Winged victory

Every time I come home I get glimpses of a masterpiece as I drive by my neighbors house.

My very own winged victory. 

Is it better to imagine masterpieces in the common place or have masterpieces be commonplace?  I think the first, but I'd like a chance to test my theory... ;)

Sent from my Windows Phone

Summer of canning

This is late spring before we mowed the grass around it down.

This is late summer and our grass is truly dead.

 

Well this year was the year of canning.  I have canned more food this year than in my whole life combined.  There are women out there who do this every year.  I'm still coming to grips with it for me.

Making apple butter. So easy in the crock pot !

 Our garden this year was prolific.  Last year I learned that I could get successful results by tarping the ground then cutting holes for my plants. This eliminated 95% of the weeding and allowed my plants to grow, GROW, GROW!  I had automatic sprinkler controls which took care of the next chore.  The biggest chore was planting and harvesting. (Though next year I would prefer using weed barrier as my base instead of tarps because the tarps left puddles on top and some plants didn't get enough water as the water was directed away from their roots and not to them).  All in all it was a truly successful venture. Yay!  after years and years of trying and only marginally succeeding or failing all together, I have figured out how gardening will work for me!!  Breakthrough moment!
I got lots of peas, green onion, lettuce, spinach and chard early on and by late summer I was regularly harvesting: beans, broccoli, chard, cherry tomatoes, summer squash, and zucchini. (Two zuccs, serviced us just fine!)

Here's another try at pickled garlic.  Beans and squash in the back.

I bagged and froze most of the broccoli and beans, along with some raspberries and apricots we got from friends.  We also got cherries for pie cherry filling (12? qts) and cherry syrup (12? pints) and cherry drink, and apples from friends for apple sauce (2 qts.), apple butter, (14 pints) apple pie filling (14 qts) and spiced chunky apple sauce. (5 qts) YUM! I bottled 7 quarts of apricots and made a bunch of fruit leather.  I used the cherry syrup in the fruit leather mix and it was magic!

Grape drink... as far as the eye can see.

My tomatoes were still all green even by August and I realized I was watering them too much for them to ripen.  So I cut back on the water and within a few days some of them started to turn red!    

So it was just a mater of time and the tomatoes started to come on.  Salsa was my first tomato product from the garden. (24 pints.)

A casualty of my marathon canning day. :(

Somewhere around the beginning of September a good friend of mine got sick and she had grapes she had bought and needed to process.  She asked if I would do it and we could halve the proceeds.  I made grape drink. (104 qts) (One hundred and four.)  (One HUNDRED and FOUR!)  That was a long day. It started at 7am and didn't end til after 11pm. Ugh...
I did so many quarts all at once that I had to use my dining table to put the bottles on to cool. We put down two thick towels to protect the finish but it wasn't enough. Big round spots now mar the top.  Our table will never look the same until we refinish it.  This sad occurrence has made me realize it is indeed time to refinish the poor thing.  I have lots of memorable little scuffs and scratches I thought I might miss before, but the tipping point was reached in a massive way.  Its time.  

 From left to right: Cherry syrup, cherry pie filling, apple butter, cherry drink, and apple juice.

One of my favorites. Sundried tomatoes in Olive oil.

 So the garden wasn't done and kept on giving --  zucchinis (of course) and more broccoli, beans and tomatoes.  Chard never stopped and the peppers were coming on too.  I made salsa with tomatoes, peppers and onions from my own garden.  (That was a nice feeling!)
  
I also made sun-dried tomatoes from some of the tomatoes that ripened on the vine in our late summer sun.  Heaven! (6 quarts, 3 with oil.)


I learned about dehydrated zucchini chips this year and it's the first year growing zucs that I didn't have them going to waste at the end of the year. 
Another :)

Apple pie filling.

My tower of spaghetti sauce.

 In mid-late September there was a frost warning and so the whole family went out and picked all the green tomatoes off the plants.  ALL of them.  7 boxes worth.  Then I sorted them by ripeness and a week later I did a 5 days of spaghetti sauce.  Almost 9 quarts a day.  44 quarts in the end.  Most of my tomatoes went in to that. With a good bunch to salsa and sun-dried (dehydrated) tomatoes.The fun side of this was as I sat and chopped, and chopped ...and chopped I watched Masterchef and now I finally know who won this year!  :)

As I type this in mid October, I still have tomatoes in boxes... still ripening.  I'm trying to decide what to do with them.  I never thought I'd be at the point where I didn't know what to do with homegrown tomatoes.  It doesn't help that I'm the only person in our family so far that likes fresh tomatoes.  Every recipe I've made that had tomatoes in it since Aug. has been made with fresh tomatoes.  Zucchini casserole, taco soup, vegetable soup, enchiladas, chef salad etc. All made with my own tomatoes ..but wait!  There's more... and still more.  Sigh.  Its a happy thing to deal with, don't get me wrong.  I'm just a little tired.

New this year, tomato JAM.  :P

 I found a recipe for tomato jam this year after seeing Luca from Master Chef use it in his dessert in the Finale.  I was intrigued and looked it up and then made some. (12 halfpints)  Oh. My. Word.  So good! Stinky cheese and crackers here I come!!

Salsa and apple butter.

 So when i went to get apples for the various apple stuff, there was a pear tree there and the owner of the land asked if I wanted to bottle them and we could halve the proceeds...  After all the aforementioned canning I was really looking forward to ...being DONE!... But something told me to go and do it so now I have 5 boxes of pears in my house that I need to process as they become ripe. I went home and learned a lot about pears.  And have a couple recipes I'm thinking of doing.  I expect to do about 60 more quarts of pears.  Ugh...but by the time I am done with those it will be a total of ~256 quarts and 56 pints. 

That makes me tired just thinking about it.

Gideon's eagle project

On a hot July day the first phase of Gideon's Eagle Project began. 

It started with boys cleaning, scraping, wire brushing, and scuffing the exterior of this Artillery Gun mounted in a park in our local town.

 Next was the washing, including pressure washing. 

 George Howlett was here with us and helped out a lot!

 Uncle Jordon got in on the action too, along with Tim Lane.

 All 'clean', but still a mess.

 
Pressure washing the dirt, debris and 30 years of broken glass out of the nooks and crannies of this gun was no easy feat. They kept thinking they got it all then if they hit it at a different direction more just kept coming out! (It took Karen over 2 hours of walking around in the grass and picking up the glass that was washed out of this thing.)

 Insert Jeopardy music here...

 It took two months between the pressure washing and the priming/painting because of MULTIPLE variables needing to be met. The weather had to me not too hot and not to cold, the humidity had to be low, and they needed enough time before to be completely dry, and enough time after to fully cure. It was a two part paint that needed to be mixed right before applying and if it was two high of humidity it would peel off and waste the whole job. Also the weather changed like a fickle girlfriend so they would plan days ahead and get the special painter lined up to be there (the one who know how to work with the paint and had the equipment to apply it) then the weather would turn and ruin all the plans. This happened over, and over, and over. Then the days that the weather was supposed to be yucky were in actuallity perfect and our painter was unavailable because he had work etc. I was tearing my hair out it was so frustrating! When they finally just decided to do it without the painter it took 3 times as long as it was supposed to and we had to buy our own painting guns. So we are out a couple hundred bucks, and a lot of time, but it finally got painted.

 Get ready, get set, GO!

 Big difference in the before and after, all in one shot.

 Nice and clean new look! Almost all done priming!

 As you can tell Gid is pretty happy about it!

 Finishing touches.

Dan and Gideon actually got a replacement flash hider sent from a navy warehouse in Florida. It still needs to be attached. They are also working on a plaque stating the history of the Gun and which boat it came from etc.Wow, so great it is almost done!

The motley crew who accomplished the feat!  

Dan liked slinging a gun on each hip.

He really does think he was born in the wrong century.  ;)