I need to pause in the travelog to give an update on the farm because their has been a lot going on since I came home.
While I was in France we had our first frost warning. Hubby, Grandma S, and the kids when out and brought in most of the produce.
While they were picking other things they found a few of the sweet potatoes. I told them to leave most of those in the ground because they sweeten after the frost and curing.
They were not sure what to do with the leeks. I sent them some instructions and Grandma S got them processed and into the freezer for us.
There were about 25 watermelons and a good amount of tomatoes.
Cornito Sweet peppers:
The week I got home I sold 3 show quality rabbits as breeders. It has been a good year for rabbit sales. People are learning about this breed and buying them for 4H as well as starting their own herds. I am one of the few people around here that sells show quality Silver Fox rabbits. I am lucky that I started with some good quality pedigreed rabbits and have been able to show and sell the best ones and eat the culls.
The first freeze warning didn't amount to much and the tomatoes were still alive. I spent the week of my return home picking more green tomatoes and canning. I know that we harvested more than 100 pounds of green tomatoes all told because I made 8 times the batch of salsa verde and 8 times the batch of green tomato jam and each batch takes around 7 pounds of green tomatoes.
The original green tomato jam recipe came from a 1950s Mennonite cookbook, but I read some more modern green tomato jam recipes and made some changes after the first couple batches. The recipe says you can use cinnamon or ginger. I think the ginger batches tasted better. I also ground everything up with the immersion blender and added some liquid pectin. It still took several hours to cook down to this golden brown color.
I also made some comfrey salve (
Recipe here) with oil that I had infused with my home dried comfrey leaves. The leaves need to be in the oil for at least a month to make a strong infusion. I only used one quart of the oil to make a double batch and it made about 10 little half cup size jars. Big sister A already labeled one as hers and took it to her room for her eczema and M has his own for putting on his feet with socks before bed. He runs around bare foot a lot and the skin on his toes and soles of his feet is dry and cracking.
Before I left on my trip, our farm vet sent out an email that she had some extra pigs (American Guinea Hogs) ready for slaughter and anyone who could come get them soon could have them. I had to spend some time researching what we would need to transport pigs to the butcher. I watched a lot of funny youtube videos about pigs escaping on the way to the butcher. I called a friend who has cattle and asked if we could borrow his trailer in exchange for him getting the meat from one of the two pigs. He agreed and we were set for transportation.
The farm vet told me all the local butchers were booked until February, but she didn't want to keep feeding them and basically just wanted them gone. I called around to some butchers in PA and found one that could butcher them on November 6th at 8 am. On the evening of November 5th hubby and I set out on our first pig adventure. We got them loaded into the trailer at the vet's house using cattle panels to create a little chute and many tempting treats. One escaped briefly through a hole on my side, but we got her back in. She hadn't been fed that day and was hungry for the treats we brought.
We made the hour drive to the butcher's shop and then had to figure out where we were supposed to unload them. The butcher had 24 hour drop off, but having never done this before and not wanting them to escape we were careful to get the truck backed in really close and cover the possible escape routes.
They were very sleepy though, having eaten a big bucket of slops, and I could NOT get them to go down the ramp. Hubby spent about 10 minutes quietly laughing and recording my efforts to get the pigs off the trailer. There was a lot of gentle kicking and prodding and encouraging words like "wake -up pigs! Come on pigs! Let's go pigs!" When I finally said, "okay you try" and let him do it he used his manly muscles to kick them awake and push them forward. No problem. Good thing he came along.
Last Friday I picked up our pork. We bought the meat from the larger of the two hogs -- it yielded about 125 lbs of pork. I requested the cuts as best I could from researching online. I got 2 whole hams (smoked and cured), six 4-5lbs pork roasts (from the shoulders-- for pulled pork), 16 packages of thick sliced bacon (smoked and cured), one large pork loin and the rest as thick pork chops, all the pork ribs (not sure how many packs of those their were), the shanks cured for soup bones, and all the sausage 50/50 between maple links and the other half ground with regular sausage flavoring. I didn't want the head or trotters. I considered buying the lard as this is a lard breed and might be fun to try making soap with, but he said that would cost extra. The cost breakdown was 60$ to slaughter the pig and 70 cents a pound for the uncured parts, an extra 60 cents per pound for the cured poundage. All told the cost was 190$. We are not big meat eaters. I still have 6-8 fryers from last year's butchering that I need to use up. This will definitely constitute a year's supply for us.
My second week home the weather forecast our first hard freeze of 24 degrees F. That meant that I needed to bring in all the sweet potatoes. I spent two days digging up that half of the garden, about a 10 ft by 60 ft section. It was a tangle of sweet potato and watermelon vines along with some herbs and pepper plants and weeds... It was kind of a treasure trove. I found another 75 lbs of red potatoes (Dark Red Norland variety) that I had missed in my initial digging around the dying potato plants, a bunch of peppers, a few leeks, 2-3 watermelons, and a good amount of sweet potatoes... Probably only 70 lbs though. I expected a lot more from the 25 plants that were there, based on the amount that I had last year. One big difference was the lack of water. Last year we had tons of rain. Another difference was that the starts I got last year were from RH Shumway (combo pack of Georgia Jets, White Yam and Vardaman). They looked a lot better than the ones I got this year from Johnny's seed (Mahon yam). Lessons learned.
Sweet potatoes are supposed to cure at around 85 degrees and high humidity. That seemed a very difficult set of circumstances to create in the late fall, but I spread them on towels, closed 3 of 4 doors to the den and kept the woodstove blazing for a week. According to the weather, the humidity has been averaging about 65 percent. I think that was the best I could do. Some websites suggest black plastic bags to keep humidity in, but I worried about mold with how humid it is here naturally. Might be something to try next year though.
On Veteran's Day we invited a bunch of friends over and got the big plastic sheetings put up over the high tunnel. We did a double layer of plastic. First step was to unroll it and figure out how much we needed for the first layer.
Using tennis balls and 50 ft lengths of rope you tie up one edge of the plastic. Then throw the ropes over to people standing on the other side of the tunnel so that they can pull the plastic up and over the top. This was the most amazing couple minutes -- watching the plastic smoothly flow up and over the top.
The using wiggle wire the plastic is fastened all around the edges. This takes some time and careful smoothing.
Then the second layer of plastic went up and over. It too was attached with wiggle wire.
Then hubby added the roller bars so that the sides can be rolled up in the summer or whenever it gets too hot inside.
Before the second layer went on we installed the blower. That will keep a cushion of air between the two layers for insulation and so the snow will slide off rather than collecting (which can collapse the tunnel).
This week we started gathering leaves and manure to improve the soil in the high tunnel.
The turkeys are getting bigger! They will not be ready for Thanksgiving since I had to wait until after the family reunion to start growing them. It will work out fine though since I can sell them as Christmas turkeys.
I deep cleaned the turkey house and shoveled at least a dozen wheel barrows full of partially composted manure and straw into the high tunnel. It doesn't look like much. The tunnel is so big! With the new baby coming to our family in May I am not sure how much time I will be able to spend gardening next year. But at least I can keep adding compost and manure so that I have great soil in here by the following year.
We purchased our first heated water bucket to test out. So far so good.
In other news, this year's guineas just figured out how to cross the road. Ugh. We heard lots of honking while working outside and there they were blocking traffic in both directions. Hubby is afraid they will cause an accident and I know they won't stay inside the garden fence. They are excellent flyers. So rather than wait and watch them get hit by cars or cause accidents, I will have a guinea butchering day tomorrow. It's the warmest day we are supposed to have for awhile -- 55 degrees! I am not looking forward to it. At least I have a plucker, but I expect it will take me most of the day to do all 14 of them by myself.
