Pickle season!

We tried a new cuke variety at Seven Trees this year, the Little Leaf. We chose it because it was supposed to be disease resistant and a prolific producer of pickling cukes. Our ended up with some kind of disease, though with the wet spring and cold summer, I'm not surprised. We still managed 20 quarts of pickles so far, and plenty of fresh cukes for salad. Newt, ever-helpful, is inspecting my picking results.

When I wash the cukes, I also scrub off the spines.

Then the ends get nipped off. If you leave the blossom end on, it produces an enzyme that will turn the pickles mushy.

The lids and jar rings are boiled for 10 minutes, and I sterilize the jars by placing them in the oven at 250F for 10 minutes. (Most people use boiling water or a dishwasher to sterilize jars, but in our small kitchen it saves a lot space to do it this way.)
Each jar gets a clove ot two of garlic, some fresh dill flowers, and 1/4 tsp of alum. We tried all kinds of recipes that didn't use alum, but none of them resulted in crisp pickles. So back to the tried and true, old-fashioned recipe from D's mom.
Each jar is packed tightly with cukes, carefully, since they are still hot.
Then I fill it up with boiling brine.
Seal the jars.
And listen for the happy sound of the lids popping as they seal.

Our recipe:

In each sterilized jar put - 1 stalk dill weed

1/4 tsp alum (look in the spice/baking section of your grocery store)

1 or 2 cloves peeled garlic

Pack jar with washed, trimmed cukes, cover with hot brine & seal. Store in cool, dry place for 6 weeks or longer before eating. If any jars don't seal, keep them in the fridge and enjoy.

Brine:

1 1/2 quarts white vinegar

3 1/2 quarts water

1 cup regular salt

You can halve the recipe if needed, and we save leftover brine to use if we're going to make more pickles within the week.

In a pickle

Here are the latest batch of pickles - beets and refrigerator pickles. Both are really easy to make, and only take a little patience to wait til they are pickled enough to eat. The recipe we use for the fridge pickles works great for cukes, carrots, green beans, onion, garlic, peppers & green tomatoes. We use the gallon jars our honey comes in for these, but you can use smaller mason jars too. The beets are more of a sweet pickle, but we add 3/4 tsp of salt and grind the spices with a mortar & pestle to get the best flavor.

Another day's harvest - green & yellow wax beans, maybe a couple pounds, cukes, and two giant carrots. We only did 6 cuke plants this year (we had 18 last year and got swamped with cukes). We will probably plant more cukes and green beans next year though, as we just might have gotten the whole pickle thing figured out finally. Most 'official' canning guides call for water bath processing them for long enough to sterilize. They may be sterile, but they aren't as good. We're experimenting with traditional food preservation methods and planning to try very little processing to keep the flavor and texture. If it worked for our foremothers, it will work for us. This book, Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation is a great source of ideas for old-fashioned techniques. We already started lacto-fermented kraut and chard stems using recipes from this book. When the tomatoes ripen, we'll try sun-drying and packing in oil, along with other recipes in the book.

Here's our first blackberry pick of the year. Last summer, the berries were plentiful, but not very sweet. The sun and rainfall need to balance out just right for a sweet juicy harvest. So far we're looking at a ton of fat luscious berries this year. Can't wait to make pies & cobbler! And finally, all the hens are starting to lay. Some in the nest boxes, some on the coop floor, some under a bush in the henyard, and some in the hay mow. Rather than pen them up to force them to lay where we want, we'll just keep checking all their favorite spots each day. It's fun to have an easter egg hunt all year long, especially with such a colorful variety of eggs. The two smaller ones (front and right) are from Peeps and Poops, the Black Stars. So now we have 7 hens, 3 different breeds, providing good food for us. The eggs are sitting in about 10 pounds of barley that our neighbor grew and harvested. We pondered brewing with it, and baking with it, but I htink we'll seed most of it in the pasture for Stella to enjoy. Barley matures fast and makes an excellent grazing crop. And anything she misses will reseed for next spring. We'll save some back for spring seeding in our hoped-for grain patch.

Plans for the Seven Trees gather are moving right along. The first invitations went out (more to come), and we'll be picking up the Highland beef for the burgers this weekend. Hopefully we'll get RSVP's soon, so we can make sure to have enough food, drink & fun for everyone.