The Garden Song

We've been listening to some of our Peter, Paul, and Mary cd's in the car.   This song stands out and I thought you might enjoy a blast from the past too.   This is obviously John Denver rather than Peter, Paul, and Mary but it's the best I could do. It does appear that this was a very popular song in the 70's.

Protecting Our Blueberries

A few months ago, I was discussing blueberries with my dad.  I was explaining that last year, we did not get any of our own blueberries because our guinea fowl ate them all before they turned ripe. It was very disappointing.  My dad explained that my great grandmother used to have the same problem with wild birds.  He suggested a fence.  This is something that we'd been going back and forth on.  The blueberries are in our front yard and being a woman, I do have a desire for the front yard to look somewhat presentable and more welded wire was not in my vision.

Dad told me that the fence didn't have to be there all the time, only when there were berries on the bushes. He explained that my great grandmother (whom I'm named after, by the way) used to keep a fence around her blueberries all year long to keep the deer out.  Then, when the bushes started putting on berries, she would take down the fence and place it over top of the bushes to protect them from the birds.  We thought this was an interesting concept and so when the bushes put on berries this year, we put cages around the bushes.  The cages will be removed when we have harvested the berries.

We picked about a quarter pint off of them today.

Pickling: A one touch side dish

When I think of pickling, I usually think of pickled cucumbers otherwise known as pickles.  When I was growing up, my dad went through a pickled egg phase and I've always turned my nose up at pickled beets so I guess I've always known they existed but I've not really given it a lot of thought until now.  Mostly, I just thought, "Who'd want to pickle everything?"

 One of the Amish novels that I've been reading lately was talking about the women being in a hurry to get lunch on the table one day and they "just served some pickled beets as a side."  Wow! That's when I realized that they are basically just dumping this side dish straight from a jar.  It's already been prepared so no further preparation necessary.  I tried this and just served my family pickles as a side one day.  It was that easy.

Then I started looking through recipes in my Ball Blue Book of Preserving and realized that quite a few of the recipes in there are actually just various types of pickled salads.  So far I've pickled cucumbers and squash.  If all goes as planned, I will pickle some beets later this week (I've never actually tried them!)

There are several other advantages to pickling.  You don't have to cook the vegetable again. You are preserving the vegetable without taking up precious freezer space. Cans are easily organized so if your freezer is anything like mine, you will actually be able to find it and know how much of it is left.

We do still need a pressure canner because I do want to learn to can our chicken broth and it might be nice to have some unpickled vegetables around occasionally.

Low Sugar Jam

Yesterday, I asked you how you preserved your fruit and mentioned that we prefer jam.

This year we changed our recipe to one that makes low sugar jam using calcium activated pectin.  This method will actually allow me to use honey instead of refined sugar.  This time I used sucanat for most of it and used my father-in-law's honey for the last two batches.  All batches really tasted the same and set up well. 

I was inspired to look for the calcium activated pectin because in the past I've been on a diet where refined sugar is forbidden.  I finally got the motivation to do more research this year because I don't want to make jam with refined sugar yet again and end up not being able to eat the jam for an extended period of time. 

I found the pectin at a health food store and followed the instructions on the insert.  I liked the flexibility the instructions gave.  They gave a minimum amount of sugar that could be used and a maximum amount. I found that there wasn't a lot of difference taste wise between using the maximum amount of sugar and the minimum amount of sugar.

How do you preserve your fruit?

It is definately berry season and I thought I would write a little about how I preserve our fruit.  This is our third year going to pick blueberries at a local blueberry farm.  The first year, I made the traditional jam with jam and sugar being the only ingredients.  The second year, I did the same thing and also froze half.  This year, again I froze half and jammed half using a different recipe.

What is the difference between jelly and jam?  Jelly is fruit juices gelled.  Jam is crushed fruit and and juices.   Ofcourse there are other ways to preserve fruit that I'm not going to get into here such as preserves, conserves, butters, etc. 

We cook our jam and can it.  I prefer this so that it doesn't take up our precious freezer space and the cans are so convenient to grab out of the cabinet and dump into my muffin batter.


How do your preserve your fruit and why?

How to pick a blueberry

This week, we set aside two days to pick blueberries at a local blueberry farm.  MrLivingOurWay actually worked at this farm one summer for fun as a picker.  He and the owner always told me "Don't pull on the berries very hard. The ripest berries always just fall off the bush."  This explanation always implied, that I should be pulling but only gently.  I stilled ended up with a bucket that had many, many not quite ripe berries.

This time, MrLivingOurWay took a different approach that helped me out and it dawned on me that I might not be the only one that has struggled with picking ripe blueberries.  He simply said "Give the berry a little twist and if it comes off, it's ripe.  If not, then it's not ready yet."

So there you have it.  Attempt to twist the berry off the stem.  No pulling or tugging involved.  I have to say our berries were of much higher quality once the whole secret of picking ripe berries was put into words that I could understand.

Note: We do have lots of blueberries planted in our yard, but they are still little so we are using those to snack on but it's not nearly enough to put up for the winter.