First Spring Harvest

And it's......STRAWBERRIES, LOL!  I just went outside to "walk the estate" and assess the damage from last night's severe weather and I found the first 2 ripe strawberries, which will actually be the 2nd harvest of the year since I am going to count the 2 leeks I pulled in March that wintered over.  We promptly took a picture and they went down the hatch.  Finn said "Mommy, they taste like the ones we picked at the farm", to which I explained to him "no, they're better because WE grew them" :)   

    

Also a pic of the peas, which just the past week are going like gangbusters now.  Can't wait, but they never seem to make it to the freezer for stash!  I am going to remember to do fall peas this year so we have some for winter.

On the weather note, our area had the works last night:  severe thunderstorms, wind, downpours, tornado warnings - I was terrified for my seedlings, but amazingly there was no damage.  I hope the same for those of you who went through it.  I thank the raised beds and the fact some other seedlings were planted in my heavily mulched borders.  I think if they had been planted in the unmulched ground they would surely have washed away.  It's amazing how I took the safety of the basement for granted in the Midwest.  When that kind of weather happens here, we have limited options to take cover.  

I now live in the land of sand, swamps, high water tables and NO basements!  That is definitely on my list of future-house needs: a basement for severe weather/canning storage/squirrel attacks, and my own version of a harvest kitchen with a huge walk in pantry and a mudroom!   Hmmm, my mom has all that at the house I couldn't wait to leave to go "see the world"...well, Mom - I've seen it and I want back in...can the kids come, too?!!!

*An update to my fruit leather attempt:

While delicious...this is the amount that resulted from having my countertop oven running for 4 hours!  This will be devoured in one kid-snack sitdown!  Bottom line:  Yummy, but this is definitely not homesteading/being green or cheap!  I think to do this without wasting time and money it needs to be done the old-fashioned way with screens in the sun.  The yield would have been much greater with no energy wasted, but with our humidity here my options are limited.  I did, however, use my 6 jars of too-runny jam to redo the experiment in my food dehydrator.  I lined the trays with parchment paper and it held all 6 jars at once and turned it on at 10 p.m. and it was done this morning at 7.  Greater yield, less energy wasted, so a compromise has been found!

You can tell by my frequent postings that it has been raining all day so I can't get outside, my house is already clean, and I am minus one child today :)  This doesn't happen too often!

New Homesteading Messes, uh, I mean Skills!

It is evening here, the kids are in bed, and I can finally enjoy a glass of wine and blog about our strawberry adventures now that the mess has been cleaned up!  Our strawberry adventure actually started yesterday on the way home from "the farm" when we passed a field and the kids wanted to know what all those people were doing with the white baskets.  So, even though we were scheduled to pick the very next morning with L (awesome friend of mine :)) and her boys (who are like brothers to mine!) I decided I wouldn't be the evil mom so I stopped the car and let them pick "just a few"...

Well, this was a huge hit with the kids, so they were very excited the next morning to hit the strawberry fields again.  We live in an area which is blessed with many strawberry and blueberry farms, so opening day is a big deal 'round here!  So early this morning they grabbed their baskets and were off.  Here's L herding the kids towards the good ones...

And here's all the boys showing off their goodies...even some farm fresh eggs were scored!
So then the work started...I had the boys hull the strawberries for me, quite a few even made it into the bowl!  This is a great job for kids.
Here's a good tip:  use a straw!  I had one of those thick straws that come with reusable drink bottles, push through the berry from bottom and out the crown, and out pops the core/hull. Took about a second per berry, so don't go spend a bunch of $$ on a fancy huller.
This was the first time I have ever done anything with berries other than pop them in my mouth, but I was prepared to do the traditional canned/cooked jam until I talked with the girl at the strawberry stand about frozen jam recipes...she likes them better!  Since she owns a strawberry farm, I took her advice and used a frozen jam recipe using regular pectin, and it turned out wonderfully.  It is a bright red, was super easy, and way less mess.  I ended up with 12 jars of strawberry jam, although due to an experiment I did, only 6 are usable.  After the first batch of 6 jars, I decided to leave the paved surface of the recipe and use more fruit and less sugar and the result was tasty, but the consistency of a melted smoothie!  I could hear the recipe laughing at me, "b*tch thinks she's gonna improve on me, does she?"  Ah, lessons learned...better get a little experience under my belt before I start winging things!

Now what?  I still have this much left...I learned it's really easy to go overboard picking berries...

I decided to freeze bunch whole and put them in freezer bags for later use...

Much to the dismay of the tenants who were evicted from the top shelf of the freezer!

And finally, dried fruit!  The remainder made for 5 trays of dehydrated fruit, which sailor/farmer husband will love for backpacking and on the ship.  You know, "to prevent scurvy...AARGHH!"  I also tried to make fruit leather, which as I type, is still in the convection oven drying but is looking awesome!  I will post pics of those when they are done.  You can do this in a regular oven but I figured I would use my countertop convection since it uses less electricity and I figured with the convection fan, would dry quicker.  This is already paying off since the recipe I used said it could be 6-8 hours in a regular oven and mine is almost done and it has only been 3 1/2 hours.

And, when it was all done, there was even time for a Garden Dog to get a checkup!  Not sure if he is aware that her heart isn't actually on her back or her butt...

I don't think we did too bad for novice berry processing, it was a long day but we had fun and I figured out that one does not, in fact, need BUSHELS of berries to make some jam!  So now I am off to refill my glass of pinot and enjoy a new episode of Brothers & Sisters, hoping that when I wake up tomorrow the house will no longer smell like pureed strawberries!   Out...