Sunday, August 26, 2012

Hunting & Gathering

We are in harvest mode in the garden.  Yesterday alone we picked 40 pounds of tomatoes and 8 pounds of green beans.  We are still getting zucchini, cucumber, green peppers, onions and garlic.  I found a spaghetti sauce recipe that is fantastic and I can make it entirely with contents from our garden.

With so much we decided to get busy canning right away.  We put up 9 quarts of green beans, 7 quarts of tomatoes, and 4 quarts of the spaghetti sauce.  Previously we had frozen a couple bags of corn and some grated zucchini.

Speaking of the freezer, deer season is rapidly approaching.  We have been working hard at cleaning out the freezer by eating what is left of last year's deer meat, and other frozen items from last year.  Squirrel season is already in and we made squirrel and dumplings on Friday.  I made my dumplings from scratch using a double batch of J.P.'s Big Daddy Biscuits.

It is so fun to be partially self sufficient.  Many of our meals lately have come from things that we have preserved, saved, harvested, or hunted.  In addition, like the biscuits, much of our ingredients we start from scratch.

We have always composted, but now a bunch of our fresh vegetable scraps go to the animals.  My hope is to plant our own hay to be able to feed them next year instead of buying it.  I guess if the Mayan's were right about December 12th, we will be prepared to survive here on the east half of the southwest quarter.

No comments: