That Crazy Canning Curse

We have just spent an wonderful but ,busy two and a half weeks up at the farm. I took up lots of supplies  with the intention on getting in and  getting a fair bit of canning accomplished. Before we left we made the decision to dig about 3/4 of our potato plants, not wanting to risk failure with remaining crop.

We  got a lot more potatoes than we expected to. these were "Nicola" brand that we bought as seed potatoes from Bunnings.

We kept enough to eat fresh while were were at the farm and decided to can the rest of them into chunks ready for mash or potato salad, and we also did a few jars of tiny new potatoes in their skins for a trial as I hadn't processed them that way before.We soaked  the chopped potatoes in several lots of water  before canning, as I have been told that  this helps to reduce the starch release from them after processing.

Before leaving the coast I had also taken advantage of some great sales at Harris Farm Market and purchased  about 6kgs of carrots and the same of sweet potatoes.

In all we ended up with 19 pints of white potatoes,plus 14 quarts of white potatoes,19 pints of carrots and 19 pints of sweet potato. I think I cut the sweet potato too small and will make them much bigger next time as I feel personally they are a little soft after pressure canning.

We also  bought a bulk lot of turkey wings  from our local poultry processing factory outlet at $1.25 per kg  before we went to the farm and half processed them on the coast(chopping into sections,Drummy ends,mid wing pieces and tips) and freezing into zip lock bags.
The first half of the drummy ends I skinned ,boned and chopped and set about preparing other chopped vegetables,potatoes,carrots,onion,celery, along with a pint of pre canned corn kernels.

I then packed all this in layers into quart jars,(there is no required order), added herbs and garlic,salt and pepper, covered with some pre-canned turkey stock,( but other times have used water and chicken stock powder.) and pressured canned for 90 minutes at 10lbs pressure.

These become really handy ready quick meals to heat and serve in minutes,we find them great as winter lunches.
With the other half of the  turkey drummy ends we also skinned and boned and then minced the turkey meat and made  the meat sauce recipe from the Ball Blue Book substituting the chicken with the turkey.I already have many,many jars of tomatoes canned from last season so it all goes in to make a rich tasty meat sauce for quickly pouring over cooked pasta and a yummy instant meal.

Normally I would use the bones from the drummy ends to make more stock, but we had our daughter's Kelpie dog visiting and our own old blue girl, so we decided to keep them along with the wing tips as treats for them which they loved.
the next thing we did was to can the turkey mid wing pieces,

We choose to pressure can these in our Fowlers Vacola No. 31  jars as we find it is the perfect size to stand 3 larger or 4 smaller wing pieces vertically in the jar. We raw pack these, add desired flavourings, but , no extra liquid as it produces it's own liquid under pressure.
We can fit 10 of these jars per load and on the second load I only had 5 turkey jars so filled up the remaining jars with chick peas  as they require the same processing time (90 min) as the turkey, and I prefer to run the canner full if possible for better efficiency.
Our rhubarb has been flourishing so we picked another bunch, this time I decided to chop it up and roast it in the oven with sugar and a little water, instead of in a pot on the stove top as I usually do. This worked well and after about an hour it broke down and I added some natural red food colouring and canned it up

We ended up with 7 yummy  crimson pints of  sweet rhubarb. I will probably take these over to my mum when I see her next as this is a really good size for her living alone, and I already have a great supply of my own. We love this for crumbles and pies with canned apple and also with ice cream and yoghurt. I also make homemade rhubarb ice cream which is beautiful.
My final canning job for the fortnight was a spur of the moment decision to use up some  canned plums I did last year that were way over ripe and went terribly mushy.
I decided to  dump a dozen jars in a pot, then blitzed them with my stick blender and strained through muslin to extract the  most liquid I could. I deiscarded the small amount of pulp and to the liquid in the pot I added  lemon juice, 2 pints of canned orange juice, and about 4 cups of sugar the original syrup in the plums already contained sugar)
I then boiled this mix for about 30 minutes and then poured into hot pints, sealed and water bathed at boiling point for 15 minutes.

I ended up with 12 pints of lovely fruity plum flavoured cordial.  I have been enjoying this  everyday with soda water and ice, a lovely refreshing drink, but would be equally lovely as a punch base or with white wine or sparkling mineral water.
I still have another 12 bottles of plums in the pantry so I will certainly be  turning them into more cordial to use at my leisure,well worth the effort.
We had a really busy canning schedule fitting it all in between all the other activities that we managed to accomplish on this visit. I have broken it all up into areas, and will post a few more times this week detailing  all these things we did.
So until then,
Take Care everyone,
Cheers,
Jane.

A mixed bag from the last three weeks.

This post is just a catch up of our crazy life over the last three weeks, a bit from the farm,a bit from here on the coast  and a bit from down south in  Wollongong.

The last few days at the farm, hubby decided that we really needed to clear up a bit up in the shed and as there was very limited storage and shelving, we decided to clear out one side and replace it with two sets of the  metal shelving that  had previously reserved to complete my pantry when the time came. We figured we could purchase more for that purpose later when they were needed.
We put all the  stuff out on the lawn while we erected the metal shelving.

It started to rain so we very quickly packed all the stuff onto the shelves and will sort it more when we are up next. The plan is to build a second  of shelves set further down the wall and put an existing bench that hubby has to place between them under the window.

After returning home to the coast, our lovely next door neighbours gave us another 

two big buckets of oranges to juice, so we got busy and canned that.I heat treated the juice for 5 minutes at 88 deg Celcius,filled and capped my bottles(they are 500 ml bottles) and placed into my water bath, covered with water, placed lid on, brought up to boiling and held at that temperature for 15 minutes.

We then headed to Wollongong, to await the birth of our third grandchild, that was to be born later that day. We are extremely proud to say we now have our first  totally gorgeous precious grandson.We were there to look after his big sister for the week that Mum was to be in hospital, freeing dad up to be with them both.
Unfortunately our little sweetheart had some major health issues and had to be transported  urgently by NETS to the NICU at Sydney Children's hospital and was there for two weeks before being transported back to Wollongong and now finally back home  with his family.
He is now doing wonderful and although needing  many follow up visits to specialists he is really good.We were really shocked at how quickly things can happen and how scary it can be.We are so very proud of how our daughter and son in law handled the situation.
While we held down the fort there hubby completed a few jobs and helped out where ever he could, he completed building a ping pong table that my son in law had started doing,

We did some gardening, clearing an area that  needed clearing, and scoring these two big clumps of clivia's that my daughter didn't want.(they will be lovely to plant up at the farm ) We also spent a fair bit of time sitting out on their  front deck admiring the view up the escarpment and listening to the ocean in the not too far away distance.

On one of our many trips up and down the highway to Sydney to see our precious little man we called in to the Bulli Pass cafe and  lookout to admire the stunning views over Wollongong and found some  friendly feathered  fellows as well.

Once our little man had been transferred back to Wollongong, we then returned back to our place and caught up on a few jobs  here as well.

Hubby got on with finishing  building  and painting his new bee box.
We  went and picked up a new  power inverter that we had ordered previously.

This 4000 watt inverter will replace our current 2400 watt inverter which we will now use to run our cool room and when that's not in use will be a good backup for us in case of lightning strike.The larger inverter will make a huge difference to us, it means we don't have to be quite so careful with the loads we place on the system.
We had been concerned that the  two big raised beds of potatoes we had planted may not produce  anything as they had not flowered(we had always been of the understanding that flowers were needed to produce a crop),but after  voicing  my concerns on my face book canning page, many people assured me that it was not always true)
So today we decided to do a test dig of just two plants.

Guess what we found .!!!

SPUDS...!!!!
lot's of yummy  beautiful spuds.We will leave the rest for a few weeks yet, as they haven't died off properly yet and they were still small  potatoes forming on the roots of the plants.
Looks like we will get a wonderful crop when we  finally dig them, this was 2 of about 50 plants.
It has been a crazy ,chaotic ,exhausting few weeks and this post only skimmed across  a bit of it.
The only thing that is important is that our beautiful baby boy is going to be okay, everything else pales in comparison, he was certainly being looked after, and I can't give enough praise for  all  the hospitals that  he was treated at, and the brilliant staff, they are just marvelous.
So until we meet again,
Take care,
Life is  precious,
Cheers,
Jane. :-)  :-)

Building Chicken Heaven

When we were up the farm last time  our friends from the coast came up to  help with a few jobs and we decided that it would be a good time to put together our chicken coop that we had previously purchased.
So we dragged all the flat packed boxes up to the big new chicken yard and the men set to work.

They unpacked each box searching for the  detailed instructions on how to put this  little  hen house together but alas the instructions were very minimal and nothing was numbered or lettered.

So they laid everything out and hubby just started working his way through  by looking at the photo of the finished product and got it started.Bit by bit they managed to work it out.

It was frustrating work, but it finally started coming together, by lunch time the hard working men decided that they had earned themselves a beer.

The Old Blue Girl kept a close watch on proceedings and stayed close in case the  men made a mistake or needed an extra set of hands(or paws).

They  then attached the laying box( I have always wanted a  cute coop like this with external access to the eggs in the nests.)This coop has three nest  spaces in the box.
Next the roof and the slide out cleaning shelf was added, with the help of their blue assistant.

And then Quality  Control stepped in  to inspect the coop  in the form of our beautiful  15 month old granddaughter who also was visiting us that day.Firstly the door, then the ramp.

 After a few important phone calls on Nannies mobile and helping her Pop  with a few last drilling jobs, we all sat back and admired our beautiful new coop.

We are really happy with the final product, I think it is just the cutest chicken coop and can hardly wait until we move and  get our poultry. We are going to build a second coop in the orchard and are seriously thinking of purchasing another of these.( now hubby knows how it goes together the  next one will be a breeze ) .
We still have to  create a few  barriers to turn any water run off away from the coop.
So until we meet again,
Take care everyone,
Cheers,
Jane.