End of August Accounting

It’s been a good gardening season. Things have gone so well, in fact, that we plugged in the extra freezer in the basement to keep the surplus produce. 

One evening's produce gathering

 The zucchini and yellow squash produced very well. That shouldn’t be a surprise. The over-abundance of zucchini has become a well-worn cliché but we haven’t really had much luck with summer squash over the last couple of years. Last year the yellow squash did not produce at all and we only got a few zucchinis. This year, so far, we’ve picked 14 yellow squash and 21 zucchinis.

Squash plants in early July

Yellow squash and zucchini

 A couple weeks ago I realized the squash had a pretty bad infestation of squash vine borers. The poor plants looked terrible but they were and are still producing fruit.

Squash vine borer damage

We have eaten a lot of squash so far and given some away but we had way more than could be eaten fresh. So, into the freezer they went. I diced up the squashes, blanched them in boiling water for 3 minutes, dunked them in ice water, drained them, and then spread them out on towel-lined cookie sheets. After giving the squash pieces some time to dry, I removed the towels and put the sheets in the freezer. The next day, I broke up the pieces of frozen squash with a wooden spoon and put them in quart size zipper-top freezer bags. There are now six full bags in the freezer and a half dozen squash still in the fridge.

Frozen zucchini ready to be bagged

I made a double batch of zucchini muffins for the freezer too.

The green beans are not doing as well as they did last year but I’ve still manage to put away a quart size freezer bag full of them. The chard, on the other hand, has been doing very well since I managed to head off the leaf borers. I’ve put three full quart bags away in the freezer so far.

So much lovely, leafy goodness!

The cucumbers have also been very productive. They are sneaky, however. I’ll look at a cucumber and decide it’s slightly on the small size and decide to wait a day or two before picking it. A day or two later, it’s gotten huge! Fortunately, these cucumbers, no matter what the size, make great pickles. I will admit that I’m a lazy pickler. I’m a fan of making small batches whenever it is convenient. I don’t want to heat up the house with the canner or risk getting limp pickles if I screw up the process. So, I make freezer pickles. They are so simple and are delicious. So far this season we’ve picked 37 cucumbers and made 11 ½-pint jars of dill pickles, 7 of sweet pickles, and 5 of bread and butter pickles. I’ll probably be making some more this week as the collection of cucumbers in the fridge are starting to add up again.

Cool as a cucumber and ready to be pickles

Six 1/2-pink jars of dill freezer pickles

We’ve done a little fridge pickling as well. The beets and watermelon radishes are doing fairly well this year. We didn’t plant that many of either. The radishes are great on sandwiches but we worried we wouldn’t go through them quickly enough in their raw form. The solution was fridge pickles. Since we were doing the radishes, I figured we could pickle a few beets as well. We picked just enough for two ½-pint jars of radishes and one of beets. The radishes are crunch and taste good but I will say that they leave a definite funk in the air.

Just a few beets and radishes

Quick fridge pickled beets and radishes

We did do one bit of unplanned preserving as well. Early on when we first moved into this house, my husband built a trellis for wild grapes that were growing behind the garage. Last year, they didn’t do much but this year they produced enough that I thought I’d see if I could make a little jelly. Well, it did turn out to be a little jelly – just a ½-pint jar and a smaller jelly jar – but it turned out really tasty. The tartness of the wild grapes is really wonderful; not at all like the standard store-bought grape jelly. I only had one cup of juice so it took a little mathing to get the pectin measurement right but I’m calling this experiment a success.

Lots of grapevines on the trellis

Bunches of wild grapes

Draining the juice from the cooked grapes

Mmm...jelly!

An Update on the Birds

On July 4, I wrote about the multiple birds that were nesting in our hedge. I thought I’d share a little update about how they turned out.

The mourning doves had a particularly successful brood. They made very little noise until they outgrown the nest. Then, we could hear them crashing through the branches of the cedar as they were figuring out their wings. I don’t know how many eggs were laid in this clutch, but I was able to get a picture of three nearly-grown birds hanging out by the nest.

Three mourning doves

The robins, on the other hand, had a bad time of things. Well, perhaps not bad, but completely unsuccessful. The female robin sat the next for some time but nothing came of it. Anytime someone went near the next she would fly off making quite a racket. It makes sense that she would try to draw whatever intruder away. That was so different from the nearly-silent doves. By the end of July, it appears that the robins had abandoned the nest. I found a broken egg on the driveway under the lilac bush.

Broken robin egg

The real stars of our little bird show were the cardinals. While Mr. Tomato was continuing to take care of the chicks in the nest by the driveway, the Mrs. began sitting another nest across the yard. We watched a lot of comings and goings from both sides as the pair raised two broods. Just this week we’ve seen both sets of junior cardinals out exploring. Junior, a bird from the first nest, is almost entirely fledged out with adult colors while the Junior Juniors (I've seen three together at once) from the second nest is still has some baby down. They like to sing and play in the evenings just as the light is fading so I haven’t been able to get many photos but I did catch one of the Junior Juniors the other day.

Junior Junior cardinal

As a country girl, I never expected to get to enjoy so much wildlife in my suburban backyard.

Who's that checking out our garden?

It's one of the twins!

Sun Bunnies

Rabbits are notorious for letting the air out of tires.

Solar Food Dehydrator

Several years ago, when we still lived on the mountain, my husband and I saw a solar food dehydrator in Mother Earth News. (You can find a diagram of it online now at http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/solar-food-dehydrator-zmaz06aszraw.aspx?SlideShow=11) We thought it was a fantastic idea and decided to build one of our own. The magic of living at a lumber mill was that there were always leftover bits of wood and other materials lying around. We managed to construct the entire dehydrator out of scavenged pieces, hinges and all. We did have to buy a kit to make the two drying screens but that was all.

Homemade solar food dehydrator

The dehydrator is basically a big wooden box with a piece of glass on top. We started with an old window and then built the rest of the box around it to fit. Somehow, we found a sheet of metal that was nearly perfect for the reflector inside. We added screened holes for ventilation and doors on the back that could be opened to load the screens full of food and for ventilation. I’m pretty proud of the way it turned out since it was cobbed together from found parts. Best of all, it works wonderfully!

View from the back with bottom door open

Interior with two drying screens in place

Side view showing screened vent holes and top door propped open for airflow

We used the dehydrator quite a lot back then drying strawberries, blueberries, cherries, zucchini, yellow squash, and herbs. Since moving to the southern tier, we’ve used it once to dry a batch of wild hops but otherwise it has remained tucked away in the garage. That is until about a week ago. I had gone blueberry picking and thought it would be fun to dry some. My husband pulled it out of storage and gave it a good cleaning then I loaded it with some washed blueberries.

Blueberries loaded and ready to start drying

It was just my luck that I picked some of the only cloudy days so far this summer on which to get the dehydrator going. It needs extended, direct sunlight to function. You’ve got to turn it throughout the day to keep it facing the sun. After the first day of partial sun, the berries were just starting to dry.

Berries on the morning of day 2

Day two was actually sunny, so quite a bit of moisture was pulled out of the berries. Day three, however dawned completely overcast. I don’t like to keep anything in the dehydrator for more than three days. I worry that if the food isn’t dry by then that it might start to spoil. So, I brought the berries in and finished them off in the oven for about four hours. After all that effort, the blueberries had turned into just over a cup of dried berries and they taste great! It was very much worth it to drag our homemade dehydrator across the state with us.

Chewy, yummy dried blueberries!