Peaches

20 pounds of peaches (this is half of them!)

Add-ins for salsa

Cutting boards for me and my helper

7 pints of peach salsa

Canning Adventures

Belatedly, as this took place in early July...

Cucumbers shredded for relish

Onions cleaned, to be diced for relish

Dye for lime pickles

First round of cherries being washed.  36 lbs total

Various pitting tools...
We broke the spring-loaded pitter, and in the breaking decided how we would completely redesign it.
By the end, we were pretty efficient with knives.

No words...

My first canning casualty, it exploded promptly on being placed in the canner.
What a sticky mess!

End of the day...
Many, many jars of sweet cherries in light syrup
One batch of lime pickles
One batch of relish.

Onions were grown at Purgatory Ranch.  Pickles came from our in town garden or (mostly) from our good friends.

With gratitude to the friends who picked up the cherries, cut the onions, and pitted the lion's share of cherries (this includes James!), I declare we had a successful canning day, even for the two pregnant women involved.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

End of the Potato Harvest and Weedmageddon

First, Weedmageddon...

I should have taken a before picture, but it was a race against time to dig the potatoes before the heat caught us. We started at seven a.m., and I pulled the last taters around nine.  Whew!

Weeds were chest high and more.  James and the weed whacker went to work!

We have some interesting volunteers growing in our mulch pile.  They look like unripe cherry tomatoes, but the leaves are something else.  There are also a few plants that look like tomatillos or... something.  Any guesses or suggestions?  (No, we didn't taste any.)

Onions in the basket on the right, garlic, remaining all blue potatoes, and tree onions in the basket on the right.  Three overflowing boxes of potatoes that will be weighed later today.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Water!

Some time ago (weeks), James and our good friend Steven (who helped with the koi pond) installed our Flo-Jak hand well pump.  Getting electricity run onto the land is just too expensive at this point.  A generator didn't seem practical either, as we would need to haul it back and forth.  AND a pump powered by a solar panel seemed to invite vandalism.

Hand pump it is, and isn't it lovely?

I wish I had more pictures of the install, but it was 100+ F, and this pregnant lady doesn't do well in the heat (read, gagging and vomiting), so I stayed home.

James still needs to pump extensively to get the mud out from the original well digging, but we'll get there.

We now not only have water, but have a way to pump it.

Well done, men!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Leftover Lemons

It's going to take many more lemons than I thought to make strawberry lemonade concentrate.  In the meantime, before I buy the 30+ lemons I still need, I wanted to show you what I did with the lemon left after juicing...

You should always wash your lemons first... and removing the peel might be easier before rather than after juicing, but I didn't think of this before, and it wasn't too bad.

Remove the peel from your lemon.  Only the yellow, not the white, please, as it is bitter.

If you are a sensible person, you might boil your peel in 1/2 c. water and 1/2 c. vodka to remove impurities or wax, but since the directions don't say to discard the boiling liquid, I would assume your impurities are still in the final product, so I didn't boil.

For every one lemon's peel, add 1/2 c. vodka.  Shake up bottle and store in a dark place.

Lemon extract!

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

In Town Harvests

Rainbow carrots, blackberries, a cucumber, and onions...

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.

Potato Harvest, part I

Ready to Harvest

Still growing

First, I may have a bookkeeping error to correct.  You see, the totals and ratios for produce are all over the map, and I think we may have switched our two red taters...

So far, for the harvest of 2012, we have

58 pounds of Dakota Crisp from 15 pounds of seed potatoes, for a yield of almost 4:1

52 pounds of Red Norland from 5 pounds of seed potatoes, for a yield of over 10:1 (this might be Viking instead...)

12 pounds of Yukon Gold from 10 pounds of seed potatoes, for a yield of 1.2:1 (Can we all yell, "FAIL!?")

66.5 pounds of misc. potatoes from last year's leftovers, approx. 10 pounds of seed potatoes, for a yield of 6.65:1

Total? 188.5 pounds of potatoes from 40 (or 50?) pounds of seed potatoes, for a yield of almost 5:1.

This is a definite step up from last year!  I'll see what the Viking yield is in a few weeks and may discover I confused my records for Red Norland and Purple Viking... All in good time.

Until next time, remember, this is not paradise.  It's Purgatory Ranch.