Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

We are on the way to break our canning record for total jars – and varieties of food – canned in one weekend. Granted, we had a lot of help, as Anja & Duff and Zach & Rachel were around all weekend, and Jens and Grace stopped by on Saturday. 

We started off on Saturday morning picking tomatoes and then picking through (and cleaning) a pick-up load of apples, which we ran through our apple press.  It was a beautiful morning, not too hot and windy enough to keep flies away (had a lot of bees buzzing around us though).  We ended up with  about 40 gallons of apple cider. 

Jens and Grace stopped by and brought along half a bucket (5 gallon sized) of assorted hot peppers from their garden and a 50 pound bag of onions from Sams Club.  In the afternoon, Duff came up with his first batch of original salsa – which we called “Duff’s Smokin Salsa” (it contained chipotle and ancho peppers and we roasted the onions before adding them).  Today (Sunday) we canned some of the cider,canned some peaches, started a batch of apple wine, made another batch of salsa (this one was a milder variety), made apple sauce and nectarine sauce (some we mixed 50:50), and canned all of this, and cooked enough tomatoes for another batch of sauce.

We used the burners on our kitchen stove, the side burner on the gas grill and the turkey fryer outside, as we just ran out of space in the kitchen during all this processing.  In the middle of all this, we all went to Chambersburg to watch Lars and the Big Spring Midget Football varsity team win their first game of the season.  Go Bulldogs!

Here is what we ended up with by Sunday night:

• 20 gallons of apple wine (30 pounds of sugar added)
• 38 quarts of canned apple cider
• 10 gallons of cider in gallon jugs in refrigerator
• 18 half pints of “Smokin Salsa”
• 15 half pints of “Mild Salsa”
• 20 quarts of Spaghetti Sauce
• 31 pints of apple/nectarine sauce
• 6 quarts of plain apple sauce
• 7 quarts of peaches

For the last two weekends we have been working on harvesting, freezing and canning the rest of the corn. By the end of Sunday (August 29) we had frozen over 200 quarts of sweet corn – lost track of counting somewhere along the line. Had several friends stop by and pick corn for their own use plus we made 5 gallons of chicken corn soup, which we canned.

Jeff helped a friend butcher a beef – and came home with one of the hind quarters. He cut a lot of it into cubes for stew, had some ground into hamburg and used the bones and left over meat to make about 5 gallons of vegetable beef soup. Froze all the meat and canned the soup.

Continued working on tomatoes at the same time – made more spaghetti sauce, canned 12 quarts of plain tomato juice and made a batch (20 pints) of black bean-corn-tomato salsa. No end in sight yet for the tomato harvest – currently have two 5 gallon buckets of roma tomatoes in the refrigerator, ready to be processed.

Last week we also pulled out all the irrigation lines – (except those that are permanent in the blackberries) – and used the tractor with the bush hog to mow the corn stalks and the fields around the garden and corn patch – which made everything look a lot better.

The weather continues to be hot and dry and the water level in the pond is rather low. Lars started Middle School on Wednesday and we dropped Samantha off in Brooklyn on Friday for her senior year at Pratt. Midget football started a few weeks ago, and with Sam off in college we’ve got to drive Lars to practice three evenings a week (which kind of cuts into the weeding time). Zach and Rachel closed on their house in Ohio today, so they will be moving in a month.

After a wonderful week at the beach we returned to PA to find out that everything on our farm had a major growth spurt. It rained over 5 inches while we were gone – lucky for us we had just gotten the new rainspouting installed on the barn the day before we left for vacation. The vegetable plants, as well as the weeds and grass, had grown incredibly fast. We got home around 10 am on Saturday after a 12 hour drive from South Carolina, took a short nap and got to work in the garden. By that evening we had picked and cleaned 1 bushel of green beans and pulled all the weeds out of the herb garden and the flower beds around the house – 6 wheelbarrow loads of weeds for the compost pile! We picked and processed another bushel of beans on Sunday and altogether froze 24 quarts. These were the earlier variety of snap beans, the second variety we planted is just now in blossom.

We also picked 3 buckets (the 5 gallon size) of cucumbers, and loads of zucchini as well – shared much of this weekend’s harvest with friends. Luckily Rachel and Zach had kept up with the zucchini while the rest of us were at the beach – Rachel baked 12 loaves of zucchini bread that week.

On Monday evening, after a spice shopping spree, we made our first batch of “bread and butter” pickles and canned 7 pints. We have not made pickles for a long time, and our plan is to experiment with different recipes and methods, from fermenting, to fresh pack (like the batch we just did) to refrigerator pickles. We’ll have to wait and see which ones turn out best. Even the fresh pack pickles take about 4 weeks in the jar in order to develop their flavor. Here is hoping that they stay crunchy after being canned 🙂

Temperatures soared up to 110 degrees this afternoon, it has not rained for days and there is not rain in the forecast – luckily we have irrigation in our blackberry rows and the vegetable garden. Both are doing great: