July, Glorious July

Since we had July in June, Mother Nature decided to turn the first few days of July into October.  It's been pouring rain, foggy, and COLD.  Our high yesterday was only 62'. I was actually wearing a sweatshirt last night.  NO ONE is complaining.  We all need the rain desperately.  We also needed a break from the hideous heat.  But not to worry, it will be back to a heat index of 105 on Thursday.

The clover in the yard is filled with pollinators and it is almost 6 inches high.  It smells so fabulously delicious when it is freshly cut.  It also shades the lawn and keeps evaporation down and holds the moisture in the soil by shading it.  It spreads like mad, but even so, I ordered another 15 pounds of seed from stockseedcompany.com so I can help it along in the fall.  That said, we applied for our pollinator safe/friendly certification and were one of the first to have been accepted :D  OH, we heard out first cicada July 2nd, so by folklore, 90 days to the first frost.

For my local readers that are interested in pursuing this here is the link. http://entomology.unl.edu/pollinator-habitat-certification

On the chicken front, the silly 7 - dot, doris, peaches, honey, katrina, bb, and lacey- have moved to their forever home about an hour and a half from here.  They will be the little siblings to 4 RIR, two ducks, and a great dane!  I KNOW they will enjoy all the woods and the giant barn and coop/run set up.

The fox has been taken care of.  She was not lactating, so no young.  She was just moving into a new territory and chose the wrong prey.

Doc installed a new shelving unit in the barn.  We set the top shelf quite high for storage, and the middle shelf just the right height for taking care of chickens in cages.  This is our new Chicken Jail set up.  As you can see, Daisy is our first customer.  It took her a week to break, stubborn little beast as she is.

She had a buddy for a couple days, as we pulled our cream legbar pullet, Bea, to treat her for whatever was ailing her.


I have also drawn up the plans for a run extension that will act as a year 'round wind break.  I won't be getting to that until the weather cools way, way down!

The hailstorm mentioned on earlier posts did some serious damage to the orchard and the other trees around the property.  The damage to the leaves was damage to the tree's feeding system.  The wet and cool Spring was quickly followed by searing heat and a serious lack of rain.  By last week, we had cracks in the orchard that were 3 inches wide and went down 12-18 inches.  When we watered our sad trees, you could hear the water racing down around the root balls, and just disappearing to heaven only knows where.

By early this week we knew the trees were gone.  Of the 10 new trees planted this April, 8 were dead.  The stores graciously took them back and replaced them.  Every tree on the property was amazingly watered by nature, 1.5 inches last night, and today we planted new trees and gave every tree an 8" water saving blanket of cypress mulch.  After all, we still have July, August, and September to go!

The third week of June is Mulberry picking time.  BUT since we got so hot so fast, it came early this year.  And this year, I was busy with a fox.  So I entirely missed Mulberry season :(


But let's get down to happier business. 

Late June is CHERRY season!

This year, instead of driving two hours to pick my own cherries, a local market was selling fresh Washington State cherries for only $14 a lug, which came to about $1.50 a pound.  Needless to say, two lugs followed me home.

I also brought home two of THE CUTEST cherry pitters EVER! 

Sure I could use my antique hand crank pitter, but it knocking out the pit and tossing it clear of the meat is hit or miss. (Last year at the fruit farm I had them pit 10 pounds of fresh cherries on their giant mechanical pitter from the 60s, and it failed to pit over 80% of my cherries.)  I could have handed Doc all 22 pounds of cherries and just let him enjoy them, spitting pits as he went.  But I suspect that he would get sick of eating them, and probably couldn't eat them fast enough before they went all green and furry.  So hand stemming and hand pitting was the way to go!  No matter what you make with the cherries, they have to be pitted first. 

My adorable pitter allowed me to hold the pitter in my right hand, feed it with my left and catch the pit, and then toss the pitted cherry with a flick of the right wrist into a waiting bowl. IF the pit fails to hit the pin, or fails to be ejected, I know it immediately and plunge it again.

It went quite quickly with The Boy helping with the stemming. 

22 pounds of cherries in two hours.  I ended up with 3 pints of seeds, which I dried in the Excalibur Dehydrator overnight and popped into mason jars with oxygen absorbers and tossed into the back of the refrigerator until Fall, when I will plant them and see what comes up in the Spring!

So you have 22 pounds of fresh pitted cherries, and the clock is ticking.  What do you do?  WHAT DO YOU DO?!

The obvious thing to do was to fill every square inch of all 9 trays in the Excalibur. Done.

I then took my largest cookie sheet and covered it in parchment paper and tossed them into the deep freeze overnight to freeze them individually. Then I simply tossed them into a freezer bag. Done.

What else?! Oddly enough, I made NOTHING with the fresh cherries.  LOL.

MARISCHINO cherries are a MUST! So here is my recipe for an alcohol free cherry.  When you are done, you can process these in your water bath canner for 15 minutes for pints at sea level, add 5 minutes for each additional 1000 ft.

This is SO simple it is silly.

2 cups of CHERRY JUICE (Read your label and do not use mixed juices or flavored juices - like JUICY JUICE kids flavored drink.)

1000 grams of clean pitted cherries
100 grams of granulated white sugar
2 Tablespoons of almond extract.

Mix it all together and place into a plastic or non reactive container ( NO ALUMINUM).  Store in the refrigerator for 24-48 hours covered, stirring at least once during this time.  You can then fill your sterilized jars and process.  If you need for liquid simply top with cherry juice.  You can also store in the refrigerator for up to three weeks. 

The menfolk have trouble staying OUT of these.

Since we are speaking of fruit.  I purchased a bunch of bananas this week and like normal, hung them on my flip away banana tree.  When Doc wandered into the kitchen Saturday morning, he was met with quite a surprise.  SERIOUSLY?!  All on their own!  Crazy nanners.

In the Kitchen - Here We Go 'Round The Mulberry Bush

Except for the trees I just planted at the Station, there are none, save for the rouge, trashy Cedar trees and the Odd giant deciduous trees on the old homestead fence line.  The cattle rancher next door spent weeks this Spring knocking down hundreds of cedar saplings that have started to overtake his pasture.  Being allergic to cedar, I will not miss any of them.  I told him that he was welcome to take out the giant trash cedars on the fence line when he brought back the chainsaw this summer.  I told him just to make sure not to take the mystery tree near the garden or the deciduous  trees down in the lower meadow, as I didn't know what they were yet.

Sure, I've made many a pass with the lawn tractor this spring.  I even enjoyed the blooms, short lived as they were, and thought nothing more of it.  Fast forward to this past Monday.  The chickens were out and about as I was working on the overwhelming weed issue in the corn rows, when I noticed that they were congregating behind the compost pile.  I sighed, grudgingly put my tools down, and wandered over to the pile.  (The chickens for some disgusting reason love digging in the poo pile side of the compost pile.) Anyway, steeling myself to go in and chase Meriwether's Chicks out of what I consider a truly nasty place, I notice they WEREN'T in the pile, but rather massing far behind it, under the mystery tree.  BERRIES!  We'll they had been there for at least half an hour and no one was dead yet, or walking around drunk, and their faces looked like the cat that ate the canary, or a better description, like chickens who found a way into the corn crib.  My white pullets were covered in purple.  Beaks were purple.  The lawn was purple.  It was like a bank dye pack exploded.

I looked up and saw the culprit.

A giant mulberry tree.  It never dawned on me that it would be a mulberry.  I've never seen one this large, at almost 20 feet.  I'm used to a multiple trunk, more bushy mulberry.  Curiosity got the better of me and I wandered down to the lower meadow.  One of the giant trees down there is also a black mulberry. 

This one has a trunk of almost 2 feet in diameter.  She's old and slowly dying.  She must be ancient, dating back to the original homestead fence break.  A homesteader never would have taken it down.  Free food is free food.

Back up the hill I went and set upon planning for canning.  The Boy and I laid out clean garden sheets on the ground and started shaking the trees to free the loose ripe berries. (They stain ANYTHING they touch, so don't wear anything nice.)

   We then loosely folded the sheets in half and tipped them towards a 5 gallon bucket. I left the bucket outside for a bit to allow the spiders and other creepy crawlies a chance to climb out.  After, I brought the bucket in I sorted out any unripe berries and sticks, and twigs, and rinsed the berries off and placed them into a container into the refrigerator for the night.

JAM DAY!

For jelly and jam I really prefer the tiny 4 ounce jars.  Yes, they are more work, but we just don't go through that much jam very quickly.  I'd rather do a little more work at the beginning than to toss out perfectly good food later.

For each 8 cups of clean dry berries, I washed and boiled 12-4 oz jars and rings.

Into my heavy cast iron, enameled pot I tossed the berries, stems and all,  and 1.5 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar, and turned on the heat to medium as the berries started to break down, I hit the whole mess with my immersion blender.  (Make sure you do this on LOW speed, or you, the wall, the ceiling, and the counters will be purple forever!)

 

 

 

The immersion blender doesn't grind up the seeds, but it does take care of the stems, which are edible, just not a pleasant texture to hit while eating jam.  The seeds are no different than strawberry or raspberry seeds.

When the mixture reaches a constant boil I add the 5 1/3 Tablespoons of Low Sugar pectin, and mix it in.  I then allowed the mixture to come back up to a boil, one which cannot be controlled by stirring and boil for one minute.

I then ladle the jam into the jars to within 1/4" from the top.  Clean the rims well with a clean paper towel, and a little white vinegar.

  I warm the lids in near boiling water and apply to the tops of the jars, and screw on the lids to finger tight.  Process in a boiling water bath for 10-15-20 minutes depending on your altitude. 

If you haven't seen one yet, I really enjoy my giant Victorio water bath canner with the dial on the lid.  It's a heavy duty stainless Steele pot.  It's wonderfully large. And the dial lets you know when the water is really up to heat. 

We have really enjoyed the jam the past couple of days, and so few people get to enjoy them, as they aren't something you see at the market, or even the farmer's markets, as they are so short lived and fragile.  IF you can find a mulberry tree, I hope you can take advantage of this early summer treat.