Saving Seeds

So I love the idea of growing all my food from seeds saved from the previous year, but in truth I admit to not being very good at it. It's a part of the whole desire to be self sufficient.  This year I grew my peppers from saved seeds. The cucumbers, radishes and beans from bought seeds and tomatoes from bought seedlings (I actually bought tomato seeds that grew quite nicely, but then were trampled by our dog when I had them setting out on the back porch to harden off.) While I was preparing the peppers to freeze the other day, I scraped out the seeds of the best looking ones to be saved for next year. I hope to add to my list of things grown from saved seeds next year. For everything else I like to order from Seed Saver Exchange. All of their seeds are heirloom variety. I could spend hours lost in their catalogue, daydream of all the things I'd love to grow and the possibilities of my garden space.

Freezing Peppers

I so love to freeze bell peppers. It's so easy, you don't even have to blanch them like you do a lot of other veggies, and they really hold their flavor. You can freeze them whole (but that can take up loads of space) or prepare tham in advance for how you are going to cook them later on. I spent some time today chopping up and dividing a bunch of peppers to go in the freezer. I like to bag them up individually (I know that's a lot of bags, but I DO reuse them!) since most of the things I cook only call for one pepper. Later in the year these will go in chili and spaghetti and whatever else I feel like putting chopped peppers in. Love it!

Good Book

Natural Health, Natural Medicine: The Complete Guide to Wellness and Self-Care for Optimum Health

This book, by Dr Andrew Weil, is an awesome resource for anyone who leans towards a more holistic or homeopathic approach when it comes to health and medicine. I have the first printing and I reference it all the time, especially when my husband Andrew gets sick. He's been suffering from the beginning of a cold this holiday weekend, and since he doesn't like tea (don't ask, I don't know what is wrong with him!) I use the advice in this book to help treat him. It always works and Andrew seems to have survived with nothing more than a scratchy throat. Before we changed our approach to healing ourselves, if one of us got a cold, we would swallow OTC pills and lay around with fevers and coughs miserable for days. These days we each approach our health much differently and it makes getting over things a million times easier.

Abundance

 Yesterday evening was another evening spent picking produce from our garden. Production has really cranked up out there! I'm beginning to think that I may have planted too many cucumber plants. I have six and I cannot keep up. If any of my neighbors are out while I am out there they get cucumbers, and I brought some to my dad this morning. I figure I'm picking about fifteen pounds or so every three days. The pepper plants are also really producing a lot. I picked a basket full of green ones and left a few on the plants to fully ripen and turn red. The extra peppers I will be freezing. Organic peppers during the winter cost upwards of four dollars each, so I want to make sure I have plenty stocked up. Bell peppers are something we use alot of around here and are my absolute favorite veggie. My tomato plants are suffering from powdery mildew (sniff sniff) so I think the tomato production will start to dwindle soon as the plants are dying. I've been picking the tomatoes when they just start to ripen an letting them ripen in the window sill or other sunny spot in the kitchen. I know it's better to let them ripen on the vine, but every one I've let go has been rotted by the time I get to it, so this seems to work better for me. I hope I can get enough that are ripe at the same time so I can can them. Tomato sauce is something else we eat alot. It's easy and quick. I'm actually really disappointed because I had dreams of shelves lined with homemade salsa and canned tomatoes by the end of the summer. Oh well. I least I will have pickles!

First time Pickles

  With the overwhelming abundance of cucumbers this year, it is only natural that I should try my hand a pickles. I love to eat pickles, as does Isabelle. Andrew can't stand them, and he won't come near me when I am eating them because of the smell. I am still pretty new at the whole canning process, but I think I am doing pretty well with it. My goal is to have lots of preserved food to sustain us through the winter. Usually we spend more on groceries during the winter, but I hope to keep our bill down this year. The recipe I followed was really simple, and the pickles came out wonderful. I got eight pints with this batch, though two of them didn't seal properly. The only thing I can figure is that I didn't get all of the trapped air bubbles out of those and so their wasn't the proper head space. No matter. Pickles can keep for a while in the fridge, so I will use those up of the next couple of weeks. I plan on making a few more batches of pickles and will probably be giving some away, as well as giving away cucumbers. We already traded a bag of them for some homemade raspberry jam from someone Andrew works with, and I've promised pickles to another person in exchange for a gallon of blueberries that I intend to make into jam myself. It's really nice being able to trade the excess of what you have for something you don't have. Much better than just buying everything from the grocery store.

Another Energy Saving Step

Over the past year we've been taking as many steps as possible to really cut our energy usage, and since we've received notice from our power company that our rates will go up beginning in July, it's even more important that ever. Some of the things we've done were expensive (new windows) but worth it in the long run, but the most recent was so easy I don't know why it took us so long. We've installed an insulation jacket on our hot water heater. Our water heater is electric and old as dirt. Really I don't know how old it is, but it looked well used when we bought our house in 2006. It still works really well though, and truth be told a new energy efficient one is just not in the budget right now. We keep the temp set on 120 degrees F, which is the lowest setting. That has worked fine for us; we've never run out of hot water mid shower or anything. Well, the other day we went to the hardware store because Andrew had to buy a new tool for work and while we were there we saw the jackets. It's something we've talked about, but never remember to get while we were out. Old tank water heaters waste a lot of energy when the heated water sits in the tank unused. The heater is continually reheating it. This is especially bad at our house during the winter because our tank is in the basement which stays very cold during the winter time. An insulation jacket is a cheap easy fix. We went ahead on bought one for about twenty-one bucks after tax, and Andrew put it on as soon as we got home.

Chicken Envy

We have new neighbors! The house behind ours had been empty for some time, and finally a family has moved in. Our properties share a chain link fence along the back, so I have a nice view of their yard and they of ours. One day I noticed the new neighbor working hard at building something in the back corner right near our property, so I introduced myself and asked what he was building. A chicken coop! It's all completed now, and his chickens settled in. I must say he did a very nice job. I would take a picture, but I've just met them and they might not be okay with me taking pictures of their property and posting them on the Internet. I have to admit that I am suffering from a bit of chicken envy. I've wanted chickens for some time now, but we live in a subdivision. Even though all the lots are decent sized and all the yards fenced, the neighbor to our right has five or six cats that all stay outside and I think one just had kittens. None of them are fixed. I always worried that the cats, who frequently hang out in our yard, would kill the chickens. I am really interested to see how this works out for them. Maybe we can have chickens after all.