I’ve never had sloe gin and had to research to know that those are sloe berries. Very cool. I make lemoncello and creme de menthe (yum!), but I’d love any recipe using elderberries, blackberries, or cherries. :)

Strictly speaking, being a Prunus species, they're drupes rather than berries. They have a single pit rather than seeds. This was last years’s.

Ah I just skimmed this article that called them berries. Sloe gin

It does look good, Very festive for the holidays.

All done. Double quantity this year😉

Wow, floral, I've never even seen a sloe berry here, although I'm guessing they would grow as well here as in the UK. I did own a bar in a previous life, and so I am familiar with sloe gin, mostly used in the ubiquitous Sloe Gin Fizz, LOL. I never knew anyone that made it, though.

Like PM, I've made limoncello and my Aunt Ellen used to make "cherry bounce" and a Rum Pot, both of which were fruit covered with commercially available vodka or rum. I"m guessing sloe gin is along the same lines?

PM, I seldom see red cabbage here either, it was just a good year for everyone's garden, I guess. Green cabbage was also $1 a head, but I'd grown enough of that to make sauerkraut and have several heads left over.

Here I'm canning more boring things. I had apples that needed using, so I made seven 12 ounce jars of apple butter to add to my "stash", along with 18 half pints of hot pepper relish, made from a nice mix of Biquinho, Black Hungarian, Sugar Rush Peach, the last of the Pepperoncini and some of my red Cosmic carrots for sweetness. I think there were a couple of the Big Bertha green peppers in there too.

My new Rhode Island Reds, the teenagers, are just starting to lay, I'm getting those cute little beginner eggs. I'm thinking they might make nice "spider eggs" for Halloween. Meanwhile, I'm putting eggs in the freezer, the Bed and Breakfast has no guests for 3 weeks and eggs will stack up...

Annie

Annie - I miss fresh eggs and love those little ones that they lay at first.

I traded 3 half pints of last year's horseradish to a friend for 3 pints of apple butter last week. He made a huge kettle of it a couple weeks ago.

I am about to go out and plant my garlic before the rain moves in. I prepped the bed yesterday so it shouldn't take long. I've also already busted up the heads and have a sandwich bag full of cloves that got rejected for planting that I will slice and throw in the dehydrator for grinding into powder as needed. That will be a good rainy day project.

"Beginner eggs". lol! My sister is fairly new with chickens (since June 2019 and she now has 5)... she still gets excited when she gets the blue/green eggs. :)

LoneJack, I'd make that trade in a heartbeat!!! And I need to plant my garlic too. Last year, I started peeling and freezing excess cloves, and I use them whenever cooking time is tight.

We've been smoking then drying peppers to make ground pepper or flakes. We used a variety of peppers. I found a recipe where you can add 4 tb spoons of dried peppers to 1/2 cup vinegar and 1/2 cup water. Blend that up and you have a hot sauce that is table ready. I've made pepper relish, and now 2 different batches of pepper jam. Have one more batch to make up. Used up all my lids and had to pay 3.69 a dozen each for 2 boxes of lids. I've seen them priced at 4.99/dz so I guess I got a deal on these....

I planted my garlic last week and we just had our first frost last night, so I'm looking forward to trying my horseradish again this year. Last year the roots were too small so we left them, I'm hoping for bigger and better things this year!

I canned 12 half pints of pickled peppers, a mix of Hungarian Black and Sugar Rush. I have another canner full in the fridge soaking in a lime solution. I canned the first batch with Pickle Crisp, I'm experimenting to find out which is better.

Annie

Canfan - I thought the trade was a good one. I opened one of the apple butters yesterday and had it on toast and it was very good. It's sad when paying almost $4 for a dozen flats is considered good deal. I saw new canning jars marked down at WM this weekend but didn't buy any. I still have about 12 dozen various empty jars gathering dust on my basement shelves.

Floral - doesn't the Slo Gin require any time to distill? Or do you add alcohol from another source to the juice?

I need to freeze some peppers too. Picked almost a bushel on Friday but haven't done anything with them yet. I put the garlic in the dehydrator on Saturday afternoon and it's almost done. I ground what I had left in the freezer yesterday and got almost a pint of garlic powder. Next I need to dehydrate some onions for powder. I mix red, white, and yellow onions and get a lovely pink onion powder :-)

Annie - I bet and hope you get some good HR roots this year! Be sure to replant the crowns ASAP after harvest. I plant them so the top is about 4" deep. I'll wait until mid November to dig up and process mine. It's a pretty big chore to dig, wash, peel, chop, and grind but the roots hold well in the frig so I can tackle the processing a little at a time if needed. Last year I got almost 20 lbs. of useable root and expect about the same this year.

We took our steer into the Amish butcher on Wednesday. One weighed 1475 lbs. and the other just under 1400. I sold 20 lbs. of hamburger to a couple friends yesterday to make room for the new. Still have about 40 lbs. of burger left along with a brisket, a rib roast, and a few other cuts. I also defrosted both freezers a week or 2 ago. I think I have enough room in the freezers for the new stuff but it will be tight. A good problem to have.

All this talk of horseradish reminds me of the old guy in the village who used to harvest his horseradish from a wild/wet area in the flats. I was told he'd dig and take the root, then just stick the top back into the soil to maintain the plot. His horseradish was fantastic! He also made pickles unlike any I've ever tasted and I wish I had the recipe. They were mildly sour with only a hint of sweetness and had lots of pickling spices in the mix -- I remember crushed bay leaves and coriander, at least -- nothing like an ordinary dill pickle.

Annie, I've always used pickling recipes that call for alum. I'll be interested in hearing your test results.

And, yay, I got my garlic planted yesterday! :O) We had a completely unexpected light frost the night before, so I lost my basil. Bummer. And now it's raining again....

canfan, or anyone who has dried and crushed peppers before: A neighbor gave me a pile of what looks like cayenne peppers, so I strung them to dry. I'd like to crush them into small flakes and seeds. Is a rough chop followed by crushing with a mortar and pestle the best way to achieve that?

party_music50 I use the food processor to crush the dried peppers. It's quick. Pulse until you get the size of flakes your looking for. Stand back and don't inhale. I use the mortar and pestle if I need a finer grind for recipes.

In other news..... we sold our Red Angus "Ma". We couldn't butcher her.... just couldn't. Found her a home on the West side of WA State, where she will be bred and live with a herd of 40 other cattle. We have enough beef in the freezer to last another year but Hubs says we'll buy a steer and some lambs in the spring. We still have to pasture horses to keep me feeling like we have a "homestead" of sorts.

Thanks, canfan.

PM, I use a coffee grinder to turn my dehydrated peppers into "Dust of Death". Less grinding means coarser pepper flakes, of course. A separate grinder than the one I use for coffee, clearly. (grin)

Jack, that's a lotta beef, you'd better get to cooking. Yes, it's a very good "problem" to have, isn't it? Somehow I never have burger left, it's what all the kids want, I'm the only one that uses the specialty cuts like brisket. I'm optimistic about that horseradish, the plants were HUGE this year. I'm just waiting for a frost to kill the leaves, then I can see what's in there. Keep your fingers crossed for me...

canfan, I'm glad you found someone to take "Ma". They sure get to be big and expensive pets, don't they? It will definitely seem odd when we decide to stop running beef on the place. I told Elery that we could just sell hay and keep the garden and fruit trees going and it would still be enough farming to keep me contented, probably. Well, maybe some chickens too.

Annie

haha, Annie, it’s a good thing you said not to use the regular coffee grinder — I would have used it. It’s bad enough that I already use it for grinding oats, almonds, and flaxseed. Good luck with your horseradish! what will you use to grind that? :)

Has anybody here dehydrated watermelon? I've wondered about it in past years when I've had a lot of melons, but discounted it as being impractical. A couple weeks ago I was in a Trader Joe's and saw Watermelon Jerky and bought it. This morning I filled my dehydrator's 4 racks with pieces of watermelon sliced about 1/2". Some of the melon was way less than prime, but I am remembering my sis-in-law (who introduced me to dehydrators) saying that dehydrating even mediocre fruit turns out good. Time will tell. I set it for 12 hours, 135 degrees. I'm guessing it will take longer.

Margi - I've never done watermelon, only apples and apricots as far as fruits. I have no idea how long it will take s just keep an eye on it and check it before going to bed to see how it is doing. You might want to turn the temperature down if you think it will finish overnight.

Next question: How about canning potatoes? I have quite a few and I know we won't get through them before they start to sprout! Seems to me like having a few quarts of canned potatoes on hand for easy potato soup would be a good thing this winter. I know dehydrating is an option too. I did that a couple years ago, but found that I didn't really use them. Has anybody done BOTH can and dehydrate potatoes? What's your preference?

OK...That is all. .I need to get back to work.

LOL, PM, I can't even imagine Carolina Reaper coffee, oh my!

Jack, I'm looking forward to trying that horseradish. I see some people say to use the food processor and others say it compromise the texture and the only way to really get it right is with a hand grater. So, I'm going to try both ways, determine what I like. If those roots are as big as the tops were this year, of course.

I canned 13 half pints of the limed peppers, we'll wait a week or so for them to set and then have a "taste test"!

I have dehydrated potatoes and they were OK, but not something I've done regularly. I also canned potatoes a couple of years but I wasn't all that taken with the texture of those. They were too soft to make American Fries, they just broke into pieces. I did find it was really handy to have a jar of carrots, a jar of potatoes and a jar of beef and make a quick "stew".

Annie

Annie - I have a feeling you might quickly tire of grating the horseradish if you are making a lot. I think I may try grating a small amount to use immediately but everything I intend to process and freeze will be going through the food processor. The texture seems fine to me and I get rave reviews from everyone I share it with.

I made a big pot of veggie beef soup with barley yesterday and it turned out great. I used the last of the meaty soup bones from last year's steer.

We should be getting a call to come pick up our beef from the Amish butcher in a week or so. They said they would let it age for at least 2 weeks which would be Thursday assuming they dispatched them the day we took them in.

My father grew horseradish and he used a food processor, but I didn't care for the texture. It ended up like more like horseradish slaw. :p

eta: It's been almost 2 years since I've seen barley in the stores here. I have no idea why.

PM - I couldn't find the bags of barley with the other bagged grains and rice so I cheated and bought the little box of Quaker Oats 'quick barley'

The tiny little food processor I use chops up the HR pretty fine. Definitely not the texture of slaw at all....much smaller.

This is the exact model I use.

Cuisinart mini-prep

LoneJack, that’s good to know! Whatever blade my father used on his big FP, he ended up with beautifully uniform 1/2” long shreds… I want my horseradish more ground up. I think the old guy in the village used an old-fashioned cast iron meat grinder on his horseradish, and passed it through twice!

I have a similar model mini-prep I use for hummus, but just noticed the plastic at the base of the blade is cracked. I’m debating replacing the blade or the unit, and which unit to get. They say in a review that the Cuisinart Elite mini makes the best hummus, but it’s a 4 cup size (and $60) vs the 2.63 cup for less $. Do you know if yours makes a decent hummus? :)

eta: in the meanwhile, I bought a smoothie blender thinking it would make great hummus. It might, but I never tried it because the way it’s constructed, I’d never be able to scrape the hummus out. :p

PM - I've never used it for hummus but the DW says that she remembers using it for hummus and/or guacamole before I absconded it about 10 years ago to use on the horseradish. Since then it's only been used for HR and she bought a new one.

ok, thanks, LoneJack.

Today is in the 40s, windy, and partly sunny. Lots of gold in the trees around me. Just a gorgeous day. I'm bringing in the last of my plants that I'll over-winter and things that can't freeze -- they're forecasting frost tonight and again tomorrow, so that will be it for us. This will actually be the latest killing frost we've ever had that I can ever remember. I have some green tomatoes to pickle!!! I love those things. lol! Here's my harvest -- I only had one plant that was still producing, but it feels like at least 3 pints of pickles to me! :)

So lucky to have tomatoes this late in the season PM!

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme.... Yup! I followed that old song and planted all of them this year. I harvest bunches of them before the frost. They're drying on the dining room table & will be used at Thanksgiving.

booberry, for the year we've had, you're darn right! It was a late volunteer plant that I decided not to yank at the last minute. :)

I am going to pick up our beef this afternoon. 2 beef is going to be a tight fit in my pickup! My share is 1/3 of it. I am meeting my herd partners to split it up about 4:30.

I sold the remaining burger from last year's steer so my chest freezer is empty and there is some more room in my upright.

I have a big pot of ham and beans going in the crock for dinner. yum yum!

We're also getting frost tonight, down to 28 says the weather man, so maybe the horseradish will be done this weekend. It's still nice and green and leafy right now, but I was told that the leaves can also be used (judiciously, LOL) in salads and such. I haven't tried that, but I have baby lettuces ready to pick in the hoop houses, so a salad may be on the menu tomorrow.

Elery will be hunting in the morning, he's had no luck so far this year but hasn't really gone out much. Since we have no beef ready this year, it's a "clean out the freezers" year, and boy do they need it! Jack, I have no idea what an empty freezer looks like, could you take a picture? (grin)

I still have all that garlic to slice and dehydrate, and we brought in the rest of the red onions for storage, the last milk crate full. With this latest onion recall, the B&B across the road has been buying onions from me. And I still have about 50 or 60 leeks in the garden to bring in.

I pruned the raspberries and picked the last few handfuls of those, and then just ran out of time before I could do anything with the tomatillos, the frost beat me to those last week. I still want to make some apple jelly too, and some raspberry syrup for pancakes and french toast, we'll see how much time I can scrounge before it's time to start Christmas baking!

Annie

Annie - sorry it's too late to take a picture. Both of the freezers are jam packed with beef now. I need to sell some burger to make room for other things. I think I got over 200 lbs. of burger alone and around 360 lbs. of beef total.

The only preserving i have done lately is chop some peppers for freezing.

I diced and then vacuum packed. They’ll come in handy this winter I hope.

It's cookie season here! I've started baking for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Last weekend I made 4 different kinds of cookies. Two of them made it into the freezer. The chocolate chip and monster cookies didn't stand a chance. So I'm making more now to "put up".

I just jarred and am now cooling a huge pot of bean soup. Tomorrow they will go into the freezer... where I hope to find enough room for the many pint wide-mouth jars.

I used the Rancho Gordo beans, soaked almost 24 hours before cooking. Then I added the Smoked Pork Shanks from the grocery, along with a ton of fresh vegetables.... and more water. Those will last at least until the first of the New Year.

itsmce, I did exactly the same thing with the last of the peppers in the garden just a couple of days ago. I still need to dig the rest of the leeks...

I also found a turkey carcass in the freezer and made a huge batch of turkey vegetable soup. Two quarts went into the freezer for busy days.

Booberry, I need to start with the Christmas cookie dough. Maybe tomorrow, but I still have a bucket of apples in the garage that I should be turning into applesauce. We'll see how my times goes.

Annie

We skipped having a bird yesterday since it was just the two of us and instead had surf and turf (Rib Eye and seared scallops). The Rib Eye from our just processed beef was the best I've ever had...so tender and flavorful! We had them cut the steaks 1" thick and one was enough for both of us.

I finally got my last bed of horseradish dug up yesterday. This morning I cleaned the loose dirt off the roots and cut off the crowns to replant later this morning after it warms up a bit. I have about 40 crowns and only need 9 so I need to try to find someone to give the rest to. Anyone here want some?

I got a little under 5 lbs. of peelable roots which should end up making around 3 quarts of processed HR. I'm getting ready to wash the roots now and will peel, cube, and process it tomorrow morning.

I'm going over to a friend's place this afternoon to help him split a couple cords of firewood. Thank goodness he has a log splitter!

Sunday I'm going to make the first batch of Chex mix of the season. Need to buy the ingredients still.

ETA: The wood slitting got postponed until tomorrow so I went ahead and peeled and cubed the HR. I should be able to process it in about 2 hours in the morning. I got about 10 cups of peeled HR chunks

Jack, I ground horseradish too, and replanted 5 crowns. I've only dug about half of it, and have 3 pints in the refrigerator and about another pound of peeled chunks in the freezer to grind later. I'm going to make some horseradish sauce to go with tomorrow's dinner.

Congratulations on the beef, there's nothing quite like your own homegrown beef. Plus you know how it was raised and treated, what it ate, how it was processed.

Great minds must think alike, we had scallops yesterday too. Our big dinner will be tomorrow, it's the first time all the work schedules could align.

I did finally finish dehydrating all the leeks. 3 two quart jars full of dried leeks, I'm thinking I probably won't run out of those!

Annie

Now I’m wondering if horseradish grates/grinds easier after it’s been frozen. It seems logical that it would.

Annie - you sure are right about the home grown beef! We did some cow herding yesterday afternoon. We recently put a young angus bull in with our cows and needed to separate the 10-11 month old heifers from the bull so he wouldn't try to breed them too. It took a bit of work to cut out the 2 heifers and the young steer and move them to another pasture. They seemed to be enjoying the fresh grass in the new pasture but I'm sure they will be crying for a few days once they realize that they are cut off from their mothers and their milk. The next batch of calves should be born sometime around next Labor day.

PM - I've never frozen HR roots but would be somewhat concerned they would turn limp or rubbery after thawing. I don't think you could grind them while still frozen.

I do freeze the processed HR in half pint and 4 oz. jelly jars and it will easily last a year. I just gave away the last 2 pints left from last year.

I processed the rest of my HR yesterday morning. I was balling my eyes out for most of the 2 hours it took to process it all in my basement. I wait 3-4 minutes after grinding it in the mini prep Cuisinart before adding the vinegar and a little salt and sugar. The wait is supposed to increase the heat level. I ended up getting 6 1/4 pints from the second bed and 10 1/2 pints total.

That is a lot ! of horseradish. I don't even think I use a pint a year.

Jack, I just had a turkey sandwich with horseradish and cranberry sauce, it was delicious!

I'll let you know how the frozen horseradish turns out. The internet is no help, of course. Half the sites say it's just fine to freeze the root, then thaw and grind later. The other half says to grind first, but doesn't say why. So we just peeled it, cut it into chunks and put it in the freezer. I have some fresh stuff that's wrapped and in the bottom of the fridge to see how long it will keep and we'll grind some and freeze that. Then we'll see how each method worked!

Yes, separating a herd, even a small herd, is an adventure, LOL. I used to do it on horseback, before my beloved Copenhagen died. Now I do it on foot, I'm patient and calm and it works. Eventually. There will definitely be some crying before those guys are weaned and the Mothers will bawl more than the babies, or at least louder. Invest in earplugs. (grin)

Annie

After reading all that, I now know that I could never separate a herd of crying whatevers. :O)

I would guess that partially thawing the roots would make them grate the easiest. I find that most things are too hard to deal with if frozen, and too soft/wet/mushy to deal with if thawed.

I just remembered my sister telling me about a steak she grilled that involved coating it in horseradish. She said it was delicious and didn’t really taste like horseradish. Lmk if you want me to ask her how it’s done.

Annie - Did you end up grating your horseradish by hand? I have kept HR root in the fridge for a few weeks and it seemed to be fine when I got around to processing it. I'd think the thicker (1/2" or bigger) roots would store better/longer.

PM - That HR steak sounds interesting. I've put HR on roast beef while cooking and after but never on a steak.

Our young heifers and steer are only separated from their mothers by a fence. They can still visit nose to nose but they can't get at the milk jugs :-)

Yesterday I made all the Christmas Jam. I have to mail several packages this year and the Jam will be included. I've heard that it can take lots of extra time to reach a recipient so I'm going to try mailing early.

But was it hard work! You all have warned and warned about the lack of jars and lids, so I ordereded a dozen Ball jars from Amazon last month. What I got wasn't Ball but I kept them anyway. Saturday I found that the jars were OK, but the lids each had a huge paper stuck on. I tried taking it off; I soaked it; I scraped it; and then discovered that they smrlled weird, perhaps from the sticky stuff; I boiled them and changed the water 4 times; they still smelled and I tossed them.... I didn't want my jam to pickup the taste. I dug thru every supply I had and found a few extra jars and lids; I used those, and had enough to finish the job without using the offending lids. But, there is not a spare small lid anywhere in my house.

Here are yesterday's efforts:

wow, nice variety of jars and lots of them! That sucks about your supplies. I happily just found extra lids in my canning jar boxes! I never think to use the lids that they seal in plastic on the packing cardboard, and that's where they still were. :)

What flavor is the jam? It looks really good.... like it has raspberries or strawberries in it. I've been thinking about making either blackberry jelly or jalapeno-apple to send out. The J-A is really pretty with a mix of red and green pepper bits.

Thank you, Party Music. It is an uncooked, refrigerator raspberry jam. I think it is pretty for Christmas.

Beautiful jam, Kate. I've still got a few lids left from my stockpiling, so I can turn some of those raspberries in the freezer into jam just as soon as I get a little time to do it.

Jack, we used the food processor and just ground it very finely. It worked well, so that's what I'll do again next time.

Our calves and cows are also able to visit through the fence, the young ones in the "weaning pen" and the cows free to wander about their pasture space. They're fine until the mamas wander away to eat and then the crying begins. Or the mamas go to find their little ones and realize they can see them, smell them, but not get to them. And the crying begins, LOL.

Annie

We decided to go ahead a buy the young angus bull we had 'borrowed'. He isn't registered/certified but both of his parents were. We paid $1500 so not a bad price for a ~2.5 year old bull and we should be able to use him for 2 generations or longer if we don't let him breed his own offspring. It will be about 2.5 years before his first offspring would be breeding age anyway.

I am 'putting up' a double batch of Chex mix this morning. It's in the oven now and it sure smells good!

ETA: my herd partner's son had the bull in his pasture with his 11 breeders since August before bringing it over to our pasture about a month ago. He had a vet preg check them all yesterday and all 11 of them were knocked up! It seems the bull knows what he's doing :-)

Jack, that's about the age of my new herd bull, he was a couple of months past 2 years old when I got him in August. He is registered, the people I got him from were serious about beef, they'd even had the rib eye ultrasound checked for fat marbling, LOL. I figure I can keep him for a couple of years and still get my money out of him. So I only have three cows, but I'm sure they are all bred. He was already tested, of course, as his owners were leasing him out as a herd bull before they sold him to me.

Anyway, tenderloin for Christmas dinner this year! I made some really nice horseradish sauce with some of the horseradish, but Elery has been eating it straight, just smeared on a sandwich, he loves the stuff. I guess we'll be planting more, or letting it spread.

I still have some in the freezer, unground, so I'll be experimenting with that when the three half pint jars I made are gone. I was told not to grind it all at once, since it loses it's potency.

Elery's son, DIL and their three boys are coming from California for Christmas, we see the boys in the summer but haven't seen his son or DIL for nearly 5 years. He just put 5 pounds of venison sausage in the smoker this morning, more than we'll need although there will be a Christmas meal for 16 and another one for 11 this year. So, some venison came out of the freezer, was made into sausage and went back into the freezer, LOL. That kind of counts, right?

Annie