Dill Pickles

With over 6 gallons of Bread and Butter Pickles in my root cellar, I decided to try a new pickle recipe – Dill.  My handy cook book even had a couple variations of Dill pickles – regular and kosher.  I haven’t the slightest idea how one is more kosher than the other, but it doesn’t…

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Pickled Peppers

Right now, my garden is full of peppers, mostly banana peppers. You know the ones I’m talking about.  They come in the box when you order pizza from town (at least when you order it from Papa John’s). With just two of us, I think the 4 banana pepper plants he planted might have been…

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Using Pectin

It’s spring, which means it’s time to start thinking about your garden and what you want to put in it.  For me, that means thinking about what I want to make with my plants from the garden – and lately I’ve been a big fan of jams and jellies.  Really, this means I need to…

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Friday Favorites

There are several things I love about this time of year. Leather & Furs I’m not really a big fan of cold weather (or hot weather for that matter) but one of my favorite things about this time of year is that when it gets cold outside, I get to add some things into my…

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Peach Pecan Amaretto Preserves

This recipe for Peach Pecan Amaretto Preserves with Golden Raisins is amazing.  This recipe takes quite a while, especially if you wait the 2 weeks for the preserves to mellow before you eat it, but the final product is well worth the work.  As a head’s up – this recipe took me about 2-1/2 hours…

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Young Farmers Conference 2012

Matt & I went to the 2012 Indiana Farm Bureau Young Farmer’s Conference in Indianapolis last weekend.  It was a lot of fun!  This year was another record breaking year for the conference with 631 registered attendees and 100+ kids. The conference started on Friday night with fun and games.  There was a cornhole (bean…

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Plant a Seed

This week we will be discussing Plant a Seed, chapter #4 of Julia Rothman’s book, Farm Anatomy.  This particular chapter covers quite a bit of plant related material including: Average frost dates Vegetable anatomy Squash varieties Build a bean teepee Dry bean varieties Pepper varieties Tater Tower 4 ways to grow tomatoes Tomato varieties How…

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Homemade Jellies

I hope everyone out there had a great Christmas!  I certainly did.  I got tons of awesome things, but it’s not fair to get gifts and not give some in return.  My favorite gifts to give is home canned goods. There are a couple of reasons I like to do this.  First, I feel like…

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Canning Squash

I canned squash again this year.  Well… I canned a squash.  A 12 pound squash. It was too heavy to weigh on my kitchen scale, and too light to weigh on the bathroom scale.  That meant that I had to weigh myself and then weigh myself again with the squash.  It works, but you don’t…

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