Welcome to the back 40...feet

Welcome to "the back 40" (as we call it)...I wish it were the back 40 acres, but its just the back 40 feet! Bryan built a cute picket fence and walkway in front of the garden to help section off the garden and bees from the rest of the yard. 

We have planted 1 bed of beans that is doing fabulous and are getting ready to plant several more beds of beans as a fall crop. I love the various beans we have coming up. We planted a variety of colors so when the kids go exploring for beans they get to find yellow, purple and striped beans instead of just regular green beans...although they are tremendously fun to find as well!

Once the busy time of goat milking is done in the morning our backyard quickly becomes a very peaceful place to relax! The bee hives are tucked into the corner of the garden bringing thousands of pollinators quickly into our garden as well as a growth of fresh honey :) You can sit back and hear the peaceful hummmm of the workers comes from their hives. Then glance to the other side of the yard and see Peaches and Poppy relaxing  after their morning milking. They love spending the cool breezy morning relaxing beside their bin of alfalfa while the chickens peck around the yard finding little "protein treats" (bugs)! Its quite a peaceful time of day! I fully enjoy the relaxation of watching my "backyard work for me". The garden is growing, the bees are buzzing around pollinating and storing up honey, the goats are "replenishing their milk supply", the chickens are laying eggs and being a fabulous bug pest control, and the chickens and goats are turning the compost pile as well as "producing compost" to enrich the soil! 

 It has been a tremendous amount of work to get our backyard to this level of productivity...but we have no intention of stopping here!! We are continually trying to find new ideas to put our little plot of land to work!

The front 3 beds are now empty after harvesting the leafy greens (arugula, lettuce, and spinach) and peas. We prepped those beds to plant more bush beans and here soon we will plant our fall crop of beans in those beds. 

Then we have 1 row of tomatoes, 1 bed  of beans, and 2 beds of tomatoes. 

Last year we planted a very wide variety of vegetables, all for the purpose of finding out what we like to grow and like to eat. Then after realizing there are some things we are terrible at growing we decided to limit our variety and use the "barter system". We can grow beans and tomatoes well and it is easy to trade those veggies with people who grow other vegetables well. Then of course we had to plant a few herbs for fresh garden herbs. We also have 1 row of quite a few different varieties of peppers and I am anxious to experiment with new recipes!

Taste the Rainbow!! Our tomatoes are taking off!! We planted a variety of colors and sizes and have already harvested a dozen pounds of tomatoes...that doesn't even count what Addie and Henry have eaten while standing out in the garden "harvesting".

We have 2 beds of tomatoes...its our "wall of tomatoes". I can not wait for these fresh balls of delightful flavor to flow out of the garden!! I have alot of canning I want to do as well as sun drying! We sundried several dozen pounds of tomatoes last year (which only ends up being a few pounds of dried tomatoes) and they were extremely fun to savor during the winter months! Sundried tomatoes are fabulous to toss into a winter pasta or salad...I plan to make much more this year!! 

 

I used t-posts and cotton string to make my wall of tomatoes and so far it has done quite well. Now that the tomatoes are growing and branching out I can see that the weight of the tomatoes might be a little heavy for the thin cotton string I selected. I tied up some extra rounds of string to make sure the wall wont collapse under the weight and pressure from the plants. Last year I used some vinyl twine that held up really well but I Wanted to go with a string that would be compostable and I sure hope the walls don't collapse with the stretching of this cotton string! This method easily contains the tomatoes and helps these 8 foot tall plants have somewhere to go as they grow taller and taller. Last year we had tomato plants well over 10 foot tall by the end of the season. 

I hope everyone's gardening adventures are going well!! I would love to hear about your garden, animals and harvest! 

Canning Homegrown Potatoes at Home :)

I have never grown or canned potatoes before, but I have heard it is one of the easiest things to can! SO I was super excited to give it a try. The canning process was actually relatively easy, but the research and decision making process was much more intense than I had thought!!
My first hurdle: When do I dig up my potatoes?? Everyone was saying..."and then you harvest your potatoes.". Some resources said "when the leaves begin to wilt" and others say "when they plant dies back".
I have about 16 potato plants and several of them looked dead dead and several of them do not look like they are even starting to wilt. I had decided to dig up a couple plants (partially out of excitement and partially out of extreme curiosity!) but only found 4 potatoes in 1 plant and 6 in the other...after much digging around (which was fun!) to make sure I was getting everything!. So I called my dear friend Nicole (which I have called about this same issue several times this season already!) to ask her when do the plants look "dead enough". Nicole is my "potato expert", although I do not think she would consider herself a potato expert, she is a lot more experienced at it than I am! Nicole convinced me to leave the other plants until they are completely died off and we will hope for more than 4-6 per plant! Nicole plants her potatoes in bushel baskets and it makes it alot easier come harvest time because you just overturn the bushel basket and there you have it!! You know for sure this way that you are getting all of the potatoes!!

These are 2 of the plants I dug up: 1 looks really dead and the other was having some wiltage!

I got quite a variety of sizes!

I ended up digging up 1 more plant and from 3 potato plants I got 21 potatoes! The first plant I dug up was the "dead dead" plant and I got 4 from it, the second one was the "wilting" plant and I got 6 from it...then the last one that I almost didn't dig up gave me 11 potatoes!! So, I really don't know what the conclusion is here except that with potatoes it is just an extreme mystery :)

Get ready for canning: Get your pressure cooker, large pot for boiling potatoes and water, small pot for sanitizing your lids!

Step 1: Wash and peal your potatoes (some people say that they leave the skin on their potatoes, but some people say that the skin contains bacteria that could be harmful for canning...I'm not sure but I opted to use my new potato peeler!)

Get the family involved here!! Its alot more fun than standing by yourself in the kitchen for hours! Bryan helped with the hand peeler and Henry helped with the turning of the potato peeler handle...and Addie pretty much ran around the whole time.

Washing potatoes that are just out of the ground is Super easy! The skin pretty much comes right off! If you are wanting to keep your potatoes in a root cellar then you will need to let the potatoes rest for a few days and not scrub them right away or this is what happens to them...but since I was going to peel them anyway it really didn't matter :)

Step 2: Cut your potatoes and place in boiling water for 10 minutes. (not longer or they will turn to mush!)

Step 3: Fill your hot sterile jars with hot potatoes (not the water)...add 1 teaspoon salt at this time.

Step 4: Top off each jar with fresh boiling water leaving 1" head space

Step 5: Remove air bubbles - use a non metal stick (I used the plastic handle of a spaghetti spoon) and slide the stick around the outside of the jar several times to make sure all air bubbles are out.

Step 6: Clean/Dry off the top of each jar and place hot sterile lids and bands on top of each jar

Step 7: Place in your Pressure cooker and process for 40 minutes at 10psi.

Step 8: When processing time is complete, turn off the heat and let your pressure cooker slowly release the pressure and once it has stopped "whistling" and all the pressure is gone, remove all your jars onto a towel and let them set for 24 hours.

Step 9: Once your jars have set and all the seals are tight, wash them off, label and store!

It was seriously super easy and I am very excited to have these 5 jars of canned potatoes!! YEAH!