10/29/2011

End of the garden

This was a very good year for our garden. I had a bumper crop of all kinds of winter squash, so much so that I was peddling them on the side of the road. Made enough to buy about 30 pkgs. of seeds for next year.

Tomato's were coming out our ears and we froze about 40-50 quarts of tomato sauce and canned about the same. Didn't get one ear of corn though. The ears never formed. Green peppers were in abundance after the end of Sept.! We made four batches of hot pepper jelly. Warm, hot, hotter, and burn the end off your tongue! It goes well with a little cream cheese on a Ritz or a Wheat Thin.

Planted sweet potato's I got from Johnny's Seeds and there are some that are big as footballs!
Never have been ale to grow any bigger than golf balls before. Probably had something to do with the ton or 2 of seaweed we put on the whole plot.

Planted three rows of Kennebec potato's and got at least 2 bushels per row. Also put in some Red Pontiac for early eating. Couldn't measure them as they kept disappearing out of the rows when ever anyone needed some.

Put up about 25 pints of pickled beets which turned out fantastic! Just used the recipe out of the Balls canning book.

Ordered and got 35, day old RI Red chicks, the 27 of June and they are 18 weeks old, so should be commencing to put out some eggs real soon. Time to "retire to the freezer" the old soup chickens. They are down too between 3 and 6 a day. NOT cost effective to keep feeding them.

Bought 3, 12 to 15 pound pigs last spring and as of this date they are all very close to 300 lbs.! Lots of bacon, sausage, chops and roasts to fill out the freezers.

All in all, with what fruit we canned and all the rest, if the SHTF any time soon I think my extended family will make it at least till the spring. When we butcher the pigs, real soon, all the "spare meat and fat" goes into the freezer till deer season comes along and then we can make some pork/venison sausage! UUMM that stuff is good.

Hey look at that! An upbeat post for a change! TIFN

1 comment:

Old NFO said...

Sounds like a successful summer, in more ways than one! Glad things worked out well!