Productive Morning

 It has been a busy and productive morning!

Started with my Thursday morning chat with Soni.

And then I got up and made breakfast.

(Eggs, bacon & okra... yum!)

Then we all adjourned to Rod's computer

in our bedroom and looked at house plans

and narrowed it down to two online

and one Kyle drew up.

Printed those and the guys headed out to the

farm with some sticks and surveyor's tape

to mark it out on the property.

Meanwhile,

I pulled the ice cream, ice cream sandwiches,

and bananas out of the freeze dryer to process.

Set the hair dryer in the FD to start the defrosting...

OOPS!

Should have used parchment paper under the

bananas! It's been awhile since I've done any

of those and they stick really badly.

But I got them all into bags.

We got 12 bags of bananas,

14 bags of ice cream sandwiches,

12 bags of unicorn ice cream,

and then I did another 12 bags of

peaches from some I dried in 2022.

They were a big hit last week at

the market, so I bagged some up and I'll 

bring another big bag in case we sell out.

Then I washed those trays and pulled

the jars of tomato puree out of the fridge.

I was watching one of my YouTube people

the other day and she was doing tomatoes.

(Canning, not freeze drying) 

and she ran her's through a collander to get

some of the seeds out.

DUH!

Look at all that beautiful pulp (and SEEDS)

I dumped it into my fine mesh strainer and

used a soup ladle to scrape it back and forth

and work all the juice and pulp into the bottom

bowl and hold back the seeds and skin.

After 4 minutes (I timed it) of work,

this is what was left.

I ended up with 4 trays of beautiful, smooth, delicious

tomato puree with ZERO seeds.

Less than 20 minutes of work probably saved

9 or more hours of freeze drying time.

(Those seeds really hang on to the moisture...)

And it will yield a MUCH nicer product.

Also a fray of diced no-heat jalapenos we

froze the other day.

Got that all done and the kitchen cleaned up

in just over 45 minutes.

Meanwhile the freeze dryer was all defroster,

so I opened it back up to let it come to

room temperature. (The hair dryer gets it

pretty HOT in there, but defrosts it in about

30 minutes instead of about 3 hours...)

Once it was room temp, I turned it back on

to start really cooling the chamber.

Took it from 96 to 36 in about 30 more

minutes.

And then I got 3 more trays of apples and

2 trays of grated zucchini out of the freezer

and put those in the FD to get dried.

Back into the house to do a quick blog post

and eat some leftovers from dinner.

And then I'm heading out to the farm to

check on the guys.

Whew!

I'm pleased with today's progress!

MORE Pickles!

 So I opened a jar of pickled okra yesterday.

And then I pulled all the okra out of the fridge,

sliced it and put it in the freezer to

freeze dry.

Ugh.

I wasn't a huge fan. 

It wasn't terrible, but not as good as I hoped.

However, we had a busy day yesterday.

(Surprise, surprise...)

We spent the morning doing chores around

the house, like getting the stuff out of

the freeze dryer and processing it

(I got 26 bags of everything bagel zucchini bites)

and then defrosting the machine and

getting the next batch in.

(ice cream and bananas)

Then about 1:00 Kyle came home from

the farm and we headed to our local

sale barn for a cattle auction!

It's a small facility.

But looks like all the other sale barns I've been to.

There were a couple of buyers.

One man was buying for a few ranchers

and spent about $89k on just one group!

Kyle was kind of keeping track and he thinks

he spent close to $300,000 on cattle!!!

So.

We decided to try to go direct - we have a few

friends here now who raise beef cattle.

We are looking for 3 or 4 heifers (young girls)

and 2 steers and MAYBE a milk cow if we

can find / afford one. But should probably wait

until next year on that...

Anyhow. 

It was fun, but intimidating.

And cows are STILL really really really expensive.

So get ready for rising beef prices...

I'm used to paying about $650 for a calf.

They went for $1600-$1900 yesterday.

WHAT?

***Also, stock up on your holiday pecans,

the pecan crop got wiped in Helene....

I ordered a bag on my Sam's delivery this week.

I don't use a ton, but I am out.

Then it was back home to have some lunch

and clean the house.

And then we headed out to the farm.

Kyle has been installing the siding on the exterior

and boy it looks GREAT!!!!

Changed it from a "hunting cabin / shanty / what is this?"

to a house!

It looks so good!

He will have to rent a telehandler to do the 2nd floor,

but he needs one to shingle the roof anyway.

So he'll get the bottom floor all finished and then we will

look into renting the equipment.

(The shingles are on a pallet under the house

awaiting installation...)

Meanwhile, Rod went to the well to swap out

the float valve that turns the pump on and off.

Ours is stuck open (which is better than closed, I guess,

but the pump runs continuously and we don't want to

burn it out...)

But when he got it all installed, they put the wrong

valve in the box. Its upside down.

When the float sinks down (like we are out of water)

the pump turns OFF. And then it is high it turns ON.

NOPE.

So he had to package it all back up and call the guy

who was very apologetic. He's sending a return

label and a new (tested) valve.

While he was doing that, I hit the garden.

Kyle has been busy and hasn't picked lately.

I guess I"m doing another batch of pickles this morning.

Hahahahaha.

Also I got 5 or 6 really nice looking zucchini.

I'll make them into more chips.

They are yummy and if they don't sell,

we can always enjoy them ourselves.

There are also about 10 nice lemon cucumbers,

but I left them on the plants to pick on Friday

before we go to market on Saturday.

Better get to it.

I've decided it's time to stop freeze drying 

doodads for the market now and get back

to processing "food". I'm going to head over

to the local butcher and get some ground beef

(I just CAN'T eat WalMart hamburger... its just

doesn't taste right...) and get that cooked up

and then into the freeze dryer (once the other

loads ahead of it get done...)

But that's for another day.

Right now, its pickles and then get ready

to teach this evening.

Keeping Ralph Busy

 Ralph is our Freeze Dryer.

This run has gone 35 hours so far.

I'm getting ready to pull it.

We are 5 hours into the extra dry time.

And that is probably enough.

He is currently full of french fry shaped

zucchini with Everything Bagel seasoning.

All my 10 metal trays are full, so these

are on the plastic lids.

I don't love using them as trays because you

can't fill them as full, but, in a pinch....

Next up we have 2 trays of bananas,

1.5 trays of ice cream sandwiches

and 1.5 trays of "unicorn & sparkles"

ice cream we bought at WalMart yesterday.

I used my smallest cookie scoop and put

it in little balls on the trays this morning.

I'll probably leave it in the freezer for a couple more hours

so the bananas can get a good freeze on them.

It doesn't like it when you mix frozen and nonfrozen foods together.

But bananas don't take long to freeze.

Next up after that will be 3 trays of apples (the last of them)

and 2 trays of grated zucchini.

(I'll pull them out of the bags before they go in...)

Of course we also have BAGS and BAGS of chopped

zucchini and yellow squash.

As well as 5 more quarts of tomato puree in the fridge.

But this morning I'm going to pickle the okra.

I think there are... 3? 4? gallon bags of okra

in the fridge that I need to take care of.

And since it's kind of chilly, I won't

mind turning on the oven.

It looks like we might be able to

start picking beans tomorrow or Thursday.

We have eaten a couple fresh from the garden,

but most of them still need a day or two.

AND!!!!!

Yesterday we found the first flowers on the peas!!!

I know that means there are still a couple weeks

before we have enough to harvest, but at least

they are doing something besides just getting TALL.

(We are watching for first frost.....)

Of course Kyle keeps the tomatoes picked.

(Right into his mouth....)

But there are still lots and lots of green ones.

And we might FINALLY be getting a few snacking peppers!

Every few days he pulls a carrot or two just to check.

They are starting to form little tiny carrots.

He said they taste amazing! But they are basically

carrot flavored hair at this point.

A cold front came through last night while I was 

teaching my evening class.

I was watching my little weather station on my desk.

(teaching is kind of boring, so I sometimes have

other stuff going on to keep me awake... lol.)

The humidity was about 36% when I started.

And then after about an hour,

the wind picked up and the humidity

started to drop like a ROCK.

It got as low as 24% while I was watching.

This morning it's back up to about 28%.

And it's 72 in the house.

Which is nice and pleasant.

We are wearing sweats and slippers.

HA.

The high for the day outside is only 71.

(it's currently 59.)

But it is a short lived cool front because

tomorrow is supposed to be 89.

And 93 by Saturday.

So I'm not too worried about frost just yet.

(Our first frost is usually October 12-ish

but depending on who you talk to,

some say it will be November, and some

say it will be any day now.)

Anyhow.

We are keeping a close eye on it.

Don't want to lose our peas and beans.

We will lose the tomatoes, but that's ok.

We will just pick everything and let

it ripen in the house.

Anyhow.

That's what today looks like!