Around the Farm

I’ve got to run up to the garden spot in a short while and pull the okra.  It demands attention every two or three days and this is day three.  This year I went with a variety called ‘Emerald Green’ instead of the ‘Clemson Spineless’ that I’d been planting/harvesting the last several years.  The emerald is a little more forgiving (doesn’t stiffen up as much) when you miss a day of picking.  Once picked it’s cleaned, boiled for 3 minutes, tossed into an ice-water bath, cut, flowered, placed on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and frozen for four or five hours.  Once frozen its repackaged into quart baggies for long term freezing.  I’ll also freeze a few quart baggies full of some that are un-breaded.  This will go toward gumbo when the leaves begin to drop this fall. 

The garden is still spitting out jalapenos.  They are not as abundant as last year, and the size is not as large, but they are damn good.  I’ve used almost all that were produced thus far this year in the salsa and rotel I’ve made.  I’ll put up the rest in my three favorite types:  simple brine, ‘spiced’, and what’s called ‘cowboy candy’ (spiced with sugar). 

The habaneros are just about ripe and the thick cayenne peppers are a deep red.  I’ll get those pull in the next couple of days.  They cayenne will be dehydrated and then ran through a food processor to turn them into red pepper flakes.  The habaneros will be dehydrated and remain in little strips.  My only real planned use for them is for shrimp & scallop ceviche. 

The watermelon, cantaloupe, eggplant, and slicing tomatoes are still producing.  Right now I believe I could live a full ‘nuther’ lifetime without skinning/coring another Roma tomato (a feeling that will pass when the salsa runs low).  I trashed the last 4 quarts of last year’s salsa this morning and spent a little time arranging, rearranging and then un-arranging the pantry.  Here is what I’ve gathered/preserved thus far:

  • Salsa, Tomato Sauce, Tomato Jam (2 types), whole tomatoes, dehydrated (Besser) tomatoes and tomato powder.
  • Salsa verde, dill relish, rotel, sauerkraut, okra, and pesto
  • Jalapenos and Spiced Jalepenos.  6 or 7 varieties of Pepper Jelly.
  • Three types of orange marmalade, blueberry jam, and jalapeno/blackberry jam  
  • Dehydrated squash, cucumber and zucchini.

I did get the boat out this past week.  I fished just a mite, but my real purpose was to see if there was any damage from my spring accident and to reposition the boat on the trailer.  My spring accident came about by my being in a big friggin hurry and not blocking the wheels on the trailer when I unhooked it from the jeep.  I thought sure that I would stay where it was on my upper driveway (wrong).  Given that the jack on the front of the trailer has a wheel on it, it came off of the drive, bounced off of a couple of trees, gained enough speed to jump the upper tier of my railroad tie retaining wall and end up nose down on my lower drive.  This promptly crushed the front jack and caused the boat to slam forward on the trailer.  I guess the only thing that kept it on the trailer is the two rear tie-downs and transom saver.

I was able to lift the boat and trailer back over the wall using the tractor.

The circle in this photo shows one of the two rails that the boat sits on when on the trailer. When the boat is on the trailer properly, it will not be seen. That roller immediately to the right of the circle is the trailer mounted portion of the ‘transom saver’. That aluminum rod that that hooks to it runs up to the engine and is designed to keep the engine from rocking while traveling. Because the engine is mounted to the boat on the transom, it saves the transom from jolts.

Because of the way the boat was positioned on the trailer the only way to get it launched was to back so far into the water that the exhaust on my jeep was gurgling.  This enabled the u bolt welded to the front of the boat to float over the roller on the front of the trailer. The front of the boat had to go up before it could go back.

This is a photo of the front wench and front tie-down. That U Bolt should be to the right of the yellow rollers.

I replaced the front jack a few weeks ago and, now that I’m certain that I didn’t crack my transom or destroy my engines hydraulic trim. All is good !

Anyway, I’ve got to go gather okra. Take care.  Block your trailer wheels.

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