So, It's Been A While...

What to say about the past 3 weeks..... I have been busy. I made some apple sauce, and then apple pies for games night, I've made about 3L of dried apple slices(with more to come), and I'm in the process of making apple scrap vinegar.

After fighting tooth and nail with the apple sauce trying to puzzle out why some jar seals failed to seal, I'm happy to announce that I'm pretty sure I was just being to delicate with them and the following 6 jars of stew pork, 6 jars of beets, 5 jars of "red relish" and 19 jars of various pickled beets ALL sealed with no issues!

Unfortunately I did NOT get to the carrots before they went off. Somehow, they were the cleanest and nicest of the three (apples, beets, carrots but by the time I finished with the apples, they were just straight up nasty even though the beets right nest to them were fine. Now the compost pile contains $30 of rotten carrots. :-/ (Don't worry, no pics of this one.) I did learn my lesson though. DO NOT get $60 worth of seconds at a time. It least until I nail down my process.

I will be getting more carrots but I'll have the jars and everything ready to go and I won't have apples begging for attention first. In happier news, my crocus and garlic pre-orders have arrived and I'm looking forward to seeing them again next year. :-)

Photo by Joe Green on Unsplash

The chickens have started to get along better now that I've been making them stay in the shed whenever the weather is bad. Exposure to each other without the possibility of being 50-100 feet away from each other has helped them talk through their issues. There have been TWO tropical storm things gone by now and a few days where the heavy rain and winds just made it easier on my nerves to keep the chickens indoors.

Isabella(black) is the new lead hen after Henrietta's death, and she happily ignores the new girls as they calmly get out of her way. Jennifer(Barred) seems to be in the middle of the main pack, with Kelly(white) still pulling up the rear,... which is of course why she's constantly chasing and nipping at the new girls. Can't let these whipper snappers overtake her.

Lily and Marsha are maturing and starting to get closer to their full size and proper colouration. The grey feathers are coming in more and darker as their moult progresses but they are still mostly white. I am a bit confused about why Marsha's comb and wattles have got dramatically redder and larger than Lilly's. Seems Marsha may be a Marshal which would be bad for her... but it's also possible she's just a few weeks older than Lilly. We'll have to wait and see. Neither of the new girls are laying yet but all of the chickens seem to have a nice gentle autumn moult happening. No naked chickens here.

Cold Snap

Games night went well. One neighbour and her two kids came over for some boardgames Which was lots of fun. They and the other neighbours will likely be available next time around so we'll have more folks next month. Shortly after they left Thursday night, the wind really kicked up and we got some snow.

The cold snap only lasted 2 days just like the weather app predicted so we just bunkered down for Friday and Saturday to avoid the -40 windchill. Unfortunately the partially assembled, already damaged greenhouse did not fair well in the storm. The cold and wind literally snapped two panels.

After some serious consideration we've decided to cut our losses on this project. It was designed in such a way that it needed to me put together perfectly, all in one go, before being exposed to any stresses. Our partial construction and then subsequent destruction, and re-struction(?) was not enough to make it work. 

This was our first big financial fuckup on the homestead and it hurts, but this is not a salvageable project. Instead, when the nice weather comes we're going to bring it all the way down. Then in the fall, or maybe some time in 2024, we plan to have a different greenhouse professionally installed.

Our flower bulbs seem to be doing fine, but the cold snap was the first thing to affect the garlic. They should bounce back no problem from this condition. I'm just surprised it took this much to wilt them.

We finally got around to trying some wild goose and I've gotta tell you, not a fan. It's like a weird taste combination of duck and beef with a fishy aftertaste. Hugslut said it was okay enough that she'd eat if someone served it, but she wouldn't go looking for it. Also, even though I tried my best, somehow there was still shot in it. 

I think I'll stick to farmed birds for now.

The dry air has been giving us both a hard time so this weekend we're picking up a humidifier. Hope this fixes the headaches and terrible sleep.

Busy As A Bee

I kept hoping to be done with the canning so I could have a nice lil before and after for you but... well, here's what happened.

We were out running some errands on the Saturday the 10th, and on the way home I spotted someone bagging up deer apples! I was already planning on getting some deer carrots but the apples got me excited. We popped over to the bank to get some cash and by the time we got home we had three bags of food.

Tape measure for scale.

Now they're called deer apples and deer carrots because they're "2nds" from the farm. the stores wont take them because they're too large, or too small, or bruised, or in the case of some of the carrots, forked or broken in half. The hunters around here use these bags of food to lure deer which makes for an easy shot so they're less likely to injure the deer and more likely for it to just die quickly. 

Although I applaud their ingenuity.... I'd rather sort through and put-up/preserve some food for humans.

This next bit was over an entire week...

After sorting out the clearly bad apples and washing the rest I loaded them in grocery tubs for later.

Two deer apple bags = two overflowing tubs plus a reusable bag.

The carrots went quickly and easily. There were very few I just tossed and most of them were just too small and had dehydrated. After removing tops and tails, plus a good wash and sort, I used my food processor to "cube" them. The machine is not accurate at all, but especially in this case, it's good enough.

Thirty-Six 500mL jars, fresh out of the canner and cooling overnight.

After the carrots I was..... too optimistic? Apples require a LOT more work. I spent a lot of time peeling and coring on Sept 13th and then letting the apples cook down. I think I must have put too much water with them because it was apple sauce texture by bed time and I put it through a sieve to remove any missed seeds/chunks... and decided to pick it back up in the morning. 

It was a blustery morning so I was happy to spend it in the kitchen. With a timer reminding me to stir every 15 minutes, I spent most of Sept 14th cooking apple sauce down into apple butter.

Half on the stove...

...half in the oven.

Eventually both of those reduced by half and fit on the stovetop. I added the cinnamon and such, and then reduced by half again by the time it was thick enough. definitely too much water... But look at this!

Beautifully thick.

Stays up with no liquid escaping.

All that work for....... eleven 250mL jars..... :-/

I told myself the next batch would be more fulfilling as it's apple sauce and doesn't cook down as much.

Friday Sept 16th I spent the morning peeling and coring apples. When we decided to go into town for a long lunch instead of running the errands after work, we were greeted by and unpleasant surprise.

The shed door had blown right off its hinges!

Immediately after.

Well no time to deal with that then, so we went into town like we planned, picked up a few things including the slow cooker I had my eye on and went to the jeweller to get my wedding ring cut off.

My ring had been stuck on for a while now but I kept telling myself it wasn't a problem since I didn't want to remove it anyway.  The thing is, Hugslut's ring doesn't fit either and with mine so tight it was only a matter of time before something bad happened.

We have plans so we aren't walking around ringless, but for now, my finger feels really naked.

Because I had a crock pot now I decided to try and give apple butter another go while I was busy with peeling and coring for apple sauce.

10qt slow cooker. Hoping for another 11-13 jars

For some reason the chunky apple sauce didn't really.... sauce.

Late afternoon Sat Sept 17th, Hugslut tackled the problem of the broken shed door by bending hinges back into shape, repositioning them, rehanging the door(with my help to hold it steady), and on top of all that, creating better interior locks to hold against the rattling of the high winds here. Very proud of her. :-)

Went to bed that night happy with our work. My apple sauce seemed a bit odd and there had been a bit of siphoning but nothing a quick bath for the cooled jars couldn't fix in the morning. I turned down the crock pot and went to bed... only to wake up to BURNED apple butter. 😭

Somehow it burned bitter and was still wet.  >:-(

Looks like apple butter is one of those things you just can't leave to a slow cooker. It was heartbreaking to have all that work ruined. Don't know what I'm doing with the last half a grocery bucket of apples. Probably going to do lil bits of apple so we can have pie and such, but that won't be today.

A little over 14 L of food in 58 jars plus some carrot & apple bits in the fridge/freezer.

Also, guess what I remembered exists AFTER putting in the effort for three batches of apples? These thing-a-ma-jigs! 

Oh well. Next year. I am sick of apples for now. lol

The Vac-A-Vent guys came out today. Quality work and friendly folks. 👍 

My desk arrived today too. Gonna need Hugslut's help to put it together tonight. Wish us luck!