June 30, 2018 - Garden, Etc....

I went out this morning and took a lot of pictures of the garden and a few other things, so you can see how lovely everything is here on the last day of June.

Kitty greeted me when I went out the back door this morning...

...to hang up laundry.  It is supposed to get well up in the 90's today!

And since we've had plenty of rain along with the heat, the sweet corn is VERY happy!

This year, for the first time, we are growing THIS squash.  I am very excited to see how these turn out! 

Here is some very nice eggplant growing on the hugulkultur bed..

A distant view of the whole vegetable garden:

My favorite day lilies:

Corn silk:

Cucumbers:

Okra - I love it.  It looks quite exotic to me.

Okra blossom:

My one and only Jericho lettuce plant.  It is a volunteer.  Jericho lettuce is wonderful.  It stands the heat and tastes very nice even in the heat of Summer.  I pick off the outer leaves as I need them.

New spinach crop for fall:

Here is the row of sweet potatoes, inter-planted with onions to discourage bunny rabbits:

A row of sweet sorghum.  I am going to attempt to make sorghum syrup.

Our sweet dog, Badger:

Crayfish hole in the grass:

Two of the chickens.. I was letting them free range... until they found the garden!  Poor things.

I have begun experimenting with stinging nettles for fiber this year.  Here are some of the fibers that I stripped and they are hanging to dry.  I have no experience with this, at all, so I am trying to figure out what will work best for me.  Did you know that during the 1st World War, the German army's uniforms were made from nettles?

A bit of cordage I made:

And a swatch I wove on my little pin loom:

It is hard to see here, but this is a side view of the bower my garden fairy and I made for her little boy out of basket willow branches.  There are two benches in there.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into what is going on here right now.  

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Cling peaches canning update!

Quite a while ago, I posted about canning clingstone peaches without sugar.  That worked out fine, but was a LOT of work.  Today, I figured out a MUCH easier way to do it. I bought a case of peaches for 69 cents a pound at our local grocery store.  I thought they were freestone peaches.  They weren't. Here is the link to my original post:

Canning clingstone peaches..

Here is what I did differently. Scald and remove peels. Then, take a nice sharp paring knife and just cut off pieces of the peach, down as close to the pit as you can.  Put them into a jar as you do it, and as you go, press down the peaches so the juice covers the peaches. Fill the jar to within 1 inch of the rim with peach pieces.  Then, proceed as before.

This was so easy and quick.  Why didn't I think of it before? When I got done, I put some of the peels and pits into a saucepan, added some fresh mint leaves from the garden, covered all of that with water, simmered with the lid on for about 15 and let it cool. Then I strained it into a big drinking cup and added ice and a few drops of stevia extract.  That was a refreshing drink!