The Weekly Digs #184

It was a big week of preservation! After harvesting most of the cowpeas last week, we made 21 quarts of Cajun Cowpea Soup. Kian asked me multiple times if he could just open one jar and my answer was no, we need to save them for winter.

Well, as I was cleaning the jars to put them away, I realized one did not seal. I knew that jar was going to Kian, since he made it clear he needed some to tide him over for a while. His lucky day! He jumped for joy and ate the entire jar in one sitting.

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We also picked a bunch of our black beans this week and made canned pork and beans. I’m super excited to have more meals ready to eat in jars. This recipe also comes from the same pressure canning book as the Cajun Black-Eyed peas and the Baked beans I mentioned last week.

The pork and beans recipe was off on the amount of jars it said it would make, it made less than expected. But the recipe smelled really good before going in the pressure canner. 

I also canned some chicken stock at the same time since I didn’t use it all in the soups and beans I made. My next idea is to make some more freeze dried meals. The pork and beans are better off canned than freeze dried because of the higher fat and they need to be cooked for a long time anyway.

But I’m planning on maybe trying to make some freeze dried chicken soup in the next couple weeks (I need a break before I start on this since I’m tired of preserving for the time being. Haha!)

I’m going to switch over to a few garden projects. We are expecting our first frost this coming Tuesday so we are harvesting ALL the basil, peppers, tomatoes, and dried beans. 

My green beans are so close to harvest! So I am going to try and save them with a double layer of row cover and plastic. Hopefully it works!

It’s a bittersweet time of year as I say goodbye to all the warm season crops and embrace lots of greens and roots for eating instead. 

Cam and the kids have periodically working on chicken coop #5. Our meat birds are almost ready to move out to grass so we’ll need to finish it up soon.