Fruit Harvests

Today I will be picking, washing, and preparing fruit for canning, juicing, and freezing.  I spent the morning picking blackberries and peaches.  The blackberry bushes have been neglected and I missed a lot of fruit with our crazy summer schedule.  I picked about a gallon baggie full of blackberries.  I plan to freeze them and then later, when I have 4 gallons, I will juice them for jelly.  Freezing blackberries is simple.  Just wash them and freeze in a single layer on a cookie sheet. This will keep them from sticking together and you will be able to pull out a cup or so for a recipe/smoothie/etc.  However, if you know you are just going to be making jelly or jam later, you can freeze them in freezer boxes.  I will probably do the boxes for this batch, since my freezer is so full of the beef we just got from the butcher.  Right now I have to work with what I have available.  T

The peaches are overflowing.  Two trees are fully ripe with two more full of green and unripe peaches.  I usually make jam, but I may resort to juicing and canning for jelly at at later time.  I would love to freeze them, but I do not have enough freezer space.  I will teach Miss J to can a few quarts for pies and cobblers.  I hope they turn out well so she can enter them into the fair.  Last year she got a rosette for her Caramel Apple Pie filling.  We have one quart jar left and no one wants to eat the last jar. We keep saving it for a "special day."   I guess we need to make another batch of that too!  Here are a couple of recipes that I am looking at for the peaches!  I have a nice stock of dark honey so I plan to try it on at least one batch of the jam to see if we like it.

Honey Sweetened Vanilla Peach Jam

Honey Peach Preserves

Here is a LOVELY pdf of a vintage Ball Canning Blue Book.  The ladies on the front appear to be wearing clothing from the 1920's.  There are several recipes that are appealing in this pdf.  I also love the simple directions on canning at the beginning.  What is your favorite way to preserve your harvest?  Freezing, canning, dehydrating? 

I can wish can't I???

Some things are getting done, and many, many more are not done.  I'll cross off as I do a few things because unlike my home making binder or a to to list, I won't lose this list.  This week, I hope to focus on our over-abundance of clothes.  I finally have accepted that with 8 years difference between my boys that hand-me downs are not going to work.  Even things like Levi jeans change styles in 8 years.  So that is going to free up some MAJOR space in my boys' closet and will be freeing to me to quit trying to keep it all organized!

So here is my "wish list" of things to accomplish before school starts in August.

Organize my daughter's American Girl Doll Collection.
Clean out the freezers.
Organize my sewing supplies.
Move furniture around and set up my office/school space in the upstairs loft area.
Get Baby C to sleep ALL night long without his 3:30 am songs to Momma from his gated room.
Get Baby C the remaining 10% potty trained.
Repot my house plants.
Finish weeding my flower beds. (actually hubby took the weed eater to them, can I take credit for that???)
Mulch my flower beds in hopes of keeping the weeds at bay in the future.
Have my bedroom carpet cleaned.
Clean my ceiling fans.
Clean my barn!
Redo my stone walkway onto the porch.
Finish the first 5 lessons of Henle Latin. (1 down and 4 to go...read the first 10 lessons of another text for reference sake)
Create Study sheets for weekly Algebra 1 lessons.
Create school supply lists, calendar, etc for Challenge 1 classes.
Spot clean sofas.
Cover my old sofa upstairs with the cool red duck cloth I've had for 3 years now!
Sew the patterns and fabric that I bought a month or so ago.
Wash my windows.
Scrub my porches.
Clean out my shed.
Clean out the children's clothes and hand me downs.
Be consistent about not eating things I'm allergic to.

Buckwheat Love

A repost from my original blog, updated with my favorite buckwheat cracker recipe.

A field of buckwheat

Buckwheat is an unusually fast-growing crop with a variety of uses. Its flexibility and wide adaptation led it to be grown on more than a million acres in the U.S. in the late 1800s, even though it is not native to our country. 

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were two of the first American farmers to grow buckwheat and recognize the benefit to their crop rotations. With increased focus on specializing in the major commodities during the 1900s, buckwheat become much less common. In recent years, some farmers in north Missouri grew buckwheat under contract with a major buckwheat processor. Overall acreage in the U.S. has climbed to more than 70,000 acres, with millions of acres grown worldwide. Russia, where buckwheat is native, has the largest acreage of buckwheat.
from www.jeffersoninstitute.com

buckwheat groats ready to be ground into flour

    I have thought about growing buckwheat on a couple of occasions. Mostly occasions where I am shocked at the price of a one pound sack of buckwheat flour.  I really like to use buckwheat in cooking and baking and it is becoming a staple here at my little homestead.  However, since it is not a crop normally grown in Texas and also not a largely grown crop, the prices for it are high.  Also there is not much information available about growing it as a food source in Texas.  So I had really sort of dismissed it as a viable crop here on the farm. 
     I recently found buckwheat seed at Homestead Heritage.  We calculated what we would need and purchased enough seed to plant 2 acres.  And in my mind I was thinking of the section in the Little House book Farmer Boy where Almonzo describes his father planting a field of corn and a field of rye for Ma’s Injun Rye bread and cornbread for the year.  And then I envisioned my Mr. P walking out and scattering buckwheat seeds so that my kids could someday recount "Pa" planting a field of buckwheat for "Ma’s" buckwheat crackers and buckwheat pancakes.  When I asked the store clerk about harvesting it, he gave me a funny look and said that they don’t grow it for food, but rather for the bees. Well, my bubble wasn’t burst.  Just because they weren’t growing it for food, didn’t mean that I couldn’t.
     On the way home from the farm store I googled buckwheat on my iPhone.  I know it isn’t very Ma Ingalls, but really, I think she’d have googled. if she’d had an iPhone.  and internet.   and electricity.  and technology of any kind.  In my research I found out quite a bit about buckwheat.  We now have 2 acres planted and are crossing our fingers that we don’t get a late frost.  "Pa" didn’t hand scatter as I imagined, but used a tractor to plow up the earth and a little green plastic wagon thing to broadcast the seed, which was still a nice picture memory.  This is our first year to have bees and the bees will be blessed with the lovely white flowers from this year’s crop.  And maybe down the line as we learn more about growing buckwheat, I’ll be able to harvest some groats and make my favorite buckwheat crackers and pancakes.  And then in my old age I can hear the children reminisce about their father indulging their mother and planting buckwheat for crackers and pancakes.  A mother can dream can’t she?


Here is a recipe I love to make.  The last time I made these crackers, I had to rush out to help a friend with some goats kidding (the joys of being known as a small handed woman), so I jokingly refer to them as buckwheat birthing crackers.  The recipe is from The Yeast Connection Cookbook


Buckwheat Crackers
1 c. buckwheat flour
1/4 c. arrowroot or tapioca starch (another starch would work well too)
1/4 t. salt
3 T. sesame seeds
2 T. Sesame oil (NOT optional...this provides much flavor)
1/2 c. water.


Preheat oven to 400*.  Mix the flour, starch, salt and seeds in a small bowl.  Make a well in the center and pour in the oil and water.  Stir with a fork.  I found the easiest way to prepare the crackers is to pat the ball of dough into a rectangle and put it on an oiled cookie sheet (or a silpat)  I then put wax paper on top of the rectangle and roll it out thin while on the cookie sheet.  I then cut it into squares with a pizza wheel.  Martha Stewart would measure the squares, but I don't.  I think they taste the same no matter if they are all uniform in size.  If desired, you may salt the tops.  


For baking, reduce the oven temperature to 350*.  Bake for 12 minutes and then remove the edges which will brown and be done sooner than the center.  I then just keep checking them until they are evenly browned.  The original recipe says to leave the crackers in the oven for 10-20 minutes with the oven OFF to get them super crispy.  I have never done this as they seem to be fine without this.  I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do.  I suspect you can also use wheat flour, although I haven't tried it that way.  As the recipe is stated, it is dairy free, egg free, corn free and gluten free cracker.  If you have little ones with allergies, they will appreciate this recipe very much.

Blessings,
Mrs. P

Strawberries!

Yesterday I found little strawberry plants at Wal-mart. I have had strawberry plants before, but they only made a few strawberries. Still, we enjoyed them. Then one day I met a man at the farmer's market who was selling strawberry plants. He explained how strawberry plants like sandy soil. So I'm going to add lots of sand to a little skinny flower bed around the bay windows. I planted flower seeds there a week or two ago and they didn't make it. So this will be plan B for that bare little bed. And I feel a little better about this choice, since I know strawberries have grown well before. I have pretty limited gardening experience. Mr. P is the master gardener and canner around here. Hopefully I can get the right soil mix and they will thrive because I would love to can some strawberry syrup. Which brings me to a simple recipe to top your Saturday morning pancake or waffle. It can be made with refined sugar, but I opted not to. If using granulated sugar, the amount is 1/2 c.

In a blender:

2 cups red ripe strawberries, washed and hulled

1/4 c maple syrup

1/2 t vanilla extract

Blend until smooth. This will make a thick strawberry purée or syrup type topping. I think sugar gives a more syrup consistency.

January Gardening Lists

So this is the time of the year to get started with Texas gardens! Today we planted 6 live oak trees for some much needed shade at our little farm. I also threw some snapdragon seeds in a flower bed, but I'm not expecting much from them. I think they needed to be started indoors first. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised though.

So here are some lists for all of our garden projects for January.

Tool Care and Repair:
Sand down how handles (due to a misfortunate accident with a rototiller)
oil handles
sharpen hoes
clean blades
clean and care for lawn mower...a grandad job as I know NOTHING about mechanical things.

Flower beds
pull weeds
add mulch or leaves for beds that won't be planted yet
till beds that will hold salad greens and flowers

Vegetable Planting from seed or set:
lettuce
kale
chard
carrots
spinach
beets
peas
broccoli *
cabbage *
cauliflower *
onions
*first attempt to plant from seed rather than plants
and Hopefully, I will find some strawberry plants...but that will require a dedicated bed

Herbs to plant:
chives
cilantro
oregano
parsley
rosemary
sage
thyme

Flowers from seed:
alssum, calendula, cornflower, delphinium, echinacea, feverfew, larskpur, poppies, snapdragon, sweet pea, hollyhock

All tips were from a newsletter printed by Jim Gober. You can read the full newsletter here.

Garden #2- Hugelkultur

For our second garden, we will attempt to build a hugelkulture garden. The idea is that the piles of logs provide nutrients, drainage, and moisture to the plants. I say we will attempt it because it is ideally, 6 feet tall. I'm not sure we can come up with that many logs and sticks on our flat, mostly treeless farm. The concept makes a lot of sense though, and with our serious issues with drought, it would be worth the effort to have a garden with little to no need for rain. I guess I'm skeptical that it really will provide all the moisture needed for plants. However, that is the main point of the project..to learn about ecology and botany. The kids have formed a hypothesis about this type of garden. And I will just say that they are much more optimistic than I am. Already, they have beautiful drawings of green lush foliage with deep roots in their sketch books. My favorite quote was when Mr. C first saw this drawing. He immediately said, "Cool! The logs are the food for the plants." We also had a good discussion of our garden as it now stands (in long straight rows) in comparison to these other types of gardening that we are studying. Obviously, we won't be planting much since we are now getting freezing temperatures every night, but I suspect it will take a while to prepare the beds. After all, it is myself and 3 young helpers, plus a very "helpful" toddler. And we only will have about 30 minutes a couple of times a week to work on it during our regular science class during school. And with that, the bell has rung (so to speak) and science class is now over. Time to put away our science sketchbooks and plans until science class tomorrow.

Click the link to read more about HUGELKULTUR. It really is an interesting read. I only wish I had read it before we cleared the fence line and burned piles of trees and shrubs.

Real Life Science project

In order to have a hands on science lesson in ecology and botany, we are creating 2 gardens. The kids watched this first video and are today making a list of supplies needed and drawing sketches of the garden. They are also forming a hypothesis of what will happen in our garden. What information they do know is that the flower beds in front of our house have soil that is completely devoid of nutrients. Only long rooted weeds will grow there. Here are the resources that we have readily available.
*lots of rabbit waste
*paper/newspaper that we can recycle
*lots of decomposed cow manure in the barn
*a friend has mountains of mulch and will allow us to have some
*tools for gardening
Today is a planning/learning day and tomorrow we hope to implement the first part of the plan and lay down a layer of papers and newspapers and cover it with mulch