On the Homestead this week - "Days" Reprise

Another reprise from S's blog...reminding me we have been coming at this for a while now...

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We are getting ready for winter, and reaping the harvest!

15 pounds of peaches (and a lot of sugar!) are being turned, by microbe, into 5 gallons of peach wine. It's an experiment, but it already smells delicious.

We finally invested in a pressure canner, and then practiced using it on tomatoes that didn't need to be pressure-canned, just to be sure we knew what we were doing!
So this weekend, we put up:
4 quarts of tomatoes (it would have been five, but one jar cracked in the canner!)
11 pints of mixed dill pickles
5 half-pints of peach jam---I have finally made a jam that 'jammed'! Rock out!
Several pounds of pesto are in the freezer, frozen in ice-cube trays, then stored in a Ziploc for easy portioning.

We've got another batch of anaheims ready to be roasted. If we could just stop eating them all as soon as we roast them, we might actually get some canned up for winter!


Yesterday, we got the first eggplant. And promptly made Thai curry. Mmmmm.... curry. We are now over 100 pounds of produce! There are more apples still to come, and eggplant, and tomatoes and (maybe) corn. Oh. And lots and lots of carrots and winter squash and more potatoes.

Quinoa for dinner tonight, cornmeal muffins for breakfast Sat/Sun, brown rice last night, whole wheat pizza dough on Saturday. We are gradually adjusting to whole grains. It takes a little getting used to, but eventually, your stomach adjusts to the fiber.

We bought 50 pounds of rolled oats at the IFA, for $16. This sounds like crazy talk, and it might be. But I go through at least one of those big cardboard Quaker oat cans a month in the summer, making granola for John, and two a month in the winter when I'm eating oatmeal. This bag should last us until next year, for about the cost of two cans of oats. It might be crazy---we'll see how it goes. We can always feed it to the horses and the chickens! It's interesting to be eating the same things that I feed my horse... maybe I shouldn't think too hard about that.

Many weeks ago, we bought a 50 pound bag of hard red wheat, and are gradually working our way through it. J (the baker!) tells me that it's very different to work with, but he likes it. It's fun to grind it in the grinder, and you just can't get any fresher than that!

It is not lost on us that we get more and more 'Utah', the longer we live here. ; )

We cleaned out under the grape arbor, and moved a table and chairs out there. It turns out to be a wonderful place to have dinner! But we are now out of wine completely. ; ) I sure hope that merlot-cab blend that's ripening in the basement turns out! We have a Mexican Cerveza to make, as soon as we can get back down to G3 and pick up some yeast. Maybe that will be Thursday evening's project.

The CSA box comes tomorrow. I wonder what will be in it?!