PUTTING IT UP - PRESERVING THE HARVEST

I'm still at work with my three garden mega-harvest and we're being blessed like crazy!

Not only did the Hive account@bluerthangreen family leave their garden under my care, but another neighbor as well, so I've got three gardens to take care of and harvest!

Just in case you missed my excited vlog about watching the three gardens, there's the video!

FOOD FOR THE WINTER!

Now that delicious pile of fresh food isn't exactly going to stay that way. Soon, it'll just rot if we don't do anything with it. Besides enjoying some fresh, we've got to preserve the rest, so I had a one man preservation party after the Hive account@little-peppers went to bed the other night.

I like to prepare bags of "stir fry mix" and freeze them, so that was my first task. Out of four Snake Gourds and a few other plants I prepared six family sized stir fry mixes for the winter. All we'll have to do is heat up some oil or butter in a skillet and dump the bag in for a delicious meal this winter. We can also add some meat if we desire.

The major goal was to put up all the cucumbers and turn them into pickled. I use a simple vinegar & water mixture with a few other added ingredients. Due to the large volume of cucumbers, I used quart jars, which is a good size for my family anyway.

The interesting cucumbers from the Hive account@bluerthangreen & Hive account@allforthegood garden made some great slices. While I don't use some sort of a crinkle-cut knife to slice the pickle slices, the rough edge of these cucumbers still gave it a similar effect. Don't they just look cool?

I use a hot water bath to can most of garden vegetables. I've been doing it for years and thus far still haven't used a pressure cooker, although Hive account@mama-pepper does have some experience with those. Eventually we hope to build an outdoor kitchen down on our land to keep it cool in the house when we are having canning parties. We will see.

In total, I made thirty six quart jars of pickles! Some were whole, others were spears, and the rest were slices! That looks pretty good so far, but I'm going to have round two tonight, so there will be more to come! I should probably send a few down to the neighbors too as a way of saying thanks, don't you think? Anyway, turning that big pile of fresh garden vegetables into six stir fry meals and thirty six jars of pickles is pretty good in my opinion!