JAP69's Blog

Tomatoes froze, squash froze and the peppers froze.
Beets in container, scallions, lettuce and flower plants look like they may have survived.
Have three radishes that survived which will go in my salad tonight along with three or four scallions.

The containers should be empty if the viola flowers freeze by January or February to be ready for the steamer to rid the potting mix of nematodes and fungi. 

Make plans the end of the month for my seed purchases that may not be available locally. Want to get a nice start on my seeding for next year to have sizable plants for transplanting.

I was thinking the last few days I would like to try making my own breakfast sausage. I seen at the market you can buy fresh ground pork. Back home when I was younger my father would make our own sausage for patties. I have no idea what he used for spices but it tasted dam* good.

This was done after we done our hog harvesting when it got fall time and the weather was cool enough. We also had our own smoke house to smoke meats.

This is the recipe I am going to start with and adjust for taste preference after the first go at it.

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Homemade Pork Breakfast Sausage

https://www.thespruce.com/homemade-pork-breakfast-sausage-3060593

Just went out to take a walk about around the garden. Discovered that one of the Rutgers tomato plants had a branch snap at the main stem. I have them staked at the main stem but did not get around to building the chimneys yet. The branch grew out so large gaining weight that it snapped. I finished clipping it off at the main stem and re broke the snapped off branch back a few inches getting fresh plant tissue exposed. Pushed the branch stem down into potting soil in another container having a pepper plant in it and gave it some water.

Done it just to see if it would take root and grow from the broken stem point. No big loss as it would have been thrown away any how.

I like beans now and then to go with my food intake. I buy canned beans at the store now and then also but prefer to make my own.

This is how I do it.
  I take my quantity of beans I am using for my recipe and place them in a stove top pot with the amount of water required. Just plain water not adding anything. Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 hour covered or until done. Strain and return to pot adding my ingredients and simmer for 1 hour. If I want beans with meat [sausage or beef] I will pre fry the meat and add to pot. One pound or so of ground meat.

Adjustable recipe depending on the spices you like.

16 oz red kidney beans
1 onion of choice [ pre glazed in frying pan]
1 green pepper, diced
3/4 cup smoked BBQ sauce
1/2 cup light or dark brown sugar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 tsp dry mustard or a splash or two of mustard of choice
14 oz drained tomatoes [ I have used inexpensive spaghetti sauce at one time]
1 tbsp paprika
1/2 tsp cumen
1 tbsp cajun seasoning

Adjust thickness desired by adding liquid of choice. [ I have used apple cider juice at one time or another]
I like my beans that are not running all over the plate.

On our farm we had an apple orchard. It was not of any great size with a few pear trees here and there. Those pears when just right at the peak of on the vine ripeness were the best tasting pears you ever want to eat. I have never seen pears at the store that matches the taste of those pears.

Anyhow we use to bushel up enough apples and take them to an apple presser that lived nearby. We use to do up a 50 gallon barrel of apple cider. Great tasting stuff.

I buy their so called apple cider made from concentrate at the store nowadays. I also buy apple cider vinegar with the mother to use with apple cider. An 8 ounce glass of store bought apple cider with a splash of apple cider vinegar tastes great. The vinegar takes away a lot of the sweetness in the apple cider.

I started using apple cider vinegar when I seen it touted for weight loss. That is also why I started using it in the apple cider. I started about 6 months ago using the apple cider vinegar along with watching my carb and snack food intake and have lost 35 pounds in that length of time. Other than that I eat the same food I always have.

Back when I was younger people use to do more canning and preserving than they do now. I can remember our basement stocked with home made canned goods, crooks for pickling and of course we had a large freezer.

When I buy vegetables at the market these days I prefer packages of frozen vegetables. Has more of a taste of freshness in my opinion.

I have relatives that dried a lot of their garden harvest that were suitable to be stored dried.

Do you know storing potatoes improperly could give off a hazardous gas. Look it up on the net.

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How Much to Plant Per Person in the Vegetable Garden

https://www.thespruce.com/how-many-vegetables-per-person-in-garden-1403355

Went out and watered the plants today, Staked up the Siberian tomato plant. Put some ferlizer [bone meal] on some flower plants.

Lettuce in small basin is doing good. More radishes to be harvested. Got a couple spinach plants that finally came up in the 10qt container.

 Two radishes and two scallions. Maybe I will check and see what flower petals are edible. I heard about eating flower petals but thought it was only old wives tales.

I mentioned in previous post that it cost $375.00 plus or minus to set up the container garden. Now that it is setup for planting it should last a great many years. The wooden containers will probably rot to the point of being unusable at some point in the future.

The yearly cost after setup should be only for seeds, ferlizer and products for pest and treatment of plant ailments.

Expanding the container count could also add to the cost.

Chalk it all up to being a hobby, learning experience and having my own fresh vegetables and some flower plants for admiration.

Just in the yard checking on things. The radishes [ Raphanus sativus] finally grew some roots large enough to harvest for my salad tonight. The bunching onions [AKA scallions] have a couple plants that look large enough for my salad tonight.

A couple radishes and a couple scallions will be in my salad tonight.

Tonight's harvest feast being my first real harvest since starting cost me about $375.00 +- and four months of learning container gardening with more to learn and a few dollars more for supplies to get next years growing season off to a good start.

The flower plants are doing well. The pansies I dead headed and trimmed back has one of the two remaining pansy plants with one flower in full bloom.

The rest of the vegetable plants are still alive. Struggling along with cool weather now.

Swedish fish filet knife

https://www.surlatable.com/product/PRO-683425/?adpos=none&creative=113913132488&device=c&matchtype=&network=d&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImMq6zI_f1wIV3HjBCh3wLA1JEAEYASABEgKoA_D_BwE

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I have one that was made in Finland. Sharpest knife you ever want to see. Honed sharp as a razor. The steel in those knives are grade a number one.

I got mine at a yard sale for something like 5 or 10 dollars. Mine has a wooden handle. I have a two sided wet stone with honing oil so I can sharpen knives to slice a piece of paper with one stroke.

I learned how to hone knives when I was young for obvious reasons living on a farm.

Yep, we had a bad ass farm dog. That dog was a woodchuck hunter among the best. He would sneak up on a woodchuck and the woodchuck would sit up on his hind legs when it spotted the dog. Our dog would see that and then start running circles around the woodchuck. The woodchuck would pivot around on his hind legs at the speed the dog was circling him. The woodchuck would get all dizzy and fall over and our dog would go in for the kill grabbing the woodchuck by the neck and breaking it.
Woodchucks are bad if they took up residence in the cow pasture. Woodchucks dig and entry hole on an angle and an exit hole vertically. A cow could step into the hole and break a leg and it would be all over for the cow. Best to see the woodchuck meet their demise rather than a valuable cow.

We use to plant corn with what is called a corn planter which was attached to the back of the tractor planting two rows at a time. The planter was calibrated to drop a corn kernel in the row so far apart from the last kernel dropped. We would finish planting and sometimes a crow or crows would come swooping down to where we planted the corn kernels. The crows would see where the corn rows were and walk over and find a kernel of corn. Then you would see the crow walk the exact distance to the next kernel in the row and pluck it right out of the ground. They did not need to grub around in the corn row to find the next kernel as they knew the distance on how far apart the next kernel was planted.

We had chickens on the farm, hens and roosters. We kept maybe a hundred or less for eggs and eating to be sold. I use to feed the chickens occasionally, gather the eggs and what not to tend to the chicken flock.

Well we had this rooster one time who grew up thinking he was king sh!t and a bad ass. He got to the point where he would come charging at me and try to spur me accomplishing it a few times. I tolerated that for about one week and one day he came charging at me. I had a small club in my hand and clubbed that bad ass rooster up side the head. Need less to say that bad ass rooster ended up making the main ingredient in a pot of bad ass soup.

True story.

We use to have maybe three or four milk cows on the farm that we had for our own use.  The cows use to be put into stanchions at night which had a gutter on the tail end to catch the urine and excrement. We use to wheel it out with a wheel barrow building the manure pile. Generally every spring when it dried out enough we loaded up the manure spreader by hand. When it came time to load the manure spreader I took off my boots and shoes and plodded through the manure squeezing it between my toes and up to my ankles while loading the manure spreader.

Makes a young lad grow tall doing that.