Farmette Happenings .......................................

Well , Goatee and Jazz seem to have hit it off well together. We'll probably have kids around the first week of Feb. Teresa , you hit the nail on the head with your comment last week (LOL).

My uncle brought my Mom and I some pears last week. I made 7 pints of pear preserves this weekend and will be canning the rest tomorrow.


I finally got around to turning these bell peppers and some of our tomatoes into 5 pints of mild salsa for Little Froggy on Friday. I have more tomatoes waiting to become spaghetti sauce one day this week.

The sunflowers have dried out , we're saving these for next years seed.

Saturday morning , Goatee was checking Little Froggy out. But after this cute scene he decided he needed to dominate Little Froggy , so he backed him into the fence and pinned him against it. He didn't hurt Little Froggy , but it scared him. I pushed Goatee away and told Little Froggy he needed to stay outside the fence , because he was being a bad goatee. I'll be keeping the Grands away from him from now on , they'll only be allowed to pet him through the fence.

This is were Ms. Crew is hanging out now , it's off to the side of the chicken coop , so she can keep an eye over the chickens and goats. Hopefully she'll help keep the wild critters away.

~ Blessings ~

JoyceAnn

In the Garden ................

It's been very busy around here , working in the garden and helping with the grands , plus all the other chores. But here's a quick update to show what's happening in the garden

The sunflowers have came up , they're about 2 inches tall.

The squash and jalapeno peppers have been weeded and mulched .

The tomatoes are growing nicely and starting to bloom. I'll be mulching and adding the tomato cages this week.

Looking forward to some salad tomatoes ..............

and the garlic has been hung and is drying , I need to start braiding it this week too.

~ Garden Blessings ~

JoyceAnn

Tomato , Tomatoe , Tomatoes

~~ Drying Tomatoes ~~

~~ Almost Ready ~~

~~ Dried Tomatoes ~~

~~ Spaghetti Sauce Cooking ~~

~~ Spaghetti Sauce ~~

~~ Spicy Salsa ~~

Do you say tomato or tomatoe ? Around here it's been tomatoes lately , I must admit my tomatoes didn't do so well again this year. We had a very dry June and a cool July , the tomato vines grew beautifully , but the tomatoes are small , rot on the ends and cracking. But I have been saving what I can , I've also bought tomatoes from a local farm to make salsa and spaghetti sauce.



The Roma and Tommy Toe tomatoes have produced well , they're the plants I used clay pot irrigation with , next year I will use that method on all of the tomatoes. Our garden is to far away from the house to water with a hose and toting water is a pain , so clay pot irrigation will be the best solution. I only had to add water once a week or less if we had rain. I tried to leave the tops off if I knew it was going to rain so the clay pots would fill up.


I made spaghetti sauce for the first time this year , my SIL and I canned 17 quarts + 4 jars of tomato juice. I used the recipe from the Blue Book of Canning , but tweaked it quite a bit , so I guess you could say it 's my own recipe , that recipe was just a starting point. I hate those recipes that only make 3 qts , if I'm going to can spaghetti sauce or salsa , I want to make enough for a full canner . Anyway it turned out great and I 'll be making more next year.



I also canned 11 qts of salsa and 4 jars of tomato juice. We love spicy salsa around here , I'll probably make more soon. The small tomatoes coming off my vines , we're eating or dehydrating. This is the first time I've used my dehydrator and I started with the hardest thing to dry , tomatoes. But they seem to be drying well , it has taken longer than the book recommendation though.



BTW , spell check says tomato is the correct spelling (LOL).



~ Garden Blessings ~

JoyceAnn