As everyone has probably noticed we've been a little behind on the blogging lately. This is mostly due to my laziness, but we've also been busy working, playing, gardening, swimming, canning, collecting eggs and traveling. Without a doubt we had a very busy but fun summer!
The kids stayed busy with trips to the lake, park, water park and just playing in the yard. I think their favorite thing was to go the the little "lake" we have in our town. It really isn't a lake by any means but its a great place to cool off.
E and T both celebrated their birthdays this summer and the big hit for T was the remote control boat he had been dreaming of.
Our garden was a great success. We had lots of veggies to eat and even more to can. It seemed as though Heath and I were canning every night for 6 weeks straight.
We ended up with over 325 onions to store for the winter along with the ones we used right out of the ground throughout the summer.
The carrots we grew were actually a huge surprise. As mentioned before, our soil is very, very rocky. We were expecting twisted, split and gnarly looking carrots but over 90% of our carrots were straight and beautiful.
This was our biggest cabbage. It was sweet, and very tender!
We really did eat as much as we could from our garden and the rest we put away. Here is our canning/freezing tally for the season:
7 pints grapefruit
5 gallons frozen broccoli
9 quarts frozen peas
5 quarts freezer slaw
7 pints strawberry-rhubarb jam
26 pints strawberry jam
9 pints pickled squash/zucchini
19 pints pickled yellow squash
5 quarts ham and bean soup
3 pints frozen strawberries - sliced
1 gallon frozen strawberries - halved
4 pints bread and butter pickles
12 quarts frozen zucchini
10 pints apricot halves in light syrup
20 pints apricot jam
12 quarts frozen apricots
7 pints kosher dill chips
60 quarts kosher dill pickles - whole
34 pints green beans
7 quarts new potatoes
29 quarts whole tomatoes
8 pints crab-apple jelly
8 golden acorn squash
6 pints canned chicken breast
7 quarts homemade sauerkraut
10 pints yellow squash
6 quarts diced tomatoes
10 pints beets
19 pints salsa
4 pints frozen green beans
3 quarts goulash
325 onions
223 lbs potatoes
5 pints black eyed peas
4 pints white beans
5 pints pinto beans
2 pints roasted green chilies
38 quarts peaches
27 pints carrots
10 quarts pears
4 quarts chicken soup
1 quart chicken broth
8 pumpkins
14 quarts applesauce
7 gallons apple cider
65 lbs venison
3 gallons frozen plums
Just before Memorial Day we found some praying mantis egg sacks at our local nursery. We seemed to have an over abundance of wild ladybugs, but we wanted to make sure that any unwanted pests would get eaten. So we took a chance and hatched out hundreds of baby praying matids. When the hatched each was approximately 1/4 of an inch.
After they hatched we placed them in the garden and it seemed as if weeks went by before we saw a single one. After about about 5 weeks we found three healthy matids on our corn. Although we didn't see much of them in action, we weren't plagued by a single potato beetle, squash bug, or aphid!
Amid all of our gardening and canning we also extracted honey from Heath's beehives.
Despite having a fairly dry summer we managed to get over 200 lbs of honey from Heath's 3 hives!
Our chickens have also come a long way. They are now full grown laying hens. We are now have 9 hens and we get about 8 eggs every day. In all reality they are quite spoiled. They wander around eating anything and everything they can find.
I know it sounds weird but they love to be involved in anything we do too. They are more like pets than livestock. They play with the kids and follow us around everywhere.
This last weekend we had the pleasure to visit my parents and they graciously let Heath hunt. Heath was really excited because it has been 3 years since his last deer hunt. T wanted more than anything to go hunting with Dad, so Heath explained to him that it would be cold, early, there would be lots of hiking and he would have to be very quite. T agreed that he could do it. It turns out T is a natural born hunter like his Dad and did great on his first hunt! He tagged along with all the men and didn't complain or give up! He was especially excited when Heath shot his deer. Heath and I feel that it is very important for our children to know where food comes from and what sacrifices are made in order to feed our family. And Heath is adamant that our children understand that meat does not come from mysterious Styrofoam trays in a grocery store, but rather from living, breathing animals. We hope to instill in our children a sense of appreciation and gratitude for what we have been blessed with.
My brother and sister-in-law also visited my parents the same weekend. And upon planing this trip we agreed that we should make the arrangements to press apple cider. My amazing sister-in-law scoured our local area to find apples to pick. We found posts on Craigslist for apples to pick, we picked wild apples, and my dad even found us a great apple tree just by asking the homeowner.
We all had a great time, and I loved that everyone was involved. All the kids really enjoyed picking apples and there was so much to do, we all had our own part in making the cider.
Heath and my brother manned the cider press while my sister-in-law washed apples. My mom bottled the cider and the kids helped with everything! We ended up with over 23 gallons of fresh, delicious apple cider. Our share was 7 gallons. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun and worth every minute!
All in all we had a great summer!
