Canning in January?

Making tomato juice in January. If you're scratching your head wondering why I would want to make tomato juice from the nasty tomatoes available during the winter . . . I'll let you in on my secret. The freezer! I did not make tomato juice this morning from florida tomatoes . . . these were straight out of our garden in September . . . by way of the freezer. The nifty thing about freezing tomatoes is that when you thaw them some of the water is already drawn out, cutting cooking time, and the skins fall right off, saving you having to blanch them. Plus you can gather up a whole bunch to do your preserving in great big batches instead of having to constantly be doing little batches all during tomato season. Now if you're wanting the tomatoes for their texture, best to use fresh. The freezing process ruins the fruit structure as the water in it freezes, bursting plant cell walls, and causing it to lose any firmness it might have had. No big deal for sauces and juice though.


These 4 pints are the last of our 2010 tomatoes. The rest can be found in the 30+ jars of salsa, and small batch of spaghetti sauce hanging out on the basement shelves. We are big salsa eaters here, and find it a great hit at most parties and carry-ins, so we always make a bunch. We also like to use a lot of spaghetti sauce for Friday night Italian suppers: spaghetti or pizza as our whim dictates. But we have yet to find a sauce recipe that we really like, and are working on the best mix of tomatoes that gives a good flavor, just the right balance of sweet and acid. Most of our batches to date have been a little on the acid side; we think we need more paste tomatoes and less big beefy German Pinks, which are great on flavor, but high acid too.


All this talk of tomatoes makes me want to peruse the seed catalogs. In just a few weeks we will need to be seeding our onions, and a couple of weeks after all our early crucifers. And before you know it, it will be time to till all that rotten cow manure/straw under, and uncover the strawberries, and watch for turkey eggs. Oh wait . . . we still have to survive January, February, and March. There's a lot of winter still left.


So maybe I just need to be like the cows today, huddle up, and enjoy the sunshine while we can. Another snow will be just around the corner.

First week of January

Yesterday I sat and prepared the pages of our farm journal for the first 3 months of 2011. How odd it felt to write week 1 -- January 2-8. It doesn't seem as though enough time has passed for it to be a new year. But that's how it goes; the older we get the shorter a year seems. I think it's because as you get older, a year becomes a smaller and smaller proportion of your life. When you're 8, a year is 1/8 of your life. When you're 30, a year is only 1/30 of your life.

2010 was a typical year of changes, subtractions and additions. The opening picture shows one of the largest additions to our farm this year, dairy beef calves. We've determined over the past few days that cold and clouds is not what keeps our animals inside for most of the past few weeks. It was snow on the ground. Even though it was cold and breezy yesterday and this morning. All our animals were out braving the elements. I wish I could have managed a picture of our birds this morning. We have an old a-frame portion of a swingset out in our pasture. The youngest turkey hen was perched on top of it, and all the other chickens and turkeys were quietly gathered around, as if holding poultry church, or an important livestock meeting.

Happy New Year!

Did you feel it?

Out the window at the O'Hara Corner Farm is not very exciting this morning:

Though it does help when you take a glance at the thermometer, and realize that it is above freezing for the first time in weeks:

Did you feel what though? The earthquake, a 3.8 which occurred at 7:55 AM this morning according to the U.S. Geological Survey with an epicenter in th central Indiana. I evidentally had dozed off while watching the news this morning . . . the next thing I know Checkers the dog is going crazy, and the it feels like there was a really loud crash of vibrating thunder or a big tree fell down nearby, or a car went off the road and hit then house. After a quick check out the window, I concluded that none of the above had occurred. Maybe I was imagining things, but that would mean that Checkers and I were imagining things together. Not highly likely . . .


So as I'm puttering around this morning, with the news still on, the guy on the news is talking about how they've gotten all these phone calls about an earthquake. Now I know that Checkers and I are not crazy. I'm surprised our cats weren't yowling too. Pumpkin, our large, elderly calico cat is known for her prediction of the weather, i.e. if a a big storm is coming she will sit halfways down the stairs and yowl. We think she can feel the change in barometric pressure. I would have thought an earthquake was enough to bring out her inner craziness,  but evidentally she was in the throes of her hours long morning nap.


So now after a bit of morning craziness, we are back into a wet, warmer winter day. Grocery shopping, putting a new zipper in my outdoor work coat, and general household chores. Or if you're the chickens, a good day to get outside, an scrounge around for grass, weeds, and undigested corn out of cow patties (I know ... EWWW!!!).

Frosty Pines

Another beautiful morning on the farm. Cool and frosty, with little crystals all over everything. All of our conifers really seemed to catch my eye, from the spruce in the side yard, to our big stand of pines in the back, and the little volunteer cedar beside the house. I never quit being amazed at the beauty and structure in this wonderful world.

And how lucky are we as humans that we are given the ability to appreciate it all. I can't say the same about the calves, who were a lot more interested in their breakfast this morning.

Waiting . . .

We're through the major holidays now. Thanksgiving and Christmas have come and gone; now just waiting on the new year. Everything outside is cold and still, as if all is waiting for the turn of the calendar:

I look out the window and see our maple trees, bare, stark against the gray winter sky. And suddenly I'm thinking that the end of Februrary, sugarin' season, is only a few short weeks away. Just a few short weeks until there will be white buckets in this view:

Until then, we'll wait and enjoy the quiet of early winter, when evening to-do lists are short, and there's a good chance that there's some soup or broth  simmering on the stove.

And maintain all of our critters, taking care that the cats don't fall in to the stock tank when they're getting their morning drink:

Drizzle, Drizzle

We woke today to a freezing drizzle and cold gray skies. The outdoor critters are none too interested in being outside. The calves peer out from the doorway of the shed when I come out to feed them breakfast, but can only be coaxed out for the 30 seconds it takes to greet me at the gate and hop, skip, jump to the feed trough. The chickens have spent no more than a few minutes in the last few days outside, but the turkeys are a bit more intrepid. Or else Thomas and Essie feel required to make sure that drama queen Ginny doesn't get lost outside in the snow by herself.

Sparkles, Critters, and other nonsense

This is actually yesterday's post. I was having trouble getting photos to upload, so here goes.


One of the few cool things about it being this cold out (1 degree at 8 AM), is that it makes for a really beautiful frost that covers everything in fine sparkly crystals that look like diamonds in the sunlight.

If you can't tell, I'm a little obsessed with up close nature photos. Especially stuff that holds still. And ice crystals are so cool!


I finally remembered to take my camera out when I fed the cats in the morning. Here's your opportunity to meet Henry and the new kitten, (who now has a name because she has stayed almost a week), Sally. As they seem to have an aversion to looking directly at me when I have a camera in hand . . . all I got was a picture of them eating:

Henry on the left and Sally on the right (this photo does not do justice to the size difference, Henry is at least twice as big as Sally).


And lastly, the nonsense . . . on Saturday, we thought our indoor cat Kiddo was just really enjoying posing so nicely with the nativity scene under the Christmas tree:

But then we noticed that Checkers was also completely obessed with the Christmas tree as well, i.e. constantly circling it, trying to climb up in it etc. It took us a while to draw the line between the mouse chasing that had obviously went on in the kitchen the night before and all this attention bestowed upon the Christmas tree. So evidentally a mouse had at one time been in the tree, though with the lights on and using a flashlight, Ryan couldn't locate the critter.


Later on, we were sitting on the couch eating a snack, and Ryan says look! There at the end of one of the Christmas tree branches, a few feet above the ground, a mouse, sniff, sniff, sniffing . . . trying to figure out how to get from this tree to a nice safe place under the couch, while avoiding the crazy meat hungry predators that inhabit this territory. It gets some help from Ryan, who runs over and knocks the critter and a couple of bulbs off the tree . . . but lucky for the mouse, none of the "fierce" critters were fast enough to catch it. So the mouse lives to see another piece of cheese. And all of our pets are obessed with the fact that there is still an edible rodent somewhere in our living space.