More Garden Delights, PLUS Canning!

We planted our garden in April/ May, knowing that we started late, but we didn't think it would take THIS long to begin producing!

Despite the drought, our garden is green and lush (with too many weeds as well) and we are beginning to pick more and more daily.

Praise be to God!

Sadly, my in-laws just lost most of their garden to desperate deer.... all except the tomatoes and eggplant. I'll post a picture later of the beautiful eggplant they've grown.

Last week, my Oma gave me a crash course in pickling. It was much easier than I thought to make dill pickles.... I guess the hardest part is waiting 3 weeks to try them!

Also, a friend and I made 18 pints of Jam. Some of it was strawberry and some, peach.

It was her first time to can and we had a great system going with one of us at the stove stirring fruit & the other, manning the canner- despite 2 fussy babies and a slew of other children darting in and out the kitchen ( oh, and husbands too).

God Bless them- the husbands that is- they tried to get the children out of our hair by taking them on a wild grape picking excursion, only the place they went to didn't happen to have any grapes on the vine.

Providence or poor planning? - you tell me.

Homegrown and Homemade

BOY, have we had a major creative streak lately- making all sorts of things like jelly, preserves, zuchinni bread, grape juice and even real cheese! The garden is flourishing- mostly- and we picked peaches last week from our little peach tree. Here are some pictures of the fun...

We picked wild mustang grapes, cooked them, strained them, juiced them and jellied them!

We have whipped up 2 batches of homemade cheese- 1 mozzarella/ 1 ricotta- from store bought milk.

We gathered wild figs from nearby trees and cooked them into preserves. (They are DELICIOUS served warm, especially with ice cream!)

AND... we mixed up our own grape juice from left over mustang juice.. adding apple juice concentrate and sugar for sweetener.

It was all very inexpensive and educational for us. Plus, now the kids can have peanut butter and jelly all year and we've only spent $8 or $10 on jelly to last that long..now if only we can figure out how to make peanut butter.... look for that in later posts!!!!