Well, I get depressed every time I walk out in the garden. (Unfortunately, I'm not joking) So to cheer myself up, I decided we needed to do some home preservation! We've been canning every night since Saturday. So far, the tally is:
2 pints and 20 half-pints of sliced peaches
2 pints and 5 half-pints of grape jelly (from wild grapes we found)
2 pints and 4 half-pints of peach peel jelly (made from the peels and pits of the peaches we canned earlier)
3 pints and 3 half-pints of strawberry jam (made from the strawberries we grew)
About half of a watermelon cut into half-inch slices and dehydrated
one tray of yogurt dallops dehydrated (first time for that--need to tweek it a bit)
two trays of strawberry leather (made from our berries)
I feel much more productive looking at my shelf of canned goods than I do looking at my garden!!
We have had trouble lately with cardinals getting into the chicken coop (no small feat...they have to crawl along the ground and squeeze under a 2x4). We're pretty sure they're coming after water because the drainage ditches and small creeks close to us are all dry. I think we're losing what tomatoes we have to the same problem. When I sit outside to watch the wildlife, it sure seems like the smaller critters are going after the tomatoes more as a water source than a food source. I'm thinking about picking all the tomatoes while they're still green and letting them ripen inside so we get some.
2 comments:
Do you have a bird cloth over your tomatoes? We did one this year and have saved a lot of them from the birds. However, the mice or something else are getting all of the low-lying tomatoes. Stinkers! Between the mice and caterpillars eating our tomatoes, I am not sure how many we will actually get.
Oh, they're too far gone to put any extra money into at this point. We've never covered them because we haven't had bird problems before this. Besides that, if it really is one of the only sources of water around, I'd rather them just have 'em!
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