The work of the farmer's wife

So Gab spends the day out hoeing and raking and weeding and digging and chopping and sowing and cutting and picking and pruning etc etc etc.  But when his work is done, mine is just beginning.  Its my job to cook and stew and jam and pack and boil and sterilize and dehydrate and blanch and freeze and and and...And I Love It!  Really, I do!  I was worried it would be overwhelming, too much to do and all within a limited timeframe because otherwise everything rots and all Gab's work will have been for nought.  But its not overwhelming, its actually very relaxing and calming.  There's tons to do and the only way to get through it is to do it, so its very zen in that way -- just go with the flow, pick those beans and pod those peas and skin those tomatoes until there are none left to do.  Its even more fun with company, and I really think we have lost something grand when we stopped sitting on the front porch with all the neighbours gossiping and shelling peas.

Anyway, so here is a quick run down of all the cooking and putting away I've done over the last few months with links to the best recipes I've discovered in the process...in order of appearance...

First came the cherries.  About 10kg of black cherries was made into abou 10 jars of jam and 2 pies.  Then 40kgs of sour cherries was made into 10 traditional lattice cherry pies (in the freezer)...the BEST cherry pie recipe ever: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Classic-Sour-Cherry-Pie-with-Lattice-Crust-242514, and I mean EVER...even better than the cherry pah from the Matawa café..., then I burned about 30 jars of cherry jam.  Damn Damn Damn...took about 6 hours to pit the cherries for that batch of jam (even with my awesome cherry pitter machine: http://www.chefscatalog.com/product/93600-leifheit-cherry-stoner.aspx), and I BURNED it.  URG!!!  And the last 15kg went into a fermentation vat, and produced approximately 12 litres of sour cherry grappa...mmmmmmmmm

Then came the peas and beans -- peas were not nearly enough, and we ate them as they arrived, and we know to plant more next year and to treat them differently as well, because they should have been much more productive.  But the beans though...they started giving in June, and still haven't really stopped yet.  I have about 5 big jars of spicy pickled beans put away (bring vinegar to boil with a spice bag with cinnamon stick, mustard seeds, corriander seeds, black pepper corns, and some spicy chillis, blanch beans in vinegar, jar up, cover with boiling vinegar, and seal), and about 20kg of blanched green beans in the freezer for use throughout the winter.  And we eat fresh beans at least three times a week...yum yum yum....

The borlotti we pulled up when they were full and hung the plants to dry, and then once dry, shelled them all, and we have about 3kg of dried borlottis away in glass jars -- that was ALOT of work for not many calories. But they are gooood calories, though, and Mia helped me -- we had fun picking away at them all day long.

Then the along came the plums...from one little teensy Santa Rosa tree we got about 90kg of plums. They were quite literally coming out of my ears.  I made about 60 jars of plum jam, in three different batches and variations, sliced and froze about 5kg, and hot packed whole another 20 jars.  And we still had flats upon crates upon boxes of plums...time to visit the neighbours!  Everybody got the gift of plums this year...Then about 2 weeks after the santa rosa's finished, the damsons came.  With these I made another 20 some jars of jam, some with fresh ginger, and about 18 jars of a FANTASTIC plum ketchup: http://www.food.com/recipe/plum-ketchup-64525 -- excellent as a barbecue sauce, a marinade, and a stir frying sauce, as well as just as ketchup.

And then peppers -- the sweet lombards are pickled and away in jars together with the spicy ones -- I didn't know they were different at the first fruiting, and put them in together...eee, spicy!!  And then loads chopped up in the freezer, and loads pan fried for dinner.  There are about 5kg of classic bell peppers, green and red, in chunks in the freezer waiting for winter stir fries.

In the midst of all this, the herbs are coming and going, so we have bags and bags of parsley, mint, sage, basil and dill chopped and frozen, ready to use.  The basil has come to harvest strength five times this summer, each time we've taken about 2 or 3 crates full -- each crate makes about 1.5kg of pesto (and about 100g of pesto will do for pasta for 4 or 5 people), so I have about 10kg of pesto in the freezer along with tons of just plain chopped basil ready to use, and we gave tons of both basil and parsely to Angelo and his restaurant.  My fave is pesto with walnuts instead of pine nuts.mmmmm

Tomatoes went through 4 proper harvests, but the beefeaters and cherries didn't do so great.  The first beefeater crop was nice, but it didn't do anything afterwards. The Principe borghese were our king crop of tomatoes, and with these (about 10-15kg per harvest) I have put away about 30litres of tomato purée, about 10 litres of tomato sauce, about 8 bottles of whole canned cherry tomatoes, and about 12 bottles of tomato ketchup (super duper yummy -- it will actually run out soon because we go through about a bottle every 2 weeks, and when it does, I don't know how we'll go back to the store bought kind).  Next year we need more tomatoes, and bigger saucier ones.

And in the meantime, we are getting a really generous crop of aubergines (eggplants) which neither of us actually like very much, so what to do with them all?? First we gave away tons, then I learned an awesome recipe for chutney, and made an aubergine apple and fig chutney that is to die for.  Have about 8 jars of that.  Then I pickled a bunch with sweetened spicy vinegar, about 6 jars of that.  And the rest we made into soups and rattatouille to eat right away -- changed my mind about aubergines, and now I'm kind of sad they are almost finished.  I'll put the last of them away in the freezer so we can bring them out for soups and stews in the winter.

The zukes made TONS but we ate them ALL as tiny babies as soon as they were ready -- worried about the classic "too many zucchinis and nobody wants them" problem, we solved this by eating TONS of zucchini flowers, and loads of grilled and stir fried zuchinis picked when they were no bigger than 10cm.  Sweeeeeet.

Also overloaded with potatoes, from the earlies to the maincrops -- we've given away loads, eaten loads, and have about 40kg in the cellar and still another 2 or 3 rows still in the garden.  And that was after wild boards made off with about half the potato crop.  They made off with ALL of our sweet corn, so the potatoes should count themselves lucky.

Phewff -- its almost more work to talk about all the stuff we've harvested and put away than it was to do it in the first place...I'm getting kind of tired of this post, and I still haven't mentioned the figs (40 jars jam), the pumpkins (puree in freezer, pieces in freezer, and 13 pumpkins in dry storage), the apples (20 jars apple sauce, 4 crates in dry storage, 3 cakes in freezer, and chutney still to come), the pears (10 jars pear sauce, just like apple sauce), peaches (12 jars jam, 8kg pieces in freezer, 2 cobblers in freezer), blackberries...so much work to pick, so little yield...all in freezer...

And now the chestnuts begin...made chestnut jam last week and just the thought of it makes my knees weak...mmmm...but they are so HARD to peel and prep.  Hours and hours and hours of work for a kilo or two of pulp.  UGH.

OK, enough enough already...I'm tired, its lunchtime, and today there are another 5kg of chestnuts to go through and the apple chutney to get underway....

Inspired by Ken & Nicole Barker's blog (http://barkersfarm.wordpress.com) on their newly started organic farm experience, i am from here on going to be more regular and less exhaustive with the posts -- they are blogging every sunday, and I think that's a great idea!  So from now on, every sunday I'll try and post, whatever has happened that week!