The Weekly Digs #124
Preserving
Preserving food, especially by way of canning, always takes longer than I anticipate! I usually spend the morning in the garden and then help the kids do chicken and turkey jobs. Then I get a block of time to get started canning.
The preparation, let’s say for diced tomatoes, is done in a few hours and then I make and clean up dinner and by then I need to actually do the water bath or pressure canning. Then next thing I know it’s 2am when I finish.
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That has happened multiple days this week and the last two days I’ve had four hours of sleep each night. I put in all the work to grow a lot of food and I feel like it’s important to preserve it before anything goes bad.
Here is what I did this week… from what I can remember. My mind is so tired!
- 14 Quarts canned diced tomatoes
- 18 pints canned diced tomatoes
- 6 pints canned marinated roasted red peppers
- 14 Quarts canned chicken bone broth
In the Garden
The most exciting thing in the garden this week was we found that the corn was ripe for picking! It is beautiful and so yummy!
Most of the ears have some form of corn earworm damage but it’s not bad. We just chop off the tip and it’s still good to eat the rest.
I also spent the week doing quite a lot of weeding and many, many hours harvesting tomatoes. I’m sure I harvested over a hundred pounds of tomatoes again this week.
I transplanted some lettuce that will mature in about a month. Tropicana and Coastal Star. They are both supposed to do well in the heat.
I’m a little late to it, but I did another garden tour. I have it scheduled to publish tomorrow at noon on YouTube. I’ll link to it when it’s live 🙂Â
Cows
Cameron had quite the ordeal this Wednesday trying to get a couple of our bulls to the vet. We borrowed a friend’s stock trailer and Cameron woke up early to get them loaded in time for a 9am appointment.
He was trying to get our new calf, Jed, along with Jethro (one year old), and our mature bull, Auggie, all loaded. Auggie had pink eye and had to go in for that and the other two will be castrated.
Cameron was able to get Auggie loaded easily but the two calves would not even get near the cattle panels, let alone the trailer. He struggled for over an hour and left with just Auggie. Below is a picture of the pink eye. Which now, a few days after the vet visit has completely clear up.
He was able to make another vet appointment two weeks from now for the calves that were stubborn. He is going to borrow someones cattle panels so he can make more of an enclosure and then load them from there.
