This morning in the garden... (and a few other things)

I'm so thrilled with our garden this year... we're getting basketfulls of tomatoes, peppers, squash, and eggplant every day now, and we are still waiting for most of the squash, zucchini, cucumbers, cantaloupe, okra and the rest of the tomatoes to come in. In a few more weeks I hope to be putting up a few things for winter use. Here is today's harvest:





I have enough squash from yesterday and today to cook some for our dinner tonight. We like it sauteed with onion in butter with lots of salt and pepper. We also had enough eggplant yesterday to make eggplant fries (which are delicious- my kids love them.) It's been a challenge to eat all of the tomatoes we're getting, lol. Besides eating sliced tomatoes with practically every meal, we have done fried green tomatoes, homemade chili (with garden tomatoes and grassfed beef!), grilled cheeses with tomato slices (so good with homemade bread and Amish cheese!) And I've made a TON of fresh salsa. We have white, yellow, pink, purple and red tomatoes (all heirlooms) and using a variety of colors makes an interesting looking salsa. Our salsa is just diced fresh tomatoes, diced garlic, diced onion, whatever peppers we have on hand (diced of course)- usually a couple of green bells or banana peppers and one hot pepper, salt, pepper, and cilantro.... so fresh tasting and so good for us. Even my friend's picky-eater daughter who hates tomatoes enjoyed the salsa and finished up a huge helping of it with my girls.

Another cool thing we did yesterday is that we made goat milk butter. Goats' milk is naturally homogenized- it doesn't separate like cows' milk. Only a tiny portion of the cream rises to the top of our containers of milk, but we have faithfully skimmed this a teaspoon at a time and put it in a jar in the freezer. When it was full, we made butter. We poured it into a bigger jar and let the cream sit out until it was warm and slightly soured (this is the way they made old fashioned butter; the butter we buy at the store is not allowed to sour and that's why it's called "sweet cream" butter.) Then we just passed around the jar and took turns shaking it. We got about a stick of butter after saving cream for a few weeks, lol. We added salt and its really yummy. One of the things on my wish list is a cream separator so that we can get most of the cream from our milk and make our butter as we need it. The kids have requested some homemade bread with dinner tonight; they want to eat the butter they made, lol.

And speaking of goats, it's nearly time for the girls to start cycling and getting ready to breed. They will usually start in August, and stop in December. I spent a couple of hours on Wednesday giving everyone supplemental copper, worming, and trimming hooves. I'm trying to "flush" the does this year- that's where you basically increase the feed they are getting and add as much nutrition, etc., as you can before they breed to encourage multiples. We had two singletons last year, and I wasn't too happy about that. It's also supposed to be possible to breed for more girls by adding apple cider vinegar to their water- it may be an old wives' tale, but vinegar is cheap and it's worth a shot, lol. We only had one doeling born last year, and I wasn't too happy about that, either. All of our girls are in really good condition so I am looking forward to a great year and to lots of doelings. Goats have a five month gestation, so we can look forward to babies in January.

Otherwise, Rob and I are working steadily to get as much work completed and shipped out before vacation as we possibly can. I know that we will most likely work a little while we're supposed to be off (we always do but we'd like to not work as much as we usually would). I will check in here and probably post some pictures- we have plans to do some museums, state parks, the zoo, fishing, etc. We have to stick close to home but there's plenty to do here locally to keep us all busy =0).


I hope everyone is having a great day!