After waiting for weeks for our deep freezers we ordered to arrive, Cam got a message that said “preparing your order for pickup”. He drove to Best Buy where we ordered them from to see if maybe they were at the back of the store or something.
After twenty minutes of trying to figure it out, they determined the freezers were not at the store and hadn’t been shipped there yet.
So the freezers that were scheduled to arrive last week never came. We knew that our beef would be ready for pick up soon. Then on Tuesday we got a message from the processor. 200lbs of beef was ready for pickup! Eek!
Our existing two chest freezers are full to the brim of vegetables and chicken so there was no space there.
You might be wondering why we didn’t just buy one locally and the answer is that we’ve had such good luck with the GE brand freezers we currently have (they have never failed) I didn’t want to take a chance with another brand.
It turns out beggars can’t be choosers when you are in dire need, so we found a 7 cubic foot chest freezer from our local Home Depot and bought it. Friday, Cam picked up the beef and it fit just right in the freezer.
Hopefully the freezers I ordered will make it by the time we process our pigs at the end of September.
It is great to have our pastured raised chicken and now our own grass fed beef! We had a salad with a little bit of steak just to try it out. It was very tender and yummy.
In the Garden
I will definitely make some adjustments to the garden next year. One is to set up irrigation and two is to add wood chip mulch in all the walking paths.
We worked super hard to keep the weeds down this year but they still overtook a few parts of the garden. It is not very motivating to have a weedy garden.
And yet, looking at the positive side of things, the garden is in better shape than it was at this time last year!
I have to remind myself often that it’s not a perfect garden that matters but that I am learning new things, growing each year, and doing a little better than before.
Harvesting this week
Lettuce, tomatoes, basil, yellow and green beans, cowpeas, carrots, leeks
It’s been so hot and dry, I haven’t sowed anything new. I am hoping to do it next week.
Preserving
Things are winding down with the vegetable canning, I’ll be moving to making more ready to eat soups from a can now that we have more of our own meat. For this week, I got a few things done.
- Froze 2 quart bags of pesto
- Canned 6 quarts of diced tomatoes
- Canned 7 quarts cajun cow pea soup
2 comments
What do cow peas taste like? Do you dry store them?
It’s been extremely dry and hot here too. My vegetable garden has just about packed itself up with the exception of the butternut squash. I love the stuff 😋
Nice!! Have you tried black eyed peas? Those are a type of cowpea. Cowpeas are very similar in taste and texture to a dried bean. Cowpeas are one of those plant it and forget it plants-at least here in the south. They do excellent in the south because they love heat. I have much better results with them then I do dried beans.