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Putting food by, putting up, canning, processing or preserving; whatever you choose to call it, the time is now. Another canning season is in full swing. Time to preserve summer’s bounty for the rest of the year. This year’s projects include tweaking some of last year’s recipes and finding a bunch of new ones. Canning . . . → Read More: Putting Food By A few weeks ago, at the height of summer, it was hard to imagine sitting in front of the fire on a cold winter’s night sipping a simple digestivo, but that’s the time to start a new annual tradition; making Nocino. With my mind full of canning and preserving summer’s bounty, I realized I had . . . → Read More: Time to make the Nocino The back perimeter of our property, where pasture turns to woodland, is overgrown with raspberry brambles. For a week or so every July, these thorny canes are dripping with sparkling red fruit. The key is to pluck them for ourselves before the wild birds gobble them all. This year my timing was perfect and with . . . → Read More: Wild Raspberries Make Tasty Jam After pickles, strawberry jam has been the most popular item at the farm stand. Given the strawberry’s short season, I’ve been busy making more. Fortunately, there is a great farm on the other side of our hill, Bechdolt’s, that has beautiful, juicy, fragrant strawberries this time of year. This is one of the few items . . . → Read More: Strawberry Jam Last fall I began experimenting with jellies infused with herbs, so this spring I decided to do the same with early blooming flowers. My first effort took advantage of the abundance of violets we have all over the property. While it takes longer than one might think to pick two cups of violet flowers on . . . → Read More: You’re Turning Violet, Violet! Now that the canning season is over and the larder is full, I’ve been working on the label designs for all the items to be sold at farmers markets next spring. I’ve also found a unique egg carton to help make our beautiful eggs stand out from the rest. It’s a reproduction of an early . . . → Read More: It’s all in the packaging The tomato vines are still heavy with fruit, but the much cooler evenings (low 40′s) have stopped them from ripening. What to do? We can only fry up so many of these tart beauties. Yesterday I picked 10 pounds of nice green Rutgers and other heirloom tomatoes and pickled them with garlic, bay, pepper and . . . → Read More: Green Tomatoes When we bought this property we were thrilled to find the remains of an apple orchard, seven very old trees still producing delicious crisp, tart apples. We have no idea what varieties they are but know that that trees are at least fifty to sixty years old and each ripens at a different time, beginning . . . → Read More: An Apple a Day… Last year, Larry’s Mom Helen taught me how to make jelly with our large crop of red currants. I’ve been hooked on canning ever since. Pickles, whole tomatoes and applesauce followed. Few things beat opening a jar of summer’s perfect fruit or vegetables in the dead of winter. This year I’ve experimented a bit more. . . . → Read More: What’s Put Up It’s been a bountiful week of deliciuos tomato eating. All four varieties of tomatoes are are their peak right now. We have Brandywines, Cherokee Purples, Rutgers and Sungolds. We can’t stop eating them fresh but must find ways to preserve the harvest. Salsa? Jam? Ketchup? Sauce? All of the above? Tomotoes pre-feasting Heirloom . . . → Read More: First Annual Heirloom Tomato Festival |
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