Spending the day gardening, harvesting and preserving!

good morning friend it is early this morning it's supposed to be in the 80s today and so I thought what we should do is get out and work outside before it gets too hot but I need to make some breakfast so I thought I would come out and collect some eggs looks like we got six beautiful eggs this morning which is gonna be more than enough for breakfast this morning we're gonna make a breakfast casserole and there's the makings of a good breakfast today is an exciting day we are gonna head out into the garden and we are going to do our first kind of big Harvest we've got some cleanup to do and some preservation of the Harvest that is going to be coming in today from the garden which is so exciting but we need to make breakfast first I grabbed some home canned potatoes these are homegrown potatoes that I thought we could make a egg and potato and sausage bake thank you because I cooked up some sausage from that whole hog that I ordered the other day and picked up and so we can get that into this bake along with jalapeno and some peppers that I saw yesterday so this is going to be really easy to throw together right in this dish I'm gonna go rinse these potatoes because they have a little bit of starch on the bottom and I don't want that in my bake I'm enjoying using these canned potatoes for baking or using in casseroles like this because canned potatoes are par cooked they're not soft enough to turn into mashed potatoes but they're perfectly cooked that I can turn them into a bake and they will come out perfect if I was to use raw potatoes in something like this the potatoes wouldn't be done by the time the eggs cook through and so this is a perfect application for them and so now here I am going to grate up some cheese this is gruyere cheese that I found in the fridge actually from Easter it's still fine within date because it was in its original packaging but I thought that this flavor would go really well with our bake this rind part I'm going to give to the chickens and they will greatly enjoy I thought gruyere cheese peppers sausage and potato and egg just would be a really good combination so that is what we're going with I am not following any particular recipe here I'm just cooking with what I found in the kitchen and freezer and pantry and refrigerator and going with that I kind of find these breakfast bakes to be a good kind of catch-all for anything that needs to be used up like these jalapenos these jalapenos were still totally fine but it was a good time to get them out of the fridge and I'm really happy because the jalapeno peppers out in the garden are starting to produce little peppers and so soon enough the jalapenos that I'll be cooking with will be coming out of the garden so now I'm going to add some eggs I do get the question sometimes how do I you know do it all do how do I have a house clean and food on the table and gardening and all the things and I really I don't do it all so one way that I try to help myself is to do extra prep like this so this breakfast bake is going to last us more than just today it'll probably give us a total of about six servings so that's six breakfast between Josh and I so that if we each had it for the next three days I have a breakfast done for three days that I don't have to think about I do the same thing with dinner I try to bulk cook bulk batch so that I just don't have to cook all the time I love cooking but sometimes I just don't have the energy I don't have the time I don't want to mess up the kitchen and so this is a way I can kind of gift myself the gift of not having to cook and so here I am putting some sausage just right on top of the potatoes I diced up a zucchini that I found in the fridge that needed to be used up like I said you can really dump in anything you want into this and make it your own if you don't like zucchini leave the zucchini out if you like spinach and you have spinach that needs to be used that would be a perfect thing to put into a casserole like this I'm gonna pour the veggies and cheese and egg mixture right over the top of our potatoes and sausage I do end up kind of mixing this in just a little bit together I didn't want to put the potatoes and the sausage in the bowl because my bowl was a little bit small and I didn't want to get another bowl out and another Bowl dirty so I just kind of mixed it into the casserole dish right in the serving or the baking dish that I'm going to put in the oven and then I decided to go ahead and top it off with just a little bit more pepper because Josh and I really like fresh Cracked Pepper breakfast is in the oven I set a timer so that I don't forget about it when we go outside we've got a couple projects and some harvesting and some preservation that we're going to come in when we're done of what we harvested so here's the Brio cheese I have some of this beeswax wrap it's a cloth that is dipped in beeswax and it's an alternative to Saran Wrap and I've been using it for about two weeks now and I really like it especially for cheese so I just wrap it up in this beeswax wrap and I pop it in the fridge for later use and then this sausage is sausage I cooked yesterday for pizza pockets I cooked two pounds even though I didn't need two pounds because I thought I could just prep a little bit for today and then I have a little bit extra here so I'm gonna pop this in the freezer so next time I need sausage I don't have to cook it I don't have any plans to make anything with sausage today or tomorrow so instead of it sitting in the fridge and me forgetting about it I figured I should just put it right into the freezer the first project we're going to tackle this morning is planting these pinto beans these are some beans that I got at Walmart I think a year ago or something like that and they've just been sitting one of you all gave me the suggestion of doing a Three Sisters Garden so you plant the bean seeds right next to where you planted corn so I thought that that would be a really good idea because I've had these seeds for so long I don't know if they are able one I don't know if they're viable two I don't know if they're a pole bean or a bush bean variety when you do a Three Sisters Garden you want a whole bean variety because the idea is that you plant your corn you want to let your corn get a few inches tall which mine is at the perfect spot for that and then you go back in and you plant some beans so the beans can grow up The Corn stock and you can use the corn as a trellis now then the third aspect would be on the ground you plant squash and you let it Vine out around the corn I'm not doing that I do have squash in my cornbed but it's in the corner it's going to vine out going down the walkways but I thought I think I spent a dollar on these seeds beans and so if it doesn't end up working I'm not really out much they've just been sitting in the pantry let's give it a go I'm hoping they are a pulping variety but your guess is as good as mine I went ahead and turned the freeze dryer on because in the previous owner's Garden we have quite a few things we can Harvest and in my new Garden I have some things I can Harvest and I want to get them preserved in the freeze dryer so I thought I would get that cooling while we go plant the bean seeds so we're going to plant the bean seeds and then we're gonna come in here and we are going to do some harvesting and I want to clean up this mess I want to tackle this mess right here our driveway is right here and so when we pull up to the house I see this mess every day and it kind of bothers me so I thought since today is supposed to be a beautiful day and it's kind of cool earlier in the day this area is shaded for quite a bit because of these big trees I want to get in here and get these projects tackled but while it's shaded over here I want to get the harvesting done it is best to do harvesting earlier in the day than later in the day but we don't live in an Ideal World so sometimes you just have to harvest when you can and so that's why I want to get and harvest those things in that Garden while it's still Shady even though it's you know it's almost 10 in the morning but better to be done than not done at all but first though I want to get the beans planted before it gets too hot in the Sun so let's get that project done it shouldn't take too long so here's the corn bed right here and you can see that the corn is a few inches tall so this is the ideal time to get these beans planted I soaked these beans overnight so that it would help the pre-germination I figured since the bean seeds are so old it wouldn't hurt to have a little bit of extra time soaking the last few times I planted beans and peas this year I have just soaked them for a few hours before planting this these I thought needed a little bit of extra time I thinned these corn plants to one plant per whole and I think I'm gonna put two or three pinto beans oh in each hole around the corn the seeds are already split in half I won't plant those ones I'm really appreciative of the encouragement to give this a try because this has been something on my list that I've always wanted to try and I just have never gone around to doing it one reason after reading those comments that really just lit a fire in me to do it this year is that my corn is also doing really well and so I thought that this is the year we're going to try it the corn in these beds look the best I have ever had corn at this point I have tried growing corn three years in a row and it's been kind of an epic fail and part of it I think why is I've been really really good about watering this corn corn needs a lot of water and I've been very diligent about giving what it needs and so I think that's been a big help and the fact that it's in a raised bed the soil is a more controlled soil versus I have only ever in the past tried to grow corn in ground and I never really amended the soil much and so I think a combination of poor soil poor watering resulted in a poor harvest so we will see if we get a good harvest this year I have been feeding this corn fertilizer too corn is a heavy feeder of nitrogen and that is one of the theories why beans do really well with corn as well is bean plants are nitrogen fixers they actually take nitrogen out of the atmosphere and canned fix it into the soil so the idea is that the it's a really good relationship between the bean plant and the corn plant the bean plant is actually feeding the corn so I haven't done any like scientific research on that other than I have just heard that in the past being the case and so I am all for it I am going to give it a try and the worst thing that's going to happen is I won't get a harvest and that's not really that big of a deal because I originally wasn't planning on doing this experiment and I'm not really out anything other than maybe a little bit of my time but time spent in the garden is never a waste so we'll get it watered in and we will just see what happens timer just went off we got this bed finished planted and we got it watered in really well perfect timing we're gonna go check on the breakfast and then we're gonna start our first major Harvest of the season so that's pretty exciting and I do want to harvest first where it's shaded and then we'll come down here and we'll get the goodies that are in this Garden there's not that much yet to harvest in this Garden that's ready for preservation oh this looks oh oh no it's not done yet but it's getting a little too Brown oh no it might be dead I just dished up some breakfast for Josh so he can enjoy that he might put some hot sauce on it he might not but that with a cup of coffee is going to be a really delicious breakfast and we will have some breakfast for the next couple days the first thing we're going to harvest today are these garlic chive flowers we are going to infuse them and make a special vinegar to make salad dressings All Summer Long I guess the day today is kind of doing projects that I've wanted to do for a long time because this is another project I have wanted to try for a long time I've seen it floating around the internet for a long time so chives you know we usually think of just eating the greens but you can eat the flowers too you can garnish salads and soups and pastas and compound Butters and all the things with the Chive blossoms they have a really beautiful light onion flavor but we are going to make a fluorescent pink beautiful vinegar out of these and so what I'm doing is I'm just picking the heads off and you want to make sure they haven't gone to seed yet you don't want a bunch of seeds in there so that's what I'm doing I'm picking them and kind of checking just to make sure and we're going to go inside in a little bit and make the vinegar out of it now we are going to go down into the grass and we are going to harvest what appears to be a weed but it's not it's actually an edible that probably was intentionally planted at some point and a few of you were worried when I mowed all this grass that I was wasting this but I knew that it would come back without a problem and we would be able to come out here and harvest it and there would be an abundance more than I actually even need and that is oregano there is so much oregano in here I'm going to harvest just some of it and we'll get this in the freeze dryer but it comes back so crazy it's basically a weed that's an edible I'm carefully picking out the grass as best as I can from this oregano so I'm just grabbing a handful leaving behind anything that's not wanted and putting what I do want in the basket it smells incredible you want to be careful when you plant oregano like mint it will take over it is basically becoming the ground cover in this Garden area getting the grass out and that's probably good to start now we're going to move on to something that I ran out of a long time ago I'm really excited to get it back in the pantry and that is raspberry leaves for tea these are pretty young plants that I'm harvesting the leaves from so I'm going to be pretty conservative The Raspberries at the last Homestead were much more established and so I could be a little bit more generous in the harvesting but I am going to harvest them freeze dry them and use them for tea raspberry leaf tea is really good for Women's Health and it is delicious we'll probably call that good for the raspberry leaves now let's get another leaf that I've never harvested for tea before that's strawberry leaves oh my goodness friends I need to show you all the goodness that's happening in here look at all this potential the flowers and the actual buds that are turning into strawberries absolutely incredible I'm wanting to get raspberry leaves so I'm just going to grab some of the tender ones the littler ones that are towards the base of the plant there's something really fun about being able to take a crop like raspberries strawberries chives and maximize your Harvest again so instead of just thinking about a plant for the fruit that you would typically Harvest and enjoy trying to get creative and see if you can utilize that plant in multiple ways and so you're maximizing your space and what you can do in your garden I think that's all the strawberry leaves I'm gonna Harvest because I don't know if I like them or not yet I have tons of strawberry leaves that I could Harvest throughout the season so we're going to start with that we'll get them freeze-dried and then we'll do a taste test to see if the tea is good I don't want to take too much from the plant or have a lot of effort go into something that I don't really enjoy so we're going to start with that see how it goes so now let's head into the main garden and get what I can Harvest out of the main Garden then we're going to head inside and we're gonna get this stuff preserved up real quick the only really thing I have to harvest to preserve right now is basil so I'm gonna get these basil leaves hold off this plant the more I harvest the more it will produce so this is hopefully just the first of many many harvests basil is one of my absolute favorite herbs and the more you harvest it the more it will grow but the key is not to just harvest the individual leaves but actually snip the tops off let me show you why I've got a pretty big flower pot here where I planted a bunch of Basil because I wanted to be able to come straight from the kitchen just walk out and get basil all throughout the summer and I've already been harvesting a ton of it and what you want to do is you want to snip the whole top off basil wants to flower and once it flowers it gets bitter so by snipping the whole top off and not just the individual leaves like this then you are preventing that plant from going to flour and each area where the main stem comes up and then you have branches it will form new branches and new leaves so this plant looks really sad now because I just harvested so much of it but in a couple days it will explode with all new growth same with this one My Petunia that I started from seed the one out of hundreds and hundreds I got to start from seed is the healthiest looking petunia plant I have the ones I got at The Big Box store which are these ones they aren't doing hardly anything I think they were pretty severely root bound so they're taking a long time to kind of bounce back but this one is doing so well I might need to transplant this plant right here to the other side of this pot because it's starting to get a little overcrowded and I don't want my basil plants to get choked out by these other plants but I might do that this evening when it's not so hot because I don't want to shock this plant it is already starting to warm up quite quickly out there so I want to get these herbs inside and in the freeze dryer as quick as possible before they start to wilt so what I'm going to do first is I'm going to freeze dry the basil I'm not going to wash the basil first there wasn't very much bug activity it's very clean I am going to wash though the strawberry leaves and the raspberry leaves because they did look like they had a little bit more bug activity and I think the basil is so tender that it might get a little weird if I wash it before I throw it in the freeze dryer but the strawberry leaves and the raspberry leaves are a lot more hearty and I think they can handle the Washi and I definitely saw some bug activity on these strawberry leaves so I don't really want that going in my freezer I'm really excited about the strawberry leaves I think this is going to be fun experiment I have wild strawberries growing all on the property and you can Harvest wild strawberries leaves and preserve them up for tea just like you can domesticated strawberry so we get these washed up if you are comfortable not washing your basil leaves or any of your herbs before you throw them in the freezer of course please wash them but they look really clean I don't see any dirt or bug activity on them I'm gonna try to keep all of these herbs separate my goal is going to be to try to grow a Year's worth and preserve up a Year's worth of Basil parsley cilantro thyme I know I can do oregano no problem oregano is so prolific what other was Sage I know I can grow a Year's worth time I know I can grow a Year's worth and rosemary I have found that the freeze dryer when it comes to herbs is a far superior method for food preservation because it keeps the flavor and the Integrity of the herb so much better I have found that dehydrating chives and cilantro is almost a waste of time but freeze drying them is perfect now I've never freeze dried basil before this is going to be my first time but I had to guess I think it's going to be really really good so I'm going to get these raspberry leaves washed up I do have a salad spinner I could use for this but I don't have very many to wash so I think using the towel is working just fine I'm trying to keep these herbs separate so when I go to jar them up it won't be confusing what is what the oregano definitely needs to be washed dry these with the stems on them and then once they're dry take the stems off I don't know if that's the best way to do it or if I should take the stems off now I'll experiment this way and then maybe next time I will take the individual leaves off and I'll see which way works better when it comes to drying oregano and mint I have found that it works just fine to dry it with the stems I'm trying to remove any grass that I find I do not want to run my freeze dryer with this much empty space so I'm gonna go run back out and grab some more strawberry leaves and try to find something else to completely fill this freeze dryer if I can foreign [Music] harvesting the actual chives I talked about the chai blossoms but not the actual chives themselves so that will fit perfectly on here I'm gonna put these chai blossoms into this jar and one cool thing about a freeze dryer is you don't have to worry about flavor contaminating other things in the freeze drying process so if I was to dehydrate these raspberry leaves and these strawberry leaves I would not put chives in with it because it will cross-contaminate the flavor but I have found with a freeze dryer I don't really have that problem so we're gonna just get these on here and we can have them working in the same batch tribes do not dehydrate at all they turn brown I've tried it a couple times and if you look at tribes that you purchase at the store they always say freeze-dried which I think is kind of interesting they turned brown and limp and weird and some of these chives are a little bit limpy and I'm just going to it goes out and we won't worry about preserving those now we're back with our chive blossoms and this is going to make a really beautiful purpley pink vinegar from what I understand I've never done this before I've always wanted to try it now we're going to let this steep in a dark place for two weeks and we will strain it out and we'll give it a taste test and I think one of the main goals to use this with is salad dressings and stuff like that which I think would be really awesome throughout the summer with our fresh greens coming out of the garden it smells really good I love vinegar so I think this is going to be delicious so now we've got our breakfast for the next couple days done we got the planting done harvesting done preservation done now I'm going to go do some cleanup and try to make that outdoor area look a little bit nicer so that when we pull up in the driveway I'm not staring and Josh is not staring at a pile of building equipment this area here is my next goal is to get all of this stuff cleaned up and put away so that we're not just staring at a pile of t-posts and concrete blocks I want to keep all that stuff but I don't want it just piled around so I just pulled the weed whacker out too because I want to try to weed whack in here we don't have a lawnmower that will go in here we've got the previous owners actually gifted us their lawnmower their driving lawnmower but but it doesn't fit in here it's too big so weed whacking is the way that I have to take care of it and I don't know how much battery I have left I don't think I have that much battery left let's see oh yeah I don't even know if this is gonna work at all because it's on low I'm just going to weed whack as much as it will let me and then I will put this on the charger and then I'll pick up all of this stuff I did put longer longer on because [Music] now I have to say I have to say something about these gloves I've talked about how I love the gloves from Costco well I bought new ones this year I hadn't bought them in two years these new ones they have are horrible this is only the second time I've worn them and I don't know if you can see I am already wearing a hole through this finger so they must be a different brand or a different supplier you can still get the ones that I have been using for the last two years on Amazon but I I think I'm going to return these for to Costco because like I said I've only worn these twice Costco is really good about returns and I haven't even thrown these through the washing machine the ones that I have that I've had for two years I would wear them I would wash them so many times and they are just starting to break down after two years versus a second time use I do not want basically disposable gloves that's silly one two-time use and the fingers it's even wearing through on this one too and the middle fingers so these are not good so if you bought gloves at Costco this year I am sorry because they are not the same quality as they were two years ago weed whacking has been one of my new favorite pastimes it's one of those types of projects where it takes absolutely no mental energy to do whatsoever but you see a huge transformation so on this day you'll see I barely got maybe 20 square feet weed whacked because the battery was almost dead but I do come out the over the weekend and I finish this project it's just kind of funny because it's one of my new favorite hobbies I love weed whacking let me know what one of your random hobby slash chores or things that you like to do that would not be considered something fun necessarily by general population but for you you find pleasure in the act of doing something maybe mindless [Music] the shed because that's where I'm going to be working I'm gonna go get this on the charger and then we'll start cleaning up the rest of this mess I got the weed whacker charging and I just asked Josh where he wants me to put these concrete blocks my consideration was this shed but this is kind of my potting shed where I keep my fertilizers my garden equipment like a lot of my pots are in there shovels things like that or I could put them in that shed that is our well shed so we both thought we don't really want them in here because that's for gardening equipment we don't really want them in there because that's where our well is and we don't really want to have that become a habit where we store stuff in there because we want to keep it clean and tidy so what we're going to do is I'm going to take these blocks and I'm going to put them stacked up nicely right here so they're kind of out of sight but still usable if we need them and then they're not going to be taking up valuable real estate in our shed because they can get rained on nothing's going to hurt them they'll just look a lot nicer stacked up than just piled here and then I want to get all that taken care of too if I can I also like doing projects like this where they're one and done I'm gonna pick up these bricks and I'm going to move the t-post and I'm going to kind of get things organized and then I really am not going to have to do this again anytime soon like I would if I was doing laundry right now I would rather be out here doing this than laundry where I know if I was to do a couple loads today in the next couple days a couple more loads are going to need to be done but I know that there's a time and place for that but I'm glad that right now today I am outside in the sunshine so while I'm doing this I thought we could talk about what the long-term plans for this part of our property are where this previous owner's Garden was it makes a hundred percent sense why their Garden was placed here because it is one of the only level non-forested areas on the property you can see all those trees in the background we've got a quite a large area of our property that's level but it's forested and so this made sense to be a good Garden area but for us long term we don't want it to be a garden I'm eventually going to transplant the strawberries into the main Garden and probably do that in the fall I need a research when that when the best time for that is but long term this isn't going to be a garden and Josh and I the other day we're kind of talking about what do we want it to be do we want it to be a barn if we ever do livestock do we want it to be a shop and honestly we don't really know we just know that we chose to put the garden in the back of the property and so we really have a really unique spot here where we could do quite a few things it gives us a lot of options now whatever we decide to do here is probably going to be a couple years down the road but it was just fun last night we were kind of talking about the different possibilities and so time will tell what this flat area of the property view will be it might even just become a flat area another area for lawn where you know kids can run around but time will tell what that ends up being I do know though that we do need to take down the rest of the deer fence and that'll happen pretty soon look how much better it looks we got it done we got the garbage put in the back of the truck to take to the dump so that's kind of what Josh and I've been doing as we've been doing a bunch of these cleaning organizational projects we have been just loading the truck up when it's full we take it to the dump I got the bricks all stacked here looks really nice obviously I did not get this weed whacked because the weed whacker is dead but honestly it's probably a good thing because I have been out here for a while I'm hot I should go shower so that I can get all this dust and dirt and pollen off and I think I'm going to call it for a day for working and getting a bunch of productive things done I might go inside and just hang out and enjoy being a family so thank you so much for taking time out of your day to spend time with me I cannot wait to try the freeze dried uh leaves for tea I have only ever dehydrated raspberry leaves for tea and that works really really well but I'm excited to see if I can tell the difference between dehydrated and freeze-dried raspberry leaves for tea and I'm excited to try the strawberry leaves I think that's going to be really interesting so thank you friend for being here as we got a bunch of fun things done and I just really appreciate you if you enjoyed this I can pop a couple of my other videos here you can go enjoy between now and my next upload I hope you are having a fantastic day and I can't wait to see you next time bye friend

Channel: Acre Homestead

Views: 197,101

Keywords: Garden Tour, Backyard homestead, homesteading, backyard garden, growing food, organic gardening, homestead, garden, organic, dream home, dream home tour, tour, Garden harvest, preserving

Id: QQfEmFvo8mw

Length: 35min 26sec (2126 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023