Uh oh, Time for Pickles

While I was weeding yesterday, I sent the girls out to pick cucumbers.  It wasn't until I came inside that I realized how many they had.  That's a lot!  I'm surprised the basket didn't break.

I just looked at it for a minute before admitting that it was time to make pickles.  Pickles are one of the easiest things to can but I don't like them so any effort is difficult to put in.  But the kids love them.

Praise God, we have some dried dill left over from last year.  This year I didn't get around to planting any. 

Instead of weeding this morning, we worked in the kitchen.  One sliced the bigger cucumbers up.  One filled jars.  Another stuffed in sprigs of dill.  While they were working, I got the brine hot (water, vinegar, and salt).  I added some mustard seed to each jar, poured the brine over, and screwed on a lid. 

They only spend 15 minutes boiling in the canner.  Being able to pack them at room temperature so we don't deal with hot stuff makes them so easy.

That big basket yielded 21 quarts.  It is a good way to preserve a large cucumber harvest, so I feel good about that.  And everyone in the family except me loves pickles and they rave about how good these are, so that's nice.  ...But it still feels like a hassle.

Fodder Muddle

We've been sprouting barley for the cows and chickens for months and just when I think I have it figured out, everything changes.

The seeds had stopped sprouting well.  I noticed that the ones on the bottom of the bucket weren't sprouted while the ones on top were.    So we split each day's seeds into two buckets to keep the weight down.

But that didn't completely solve the problem.  As the temperature warmed over the spring, the fodder did better and better, until it got really hot.  Then the seeds stopped sprouting.  When we moved them indoors, which we keep under 80ºF, things got back on track.  It's a hassle, but the seeds are sprouting nicely now.

Things were okay for a while, then we got a new problem.  Mold.  After several weeks at 100ºF, mold had become a constant obstacle.  Some days the entire fodder crop was lost.  And it smells pretty bad too.

The easy solution would be to take the whole apparatus inside, which we'll have to do this winter anyway, but we are lazy and moving it will be a big project.  So we are experimenting with every other possibility.  A tarp was laid across the top of the greenhouse to give full shade.  We are doing two extra irrigations during the day to replenish the cool water.  A fan runs most of day, providing several degrees of evaporative cooling.  Finally, we're only growing the fodder to 7 days instead of 9, giving the mold less time to develop.

The results are mixed.  When the high stays below 95ºF, we're doing pretty good, but above 100ºF it's a problem.  The forecast for the next week is really hot, over 100ºF.  We should move it inside, but we're so close to some fall cooling, that I'm lazy.  We'll just muddle through until the weather is nice and the cows have thick, perfect fodder again.

The Spirituality of Dirt

So many holy people have written about the spirituality of dirt.  They name time in the garden as a regular re-grounding in the presence of God.  God, they say, is waiting in the soil to be discovered.

When I'm not in the garden, I feel the same way, but when I'm actually digging stubborn roots out of rock hard soil, I'm more aware of sore muscles, fine dust covering my skin, and the impending heat.  Now in mid-summer, we do our gardening in the morning, right after milking.  Even then, we still come in sopping and overheated.

The garden does have spiritual lessons to offer.  God is a god of abundance with harvests of 10, 20, and 100 fold.  These peppers started from little seeds indoors. The plants have grown strong and are putting on fruit that will fill our freezer.  We may have provided good growing conditions like water, soil, and weeding, but God does the growing.  God gives the abundance.

And if we forget, God offers reminders.  The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  We filled this row with green bean seed and only one plant came up.  A lone bean plant sits in an empty row.  This will not be a 100 fold harvest.  Perhaps the seeds were too old.  Perhaps the soil conditions weren't good.  Or perhaps God just felt we needed a reminder, lest we think that our food is a result of OUR efforts and not a divine gift.

But when it's time to garden, I forget all these things.  I just work.  I  look for the next bed that needs weeding.  I search for the next crop that needs picked.  And I hurry to beat the heat.