11 Half Pints of Peach Butter. Yum!!

I made Peach Butter last Thursday, and boy, is it good. I made it in the crock pot using a recipe I found on Pickyourown.org. It was very easy. I made 11 half pints and a little bit more for 2 sandwiches. I think I will have to try other crock pot methods for jams. I want to try apple sauce soon and cinnamon apple jelly using store bought apple juice. The peach butter tastes very good on my homemade fresh bread and homemade granola. The only problem is, I'm trying to lose weight.
I will get to dehydrating the potatoes soon. The moles have found the ones not harvested yet. I guess we have to look out for other critters besides sheep and deer.

I'm finished with tomatoes

Today I finished canning tomatoes. OK, I put the finished sauce in the freezer and didn't "can" it. I weighed the remaining tomatoes that I used today and had 13 1/4 pounds, so I figure I started with about 25 pounds. I like thick sauce, so all together I had 5 1/2 pints of spaghetti sauce. We had spaghetti for dinner. It was pretty good, put mild. Hopefully, the flavors will get stronger in the freezer. They should. I put enough spices in it.
Tomorrow, I am going to make peach jam, and the next day, I will try making peach butter in the crock pot from a recipe I found at PickYourOwn.org. The recipe and instructions looked pretty easy, and I'm all for easy.
Rooting around in the freezer, trying to make room for the spaghetti sauce, I decided I had enough cherries left to make jam. I think I'll need to get more jars for that.
I figure I am either crazy for doing all this canning, or I will be. I'll let you know.

Green Bluff, WA

Yesterday, my mother-in-law, and I went to Green Bluff, WA. Green Bluff is a small community that has orchards and farms that are open to the public where fresh produce and lavender can be purchased. Besides picking your own fruit, you can buy already picked fruit and vegies. There are jams and jellies and syrups and mixes, as well as crafty things, books, household decorations and wine tasting, ice cream, pastries and lots of friendly people. It's a fun place to go. There are live bands, tractor rides, pony rides, BBQ's and many other fun things to do. The first time Tim and I went was in the fall a couple of years ago, and we shot corn cobs out of an air cannon. You had to see if you could get the corn cob into a 55 gallon barrel quite a distance away. We both came close, but didn't make it, and had a lot of fun doing it. If you were lucky to make it, you got $50.00.
My mother-in-law bought a box of peaches and gave me 18 of them. I have to do something with them within the next couple of days. The box probably weighed 20 pounds. Maybe I'll have better luck turning them into preserves than I did with the cherries I bought from Green Bluff when it was cherry season. Peach cobbler does sound good, though.
I bought a box of canning tomatoes and Barbara only took 3, even though I tried to push more onto her. I figure the box weighed 20-30 pounds. I can't remember the name of them, but they are huge and meaty.
Today was spent making spaghetti sauce. I used 20 tomatoes because that's all that would fit in my big pot. They cooked down to 4 cups, and smelled and tasted really good. Tomorrow, I have the last 26 tomatoes to turn into sauce. I guess I'll have to use 2 pans for that. I put the sauce in the freezer. Tomorrow, we will be eating spaghetti and some of tomorrows sauce. Alyssa should be happy to know, I didn't put zucchini in it. The deer ate that. I could have bought some of that, too.
I also got some corn. It was 4 for $1.00, the best price I'd seen this year. I only got 8 ears. I think Tim and I will have to go back this weekend and buy some more. I really need a freezer.
Our home grown Yukon Gold potatoes looked better than the ones we saw up there. Soon, I will try dehydrating the potatoes.
I will also have to get a bunch of apples and pears since our apple and pear tree had blossoms but nothing else.
The pumpkin crops looked to be doing great. After that, will come Christmas trees and the end of the season.

Gee thanks, deer

The deer have decided it's time for me to harvest our onions. Up to this point, the deer haven't bothered the onions. Now, they are eating the tops and pulling the onions out of the ground. It does make it easier to harvest if they are already laying on the ground. Unfortunately, it's all the onions at one time and not staggered like I had planned on harvesting them.
The deer haven't tried carrots, yet. Most of them are ready to harvest. Tim dug up more potatoes this evening while I was picking up onions. More to be harvested later. I guess tomorrow, besides baking, I am doing things with fresh produce. I'm going to try dehydrating garlic and potatoes for the first time. The garlic and onions will be dehydrated outside, using my dehydrator. No rain in the forecast, so it's a good time.

Murphy, the Special Cat

In early March of 2008, this hairy bag of bones of a kitten ran in the house as Tim was leaving for work.

The kitten looked to be about 3 months old, and just about every bone in his body was visible.

Of course, me being me, I had to feed him and give him a name. Murphy was fitting. I wanted a cat and was told I could have one if it was a outside cat. I didn't want an outside cat, so as Murphy's Law would have it, one showed up. It took the kitten about a day to learn his name was Murphy.

It's a good thing he's cute, because he isn't overly bright. About a month after he showed up, I heard this crying in the distance. Since it was dark, I couldn't see anything. I got a flashlight and saw Murphy in the neighbors tree. He was afraid to come down. The next day and 4 days after that, Amy and I tried to get him down. No such luck. It even rained, snowed and hailed with strong winds, and he still wouldn't come down.

Finally, we got him to jump onto the roof of the house and figured he'd come down. Nope. Up there for another 2 days. The neighbor said he'd come down when he was hungry.

He did get down, but I think the neighbor helped him down. And he was hungry and so happy to be home.

A couple of days later, guess who was back up the same tree and then stuck on the same roof? Yup. Murphy. He still gets stuck in trees, but doesn't climb as high, and he avoids that particular tree. He disappears for a few days and shows up extremely dirty and very hungry. We think he finds holes to go into and has a getting out problem.

Murphy expects to be carried up and down the driveway. I finally, for the most part, have him only wanting carried one way now. Usually, it's when I have my hands full of mail.

He's in the house more than he's out and he has his very own oak rocking chair, but, he has to share with my mother-in-law when she visits. We bought the chair at an estate sale and you could tell it was an orange cats chair.

Tim says Murphy is spoiled. I say Murphy is special. Spoiled or special, Murphy came to the right house that day. I guess he knew a sucker for animals lives here.

I'm Melting

Today, in my snow globe world, it got up to 103.3 degrees. Way to hot. Heat and I don't get along. Rumor has it, tomorrow is suppose to be a tad cooler, (only 94 in Spokane), and then a major cool down during the week. I am thinking right now that snow would be nice. If you ask me in late winter, I'll tell you spring would be nice. Some people are never satisfied. One thing bad about the heat, besides it's hot, are fires. We live in a wooded area, and it's dry out here. You'd think with the 123 inches of snow we had last winter, it wouldn't get so dry, but it does. It's still fairly green, for the most part, and the water level in the rivers and streams is going down. The deer were out when it was still hot. Soon they will be fattening up for winter. My cat, Murphy, the spoiled, I mean special, cat decided he needed to sit on laps today. I really didn't need a furry, hot body on my lap. He has his own oak rocking chair right by the AC/heater vent. Next time I write, I will have to tell you about Murphy. The wind has come up. Wouldn't you know it, now I have to close the windows so everything doesn't blow all over. Oh well. That's life in a melting snow globe.

More garden info that you don't really want to know

Last night, we had some of our home grown Yukon Gold potatoes. They were really good. Not a bad spot in them and they didn't need peeled. One spaghetti squash is about ready to be harvested. We've never had one before, I hope we like them. We are finally done with radishes and the carrots are slowly growing. We had onions and garlic out of the garden the other night. It's nice going out to the garden and harvesting what you need for a meal. We do have a really bad grasshopper problem that's quite common out here. No more sheep, though. Now, I'll try my hand at canning cherry preserves, as soon as the temperature is out of the 90's. The weather forecaster tells us that our "normal" temperature for this time of year is 84-86. That would be nice. I'm tired of hot weather and there's this small fleeting voice that says it would be nice if it was early fall. That little voice must be out of it's mind, because, after fall comes winter and I'll be living in my snow globe again.

A meal from our garden

Last night, we had a very good meal from our garden. I picked a zucchini, an onion and some garlic. I cooked some sausage, made some spaghetti sauce, cut the zucchini in bite sized chunks and mixed everything together and put Parmesan cheese and Italian bread crumbs on top and dotted it with some butter, (OK, it was margarine), and nuked it to microwave perfection, about 6 minutes. I usually bake it in the oven, but it was a hot day and I was in a hurry, so in the microwave it went. We have leftovers for dinner tonight, but I need to add another zucchini to stretch it and fix some garlic bread. Too bad, our salad makings isn't ready to harvest yet. I also made a pistachio Amish friendship cake for desert. Leftovers of that, too.

A flock of turkeys

Yesterday morning, as I was on my trek down the long driveway to get the newspaper, a large flock of turkey's crossed my path. There were 4 females and about 25 young ones about 6 inches tall and one a little bit bigger. The smaller were still fuzzy and the bigger one was at that ugly stage in life with feathers starting to come in. I know turkeys aren't the smartest of critters, but the larger baby must have been hiding when what little brains turkeys have, were being passed out. It was lagging behind and the adults waited several times for it to catch up. Eventually, they'd just leave and it would realize it was alone and run to catch up with the rest. I'm pretty sure it will be a snack for some animal later. I used to bring my camera with me when I was out and about at our place, but nothing seemed to be picture worthy, so I stopped bringing it. I guess I'll have to start bringing it again. I had to look up on the internet to find out what baby turkeys are called. I was close. They are called poults. I thought it was poulets. I know a group of turkeys is called a flock, but I think this was a herd.

Who's fiber stash is it anyway?

It seems my spinning fiber stash is now my husbands fly tying dubbing stash. At least it doesn't take much for dubbing, and it's not like I have a shortage or anything. Tim told a friend at work who now wants some, so we went through the stash this evening for him. When our daughter, Amy, was here in June, Tim got here hooked on fly tying, so we made her a verity bag of fiber/dubbing, also. If the other fly tiers where Tim and his friend work see the bag full of fiber, I'll be supplying many people. Next thing I know, I'll be in the custome dyed dubbing supply business, since the fiber I/we are giving away is some I dyed. Now, Tim can't grumble about all my fiber, since he's found a use for it, too. That's a good thing. Now I need more for us. Tim has now found out, that you can never have too much fiber. I could take his feathers and add them to the yarn I am plying. I don't think that would go over very well. Who would have thought feathers could be so expensive.