Tomatoes

The standard way to make tomato sauce is to skin the tomatoes, put them in a big pot, bring to a boil, use a food mill to remove the seeds, and cook until it's thick.  It takes a long time, uses lots of energy, and must be stirred the whole time.  I'm trying some new ideas to make it easier and use less energy.

This year I'm trying some dehydrating.  I figured if I dehydrated some tomatoes, I could add them to sauce as it started cooking and it would thicken the whole thing up.  After slicing tomatoes, we put them out in the sun and they are dry in three days.

This bowl of dehydrated tomatoes came from about half a bushel of tomatoes.  They are kind of leathery, not crisy.  I left them in the sun for four days and then they spent another two days in an open bowl on the counter, but didn't seem to change after the first three days.

Even though they were leathery, they crushed up pretty good in the blender.  When it was all done, we had about two cups of powder.

A friend mentioned that she doesn't skin her tomatoes, she just puts them through the blender.  What a great idea!  I thought I'd try it, but start with some solar dehydrating before it goes into the pot. 

Rather than only picking the tomatoes that are perfect, we've been picking all that look close.  The ones that are just a little shy spend some time on the counter to redden up all the way.  These will be ready in a few days.

This is a lot of prep, but I'm hoping it makes sauce making faster and easier.  Last year we didn't get many tomatoes, so this year we planted a lot more plants and so far we're on target for a good supply for tomato sauce.

Gentle Bursting

Today we got our first chili pepper harvest.  In this basket are serano, poblano, and jalapeno peppers.  I've never grown chili peppers before, so this is a new thing.  I have visions of chili powder for winter-time chili.  My husband is thinking salsa.  Whoever cooks first wins!

I did some searching on the internet on how to make chili power.  As best I can tell, you just dry them, snip off the stem, shake out the seeds, and then grind them up.  It says that drying in the sun takes about 2 weeks.

The tomatoes are really coming on.  This mountain was just from this morning.  Last year we didn't get many tomatoes, but this year they are growing so much better.  I'll wash these and put most of them in the freezer to make sauce later.  I might try drying some.

My husband is growing okra in the front garden.  I think okra is yucky, but he and the kids love it in jambalaya.  The flowers are beautiful.

Those celeries I planted way back on January 1st, have grown big and they look so healthy.  I put them in a part of the garden that is a littler wetter and a little shadier.  The plants are up to my knee and thick.  These stems looks wonderful.  I'm told that you don't harvest until after frost, so we'll keep an eye on them.

We're also growing celeriac, which tastes like celery but is grown for its bulb.  They are supposed to be easier to grow in hot climates like ours.  They are starting to bulb up nicely, although I wouldn't be surprised if the celery actually turns out better. 

It's September and the taste of fall is in the air, but the garden is gently bursting with harvest.  Every day calls us to the abundance God has waiting for us.  

The Garden is Coming On

The trellis is working well for the tomatoes, so far.  Every few days I've been walking through and gently pushing stems through so they weave as they grow.  The plants are upright and getting loaded with fruit.

This roma plant looks promising!  I just got a magazine with an article on canning tomato sauce, so I'll read that over soon.   In the past I've been frustrated at how long tomato sauce has to cook so I want to find a better way.

The cherry tomatoes have started coming on.  My daughters can eat cherry tomatoes as fast as they produce.  Every year I vow to grow more to satiate them.  I don't think I did enough this year.  But all of these clusters are promising.

The zucchini is doing its thing and going to town.  We still have zucchini frozen from last year.  I use it in soups all winter along, making them thicker and heartier. 

The other day my daughter said, "I love winter."  It's not too hot, so I wondered why she longed for the cold.  Then she explained, "there's no garden work."  OK, that I understand.  We are working hard and it will continue through November when the land goes to sleep.

Our Christina is Back

This morning we woke up to a familiar cow.  Christina was standing by the fence looking at us, with ears aimed toward the house, the same place as she was every morning last summer.  She had that look on her face, I'm ready, you can come now.  When we opened the gate to the milk parlor she hurried in, gave her calf a lick and then enthusiastically headed for her candy (molasses covered grain).

Jerky was pretty enthusiastic too.  We let him nurse on the quarter that we're worried about while we milked the other three.  He emptied it out faster than we ever could.  We didn't fully milk her out, just took the pressure off, but it was still almost three quarts.

With milking done, we turned to cleaning out the shed.  It had lots of cow pies, more than we've seen in the last three days combined.  A high functioning GI tract is another sign that she is recovering.  In the short time we were out there, she pooped twice.  Normally I would have been bothered, but this morning it was welcome.

Remember that trench we made on Monday before this all started?  It's still there and a big storm is heading in.  It's supposed to rain and snow for the next four days and get really cold — a forecast low of 5F next Tuesday.  Yesterday my husband made it to the store for all the pipes and fittings.  This morning he'll get them all put together in the garage and we'll all help lay them in as fast as we can go.  Hopefully we can get it all laid today, but it won't be hooked up.  I guess we'll be carrying water out to the cows for a while.

On Monday night I also started some tomatoes.  They were all frozen and Monday I scalled them and slipped their skins off.  I filled two buckets and hung them in cheese cloth to drain overnight.  I didn't get back to them until Wednesday.  By this time, almost all of the water had drained out.  I put the resulting pulp in a pot and heated it up.  In less than 30 minutes, we had thick paste. Those six or seven gallons of tomatoes reduced down to three pints of paste.

Today we praise God for Christina's health, we watch to make sure it sustains, and we thank God for all the people who have helped us through it.

Harvest

With the last nice days of the season, we are bringing in the final harvest. As I look over the winter squash, like these acorn squash, I am amazed how many varieties we planted.  Last spring when I was looking at squash in the seed catalog, I must have been thinking preettttyyyyy and just ordered them all.  I think we have five or six varieties.

We got two varieties picked and stacked up to dry.  These are called Uncle David's Dakota Dessert.  I sure hope they live up to their name.  We pretty much only eat squash in custard and pie.  Squash custard is easy to make and we eat it for breakfast in the winter — squash, eggs, milk and not any more sugar than the kids would dump on their oatmeal.

We grew flour corn for the first time.  The book said to wait until the stalks dry out or freeze.  This variety is a native of the southwest and is supposed to make a good corn flour.  I think we'll need to let it dry for quite a while still.  If we want to make maza we need go through a hominy step and I haven't decided if we'll go to the effort.  Our two sweet corn varieties had some left overs so we let them dry for grain too.  We should be able to make cornmeal out of that.


After pulling the ears off, we cut the stalks off at the ground, gathered them up, and then stalked them up in the corners of the cow shed.  Corn stalks are decent food for cows.  People who are better at this than me will grind them up and make silage, which sounds like it goes through a fermentation process.  We're just feeding them straight to Christina and beefy. I read somewhere that corn stalks don't have much nutrition for cows, but it's fine in moderation.  So we've been giving them a few stalks a day.  It sure it fun to see them chomping away. 

We dug the last of the potatoes and got them put away in the root cellar.  In the end we probably only got a bushel or two.  I don't think they were too happy with where they were planted because most of the plants didn't produce that much, but then we would find one with lots of good sized potatoes.  My With fresh potatoes, my daughters have been making oven french fries most every day.

At the end of the day, we had a lot to show for our efforts.  We finished harvesting the dry beans.  With maybe only half of the corn done, we had three buckets.  It says that they store better in the husk, so we left them on.  In these last days of the season, the tomatoes are still ripening and we found lots.

Our first frost is forecast for next week.  We've had a few cold nights and some plants have gotten nipped, but the hard frost that knocks vines down hasn't happened yet.  Lots of things don't actually have to come in before the frost, but it still feels like a deadline.

Part of my rush is trying to beat the cold weather.  If it's hard to deal with 70F days, then how will I do with 55F days?  But I know that it'll be good for me to get out in the cooler air and work.  It will help reset my internal temperature gauge and make the cold easier to live with all winter.  I wish I looked forward to things that are good for me.

Tomatoes

We noticed a few tomatoes turning red so we ran out to get them before the irrigation comes tomorrow.  Pretty soon the five-gallon harvest bucket was full and we were looking for another bucket.  This is becoming routine — I think I'm going to pick a little and find a whole lot.

I already had a bunch of tomatoes in the freezer, so I couldn't just throw these in the freezer and deal with them later. While my husband and daughter made pizza for dinner, I blanched and skinned tomatoes as fast as I could.  Tomato skins just slide off if they've been in a boiling water for a few seconds.  (My nine-year-old took this gorgeous photo of tomatoes coming out of the boiling water, skins pulled back)

In the past I avoiding making tomato sauce because it had to boil for so long to get rid of the water.  I read that if tomatoes are hung overnight, much of the water will come out.  It's worth trying.  We set up a hanging contraption in the pantry with a milk bucket to catch the drippings.  There's already an inch of clear liquid in the bottom.  Tonight we have two of these large bags hanging.

Just like the peppers, I started a bunch of tomatoes plants last spring, but lost track of which kinds they were.  In June I just threw plants in the ground.  In the middle of the big tomatoes we found arms of cherry tomato vines heavy with fruit.  There's enough for several good snacks.