Pear Pickin'

I have the fondest memory of my mom, my sisters and my Nana all going apple picking one August many years ago.  I'm sure I was about 12 years old, and we drove to an orchard outside of town, and filled our garden baskets with as many gala apples as we could hold.  It was so much fun!  Even to this day, I only buy gala apples (first of all, cause they taste better), but partially just because of this childhood memory I have held onto.  Now what does that have to do with pears?  Not really anything (besides the pickin' part!), I just wanted to share that memory :)

But we do have a pear tree in our backyard, and Greg has told me for the past few years that it actually bears fruit.  Well, Greg never bothered picking and eating the pears, but since I'm obviously on a farming kick this summer, I decided we will actually eat some fruit!  Last Friday I put on my gardening boots, grabbed the biggest basket and bowl we have, and started picking.  Some of the pears are still a little small, so I left those on the tree, and tried just picking the bigger ones.  I filled both baskets and then some!  And that was only what I could reach at an arm's length.  I'll have to get a big ladder this week to reach some of the higher branches.  All these pears went into a cardboard box, and into a cool spot in the house where they will finish ripening.  I did some pear research, and read that you actually want to pick pears when they are just firm enough on the tree to make a small indention with your thumb.  Then you bring them inside, place them in a cool spot, and let them continue to ripen indoors.

With that in mind, I had picked a small batch last week that has been sitting in a large bowl in the laundry nook, so they were nice and ripe on Friday.  I decided with this batch I would attempt to can them.  I LOVE pears, so if I can stock up our pantry full of canned pears for the winter, I will be a happy camper :)  Having never canned pears yet, I did a little research and mainly just went by the instructions in the Ball Blue Book of Canning and Preserving that I have. The process itself was really simple, however I grossly underestimated the time it takes to peel and cut pears.  (And keep in mind, this was a small batch of pears).  It took me TWO HOURS to peel and cut those suckers!  I finally just pulled up a stool to the counter to try to get comfy.  Next time, I think I'll set up shop on the back porch and at least enjoy some fresh air during the process.

 

But anyways, you peel them, cut them into slices and cut out the core.  As you cut them up, drop the slices into a large bowl of anti-browning solution, which consists of:

• 1/2 gallon water
• 1 Tablespoon vinegar
• 1 Tablespoon salt (I went ahead and used canning salt)

 Once you get all your pears cut up and you have them soaking in anti-browning solution, you'll need to start heating your clean jars and lids and make your syrup for canning.  You can do a light, medium, or heavy syrup depending on how much sugar you use. Not knowing which would be best, I opted for the medium syrup.  But here's the breakdown if you want something different.

Sugar Syrup

Syrup	Sugar	Water	Yield
Light	2 cups	6 cups	7 cups
Medium	3 cups	6 cups	6 1/2 cups
Heavy	4 cups	6 cups	7 cups

Begin heating the syrup on the stovetop.  Meanwhile, pour some of the pears into a colander to drain the anti-browning solution, then drop them into the syrup.  Bring syrup to a boil, and cook pears for approx. 10 mins.

Once cooked, fill your heated jars with pear slices, packing them in tight, then pour syrup over to fill the jar to the 1/2inch headspace.

 Remove air bubbles by stirring and pressing against the pairs with a plastic knife.  Then wipe the rim of the jar clean, seal with the lid, and replace jar into the canner over simmering water.

Once all your jars are filled,  bring the water bath to a boil, then lower cans into the canner and process for 20 mins.  Remove from the canner and let them seal!  I haven't tried any yet, but they sure look good :)

 

Granny Meals' Sweet Pickles

My great-grandmother Meals made sweet pickles for generations.  My mom grew up eating these yummy pickles and begs for them every summer from her older relatives in Huntsville (aka: Uncle Harold!).  So when we went to our family reunion this week, we asked if he could please bring us the sweet pickle recipe.  Since we have so many cucumbers, even after giving away so many already, I decided I needed to start pickling these babies!

The whole process actually takes about 2 weeks.  So last night I got stage 1 going.  First you take a heap of cucumbers and cut them up into slices, and keep on cutting until you have a gallon of cucumbers.  Here's my pile of cucumbers, and I ended up using all of them (except 1 of those big guys) to fill my gallon jar.

Can you believe all these slices came from that 1 cucumber on the far right of the above pic???

Once I got the jar filled with cucumber slices, you just fill the jar with water to cover all the cucumbers and pour in 1 cup of pickling salt.  Pickling salt is different from regular table salt in that it does not have iodine or anti-caking agents in it.  But you can get it at any grocery store on the spices aisle.

 So for 2 days the jar is in the fridge soaking in salty water.  I took it out this morning just to swirl the jar a bit to keep all the salt from settling to the bottom.  Then in 2 days, it'll be time for step 2!

Fixing the Rain Barrel

Last fall as a wedding gift, someone bought us a rain barrel we were registered for.  I knew it would come in handy during the gardening season, and be a cost-efficient way to water the plants on the deck.  Now, I've seen tons of pictures where people hook up their hoses to the rain barrel and water their grass/plants that way.  See...

 

Well don't be fooled.  It seems the only way to make this happen is to have a pump installed in the barrel to pump the water out, because no matter how high you raise the rain barrel, you won't get enough force to actually run the water any distance through a hose.  We tried making that happen with this contraption...

 It failed.  So we moved the barrel back to the side of the house where it would collect water from the roof runoff.  From here I can water all the plants on the deck using a watering can instead of trying to run a hose off the barrel and water the garden out back.  But there was still a problem.  With the barrel sitting on the ground, there isn't enough room to fit a watering can under the spout.  So, we needed to raise it up.  Here's where we've had our barrel sitting collecting rain water that spills from the roof (notice we don't have any gutters around the house).

Actually, let's rewind for a second.  I thought maybe if we just attach a short hose to the spigot maybe we could still fill a watering can without needing to build a stand.  But no go.  Unless I kept the can tilted, the water stopped running when the hose level got above the spigot.  That was useless.

With some canine assistance, we got to work building a stand.  First we went to Lowe's and bought 2 cinder blocks (which would hold most of the weight of the barrel) and 16 decorative cement blocks (ya know, for decorative purposes).  Next we leveled out our area.

Pretty level, huh?  Then we placed our decorative blocks around the cinder blocks in a semi-circle, and then unfortunately realized we were a couple of blocks short.  Another quick run to Lowe's and we were good.  We laid the first layer down, and then the second layer staggered on top like brickwork.  Then we just had to chisel off 2 blocks on the edges to fit against the deck.  I thought maybe a screwdriver would help make more precise cuts, but in the end a good whack with the hammer turned out to work better.  Yes, it was slightly less accurate, but we Greg made it work.

 

We loaded the rain barrel onto the stand, and then filled in the open areas around the cinder blocks with pea gravel.  And again, we were a little short on pea gravel.  A 3rd bag would top us off. So we'll add that later.  3 trips to Lowe's in 1 day is just too much! 

We didn't want to rain barrel to hang right off the edge, so we cut the 4ft leader hose I had bought down to just a few inches so it fits right into the watering can.  Ta-da!  I'm so happy how it turned out.  I think it looks great!!  Oh, and did I mention it's a blazing 103 degrees F outside today!!  Boy do we need some rain to break this heat wave and to refill our rain barrel!

Garden updates

Last week I got out in the garden to tackle some weeds that had started taking over the fence.  See what I mean...

You couldn't even see the garden! So. Many. Vines.  And unfortunately, that area where they are all growing is actually wire fencing that goes along the inside and higher than the wood fencing.  And those nasty vines went in and out, in and out of all the wiring.  Let's just say getting those vines off the fence took quite a while!!  A few hours into the process, I had this mess...

And thankfully the other side wasn't as bad.  So by the end of the day, we finally had a clean garden again...

And here's how all the veggies are doing lately.  First of all, the cucumber vines are either dying off cause it's the end of their season, or this dang heat wave is just taking them out.  The tomato plants out there are filled with green tomatoes, and we just keep waiting for them to ripen up!  We've picked about 4 green peppers so far (and made meatloaf!)  The strawberries are doing nothing!  Maybe next year.  The cherry tomatoes on the deck are exploding with goodies!  We pick at least 6-8 cherry tomatoes every couple of days.  We actually had enough to fill a salad the other night! And the pear tree is filled with pears just waiting to be picked (but not quite yet!).

 But the most exciting part of the garden these days is the melon side.  WE FINALLY HAVE MELONS!!  I'm gonna be honest.  I was a little skeptical whether we could actually grow watermelons and canteloup.  And then the other day (after tackling all the de-weeding as mentioned above), I noticed this tiny little guy!

And then (it just keep getting more exciting!!), this week I did a little more digging around in the vines and I found all these little melons growing...

 

Can you believe it!?  And as you can see, the grape vines are doing pretty well also.  So what's my next project?  Well, we have about 30 cucumbers in the fridge, so I've been pinning a few pickle recipes on Pinterest.  So I may be trying my hand at canning in the near future.  Gosh, I wish my dear Nana was still alive.  She could teach me so much about all this!  I hate that she passed away just as I was getting to this stage of my life.  She used to do so much canning, and boy could she make some awesome pears and apples!  Oh if only I had her by my side to teach me all of this. 

Until next time!