Tomato juice is used for several things. Bottom line, tomato juice is extremely healthy! A lot of people just drink the juice straight from the jar. Another common use for tomato juice is a marinade for tough meats.  Such as: deer meat, and certain kinds of pork and beef cuts. Tomato juice is also  very well known as a “go to” in order of getting rid of bad odors. Such as: skunks and nasty frig smells. Tomato juice is one of those things that if you dont like it, you can use it for many other things.

What are some other uses you have for tomato juice.

Larry and I eat a fruit smoothie almost every morning.  Frozen peaches from the local grocery store are quite pricey.  Making your own frozen peaches for smoothies is easy and much tastier.

I washed and sliced 20 or so peaches.  I dipped each peach slice in lemon juice, to prevent browning, and placed them on a cookie sheet.  Freeze the peaches for 2 hours or until fairly hard.  Freezing them on the cookie sheet will keep them from compacting in a big frozen heap.  Place them in a gallon bag and stick in your freezer, ready for your next smoothie.

Strawberry Peach Smoothie

• 1 Cup water
• 1 Cup milk (we use coconut milk or almond milk)
• 5-7 strawberries
• 4-5 sliced peaches
• 1 scoop of chia seeds

Blend all ingredients together and enjoy!

Do you have any tasty smoothie recipies?

Blackberry Jelly Recipe:

• 3 ¾ Blackberry Juice
• 4 ½ Cups of sugar
• 1 box of dry pectin
• ½ teaspoon of unsalted butter

Makes 7 half pints

First, combine the juice,pectin and butter in a large stock pot.  Stir constantly until the mixture comes to a rolling boil. When the boil can not be stirred away, mix in the sugar one cup at a time.

Jelly at a roaring boil

Return to a boil, stirring all the sugar in very well.  After the jelly has a boil that cannot be stirred down, boil for 1 minute.

Remove from heat and start filling half pint jars.  Move quickly, filling clean hot jars, leaving a one inch headspace.

Next, process jars for 5 minutes in a water bath canner on high.

Process Jelly in boiling water for 5 min.

Remove jars carefully.  Let the jars stand overnight.

Yummy. beautiful blackberry jelly!.  Gideon tried the jelly out on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and declared the jelly a success!!  Theo just prefers jelly bread and milk for a snack.

Making homemade jelly does take a few steps, but it is not a hard task at all.  It is also a great feeling, knowing my family is eating jelly made from berries grown right in the backyard!

Have  you ever made homemade jelly?

100% Organic blackberry juice

Have you ever used a steam juicer?  I never even heard of this handy kitchen tool until our friends told us how helpful the juicer can be during canning season.   The steam juicer is so easy to use and is a big time-saver when trying to preserve berry juice to make jelly.

Mom and I set aside an afternoon this week to juice our beautiful blackberries.  Our juicer cost around $80 and is stainless steel.  There are less expensive aluminum types also.  I bought the 4 quart juice size.  The juicer has 5 parts as shown below.

It is easy making juice with the steam juicer.  We fill the water kettle with 2 quarts of water and turn the stove on high to bring the water to boil.  Then we place the juice kettle on top.  Next, we pour our washed berries in the fruit basket and put the lid on.  The hose attaches to the juice kettle and has a pincher to let the juice stop or flow when needed.  Finally, we turn the heat to medium and let it boil until all the juice is extracted from the berries.  We keep an eye on the water kettle, making sure it does not run dry.

Blackberries after being steamed for a while

After a few hours, we have 4 quarts of rich dark blackberry juice.  At this point, we sterilize our jars and lids and heat the jars in the oven.  Be careful when you place the hose in the quart jar.  Be sure and use oven mitts or hot pads.  The jars are hot and the juice is hot.  Lift the pincher off the hose and let the juice flow until the proper head space is reached in the jar.  Put your lid and band on and wait for the wonderful popping noise of a sealed jar.  We intend to use our juice to make jelly, and since the jars are sealed and preserved, we are in no hurry to use our juice.

The berries are a medium pink when all the juice has been extracted.  We gave them to our chickens for a sweet treat!

Have you ever used a  steam juicer before?  We’d love to hear from you.

Makes 10 Corn Dogs

• 1-2 Cups yellow Cornmeal
• 1 Cup all-purpose flour
• ¼ Cup sugar
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 egg beaten
• 1 ½ Cups milk
• 1Tbsp vegetables oil
• 1Tbsp honey
• 1 10 count package of hot dogs
• 10 wooden skewers or long cake pop sticks
• 1- 1 1/2 bottles of canola oil for frying

Directions:

Fill a medium or large pot with oil. Turn heat to medium and heat oil.

In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir together. Then add the beaten the egg, milk, oil and honey. Stir until combined. The batter should be a little thicker than pancake batter. If the batter is runny, gradually add cornmeal a little at a time till the batter reaches desired consistency.

Remove the hot dogs from the package and wipe them off with a paper towel to keep the batter from running off the hot dogs. Next, insert the skewers or long cake pop sticks in each hot dog.

Pour the batter into a tall drinking glass. Holding on to the skewer, dunk the hot dog into the batter until fully covered. Let the access batter drip off into the cup before frying. Immediately place the hot dog into the hot oil. BE CAREFUL THE OIL WILL POP! VERY HOT!!

Cook by constantly turning the hot dog around in the oil till it is a deep golden brown. (About 2-3 minutes) Dry on a paper towel then eat!!!! YUM YUM!

The night before the market, Dad and the boys collect the castings and bag them in gallon bags.  The boys are responsible to label the bags. The boys also help get our truck packed with the canopy, coolers and chairs.  It takes the whole family to make a successful market day.

The boys are learning all kinds of great skills that will prepare them for future business ventures.  After 3 months of going to the market, they are beginning to understand how hard it is to make a buck! There are over 50 vendors at our market and there is great temptation to spend their profit at other vendors, buying toys or goodies to eat. They have learned to be prepared and some organization skills by using inventory sheets for our different products.  Most of all, they have learned to rise EARLY, work hard, and enjoy the satisfaction of selling a needed product that enriches someone’s life.

The Farmer’s Market has been a great opportunity to teach our kids life skills while having fun.  Have you ever participated in a family business that helped teach your children valuable skills?

green beans 7-6-13

It’s hot and humid in early July in Missouri and that means it is time to harvest the green beans.  We started our first harvest from 2 beds today. We picked and snapped for several hours and were pleased to have 3 gallons of fresh green beans at the end of the day!

Well….we had a fourth gallon, but we were so anxious to taste the garden produce that we steamed them all for lunch.  Yummy!  Our little boys like canned green beans the best, but I prefer steamed or stir-fried with almonds.  Every year we can and freeze our beans to cater to the families’ different tastes.

We still have one more bed to complete for the first picking.  There is a great satisfaction when the picking, snapping, cleaning and preserving is done.  I have a greater appreciation for my grandparents who ate all winter long from their summer canned produce.  It is hard work, but satisfying knowing we are eating healthy home-grown goodness.

What has Your hard work in the garden produced this year?

alfalfa compost pile

Experienced gardeners know that rich compost is the key to all natural gardening and soil building.  Rich compost provides your plants with the nutrients they need for fertile growing and lush, healthy vigor.  Plus, and more importantly, rich compost feeds the soil organisms that make for long-term soil health and vitality.  And soil health is really the key to great gardening.

So let’s go make some compost.  Well, if you’ve ever tried to make compost, you know it is often a challenge to get it right.  It seems like it should be so easy.  Put ingredients in. Give it some water.  And you should get great compost, right?  Not necessarily.  Sometimes you get a stinking pile of muck.  Other times, the pile sits there and does nothing.  How frustrating.

Making good compost does take some skill and practice, but it is something you can get the hang of.  There are various ways to make compost and I have tried many of them over the years.  Yet through much research, reading books, watching videos and trial and error, I’ve found these five secrets to be the key to making good compost consistently and with less effort:

• Right ingredients
• Pile Size
• Pile Structure or layering
• Moisture
• Time

Let’s go through the secrets.

Right Ingredients

All experienced composters know that you need the right mix of brown and green materials to make good compost.

Browns can include leaves, straw, sawdust and the like.  I personally like straw the best and especially the tall rye grass straw I grow myself when it’s available.  We strive for as much on-farm sourcing as we can get.  Straw provides very good air space and mass for the pile.

alfalfa harvest

Greens can include just about any green material from weeds without seed heads, to grass and clover to name a few.  To me, there is no better green ingredient to great compost than fresh alfalfa.  Alfalfa is high in nitrogen and also provides good mass and structure for the pile.  Last year we started growing several alfalfa beds to provide our own source for this key ingredient.  The beds have grown very lush this year with all the rain, and this past week we built two compost piles from our first cutting.  I also like to use some fresh cut comfrey to help the pile heat up quickly.  This is another great green material for the pile and one we grow on our farm.

A third key ingredient that is often overlooked is soil.  A thin layer of soil on each layer of  the pile provides an injection of soil bacteria to get the pile going quickly.  Bacteria are the creatures that drive the decomposition process that makes for rich compost.  Recently, I’ve been cutting out pathways between the raised garden beds with my little tiller and use the dirt for the pile.  This has worked great.

Pile Size

With the right ingredients at hand, secret number two is getting a good sized pile.  If the pile is too small, there won’t be enough mass for the bacteria to really get going decomposing the pile.  The minimum pile size is generally known to be a three feet cube—three feet wide, three feet long, three feet high.  I like a little bigger pile, so I have good success with a four by four by three pile.  The biggest difficulty I have in making a bigger pile is getting enough brown material.  Many times I have to purchase straw bales for my brown source, but these can get expensive.

Pile Structure or Layering

Secret number three to making good compost is the pile structure.  I have the most consistent success with the layering method.  Layering provides good air flow for the bacteria to breath—they are living creatures that need air—and a good food source up and down the pile.   I start with lightly breaking up the soil where the pile will be placed to expose the soil bacteria.  I then add a six inch or so layer of straw, then a six inch layer of green material—either alfalfa, comfrey, weeds/grass or some combination of these—and then finally a thin layer of soil.  I repeat this layering of straw, green, soil until the pile is three feet tall.   I cap the pile with a final layer of straw on top of the last soil layer. This method is really very easy to remember and gives very consistent results.

Moisture

The fourth secret to making good compost is moisture—water.  The bacteria need a damp environment to thrive and move around in to breakdown the materials.  The pile cannot be too wet or the bacteria will not get air to breath and die.  This is why piles will start to stink.  Also, the pile cannot get too dry.  Not enough water and the pile just sits there doing nothing—it’s too dry.  When making my piles, I give a generous watering to each layer—brown, green, soil—as I build it, but not too much to water log it.  This is where you will have to experiment a little to get a good balance.

Time

The final secret for making good compost is time.  The pile needs time for the bacteria to do their thing.  I used to spend a lot of time turning my piles to speed up the decomposing process. You can do this, but I found that to be too much work.  Now I just let the piles sit without touching them with the expectation of having compost six to twelve months later.  This has really worked well for me and is a big labor—and back—saver.  I just try to have several piles in various stages so I have compost for planting time.  I don’t always get around to this though.

How do you know when you’re making good compost?

After getting the pile to the proper size with the right ingredients and moisture, it should heat up at first to around 120 to 140 degrees, and then settle in to around 100 degrees for several days.  You will notice that it will begin shrinking rapidly during this stage as it decomposes.  It will then slowly cool down, rest and decompose more slowly over the waiting period.  It will be ready when it is dark and very little of the source material is identifiable. I water the pile during the early stages if it seems to be dry and slow down and we won’t have any rain coming soon.

There you have it, my five secrets to making rich compost.   What secrets do you use for making rich compost?

Yummy greens in bacon grease

Our garden has produced several rounds of mustard greens and arugula.  The family has sold several bags at the Farmer’s Market.  This week the weather has topped 90 degrees and I think the greens have run their course.  I was happy to be able to fix them twice this week, knowing it will be in the fall before we have them again.

Everyone has their favorite recipe for cooking greens.  I like cooking them on the stove in a cast iron skillet.  I sauté 3 or 4 pieces of bacon until mostly done and then throw a chopped onion into the skillet.  After the onion is soft, I add ¼ cup of water and stir.  Place greens in skillet and cover.  I keep the temperature around medium to medium high while the greens are rendered down.  I usually cook them for about 10-15 minutes, or until soft.  Give them a good stir, making sure to incorporate the bacon and the onion.  Serve with vinegar if desired.

What is your favorite greens recipe?

Rye and Vetch bed

The cover crops this year have gone wild with all the rain and storms we’ve had this spring.  In fact, I’m writing this post just after another severe storm has hit our area with tornados touching down close by.  The picture above shows what happens when I plant too much hairy vetch in with the cereal rye cover crop bed—the heavy rains weigh down the dense vetch and knock down the tall rye grass. This most recent storm has knocked the crop down even more.  The good news is that this will provide a great amount of high nitrogen bio mass for the compost pile.  The bad news is I won’t be able harvest clean rye grass for straw out of this bed.

hairy vetch up close

I planted this bed before I got the advice from Cindy Conner to be careful of planting too much vetch in with the rye grass.  You can check out my review of her great cover cropping video here where she talks about this caution.  It’s a good lesson learned for the future.

I end this post with our prayers going out to the folks in Oklahoma ravaged by the storms there.

How have your cover crops faired this spring?  Are you getting good results?