an abundant harvest

Harvest time here on the Southern Oregon Coast.  It is a race against time to get the blackberries and huckleberries picked before they mold on the vine.  Add to that the tomatoes and peppers, replanting beds with fall/winter crops and keeping the skunks (4 so far) out of the greenhouse....well, we've been busy busy.

Last night I picked 2 gallons wild blackberries washed them, cooked them and canned 12 jars of the freshest blackberry jam anyone could make.  The raspberries have just started to ripen and as long as I can keep the birds away from them we'll have beautiful raspberry syrup for Sunday mornings.  

What does everyone else do with their abundant harvest?

Can/freeze everything possible! In my fridge right now I have corn, cucumbers to turn into freezer pickles, chard to freeze and tomatoes coming on strong!

What abundant harvest?    Too cool here this year so far for any canning/freezing action.  Altho I DO have a baggie of strawberries in the freezer.

Your jam sounds spectacular!  I've never jammed yet and I'm amazed at how little an amount of berries it takes to make so much jam.  Someday...

CC

Most of my canning is coming from 50 pounds of Georgia peaches over the past couple weeks of purchases.  I may never eat peaches again in my life....

Blanch and Freeze it until I take the time to learn how to use my pressure canner I bought last year.

llama momma wrote:Most of my canning is coming from 50 pounds of Georgia peaches over the past couple weeks of purchases.  I may never eat peaches again in my life....

My "friend" ordered me 6 pecks of peaches to pick up tomorrow..........

Wow, that sounds fantastic, Lynn. Like I said in another post, our wild blackberries don't get enough water for it to be worth it to pick them. Love anything blackberry, though. How wonderful to have so much of a great treat on hand.

July was pretty much dead for me, so no abundance to speak of here. The only things I've had doing well are peas in June, and some tomatillos are finally starting to ripen. The verdict isn't quite in on the beans yet, but some of them got sun-scorched and most have simply been dropping all their blossoms.

herblover wrote:

llama momma wrote:Most of my canning is coming from 50 pounds of Georgia peaches over the past couple weeks of purchases.  I may never eat peaches again in my life....

My "friend" ordered me 6 pecks of peaches to pick up tomorrow..........

Have fun! That will keep you busy.  I made 6 - eight oz. jars of peach rum sauce this afternoon.

Yummie - wild blackberry jam and canned peaches and....

This am, I canned 6 pints of applesauce from windfalls under our tree.  More to do as I pick up the apples.

Tomatoes weren't great this year - only 10 pints of them - but fortunately still have some from last year.

The winter damaged fig tree is trying to make figs but I doubt that the fruit will ripen before the first frost - maybe next year??  There are still jars of last year's fig jam to be used.

llama momma wrote:

I made 6 - eight oz. jars of peach rum sauce this afternoon.

LM - will you share your recipe?

Thanks.  Marie

Atlanta Marie

Sure I'll share the recipe    It's a Ball recipe.  Says it makes seven 8oz. jars.  I came up with jar number six being a 1/2 inch too short to water bath.  So I had some warmed over ice cream and also stirred it into cottage cheese as a side dish and it was really nice over cold cereal too.  Very good stuff in my humble opinion.

http://www.freshpreserving.com/recipes/peach-rum-sauce

Ummm...  Thanks, LM!

 

I never want to see a peach again! Froze 11 gallon bags of sliced peaches plus made an upside down cake for the family reunion from them. We do have a bag in the fridge to eat on and they are yummy............but what a sticky mess! I will be very happy in February though  

Have you tried dehydrating them?  Like watermelon, they're great dried!  And not as sticky...

Yes, you will be happy in Feb.  Just keep telling yourself that!

I made my first hot water bottled dilly beans last night .
I gathered 1 & 3/4 pounds of stringless climbing french beans that the two house sitters didn't eat.  
Both of them were veggies  and realy enjoyed the abundant crops inthe gardens but they did leave me some crops     
 My beans were between 8 and 13 inches ling so I didn't really have any oprion but to cut the beans down into 2 inch or so long sections for a family of three sized jars that would give us two or three servings.

Now I thought we had lots of dill seeds in the spice & herb jars.. Not any more ... they ate them
 Ever tried making dilly beans with fresh dill fern & anaise instead of dill seeds ?
 They made enough fto fill four  half litre Weck jars  . the last jar was shor on the pickle so I emptied liquid from one of the jars that was waiting to get HWB'd into a big pan , added the liquid from the half filled jar  , added 1'2 cup of sugar and two cups of water .
 Boiled it up and found there was just enoughn to correctly fill the last two h=jars leaving an inch head space as required in the recipe.
 Once they'd been in the HWB for 10 min each they were decanted onto a tray covered in a doubled ove hand towel and left to cool down over night .


This morning all the seal tabs were pointing down which is a good indicator of a perfect seal . I'll take the lid clips of tomorrow and test each jar to ensure that it is truly vacuum sealed then label and store them
I'll let you know what they taste like in a couple of weeks time when they have developed a bit of flavour .

herblover wrote:I never want to see a peach again!  Froze 11 gallon bags of sliced peaches plus made an upside down cake for the family reunion from them.  We do have a bag in the fridge to eat on and they are yummy............but what a sticky mess!  I will be very happy in February though  

11 bags omg. Did you do all of that work by yourself?  Well I do and there are times I wonder what the heck am I doing !!  I did two gallon bags of sliced peaches with about 7 cups in each bag and that was enough for me. 
Once cute observation -- a piece of peach fell on the floor and my 16 yr. old senior cat discovered she loves peaches then swatted my hand to grab another piece. It was the darndest thing.  I never thought to offer her peaches throughout her whole life. Wonder if your kitties would help you eat some too? Lol

llama momma wrote:Atlanta Marie

Sure I'll share the recipe    It's a Ball recipe.  Says it makes seven 8oz. jars.  I came up with jar number six being a 1/2 inch too short to water bath.  So I had some warmed over ice cream and also stirred it into cottage cheese as a side dish and it was really nice over cold cereal too.  Very good stuff in my humble opinion.

http://www.freshpreserving.com/recipes/peach-rum-sauce

llama momma, thanks for the recipe. I may get some peaches this weekend just so I can make that. Perhaps a stupid question, but do you know how many peaches you used? I hate it when a recipe calls for chopped peeled fruit as I never know how small to chop and that would make a difference.

Thanks,
GardenGroupie

No I'm sorry cause I had a whole big box of fruit and kept grabbing till I had 6 cups.
But I can give you some info from the produce purchase buying guide from my Ball Book.
The recipe calls for peeled, chopped, and drained fruit.  The closest description in the buying guide for peaches is that 3 medium or 1 lb of crushed peaches will give 1-3/4 cups.
The other description it gives is again 3 medium or 1 lb. that is peeled, pitted, and sliced will give 2-1/4 cups.

That's all the info I have.  Hope this helps!

herblover wrote:I never want to see a peach again! Froze 11 gallon bags of sliced peaches plus made an upside down cake for the family reunion from them. We do have a bag in the fridge to eat on and they are yummy............but what a sticky mess! I will be very happy in February though  

I suspect some of you people own freezers as big as most people's houses ...

Hey!  Just because we call it "the coffin"... 

  

I will say, however, the next deep freezer we get will be an upright rather than chest-type.  What a pain in the rear...!

I don't freeze, I can almost everything.  We live rurally where it is not unusual for the power to go out for a couple days at a time.  But we do own 2 freezers.  An upright and a smaller chest freezer to hold the albacore and salmon.  As usually happens, the fish arive when we are otherwise engaged and cannot get to it that day.

Marc Iverson wrote:

herblover wrote:I never want to see a peach again!  Froze 11 gallon bags of sliced peaches plus made an upside down cake for the family reunion from them.  We do have a bag in the fridge to eat on and they are yummy............but what a sticky mess!  I will be very happy in February though  

I suspect some of you people own freezers as big as most people's houses ...

I do have two freezers.......a large upright and a small chest freezer (about the size of a dishwasher) which is the designated fruit freezer.

rillgardens wrote:I don't freeze, I can almost everything.  We live rurally where it is not unusual for the power to go out for a couple days at a time.  But we do own 2 freezers.  An upright and a smaller chest freezer to hold the albacore and salmon.  As usually happens, the fish arive when we are otherwise engaged and cannot get to it that day.

I can alot as well; but I didn't have time to can the peaches this weekend. I freeze most of the fruit anyway though.