Fall like morning...raspberry jam...and sauerkraut!

This is the scene I woke up to this AM...is it fall and I really missed summer? Our weather has been more fall like this summer than summer like. My garden has suffered because of it. So frustrating, but I can't change it so I will choose to be thankful for what our garden does provide this year. Potatoes, onions, beets and carrots are doing well in my garden. Tomatoes are going to be scarce, as are green beans I'm afraid. Not one of my cucumber, zucchini or squash came up from the seeds I planted, most of my pepper plants have totally stalled or died since going in the ground and my lettuce is looking more like micro greens than lettuce. The fog is beautiful though...I just wish it were settling over a well producing fall garden, rather than a poorly producing summer garden. :) Oh well...can't have everything.
My raspberries, on the other hand are doing quite well this year! They don't seem to care that the weather has been rather cold and fall like. Sure, we could get more juicy berries if the sun would come out and shine, but we are still getting a good harvesting of berries anyway. Yesterday I spent a bit of time washing berries and making jam. I had a big bowl of berries that the kids had picked on Sunday just right for a batch of jam. Aren't the jars pretty?
When I was in town on Monday, I picked up about 6 heads of cabbage at a local produce stand. I love this place, a 5th or 6th generation, family owned, working farm. Most of the produce that I preserve that I can't grow myself, comes from Bi-Zi Farms. It just feels good to support a local family run farm, plus they are such a neat family to boot! :) Anyway, back to my cabbage....I have been wanting to try my hand at making Sauerkraut and found a wonderful recipe in a cookbook put out by a local lady named Fran Gillette. The kraut ferments in the quart jars that you end up canning it into. What could be easier!! We'll see how it works. I didn't buy the 40 pounds of cabbage the recipe called for, so I tried to salt it accordingly. Hopefully I didn't over do the salt. :) Either way, it will be a fun experiment. If it looks like it's working the way it should, I'll go buy 40 pounds of cabbage and make the whole recipe later. I can't wait to try the kraut....but it will be another month before I'll know how good it is.

Strawberries are here!

Today did not end up being as productive as I had hoped, but I did manage to get a few things done. The rest will have to wait for tomorrow or another day altogether. I just have to be OK with what I did manage to accomplish, right? One thing that I did do that I had not planned on doing is buying some strawberries. YAY! We look forward to fresh local strawberries all year. Tonight while my son Brandon, was in his driver's ed class, I visited a local family farmer that has a produce stand on site. I love to buy my produce from them, just knowing that I am helping to support a family run farm that has been run by the same family for generations feels good! Not enough dedicated farmers these days, to my mind. Anyway, they had local strawberries and I just had to get a flat. :-)

Talk about tasty! So, what am I doing with them? Half of the flat is in my food dehydrator, the other half is in the refrigerator to be washed and dealt with tomorrow. I was doing good to get half of them in the dehydrator. It's been a long busy day today.












Here are the berries in the food dehydrator. I absolutely love this machine. My husband's aunt gave it to me last year and I have used it a ton. I honestly don't know what I did without it! My kids love the strawberries I did last year in it, so I want to try and get more dehydrated this year to add to granola and trail mix. Such a tasty way to get fruit in them and they take up little to no space in my pantry! Love that. :-) Dried fruit is a favorite around here and if I can make it myself, all the better!

So, even though my list from this AM was not completed, I knew it was a huge feat to take on. I did manage to get a few things done on that list and a few things I hadn't planned on doing. I don't feel too bad about that. :-) One thing that I did that wasn't on my list was to make a caramel sauce for ice cream or whatever we choose. It was super easy and tastes amazingly good! I love it when I find that I can make something that we would normally buy at the grocery store. Huge money saver and so much better for us in the long run. With all that I did accomplish today, it feels like a very productive day...never mind he list I still have to get to tomorrow. :-)