GIVEAWAY #1: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds – Salsa Collection

May 31, 2013 daddykirbs Leave a comment

This Give-a-way contest has ended. Congratulations sharronmainor!

Thank you so much for hanging out with me here on my blog. I really appreciate you! My blog and my YouTube channel go hand in hand so it makes sense for me to announce my YouTube prize giveaway here too.

It is my honor to offer these prizes to my YouTube subscribers!

Prizes offered are from The Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Company.
http://www.rareseeds.com/

RULES:

1. Subscribe HERE to my YouTube Chanel
2. Go to YouTube. Make a POSITIVE comment on this video.

That simple!

There will be a total of 4 Prizes from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Here is a list of the prize descriptions and retail values:

7-pack salsa collection – $17.00
8-pack color tomatoes – $18.50
8-pack watermelon collection – $20.70
Signed copy of The Heirloom Life Gardener – $29.95

The first prize, the Salsa Collection, will be given away to a subscriber when I reach a total of 600 subscribers. COMMENT on the video above!

Prize #1 – Salsa Collection

When I reach 600 subscribers I will take the names of each subscriber that left a comment on the video. The names will be dropped in a bucket and one lucky subscriber will be selected by one of my beautiful kids.

I would be honored for you to LIKE, SHARE and COMMENT
on my video. Subscribe HERE for more fun videos.

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food

My First Canning Experience

May 22, 2013 daddykirbs Leave a comment

Preserving food has to be on the list of things to learn for people who grow their own. Last year I had moderate success growing food, but nothing in excess that would need special preparations to preserve and keep. This year I optimistically plan on having “too much”. I need to learn how to CAN!

Our Nectarine trees have given us good reason to start. The trees were full of fantastic fruit. They were small but plentiful. We had to get this produce off the tree and in the house or we would lose it all to the birds and squirrels.

Enjoy a few photos of the fruit to whet your whistle before talking about the canning experience 🙂

Young Unripe Nectarines

First Sweet Nectarine of Season

Bowl full of Nectarines

Is your mouth watering? Mine is. Man, these little things taste good!

Our first experience canning was good. Stressful, but good. We were a bit stressed because we didn’t really know what we were doing. Yes, we had the internet, which is awesome… but there’s something about having first hand experience with you to make you feel confident as you take on a new task. I was concerned that we would get it wrong and ruin all of our wonderful fruit.

After a lot of deliberation and consideration we decided to purchase an inexpensive pressure canner to start with. We could have saved a few dollars and just went with the water bath canner for now, but we do intend to can some veggies later so the pressure canner won out. I know we didn’t buy the best canner, but it will do until we learn a few things.

I’m not here to give anyone a “How To”… at least not yet. For now I’m just sharing my experience.

We gathered all the fruit and let them sit inside for a day. This allowed them to sweeten up just a bit. After washing them all in the colander the Nectarines were cut off the pits.

I chose to use my Vitamix to chop the fruit into slurry goodness.

I was hoping to make a Sugar-Free jam, but opted for a Low Sugar recipe instead. I am pushing away artificial sweeteners in my life. There were no recipes that I could find that would allow me to make the jam without sugar and no substitute. This batch was made with a small amount of organic raw sugar.

Jars were in the dishwasher getting sanitized, lids were in a pot on the stove. The fruit jam ingredients were all being cooked according to the recipe. The water was warming in the Pressure Canner… All is good.

Well, after a little stress and frantic commotion in the kitchen we were able to achieve 12 wonderful little jars of jam. Funny thing is that after they came out of the put I put them on this towel and they started to “Pop Pop Pop”… I freaked out. What had I done wrong?? I ran to the internet to search for “Why are my canning jars popping?”. HaHa, well, that’s what they are supposed to do! That is the sound of the jars sealing up.

In a week or so, I’ll open one of these to see how it went. So far it appears that they set up just fine. I’ll let you know 😉

Update: Testing & Tasting

Testing the Preserves

Looks Good on the Spoon!

Bad Picture, but the color of the Preserves is amazing!

What a beautiful sight 🙂

I told him to pose with the spoon and
he didn’t even wait for me to get the
camera ready… he just ate the goods!

Breakfast 🙂

The Sugar and Pectin Used in Recipe

The Sugar and Pectin Used in Recipe.
The Recipe is on the back of the Pectin Jar.

Pin this 🙂

farm, projects

Farm Repairs: Nothing Glamorous

May 21, 2013 daddykirbs Leave a comment

This farm life touches my soul. No, seriously… I mean it. I LOVE living out here and I LOVE working at the farm chores. It makes me feel good.

Many times I get to do a project that has great reward in the sense that there is something great to show for it. Something I can show off… I can take pictures or make video and people WANT to see it (or at least I like to believe people want to see it).

Then there are times when you just have to get out there an maintain things. Do the routine. Fix that broken thingy that’s been sitting there too long. When you are done with a day like that you feel good, but there’s no cool structure to point at… no glamour.

This weekend was like that for me. It was rewarding to me, but not glamorous.

Here are a couple of projects I did get done.

On the main coop we have these wooden chicken doors that are hinged so they can be raised and lowered as needed. The wood has gotten soft over time so broke and sat unattended for too many months. Finally these are repaired.

The doors on the smaller coops have degraded over time. The original chicken wire has rusted and pulled loose. Many times we find that the kids or goats or somebody has pushed a hole in the wire. The chickens come out when we don’t want them too and we are concerned that raccoon, skunks or some other predator will find their way in.

I took the time, finally, to replace the old wire with something a bit more study. This is another one of those times when I wish I would have spent a little more time and money in the beginning so this would have to be done again so soon.

With those projects done and out of the way I can move on to the Grand and Glamorous projects! ahh who am I kidding. None of this is really Glamorous… just good fun.

farm, video

Predators on the Farm: Coyote

May 9, 2013 daddykirbs Leave a comment

When we first moved to the country it seemed that everything was new. The longer drive to work. Having a septic in the yard. Using Propane that is stored onsite in a big tank. Quieter neighbors. The air feels different… smells different. The country life is good. But… there’s something else. What’s that horrible sounds of children excitedly and painfully running through the nearby brush. It’s disturbing, unsettling and eery. It’s Coyotes.

Photo Courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2009-Coyote-Yosemite.jpg
Photographer: Yathin S Krishnappa

The sound often is accompanied by the sound of dogs. All the dogs in the area chime in with barking and howling. We have heard horror stories from the neighbors of a time when their dog got “called out” by the coyotes. The coyotes lured the dogs to the edge of safety then attacked the pets. Normally only entrails or tufts of hair remain to give the owners a clue of what happened.

When we first got goats we were completely ignorant. No clue of how to protect our new little family members from these predators. The two little goats went into an area that I carefully fenced in for them. The goats seemed happy. They didn’t get out of the fence, which was my main concern initially.

Here is a short video showing the goats right after we got them. Meet “Sweetie” and “Oreo”.

It wasn’t too many mornings later when I discovered my mistakes. I believe it was on a Sunday morning after returning home from church when we noticed that one of the goats was missing. We looked all over the farm for the missing goat. It was nowhere to be found. The one remaining was noticeably shaken up. After about an hour of looking for the goat my son came to me claiming that he had found her “guts”. I wasn’t too quick to panic because I thought for sure he probably was seeing something else. Nope, I was wrong… he was right. The findings were unmistakably guts… and guts that looked like those from a mammal about the size of a goat. These findings were located near a place along the fence line that looked as if it was dug out. The offenders had dug under the fence and dragged out our little friend, Oreo.

The questions now are “What do I do?” “How do I protect my animals?”

I’m not sure of all the answers, but I hope to figure it out. One method is using Guard Animals.

Some of the farmers around me swear by donkeys. Others say donkeys don’t work and they swear by dogs… particularly the Great Pyrenees. I’ve also heard some say that the Llamas can’t be beat to protect the herd. I think they all probably have their good and bad points.

I, personally, don’t want to invest in and feed another animal at this point. I’m looking into fencing options that will keep them out. After the one goat was taken I woke me up to the fact that my silly little 4 foot barbed wire fence wasn’t gonna do it.

I’ll post updates about my efforts as they happen.

Share your experiences and solutions here in the comments.

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garden

Eggshells in the Garden: How to Save, Store, Use Organic Calcium

May 4, 2013 daddykirbs 9 Comments

Eggshells in the Garden: Save The Shells!

There is no good point to tossing eggshells into the garbage. The landfill doesn’t need your valuable resources! Save those shells for your garden 🙂

We like the idea of the eggshells being “cooked” before use just in case there would be any “nasties” on the shells. In general I’m not extremely concerned about germs, bacteria or viruses… but sometimes I figure it’s better to err on the side of caution. Cooking the shells should kill all the offenders so that when we use the shells we aren’t risking illness by handling them.