Raspberry Jelly

This week I was invited to pick raspberries near the local nursery where I have worked part time this summer.  I love fresh raspberries so this was a special treat.  I asked my visiting family if they wanted to help me pick a bunch so I could make jam and away we went.  The picking didn't really take that long.  We picked 22 cups of raspberries in about an hour or so which was good since the rain started falling shortly after we were finished.  That afternoon I turned about 15 cups of raspberries into jelly.  Another 2 cups became a delicious raspberry cobbler and the rest went into the freezer for later use.

The fifteen cups of raspberries were cooked for about ten minutes to release the juices from the berries.  They were then carefully poured into a jelly bag lined with cheese cloth where they dripped juice for the next three hours.  When the majority of the juice was done dripping from the pulp it measured out to about 4 1/2 cups.  This was leveled off to just four cups so I could match the recipe in the Ball Book of Home Preserving.  (I think it is wise to stick to the recipe if you want to be sure of the finished product.)  To the four cups of fresh raspberry juice I added four tablespoons of lemon juice and one package of pectin.  I stirred this until the pectin was dissolved and then I began to heat the mixture on the stove.  When it just began to boil I added 5 1/2 cups of sugar and stirred until the sugar dissolved and the mixture began to boil again.  Once it had boiled for only a minute I skimmed the pink foam off the top and started adding the mixture to prepared jars.  I processed the jars for twenty minutes (adjusting for altitude) and the final product was beautiful.  I was able to fill seven half pint jars and still had a little left over for fresh eating.  It tastes like summer.  The jelly gelled perfectly and the color seems unreal to me.  The deep ruby red of the jelly glows if you hold it to the light.  For a first attempt at making raspberry jelly I must say that I am quite pleased with the results.

Turning Point

Several years ago I started down this path of growing my own food because of some of the things I had been learning about where my food comes from.  I had heard things about this country's food supply that greatly disturbed me and I started to pay attention.  Mostly the changes I made started out as baby steps. 

In the beginning I would try to buy more organic foods at the store when I could find them and if I could afford them.  I was more than a little disappointed in the selection and the quality of organic foods at the time.  Much of the produce was damaged or small, would not keep for very long, and it cost almost twice as much as the non-organic produce located on the other side of the aisle.  Most of this was probably due to the long shipping distance the food had to travel before it reached my cart at the store. 

More and more I became aware of the local food movement.  I looked for local farmers markets and was disappointed yet again.  The town I lived in at the time didn't have a farmers market and the closest one was a forty-five minute drive away.  I didn't visit it often because I couldn't justify traveling that far for a few fruits and veggies. 

Here and there I would try growing veggies for myself, though mostly it consisted of a few containers on the shady front stoop and never produced enough for more than a handful of salads.  When I finally moved to a place that I could really garden at, I was overwhelmed with ideas of what I wanted to grow and how I wanted to grow it.

The first years garden looked huge when we marked off the area it was to cover.  That first year was a first in many different ways.  I was so excited to have a real garden that I wanted to try to grow as many different things as I could.  I don't know if it was just beginners luck, but by my standards that garden was a smashing success.  Sure there were some things that didn't grow well, but other things produced so well that we were overwhelmed.  The potatoes that years were softball sized and weighed in at several pounds each.  The zucchini was so prolific that I couldn't keep up with it no matter how much I ate, froze, dehydrated and gave away.  We also raised our first chickens that year and today you couldn't pay me to eat the factory raised eggs you get from the store.  Happy, healthy animals make healthy, tasty food.

The point is this:  everyone is at a different level on this continuum of food production.  Many of us still get everything we eat from the grocery store, and that is ok.  Some of us grow everything we eat and that is fine too.  There are many people who are somewhere in between.  The fact is that the more aware you are of your food choices, the more of an impact you can have on how your food is produced.  In our consumerist society every dollar that is spent is a vote to continue down one path or another.  When you buy processed foods in a box or from a fast food chain you are encouraging that business to continue to do things the way they have been doing it- regardless of environmental or health consequences.  When you choose to spend your money on seeds to grow in your own backyard you are encouraging the other end of the spectrum.  Whatever is encouraged the most will be what what becomes the stronger company in the end.  If you encourage companies that pollute the environment and provide unhealthy food you will end up with a sick or dying environment and legions of diseased people that will spend more money on health care than is reasonable.  If you encourage companies that are environmentally responsible and provide nourishing foods, then you will wind up with a healthy environment and healthy people that can spend their money on things other than health care which in turn would help the local economy.  It seems as though no one ever really thinks about the consequences when they buy food.  By becoming more informed about our food system, we can indeed effect the change that this country so badly needs.  It won't happen overnight, but if we all take baby steps to make the necessary changes, then thing will indeed change.  We just need to be willing to begin today.

Taking a Break

This week has been a vacation of sorts for me because I have family in town visiting from halfway across the country.  I'm sorry about the lull in posts and pictures, but I value spending time with my family and so the blog has been put on the back burner for a little while.  That is not to say that the garden is being neglected - far from it.  Most of the things I have harvested this week have been eaten directly from the ground (and were delicious I might add) so there were no pictures to be taken.  I'm not gonna lie - I take great pride in my ability to feed my visiting family members with food that I have sown and nurtured in my backyard.  I am happy to share the experience of fresh picked veggies with them and I think they enjoy it immensely as well.  It only serves to encourage my dream of growing food for others for a living. 

Quick Garden Tour

I snapped a few quick pictures of what is still growing out in the garden. 

The lettuce that I thought was a no show has sprung up quite well in the past few weeks.

In another couple of weeks this should be big enough to start harvesting.

 

The carrots have started to come up nicely at the close end of the bed.  Its too bad that I am having a hard time keeping up with the weeds.

The green cabbages have started to form small heads.

 

The red cabbages are good sized but haven't started filling in yet.  I am not really too concerned about this crop coming in late because everything I've read about cabbage has said they do well in fairly cold temperatures. 

 

We officially have our first eggplant ever.  I've never grown eggplant before so I wasn't sure what to expect.  I thought I may have gotten these plants in the ground too late, but it looks as though we might get a small harvest from them after all.  Not bad for a handful of free plants.

The pole beans are chugging right along in these late days of summer.  Some of the plants have reached the tops of the tipis and soon will have beans that I will be unable to reach.  I'm not complaining though.  I have had a good harvest of green beans this year considering the small number of plants I planted. 

 

 

 

 

Onion Harvest

It has been a long time since the onions seeds first went in to the dirt this year.  I think I may have planted them shortly after the first of January in flats under grow lights.  The first couple of months they grew very slowly from tiny green threads emerging from the soil to the tiny young seedlings I planted outside sometime in early April.  All summer the seedlings grew and finally the plants started to bulb up in the past few months.  In the last couple of weeks the tops have begun to fall over and once most of the bed had fallen, I decided it was finally time to harvest.  I had to wait for a sunny day of course so they could cure properly in the sun.  Today was that day.

 

I am allowing the onions to cure in the very bed that I harvested them from.  This is definitely the bulk of the harvest for us, though there are more onions bordering the brassica bed.  Those border onions were left over sets that I had from planting the bed and they were planted a couple weeks later, so they are not quite ready for harvest yet.

 

After these onions spend a couple of days in the sun they will be transferred to the back room where they can complete their curing in the more controlled climate of the house.  The largest onions will be braided for storage while the top-less and thick necked onions will be set aside to be used up first since they aren't as likely to keep well.  The grand total of actual onions from this bed is 264 and that doesn't count all the small ones that were picked for fresh eating before now.  Of course I don't expect all of them to keep for the long term, so I will be dehydrating as many of the thick necked or small onions as I can in the next few weeks.

 

Here they are drying on the very same shelves they sprouted on.  Hows that for completing the cycle?

 

Little Molas Lake Hike

This past weekend I went on a short hike several hours drive south of town.  This hike is close to a high mountain pass - Molas Pass which stands at an elevation just under 11,000 feet.

 

 

This hike also coincides with a portion of the Colorado Trail and if the rest of the trail has half the views that this short hike does, I will be seriously considering hiking the trail over a summer in the next few years.

 

The hike starts with a winding trail through some fairly open spruce forest.

There are many meadows along the way, but most of the summer wildflowers are gone for the year.  There were a couple stragglers here and there if you were paying attention.

 

 

Another thing there were plenty of were toadstools.

Some very brightly colored mushrooms in the shade of an old spruce.  Don't worry, I'm not even an amateur mushroom hunter and I'm pretty sure these are toxic.  I wouldn't touch them, but they sure looked pretty.

They even occurred in fairy rings along the trail.  Neat huh?

 

 

Along the way there were also some very old, very tall remnants of some long ago fire. 

 

Once you got above the tree line the views were spectacular.

 

Unfortunately I didn't go much further than the edge of tree line thanks to some dark clouds hovering above the mountain I was hiking on.  I decided to cut the hike short and none too soon.  I felt the first drops of rain fall as I neared the end of the trail and got in the car just as the downpour began.  Sometimes you just get lucky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Labor Day Harvests

It is officially the ninth month of the year and autumn is just around the corner.  This weeks harvests have included a summer squash or two, lots of tomatoes, peppers, broccoli shoots, a handful of cucumbers and a couple of quarts of pole beans.  This week was also the week we harvested our main storage onion crop.

 

Another batch of tomatoes waiting to become sauce.

 

A colorful array of sweet peppers and jalepenos.  The red peppers have finally started to turn and the fruits are large and heavy.  I'm sure the flavor will be well worth the wait.

 

More cucumbers destined to become pickles.

 

Another quart of green beans which promptly became dinner.

 

The red onion portion of the harvest.  These won't keep as well as the yellow onions so many of them will be used up as quickly as possible.

 

The yellow onion harvest had many good sized bulbs.  The larger bulbs will be braided and hung up for storage and the smaller ones will probably find their way into the dehydrator and ultimately become onion powder.

 

This was also the first harvest of the purple potatoes.  I only pulled up one plant and as you can see there were a good number of small potatoes from it.  This plate became breakfast potatoes shortly after.

The purple potatoes add a lot of color to the dish and contrast nicely with the red pepper and yellow onions.  The flavor was outstanding.

 

This was a dinner side dish that included yellow squash, red onions and green beans.  I love the mix of colors and flavor you can get from a fresh garden harvest.

 

This week I a plan on setting up the hoophouse framework for the fall and winter garden.  I will have a small house covering the carrot bed and the onion bed will get planted with some lettuce seed in the next few days so we can have fresh salad in the winter.  I also have to start thinking about where I want the garlic to live next year once some of these summer crops start coming out of the ground.  Harvest season sure is busy and I love it.