Making vinegar at home with a wild Mustang Grape starter.

The wet rainy spring season continues to cause trouble in the garden.

April 20th – April 26th, 2015 The Final Harvest : Carrots With spring now in full swing, it was time to pull out the final produce of our winter garden.  The last survivors of the garden were two of our carrot beds.  This final harvest of the carrots brought in over eleven pounds of carrots.  In addition to those we ate fresh or juiced, we put down 15 quarts of carrots for later.  Carrots are fairly easy to can, although peeling them can take quite a bit of time.  I prefer to can the carrots already chopped, so that they are easier to fit into the containers and ready to be used in a variety of recipes.  I do try to cut them into very large chunks, too, though, so that they retain as much firmness as possible.   That won’t be much, though, since high temperature processing as in a pressure canner really takes the firmness out of them. One of the really nice things about canning carrots is that they can be canned raw, which means you don’t have to do the prep work to cook them and keep them hot before stuffing the jars.  Simply Canning offers some very nice directions on how to get the job done.  It is important to follow the instructions carefully when you can, as not doing so can run the risk of deadly disease or simply the loss of valuable crops.  We take our canning pressure gauge into our local Agriculture Extension office every year to have it checked to be sure it is reading the right pressure and try to keep a close eye on the whole process to be sure the proper temperatures are being met to kill off any potential bad guys that might have hitched a ride on our food. Plantings of the week We were also pretty busy this week refilling all of the beds with the spring vegetables. Tomatoes Our tomato bed was already over half full, but this week we put in the last of the tomato varieties we will be growing this year, Bush Goliath Tomato.  I picked up six babies for transplant from The Natural Gardener, one of our local gardening supply stores.  I was drawn to the plants because they had a very firm, compact, and deep green growth pattern.  I decided to go with them because they also had a special resistance to damage from root knot nematodes, which we have a problem with in our garden.  I have been trying to get resistant varietes of all of our vegetables this season to help reduce the population of the problematic parasites.  I have also brought in a host of beneficial...

BEETS! This week we harvested the last of the beet beds, and I thought that I would offer you a photo journal of the whole process from garden to pantry.  I hope you enjoy!  

Spooky Action Ranch Report: Week Eight 2015. This week we head to the state capital for lobby day, can a bit of spinach, watch our baby turnips grow, and get down to business in the closet.

As the winter crops are coming into their own, the fresh meals on the ranch have been ever increasing. Beet greens, spinach, lettuce and carrots are regularly making it onto the plate.