Good morning everyone!!! I'm a little late getting around this morning, so apologies to all the early risers!

Had a birthday party at my house yesterday for my brother who turned 40, and we had a yuker (that's not the right spelling) tournament going, that lasted way too late. It's a card game, for those not familiar with it. Now, I gotta get this house put back into some kind of order today! It's a mess.

Haven't been doing too much canning this week. I'm still waiting on those dag gone tomatoes to ripen. Wonder if them not being ripe is ususal for this climate? I guess the good aspect of it is, the weather might be a little cooler for canning, when they do ripen. We had alot of rain on Friday, which brought cooler temps and lower humidity for this weekend, which I am thankful for. Going to go to the orchard today to get some June apples (transparents), probably just to eat, but might make a few pies with them. They're the hard, green, sour types I remember as a kid. Maybe I'll end up with lots of apples this year, instead of tomatoes!

So, how's everyone elses garden and canning coming along? Hope you all are getting bushelfuls of produce and all is doing well. Welp, that's about it from here, so how ya all doing?

-- Annie (mistletoe@kconline.com), August 12, 2001

Answers

Hi Annie!

Boy Howdy I've been soooo busy the last 2 weeks. Mostly been helping other people with this and that. The garden is loaded, I wish you would bring a large truck down and get some of these tomatoes! My friend is comming this evening to get some for them to make juice. I still just kinda let the garden go wild, it's neat, all the flowers and plants. The cherry tomatoes are like a jungle, but they are good! I haven't had time this year to keep it all neat and tidy like last year. Plus the heat has been bad this year.

I've spent 2 or 3 days this week working on my new site, for hosting other websites. I got one done, and it's beautiful, if I do say so myself! The male Border I placed in a dairy made it all the way up to MI at the end of the week! He got to stay in a hotel 3 nights! The spoiled bugger. He's happy, has his OWN dairy cows to boss around and he's going to go into 4H obedience with the daughter. They love him, he was lying on the living room floor while I was talking to her over the phone Thursday.

I have spent allot of my time swatting flies and catching mice! With all this rain, all the critters want to come inside. No way Jose. I can't stand even one fly in the house. The mice choose the wrong house to live in! My outside kittys are fat and full this week. I hope they don't expect me to catch them for them ALL the time now!

I'm starting to work my young female Border, Zip, and she's just like her daddy. She is something else to watch. I have 3 with me when I milk the goats outside, and they just stand in a cirlce around the goats eating out of their pans. Gen and Zip are in love with the 2 new babies, and just stand right next to them. They really love those goats. Rocket, the large buck baby, stands on the spool and just pushes down on Generals forehead with his own. And Gen just stands there.

You should see Zip fly out to get the calves! Man she is fast. She's wanting to bring them in too fast right now, she needs to slow down some, but those calves really lift their tails and take off running. On the way to the barn, the group goes down a hill, into a hollow in the pasture, and then pops back up closer to the barn. Sometimes, the calves pop up on the far side going back up the hill! They are learning to split up, there's 4 of them. But I can send General "Back" to get the others. Where ever he is out there, I can stop him and send him all the way to the back of the last one and start over. Zip is still learning back. She brings the ones on up and feels so good about it. She's a talker. That Wooooooooo all the time! She sits outside the screen door in the mornings and hollers at me if I am in the least bit late.

Gotta go out and get some more things done. We have folks comming today too. See ya later.

-- Cindy in KY (solidrockranch@msn.com), August 12, 2001.

Hi Everyone!

We're still waiting on tomatoes to get ripe here as well. We have one that is turning pink. Of course, it's the one with the worm hole in the side! As soon as we have enough, I have to make salsa. We opened the last of last year's jars this weekend. Got our first cukes this past week. So much better than store bought. One patch of lettuce has bolted so I'm going to put some more seed down and see if we can get some more before frost. Till the tomatoes are ready have been keeping busy with painting and making a robe for my husband. Hope everyone has gotten a bit of this cooler weather!

-- Cindy in NY (cjpopeck@worldnet.att.net), August 12, 2001.

Hi everone well finally got all the tomatoes canned boy what a job. canned 23 qts. and only lost one due to a thin jar.its still hot and dry here we got 6/10 of rain wed. nite. my garden is about done all that was good was corn,cukes and tomatoes. have been cleaning the old place up some getting ready for winter. moved a wood pile this am. going to set up my fishing stuff and hope we get some rain the lakes are all low,farm ponds going dry. but my friend came thru surgery in good shape so all is well here.you all have a good week Bob se,ks.

-- Bobco (bobco@hit.net), August 12, 2001.

I'm in central Illinois and we have been busy getting the last of our wood cut and stacked for winter. I know it's to hot, but my husband is a hunter and if I want help doing it I have to do it now! Our summe garden in winding down, just like everyone else And I'm waiting on tomatoes they sure are slow this year. I'm just looking forward to fall. Warm days and cool nights!

-- Barb Stiarwalt (Barb43@countrylife.net), August 12, 2001.

Picked green beans until I am heartily sick of picking green beans. Cukes not as good as other years production wise. I have heaps of green tomatoes but only the Latahs have had any ripe ones and they are stunted from stress (the size of cherry toms). The ram is healing, the chickens and turkeys are lookin' good (especially those chickens), my little black hen that came with my guineas is laying again(she hatched out the guineas at another farm and was given to me with the guinea chicks to raise them),the fire wood is out in the yard waiting to be stacked, and its raining!!! All is good here! Oh and half the floor joists of the barn are in place..hee hee.

-- Alison in N.S. (aproteau@istar.ca), August 13, 2001.

I sure do enjoy the over the fence chat threads! It's so nice to "talk" with others who share the same interests.

Have been canning crazy lately. Don't have a garden here so we are buying in bulk from a local farmer's market and then working hard until everything bought is either in a jar or the compost heap. In one blazing day of insanity, we worked up 92 pints of cut corn, from farmer's field to in jars on shelf. We turned off the last canner around 3 in the morning and then had to wait for it to cool enough to take the regulator valve off and open the lid. Talk about being tired...

That was a bit much for us to do all in one day and we are not going to push ourselves that hard again. Frankly, we have too much gray in our hair to be acting as if we were Superman's parents.

Weather here is utterly miserable. Humidity has been well over 90% for over a week now and everything in the house, including us, is staying soggy all the time. This is the only time I've wished for an air conditioner. Don't need it to cool, just to pull some of this horrid moisture out of the air.

Have canned green beans (about 9 cases) until I dream of them now. Also a lot of yellow squash and zucchini. And aaaallllll that corn! Have around 14 cases of cut corn. All the efforts to can cream style corn resulted in failure - every single jar came out of the canner with the corn so scorched that it was impossible to eat. We dumped it in the compost pile and it's so bad that even the crows who visit the compost daily won't touch it. What am I doing wrong?

I made chicken stock for the first time and was delighted with how it came out. I save bones and carcasses in the freezer and had quite a pile of them so I decided to make the stock and can it. Was really surprised by the color of the finished stock. So rich looking! Wondered aloud why the home canned stock looked so much different than the canned stuff from the stores. Wynn snorted and then said it's because the makers of the other stuff drag two chickens thru 100 gallons of water and then use artificial coloring and flavoring agents. I've got 10 pounds of organic beef bones in a friend's freezer waiting to become canned beef stock, as soon as I can get around to making it.

We are looking for tomatoes in bulk and when we find a place we can buy 4 or 5 bushels of them we will start the last major canning marathon of this season. I still hope to do lima beans and a few other things, but the tomatoes will be the last huge job.

Will be very happy to get that behind me because canning is a real chore right now. We are living in less than 800 sq ft and I have a grand total of 3 running feet of kitchen counter space here. We use the drainboard area of our kitchen sink and the table top but it's still very cramped working space. I'm dreaming of a HUGE canning kitchen built on one side of the house we are in the process of designing. It will have an acre of counter tops, a very large sink , storage for a gazillion jars and a comfortable place for me to sit down and chop, slice, etc. Also a commercial stove top with burners far enough apart to be able to handle two canners going at the same time. Anyone have any other dream ideas for the perfect canning kitchen???

Y'all take care of yourselves and have a wonderful week.

-- Carol Mora - in Virginia (carollm@rockbridge.net), August 13, 2001.

Carol, I think I'm going to have to buy green beans to can this year, too. The Japanese Beetles have had a smorgasboard on mine this year. I've also dreamed of the perfect kitchen for canning in. #1 would be a very large stove and a large, deep sink. Gotta have 2 canners going at once! My hubbys a chef and gets trade magazines all the time with used restaurant equipment in it. A couple weeks ago he saw an ad for a commercial stove for $200.00! Might have needed a few parts, but basically their pretty simply constructed and aren't hard to fix. Or for that price, there are companies that restaurants use to fix stoves and it would still be a good deal to pay them to fix it. Alot of people who go into the restaurant business think they have to have new equipment (ridiculous), but seeing as how restaurants go out of business quickly too, there's alot of good "used" equipment out there. Let me know when you're redoing your kitchen and I'll see what's out there for ya.

-- Annie (mistletoe@kconline.com), August 13, 2001.

Hello everyone, Finally the temperature has broken a bit, and the humidity is below ninety percent. It's so warm it's hard to believe people are talking of winter already and their gardens winding down. I've got a second batch of squash and cucumber seedlings coming up. Unless we have an early frost like last year, they should have time to produce after the first ones have quit. I harvested the first cantaloupe this morning. I hope it tastes as good as it looks. I really like melons and berries from the garden. I have June-bearing, ever-bearing, and golden alpine strawberries. The ever-bearing have been really good this year. The alpine ones I started from seed in the spring; they're getting ready to bear and should do so into fall. Such a treat. I also have raspberries, thornless blackberries which are huge, and blueberries which have yet to produce. A sad day today. Our redbone coon hound died this morning from prostate cancer. We got him from a neighbor when we moved here 6 years ago. He wasn't my favorite dog (we also have a lab mix who was dumped on our lane), but he had his moments, and it's always sad to lose a pet. Have a good week everyone; stay cool.

-- Katherine in KY (KyKatherine@Yahoo.com), August 13, 2001.

Finally a cool day here in Illinois. The humidity is gone and a cool breeze from the north made a very beautiful day today. I know I should have been in the garden, or something but I took the day off and read a book and took a nap. Everbody needs a day off once in awhile.I won't be getting off that easy tommorow, the tomatoes are waiting on me as we speak. I hope eveyone is getting some relief from all of the heat and humidity too!

-- Barb Stiarwalt (Barb43@countrylife.net), August 13, 2001.

You gals are all ahead of me with the tomatoes. I haven't had a ripe one yet. Here in far western WA, we have had a lot of wind and no really warm weather until the past week, and practically no rain all summer. Keeps me busy watering the garden, try to pump all the water from the ducks wading pools into the garden..figure a little fertilizer in it won't hurt. My zucchini is doing great. Planted 15 as I feed it to the ducks, too. Half turned out to be yellow zuch. and the ducks won't touch it, so had to put in more green. Have found they won't eat anything red or yellow. Strange, eh? The bush beans are forming, will freeze some and make Dilly beans from the rest of it. Have only had bug eating on the Swiss Chard. Have 3 types of fingerling potatoes growing. Pulled some of the French ones for dinner over the weekend and they were delicious. Picking marionberries every other morning. Put in new strawberry plants this year, so am not getting much from them this year, next years crop should be great. They are Quinaults and bear from June through Thanksgiving. Corn is doing great, too. I planted all available garden space this year...one thing I learned from it: Do not plant more than I can weed! Am enjoying reading all your posts!

-- Duffy (hazelm@tenforward.com), August 13, 2001.

I see everyone's busy canning. I have a teeny-tiny garden this year. I planted about 30 tomatoe plants but they are not healthy I think tomatoe rot did a number on them and then the tomatoe worms are finishing them off. I'll be lucky to get a bushel. I will probably visit our local farmer's market to buy the tomatoes I need for canning salsa and pizza and spaghetti sauce. I also want to can corn relish and corn cob jelly. I have already canned several pints of zuchinni relish (tastes like chow chow) and several pints of bread and butter zuchinni pickles. I have a small apartment and it has been difficult canning on my apartment size stove. But alas, not impossible. Did I mention this was my first time canning anything :-)

-- Carolyn in MI (sweetbabydill@aol.com), August 13, 2001.

Carol in VA:

When you make your chicken stock with bones and carcasses--are you speaking of the uncooked bones or after you've eaten a whole chicken?

With my whole turkey or chicken carcases I make a soup out of V-8 juice, a tbsp of Worchester and any veggies I have on hand. MMMM.

Hope to plant a fall garden including greens and sugar snap peas (maybe too late for peas). Found volunteer watermelons today.

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), August 14, 2001.

Hi everyone. I've just about canned all my store room will hold. A friend planted 250 tomato plants and then said he didnt know what he was gonna do with all the tomatoes. I've canned over 100 qts of juice and 35 or 40 jars of green tomato pickles. I put some of the green ones in the freezer to fry later. I've canned green beans, short runner beans, black-eyed peas from the garden. We bought 50 lbs of carrots from a wholesale market in town and I canned them. Another friend sold us 3 bushels of potatoes and I bought 2 bushels of apples to make into pie filling. We kinda of went apple crazy and ate almost one of the baskets. The apples will be ready from east Tn in a few weeks so I can get more. I canned sweet cuke relish and hot tomato relish, pickled peaches and peach vinegar. I surely thought I was through but a friend of my husbands called this morn to tell him where we can get more green beans...so maybe a few more jars wont hurt. Oh and we put 10 bushels of corn the freezer. Some of that was for my father in law. Somewhere in all this mess I have to wade thru a huge pile of mending, mostly overalls. The guys are running out of'em faster than I can keep them washed and patched. We were surprised this week with 5 baby bunnies. We got lazy and didnt take the nest box out from the last time and the critters had been born about a week before we realized they were here. Already had their eyes open. 2 weeks ago we had a doe give birth to a beautiful kid and didnt know she was bred. Right pleasant surprises are most welcome. Unlike the family of skunks that surprised us by nesting under the goat house. What a stinkin mess. Its been a pure pleasure readin what ya'll are up to but I guess I'd better get to supper before the natives get restless. Blessings Peggy

-- peggy (wclpc@cookeville.com), August 14, 2001.

Annie it sounds like you ahve beem really busy. I'm still canning tomaoes, a few maore quarts and I'll be ready to make salsa and that will just about wrap up my tomatoe canning for this year. No new babies here, just 3 kittens but they are already 4 weeks old. I have homes for all of them as soon as the mama weans them. I have been trying to get them to eat but, she keeps nursing them! Anyone have any suggestions? They are outside cats, nad the only thing I can do is try to seperate them. HELP!

-- Barb Stiarwalt (Barb43@countrylife.net), August 14, 2001.

Annie it sounds like you have been really busy. I'm still canning tomatoes, a few maore quarts and I'll be ready to make salsa and that will just about wrap up my tomatoe canning for this year. No new babies here, just 3 kittens but they are already 4 weeks old. I have homes for all of them as soon as the mama weans them. I have been trying to get them to eat but, she keeps nursing them! Anyone have any suggestions? They are outside cats, and the only thing I can do is try to seperate them. HELP!

-- Barb Stiarwalt (Barb43@countrylife.net), August 14, 2001.

Sorry about the double post, I was having major problems with the darn computer, love it, hate it too! It is fixed now. Sorry!

-- Barb Stiarwalt (Barb43@countrylife.net), August 15, 2001.

Ann,

I save all chicken and turkey bones - just put them in a bag in the freezer. When the bag threatens to take up most of the freezer in the fridge, it's time to do something with them. Usually I make soup of them but this time I was busy canning anyway, so I made the stock to use later. Had enough left over to fill one pint after doing the quarts so I just stuck it in the canner with the quarts and processed for the larger size. I opened the pint to taste and was delighted with it! I'm still trying to get around to the organic beef bones. The days go flying by and we have so concentrated on the canning that the house is a WRECK! Since the beef bones are frozen, they can just wait until I can find the time to do them.

Beautiful, huge, ripe organic tomatoes are going for $2.99 a pound in the health food store here. At the farmer's market, they are selling for $1.00 a pound. I'm having trouble finding tomatoes we can buy in bulk at a reasonable price and I'm getting worried about that now. Wish me luck!

-- Carol - in Virginia (carollm@rockbridge.net), August 15, 2001.

I just stumbled upon your across the fence chat - and I so enjoyed reading what all of you, strangers that you are, are doing...we plant approx. 1/3 acre and eat all year from our garden...this is only my 4th year in the country - my husband was born and raised such - so I am still learning. We plant our green beans, pinto beans, great northern beand and cukes on arches (rebar and woven wire) to conserve space. Composting has finally turned this Southeast Missouri soil to BEAUTIFUL consistency so our onions, beets (40 qts. pickled this year!), carrots and potatoes did AMAZINGLY this year! I have all my salsa and pickles done (our table plus Christmas presents for all my city sisters and parents!) Just replanted spinach, lettuce, radishes, cauliflower, and green beans - although I'm also up to my ears in qts. of beans! My pumpkins are the old fashioned pie pumpkins - light brownish orange and are HUGE. Froze a lot of broccoli for the first time this year - brussel sprouts didn't do very well. I'm not a fan of much sauerkraut so really didn't know what to do with ALL THAT CABBAGE when it was ready - ate fresh and gave alot away. Thanks for letting me share!

-- Cynthia (catllt@altavista.com), August 16, 2001.