plums are! I had to pop several in my mouth as I was washing them last night. Yum. Love em! I gotta get my jars washed and I bought Sure-Jell and new lids yesterday. I still gotta get sugar. I've got my pickling salt, dill, peppers, garlic, celery for the pickles, but will need apple cider vinegar, too.

I absolutely LOVE doing all this. I feel so old-fashioned, but I'm afraid that the younger generation is going to lose all these old skills. I hope there's enough of them out there still to keep up the old ways and keep passing them down. My daughter is not interested, but perhaps in the years to come, she'll come around. She'll feel more domestic after she marries and settles down.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed!