Wild Black Cherry Jelly

 Black cherry (Prunus serotina)

I usually look at these tree's as a nuisance because the leaves when wilted will poison animals that eat them.  I have to cut them down in area's the pigs or goats will be in before I can let the animals go free to graze there or fence around them.  This one is on the edge of my driveway and was scheduled to be cut down but my tree guy has been hard to coordinate with and it was a bit larger than I wanted to do with my hand saw.   Little did I know I would be so happy it didn't meet it's demise this spring.   The tree is loaded with ripe cherries.  Their small but plentiful.

 

 Absolutely delicious.   It has the richest cherry flavor.  The same fruit used for the jelly can also be used again by reheating and adding sugar to  make a great syrup for pancakes or ice cream.  

Edited 8/22/12

Related post :  Prunus Serotina - Black Cherry or Wild Black Cherry

Elizabeth

Almost wordless Wednesday

A tiny front porch with melons, variagated trumpet vine and hyacinth beans climbing the trellis

Boots at ready, boot scraper and  kitty houses or chicken nest boxes depending on the time of day it is.

In the basket of rocks on the porch 

So, whatcha been up to? or a day on the homestead

Morning cart loaded with food and milking equipment for the for the goats and food and dishes for the pigs.  

So whatcha been up to?   Nothin much....  Same thing as everyday.   That's my answer to that question.  It's a question much like the one I get from my family in the mid west...."When you coming to see us?"   Ahhh.... probably not anytime soon guys.  Maybe you could come see me????   Usually -  not always -  but usually, when I get asked those questions it's as if  the person asking is waving a red flag that says they have absolutely no understanding what our life is like.  You can tell them and on a intellectual level they may get it but at gut level they really don't.  

We have a small kennel.  We raise and occasionally show Tibetan Terriers.  We used to show the dogs more but when you have a lot of animals it is hard to go anywhere.  Then, because we were limited in being able to leave anyway, I decided why not get those goat's I had always wanted.  I had been hesitant to get goats because of the twice a day milking and how that would really tie us to the house but what the heck we already were tied down because of the dogs.   After a couple of years with the goats the decision was made to get the pigs my 10 year old wanted to help use the milk and produce some of our own meat.   Now we are at a point that getting to the feed store is an event.   Add the garden and all it's chores to that and home has become a lifestyle called homesteading.  

 I have to check in with myself on occasion to see why the heck I'm doing this,  like on the day we moved all those cattle and goat panels when it was 100 degree's out.   Or tonight, when after doing all the day's chores and fitting in a trip to the feed store, I get home in time to get ready for the evening chores but realize, it's gonna rain tonight and momma pig hasn''t got that litter of piglets out of the woods yet and up to the pig house so I need to figure out how to either move them or somehow keep them dry where they lie.   I decided to haul a 9' picnic umbrella and heavy duty stand and some hay out to the woods to keep them covered and up somewhat off the ground on the hay.   We'll see.   Then I get to start the nights chores which are an abbreviated version of the morning chores.  

Load the cart, haul it to the goat area, tether the goats  so they don't eat each others food,  

Check out the udder on Tina (on the right).  That's about a gallon of milk in there.   With her two kids gone this week to their new home it's all ours...oh yeah, and the pigs.

Goats sweet feed mix with extra corn, sunflower seeds for extra protein and  2 overgrown summer squashes cut up in it - Yummy!

Now on to the pigs.  They hear the yellow wagon and me feeding the goats and know their next...momma even left her babies in the woods to come wait at the fence.   I throw them some hay over the fence first to distract them so I can get the food in there.  They don't always take the bait though.

Pig bucket... soaked corn, pig pellets with sunflower seeds, summer squash and milk.  Now the trick is to get it into their enclosure.  Yikes!  Let the squealing begin!  I  ALWAYS wear my knee high Welly's for this job. 

The adults don't look much better.   What little pigs they are about their food!   And isn't that Tina and Passion I hear letting me know they are done eating...come untether them?   I need to milk anyway now that all have been fed.

Let see, do I have everything?  Udderly easy milker and it's inserts, wipes to clean her, udder spray for when I'm done, insect repellent for her, a Pepsi for me,  milking bucket and my stool.   Oh and I better check baking soda before I leave and I think I'll do her hooves while I"m here.  Most goats can go 3 - 6 months on hooves but not my Tina. 

These were done at kidding time.   The kids are 10 weeks old now.   Should have done them a month ago.

OK,  that's better.  Not perfect but I'll do a little more tomorrow.   Now I need to go do the kennels, check the gardens, pick up the house, get some food on before I go to the the feed store so I can get home in time for evening chores.  

And I love it and  am so very very grateful that I have this as my life.  

Well it's getting light out now so I think I'll go see how those baby pigs made out last night in the woods.

There here!

Thyme went off into the woods early this morning and had 6 baby piglets.

3 gilts and 3 boars

Luckily for one litte piglet a childs eyes spotted it about 75' from it's mother off in the woods.   How it got separated we'll never know but it was reunited with it's mama. 

Less than an hour old.

Trusting the process

Blue hubbard squash patch

For the first time ever I tried to grow blue hubbard squash.   We love winter squash and usually grow butternuts but this year I wanted to grow those huge 20 - 40  pounders too.  In early May I made a big mound that had been enriched with lots of compost, rich with aged goat and chicken  manure.   I watered dutifully and waited for the seedlings to pop their little heads from the soil.  After the seeds germinated  they grew like weeds with these huge beautiful leaves.   And they continued to grew until they over an took area, far larger than I hd anticipated.   But that was ok....I wanted those huge squash and it evidently takes a huge area to produce them.    

In the meantime, I had to wait on the butternuts to go in because we had a tree coming down that needed to be felled right where they were going.   The tree man wasn't able to get here for a month so the butternuts were way behind the hubbards going in.     The butternut came up and they too and did very well as they always do.    Lots and lots of flowers on both.  Then I got the little baby fruits on the hubbard.    They would get no bigger than a ping pong ball and turn yellow and shrivel up.   I wondered if there were enough bee's around and if they were getting pollinated.    I still watered, nurtured and waited.    Then  the butternuts started getting little baby squashes too.   But those were being pollinated because they were going on to be squashes.  Hummm....Still I watered and watched. 

 

Butternut squash

We walked through daily and squashed all the squash bugs we could find. We turned leaves over for eggs and smooshed them too.   Still, I thought maybe there are no squashes because it's a bigger plant and  it was going to take longer.    I went and looked in the Johnny seed catalog to see what it said about growing blue hubbard.   I only had the current catalog and the seeds had been from the year before but had not been planted until this year.   Johnny's catalog said  "Sorry, no seed available this year".    Ok...they must have had a crop failure and that would have been the same seed I'm not getting to fruit and I'm not going to get any squashes from these plants either this year. 

 I was disappointed.   I considered pulling the whole thing out because I could use that area for pea's instead of wasting it on this massive vine that wasn't going to do anything.   But I didn't.    And then we saw a fruit that didn't turn yellow.   Yay...we were going to get at least one.   But there were even more.  It's got at least a half dozen squashes!

Blue Hubbard squash

So why do I do this to myself every time I grow something new?   It starts out so optimistic but somewhere along the line I forget to trust the process.  I think I and my influence is more important than it is and that I hold the key to life and death for this plant.   I forget that nature isn't quite that fragile and that if I am doing things even half way right nature will take care of the rest.    I just need to remember to relax and trust the process.   Oh, if I could just remember this next time.