Wow, where did August go? I  just realized that it has been over a week since I actually blogged. I haven’t gone anywhere. I have just been so busy that there hasn’t been much time for blogging. Now I am trying to recall everything that I’ve done that I should have been blogging about, because not only can I share my activities with you through my blog, but it also acts a journal of my activities for me.

With lots of vegetables being ready to pick I have been doing a lot of preserving. To this point I have frozen several batches of swiss chard and kale and some green beans and rhubarb. I have also pickled beets and green beans.

My husband harvested honey and we filtered and bottled, I think it was, about 45 lbs of honey. It is always fun when he brings in a new box of honey because each one has a different flavor. That is the way honey should be. The flavor of the honey depends on what the bees have been foraging, so the flavor, and I would imagine the nutrients, would depend on what is in bloom. In this most recent honey harvest I’m sure that there was honey made from clover, buckwheat, lavender, sunflowers, cone flowers, and those are just ones where I saw the bees foraging. I’m certain there were more. Right now the bees are still foraging in the clover and squash, as well as goldenrod and probably other things where we haven’t seen them.

I have also been processing the bees wax for use in my balms. This is a long process as it takes several rounds of boiling the wax and then letting it cool. When the wax hardens any particles that are not wax will have floated to the bottom and are scraped off. This cycle it repeated until the wax is clean.

I have been working on cleaning garlic, now that it is dry, and getting it to markets. Click https://wordpress.com/post/92701152/407/ for locations where you can purchase it.

We have had our farm stand set up since Friday and a few people have stopped and made purchases. We thank them for their business. In addition to garlic we are selling soap, raw honey, free range eggs, and whatever veggies we have available. Our farm, and farm stand, is located at 8650 Crawford Road, Columbus Township, Michigan. We are only picking small amounts of veggies at this point because I would like to preserve or eat whatever we don’t sell, and preserving takes a lot of time. Currently we are picking green beans, swiss chard, kale, cabbage, green beans, hot peppers, mild peppers, beets, carrots, and pie pumpkins, and did I mention green beans. Thus far we have only used folding tables under an umbrella to set the produce on, but because my husband worked so hard today, we will begin using our farm wagon tomorrow. (I hope to post pictures soon)

The weather has been hot and dry for the most part with the exception of a  couple of flannel shirt days. Pretty much what you can expect for August in these parts. We have had to water the gardens regularly and do what we can to protect then from deer. I think we finally got that part (protecting them from the deer) figured out, and I’ll post some pictures soon.

My honey/oatmeal soap is ready. I named it “Don’t Eat It!” Breakfast Bar Soap. I thought it was kind of cute.

The rest of the week is going to be busy as well, but I will try my tech support, who by the way just graduated from Specs Howard’s Digital Media Arts program, (Congratulations Lindell)  to help me get some pictures up.

I hope you are enjoying this summer as much as I am. Until next time. 🙂

Our chemical free, locally grown (Michigan) garlic is now available at the following locations. At this point only the Chesnok Red is available, but the other varieties will be there soon.

http://www.puremichigancountrymarket.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Purified-Water-To-Go-in-Richmond-MI/142833425768170

We are also selling it at our farm stand along with honey, eggs, soap and what ever veggies we pick that day. You can find us at 8650 Crawford Road, Columbus, Mi.

Hope to see you there. 🙂

If you want to freeze food in a plastic bag and don’t have or don’t want to use a seal-a-meal, try this. Put the food in a zip lock bag, zip the bag most of the way closed, stick a straw in the corner that is still open, zip the bag until it is tight around the straw, suck the air out of the bag through the straw, quickly remove straw while sealing the bag. You can remove a good portion of the air using this method and reduce the chances of freezer burn.

I used this method for freezing kale, swiss chard and green beans. It is such a clever idea and so easy, I can’t believe that I never heard or read about doing this before. 🙂

I’m certainly not complaining about currants, in fact just the opposite, I am very grateful for this years currant crop. It has been fun trying different things with them. My daughter was happy to take home a jar of currant jam the other day, and the wine is still fermenting.

The last thing that we did with the currants, other than making some muffins and eating a few fresh, is to make dried currants. I may have mentioned before that we tend to do things in a non-conventional manner (our way). So, instead of getting out the dehydrator and heating up the house for a day or so, my husband suggested we sun dry them. So I got out the drying screen, which is a wooden frame, that came as part of the packaging in a table that we bought, with screen stapled to it (the screen was part of a roll that I had purchased for a few $’s at an estate sale), and spread the currants on it. We put the drying screen on a couple of chairs on the deck where the sun could shine on them.

Here is what I (we) learned about sun drying currants.

• It is a long process. Even with day time temperatures in the 80’s this took a couple weeks.
• The bugs did not bother them. Probably my biggest fear about trying this was that we would have flies and fruit flies crawling all over them, but that was not the case. I never saw bugs on them. The birds left them alone as well.
• They will get very sticky during this process but eventually they will dry.
• Take them in when it rains. Take them back out when the sun returns.

After a couple of weeks of this when the were fairly well dry we put them on a shelf in the spare room to finish drying. Yesterday, I packaged them in just a paper bag to be stored until I have time to make some muffins or granola bars with them.

Addendum: After eating the banana bread that I added dried currants too, my husband suggested I add a note. While I like the flavor of the berries and think they add a little zip to the bread, the seeds (currants are very seedy) are very hard and will stick in your teeth. I think, if I dehydrate currants again, I will try running them through the food mill first to remove the seeds and then make a fruit leather or fruit roll-up.