Dehydration

So if you have read any of my other blog posts you should know I have an Excalibur Dehydrator.  I love that thing.  It really does save a lot of space for things you dont want to can.  I have dehydrated lots of mushrooms, and a ton of onions from my garden.  I also opted to dehydrate my greens this year from my garden.  My garden is planted for my convienence.  I plant super early with greens, peas, and carrots.  And my early I mean by the end of Indiana March my garden has been planted with snow peas, regular pod peas, two types of lettuce, two types of chard, carrots, brussel sprouts, cabbage, radishes, beets, and potatoes.  Now for a normal person they start that months after I do but by then I have so much needing to be canned I dont have time to plant.  Anyway, dehydration is a great way to take what you have and reduce it down to nothing with no waste and plenty of shelf life.  Here is an example of what dehydration can do for you and your garden. 

Here is a tray of lettuce.  Now my planting of lettuce made 5 heaping trays to fill my dehydrator and I mean I heaped and had to skip trays or it would shove it off.  I layered a lot.  This picture is of some leaf and swiss chard. I tried not to leave any tray showing underneath. Here below is a picture of swiss chard after it is dried.

Yes that try was heaping.  Now I planted 4 - 6foot rows of greens( 2 types of lettuce and 2 types of chard) and one 8 foot row of kale.  I cut it all once when it was bit and bushy.  Each row would have made a huge salad for 6 people.  When I dehydrated all of it, I got two quarts of crushed greens.  That is a big space saver.  At the moment I have 3 quarts because the second cutting wasnt as good and I only did the 4 rows.  I have tilled them under now to allow my tomatoes to spread out and that area is now my tomato picking walkway.  I still have my kale and I am slowly pulling it up and giving it to the chickens to eat.  I have enough greens to last for a few years because I still have last years canning that I am using also.  It really does pay to get a dehydrator.  I also have winter onions.  My row is around 16 feet long and after I picked the small bulbs and chopped/dehydrated that I was able to get a 2 qt jar full of those also.  I still have the bulbs they produced on the top to replant this fall.  I think in a future blog I will give you a chart of when I plant and what I am harvesting/canning/dehydrating during that month.  It will be beneficial if you live around indiana or have a simular climate.

Pantry underway!!

Well this year we have a lot of projects.  I have three pantries.  I have three because we dont have room for one single big pantry.  We have now or rather are now making room.  I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!  We have a breezeway and its about 9x15.  It is less than that a little and its oddly done so we are trying to revamp it.  Our house has slowly over the past 11 years had projects done to basically redo the entire house.  It was not done correctly and was built in 1920.  It keeps us dry but has not been much to look at.  Our goal honestly is to have it done by the time we retire. It will be paid off before then and with us pretty much rebuilding it little by little we will have a "new" house by then.  This year is the breezeway project before we re-roof the entire house next spring.  The breezeway will soon be a utility/laundry/canning kitchen/pantry.  Then our now laundry room/water heater room will become a bedroom for our second boy.  They really need their own space and although in an odd spot and with no door it will serve its purpose.  The oldest would already like to have it which was odd to me because seriously the room they have now is like twice the size!  Anyway, we have poored concrete on part of our floor already and put in a new east wall.  The east wall is what is shown here. I've already painted because the water heater will be moved today as well.

The water heater is going behind the bladder tank and then both will be closed in.  Water heater with plank board and a shelf on top.  The bladder tank with have a cabinet built around it with a countertop for canning jars to sit and cool.  That stove my dad found for me a few years back in the paper for $25.  Cant beat that!!  Once the water heater is boxed in it will fit right up next to that and then off to the right and around that corner is going to be pantry shelving.  My canning jars will go next to the stove and then I think I will place dry food products next to them on the open shelves.  I already told my husband we are needing a window on the west side to place an air conditioner in to keep my dehydrated and dry products dry and moisture free during summer.  Its a very slow work in progress but we are hoping to get it done by September.  We are also going to carpet the entire thing with indoor/outdoor brown carpet.  We also went to habitat restore and found a vent hood for $12 that is stainless steel.  That way we can vent the canning moisture outside.  Hopefully we can make this look as nice as I already see it in my head lol. 

Harvesting the Greens

This week the dehydrator has been busy with greens.  I planted Kale, Swiss and Ruby Red chard, Romaine lettuce, and Leaf lettuce.  I have cut all rows once and my kale and chard are ready to be cut again!  I am dehydrating these and crumbling them up then placing them in a half gallon canning jar. Its almost full already.  It looks like I"ll get two of them full this year. That will be plenty.  I usually take a handful of them and put them in soup or in whatever skillet dish I'm making.  This gives you the greens without really realizing it.  I dried them on a very low temperature for two days to help keep the nutrients in.  Its a great way to plant greens you can eat throughout the season and then save some for winter.  Right now I've gotten everything in my garden except my broccoli.  I dont plan on planting that till end of July or beginning of August.  Right now its harvesting the greens, sugar snap peas, and turnips.  Carrots are coming soon too.  Oh and Blackberries soon too.  Gonna be busy busy busy.  Pardon if I dont blog.  I didnt realize how hard it is to be a mom, harvest/plant/can the garden, go to school, and blog lol.

Saddened by a loss

Everytime I get a favorite chicken and become attached, they end up dead somehow.  It happened again.  My beloved peachy cream.  She was a mostly white golden comet.  I loved her dearly.  She was such a human.  She would always be the last one in, making sure all were in bed.  She would come up to me and "talk" to me, love on me, and she just generally cared that I loved her.  Its sad to say but instead of being angry at a neighbors dog or at a coon, hawk, or skunk...I have to be mad at one of my cats.  Its the only explanation of the time of day she disappeared and the location I found all the feathers.  I"m so upset, I want to cry but its my third favorite that died.  She had gotten out of her pen like she always does and goes picking around the yard, mostly in my garden.  Apparently that was her downfall this time.  The cats have never even hinted at the chickens.  They walk by them when the free range and dont even look at them.  Its just sad to say but I miss her terribly.  Its almost better not knowing sometimes.  I guess I will be finding homes for my cats and reinforce the chicken run so none can get out.  I went out this morning and all the others of the same kind and size were all "talking" to me telling me what happened.   Goodbye my beloved peachy cream, I'll miss you.

Holy Hotness!!

Well I've been inside mostly trying to get cool.  Its been in the middle to high 90's here the past few days.  I have tried really hard not to cook.  I have to make bread but have been trying to hold off until tomorrow with the hope of the "cold front" that is suppose to come and lower us back down into the high 70's. 

My poor garden is looking horrible during the day.  I bought a new sprinkler.  I had two last year, one leaked REALLY bad and was more of a waste then help.  The other I put high on a landscape timber in the middle of the back garden.  My corn got so high last year that I couldnt water it.  I am hoping this year the landscape timber will help.  With the new sprinkler plus my old one I can water my entire garden at once and not miss anything.  Of course it means sprinkling my chickens too but the last two days they have been fine with it! I did manage to harvest two of those plastic walmart containers full of strawberries out of my garden.  I took those along with the 4 I bought at Aldi's and the last of my mature rhubarb stalks and made jelly with my boy.  I call it jelly but its probably preserves, or jam, or something else.  I dont get all technical its all jelly to me.  You spread it on toast and eat it with peanut butter lol.  I also have gotten two pickings of sugar snap peas.  I swear if I go into the garden and work a bit, all my plants seem to grow overnight!  I picked those peas totally gone.  Skipped a day and then had to pick another couple handfuls today of huge normal size peas.  I also bought some straw and put that over my watermelon and muskmelon section.  Had some left over and put it around my zucchini plants.  I went out today and they doubled in size!  I guess some plants like it HOT and some just wish it was winter again like my lettuce.  I still have some plants to place in the garden and some to restart.  I hope its better tomorrow.  My plan is to mow and place the grass in some newly planted pepper plants.  They are still mega small but I think they will grow better in the garden then in my start container.  Plus some of my tomatoes died when I planted so I'm gonna throw a few roma or cherry tomato plants in with my normal ones.  I am also going to start my pumpkins this weekend.  Still trying to decide on the whole winter squash thing.  Might plant my second planting of lettuce and carrots too. Cant decide.  Guess it will depend on weather and time.

Lovin Life

Sorry its been so long since I blogged.  I've just been enjoying the rain free week or so we've been having.  Memorial Day was great. I went to my best friends parents house for a cook-out like we do every year.  It was great seeing all of them again.  You dont realize how much you miss your friends parents till you dont see them hardly at all.  They have a wealth of knowledge that I enjoy obtaining from them.  She's the one who got me planting at St. Patricks day.  Something that came in extremely valuable this year.  Most of my root crops went in just a little after St. Pat's day and then we got tons of rain.  They are doing really well this year.  Had I waited I wouldnt have been able to get into my garden to plant them.  

Things are going really well here. I bought 2 seedless concord grape vines and planted them in my back garden along the fence.  They say it will be about 3 years if you prune correctly.  I have looked things up online but I'm going to see if youtube has any videos.  I bought seedless because I want to make juice mostly and dont want to have to deal with seeds.  I have wild grapes out here but they are getting overrun with blackberries, and this weird fake grape looking plant.  I looked it up once.  All I know is it produces grape looking berries but they are poisonous.  I am not getting the crop of grapes I did a few years ago but cant really get back in this field corner to fix the problem so I just decided to go buy some.

Today I went grocery shopping.  I decided to stop at Aldi's which is one of those stores like save a lot where you bring your own bags. They try to keep the cost down but most of it is prepackaged food that we dont eat.  I really wanted perogies ( I know I spelled that wrong) and dont really feel like making them. While I was there I did do some shopping and got some green peppers, strawberries, and bananas.  Walmart has bananas for 54 cents and Aldi had them for 44..but when I looked at the sign it said 1/2 off bananas!  What? excuse me?  I looked at the bananas and grabbed half a banana box full.  These were going bad but guess what because of a smart purchase last summer I have a dehydrator.  I can use these older bananas that others cant, so I get the deal most dont.  I have a dehydrator full of banana chips plus I made a double batch of banana bread. ( it smells so freakin good in here right now!) You can freeze that once its made and enjoy it whenever you want.  All my bananas cost me like $3!  Since the strawberries were only 99 for a container I got 4 of them.  My garden strawberries are going this year but I planted plants this spring so they arent giving the fruit they will next year.  I have gotten about 2 handfuls, one each day.  I am trying to decide if I want to make strawberry jelly or dehydrate them.  I have 24 hours to decide lol. Dehydrator is full.

Right now life is good.  My bills are paid, my garden is rocking produce, my dehydrator is full,  my pantry is filling slowly with "backup" food, and life is good.  I have to give all the credit to God.  Without his blessings on my life, on my lifestyle, giving me crop sharing friends, and blessing our finances...I would be nothing.  I am so greatful that I can do what God is calling me to do and to enjoy working for the Lord.

2nd garden harvest...Salad! (how to prepare lettuce)

So while all my friend put in their gardens this weekend, I laughed.  Then today I went and made a salad.  In my garden I have Romaine lettuce, Leaf lettuce, Kale, Swiss Chard, Ruby Red Chard, and Spinach.  Most of this is ready to pick.  I dont wait for mine to get big and bushy like the store, instead I snip the larger ones and pick the outer leaves of those and let them continue to grow.  With all the rain we've had my greens are really growing.  Harvesting lettuce is a little different than the store because you have dirt to contend with.  So first go out and if need be spray your greens with the hose lightly to help "wash" some of the dirt away.  Then grab your larger leaves and I personally cut them with scissors.

If you are harvesting some chard or kale..snip only the leaves and leave the stems on the plant. My family doesnt like them and I hate cutting it twice.  If you really want to recut then go ahead. 
Next you want to get a large bowl and place your lettuce in it and fill it with cold water.  Once the lettuce is covered, give a couple swishes and let it sit for a minute.  This lets the dirt settle to the bottom of the bowl.  Then gently pull the leaves out and tear them into tiny pieces and place into another container that you can fill up with water.  I usually use this pan.

When the pieces are small it will help get the rest of the dirt off the leaves.  Again fill up the pan/bowl over the lettuce and swish it a few times and let the dirt settle. Pull out the leaves gently and then place in a collandar to drain the rest of the water off the lettuce. You can toss it a few times if you like.  I let this sit while I chop the rest of my veggies.
This salad had romaine, leaf, kale, and swiss chard as greens.  I also put some radishes in because there were a few more done.  I had some celery and carrots in the fridge from the store. I added them in too.  It was a very delicious salad.  I'm so excited to be eating fresh greens while everyone else is just planting.