A Lesson Learned

This post could also be titled, "Don't Count Your Blueberries Before They're Harvested."

Our blueberry bushes were loaded with blossoms this year.  Then the blossoms all turned into tiny green berries.  The green berries grew and started to turn a dark blue as blueberries are wont to do.

We picked berries a couple of times getting a total of maybe two quarts.  But the berries seemed to be ripening slowly, we could never find as big a quantity of them as we were expecting, so we gave up checking them every day.  When one of us did go out to pick, we were dismayed to find so few berries ripe and ready.

Then this morning, Papa Pea was up and at his deck earlier than usual, just after dawn, in his second story office which overlooks all of our garden area.  What was all that movement in the blueberry patch?  Eventually he identified several crows hopping in and around the bushes.  Hunh.  Wait.  Could those crows have been making early morning raids and stealing our berries?

After I was up and functioning, we went out to check the situation.  With a sinking feeling, our suspicions were confirmed.  Those $^!&* crows have literally cleaned off the bushes of every last berry except a few (very few) tiny green ones.

Yep.  We've lost our entire what-should-have-been bountiful blueberry crop to the crows.  We have never had trouble with birds bothering our blueberries.  Nope.  Never.  Not once.  

Until this year.

We have netting with which we could have covered the bushes and saved our crop.  

We (obviously) weren't diligent enough or quick enough (or smart enough) to figure out the situation before it was too late.

Now there will be no blueberry jam this year.  No blueberry juice.  No blueberries in yogurt.  No blueberry smoothies.  No blueberry syrup for pancakes.  No blueberry pies.  Oh, stop!  I can't stand it!

Well.

It's not the end of the world.  We won't suffer or go hungry this winter because of the lack of blueberries put by.

I do confess to having a strong urge to go out and kill every crow with a blue-stained bill I can find.

I Didn't Mean To Do It

This morning as I was starting my first batch of pickles for the day, I noticed my supply of spices needed for the recipe needed replenishing.

I went to my spice rack to see if I had adequate amounts of what I needed there.  (If your interest is piqued regarding the pretty-darn-spiffy, one-of-a-kind labels on my jars, you can go to a post I did in 2011.)

Turns out the jar of spice I needed was only half full.  Since these jars that fit my spice rack aren't large nor do they hold a very big quantity, I keep back-up amounts of herbs and spices in the pantry.

The bigger amounts for back-up are in 4 oz. canning jars topped with canning lids.  I store them on a north wall in the pantry, in a cabinet behind closed doors, and they stay cool even in the warmest summer weather. 

But back at the spice rack.  Before I knew it, I was checking another jar and then another jar to see if any more needed to be topped off from my reserve supplies.  I ended up doing the whole durn rack full and in the process realized that the date on some of my herbs and spices was getting a little old.  (I put a date on a little piece of masking tape on both the jars in the rack and those in the pantry.  Since herbs and spices do get old and lose their potency, I try to replace them when they've lived in the pantry longer than they should.)

In the middle of this little chore, a niggling voice in my head rang out loud and clear, "Hey, girlie, don't you have pickles to make here?"  Ooops, I didn't mean to get sidetracked . . . again.

The upside is that I did do a thorough check of which herbs and spices I need to get at our local co-op next trip in (it's really hard to make a good gingersnap cookie without ginger) and which ones I'll make a note to stock up on this fall.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This public service message on dating your herbs and spices

in order to keep them fresh and tasty

has been brought to you

by Mama Pea.

Let The Pickling Begin!

I made my first batch of pickles today.  Usually only pickling cukes for two kinds of pickles come out of my garden, into the kitchen and onto the pantry shelves.  Bread and butter pickles and dill pickles.

For the dill pickles, I like to harvest the cucumbers when they are on the smallish side, because I think they stay crisper that way.  Bigger than gherkin size but not much more than 3" in length.  For my bread and butter pickles though, I prefer larger slices . . . which come from larger cucumbers.  I'm picky that way.  (Hmmm, the picky pickler.)

Because I've got about a dozen quarts of dill pickles still in the pantry from last canning season (yeah, I got a little carried away), but no bread and butter pickles, getting my yearly quota of them put by first and foremost is high on my list.

So the first harvest of the pickling cucumbers was put off for a short time until the cukes reached the size I wanted.  When I checked the vines this morning, I decided I there were enough "big" cukes to make a batch of bread and butter pickles.

Beginning the process on my kitchen table earlier today.

And, ta-dah!  Magically (ha!), the first batch of 8 pints is out of the canner and cooling.

Another batch tomorrow?  I'll have to wait and see what the cucumber patch has ready for me.

My Day . . . So Far

This has been a fairly typical summer Monday.  Got our usual weekly laundry done and will glide through the ironing after dinner tonight.

Papa Pea got a really good start on the walkway off the new deck and work on the front foundation of our quasi-greenhouse.  I call it our "quasi-greenhouse" because we've never used it for an actual greenhouse as we originally thought we would.  It's permanent use/designation is still to be decided.

Our friend and lady carpenter, B, was here for a time to lend her expertise and suggestions on the construction and best way to tie things together.

This morning I picked a huge amount of edible podded peas.  We've had many more than we can eat so I've been giving about every other picking of them away.  I did freeze a lot last year, but wasn't pleased with the way they came out when cooked (limp) so I'm not going to do that again.  Methinks I should make a note to myself to plant only half as many next year.

Our daughter has a friend who doesn't garden but loves zucchini, BIG zucchini, so I always let a couple/few get over-sized for her.  These are three of the monsters that went to her today.  That's my morning mugga caffeine in the picture for comparison.  They added up to just under 25 pounds.

I ripped out some bolted spinach and lettuce and also some purple top turnips I had planted on a whim earlier this season.  The turnip tops were gargantuan, but the biggest turnip was only about golf ball size.  The problem was that the greens were taking over some peas on one side and kale on the other so into the bag they went with the rest of the excess greens for our daughter to take to her chickens.  Our own chickens are so full of lush greenery this time of year that they run the other way when they see me coming with garden gleanings.

I harvested 6-1/2 cups of blueberries putting a little over a quart in the freezer and leaving the rest out for us to eat fresh.  The bushes are loaded with tons of unripe berries.  They've really just started coming in.

Also harvested another large and lovely cauliflower head which I blanced and put in the freezer.  Only one more head left in the garden.

I knew I needed to strip lower leaves off the Brussels sprout plants for the second time so I attacked that, too.

I was glad I had only this one row to do and not a whole field of them!

This is a before shot . . . 

. . . and after stripping off the leaves.  Doesn't look like the same plant, does it?  I'm thinking we're gonna have a really good Brussels sprout harvest this year.

About an hour ago, the wind came up and dark clouds blew in.  It stormed buckets for about five minutes, and then was gone.  But that brief deluge gave us 1/2" of rain in our gauge and was welcomed because the garden needed it.  Papa Pea had just put away all his tools for the day before it happened.  Great timing, I'd say.

Now I think I'll go find, Agnes, my maid and cook and see what she's planning for dinner.

Checking In . . .

All is well in our neck o' the woods.  Haven't spent much time blogging as we've been working a smidge bit too hard, but accomplishing a lot, and that feels good.

Took some time off last Friday night to go visit some friends and bring home a new-to-us banty rooster.  They are (for the time being, at least) getting out of the chicken keeping business and wondered if we wanted a bantam rooster.

Just so happens we lost our bantam rooster last year when a hawk flew over the chicken pasture, scared heck out of the birds, most of whom ran for shelter, but either our bantam rooster panicked and tried to run through the electric fencing or possibly was driven into it by the hawk in hot pursuit.  Unfortunately, he got tangled in the fence and by the time we got to him he was in bad shape and died during the night.  So we were happy to take in this new guy as a boyfriend for our two banty hens.

He's a pretty boy, very docile and friendly.  I'm not positive, but I think he may be a Silver Laced Cochin.

D and M, our good neighbors, trundled over to our place late yesterday afternoon to get some dill.  D was making pickles and, for some reason, the dill he planted this year isn't doing diddly-squat.

I have plenty (and then some) so was glad to share as much as they needed.

While we were all out in the garden talking, I complained to M that my slicing cukes just weren't sizing up at all.  With that, she plunged her hand into the cucumber vines and pulled out a couple.

"These look big enough to eat to me," she said.  By gar, if she wasn't right.  I sliced them, added garlic salt and pepper, some dill leaves and a small amount of salad dressing, and we had them last night with macaroni and cheese.  Crunchy, crispy and F-R-E-S-H tasting.

Our edible podded peas are in their full glory right now, so I went out into the garden this morning to pick these for breakfast.  I sauteed a couple of diced scallions in butter, added the leftover mac and cheese from last night, put two fresh eggs on top, and cooked covered until the eggs were done.  A portion of that on each of our plates along with a helping of the tender-cooked peas with butter and salt and we called it a gooood breakfast!

I've still got shell peas to process tonight, and I suppose we'll need to eat something for dinner right soon now, so I'd better get back to my kitchen duties.

Hope you all had a good weekend!

Deck Construction and Garlic Harvest

Quite a bit got done on the deck today.

There's much left to do, of course, but the project tonight looks a lot different than it did this morning.  (Those four 4 x 4 poles are the start of my laundry lines.)

The above picture shows the new house color pretty accurately.  The painting officially got finished Saturday.  There are just a few little things remaining for me to take care of.

I dug the stiff neck garlic today.  We got about 36 nice look looking bulbs that are now hung and starting the curing process.  The harvest of the stiff neck was much, much better than that of the soft neck.  I still have no idea why most of the soft neck never came up this spring.  I'm sure glad we've got this big bunch of the stiff neck though.

Tomorrow?  More work on the deck, I think.  I know we have to do some measuring and figuring and possibly go get more lumber.  That gives me something to look forward to.  Our social outing for the week.  Going to the lumber yard.