Late July is always jam-packed, sometimes literally…with jam.
Garden harvests are in full swing, the pond is inviting, mushrooms are popping up on the forest floor, and the weather is just about perfect. We’re stacking wood, and packing in the pantry because winter is always coming…and enjoying this mid-summer bounty because it’ll be gone before we know it.
This year, I’ve packed away more than my fair share of canning recipes (42 different recipes this month!), and the freeze dryer has been running nonstop, powered by our solar panels.
There are so many pictures to share this month, so I can’t fit them all. I’ve skipped the pictures of cleaning out the deep bedding in our chicken coop, pulling down busted old fences, and enough garden weeding to bury a VW bus. I’m sure you won’t mind =)
Here’s what’s on my camera roll in Late July:
Sliced Heirloom Tomatoes headed for the freeze-dryer
Baby Eastern painted turtles on the pond. This little cutie probably hatched this year and has 5-7 years before he’s full-sized, and it’s a tough world out there. Good luck little guy!
I tested six different apricot canning recipes this month: pie filling, salsa, BBQ sauce, jelly, fruit in syrup and hiding in the back, and apricot pepper jelly. My favorite by far is the apricot salsa, and I’ve actually run through the whole batch already, and it’s so good. Gunna will make more of that one next year, for sure!
The old saying goes “Make Hay While the Sun Shines”, but around here, it’s, “Cut Wood While the Weather’s Good…winter is always coming.” The cats don’t bother much about winter, and they’re pretty sure it’s just a big cat bed built for their pleasure.
One of the more unique canning recipes from this month…Dungeness crab. It’s absolutely delicious home-canned and perfect for homemade crabcakes all winter long (with a hefty helping of home-canned pickled corn relish on a bed of homegrown microgreens).
With our new canning kitchen doubling as a summer cookout spot, we’re serving up dinner on a bun more than usual, so it’s going to be dressed up right! Some of the relish recipes I tried out this month, including: Cucumber relish, corn relish, sweet pickle relish, mexican corn relish, dill pickle relish and pepper onion relish.
Wild Bergamot or Wild Bee Balm (Monarda fistulosa) is one of my favorite cough and sore throat remedies. I turn it into an oxymel (infused honey and vinegar syrup), which prserves it for winter use. But now’s the only time you can harvest it.
Nasturtium seed capers (or pickled unripe nasturtium seeds). This recipe goes back hundreds of years, and is included in Amelia Simmon’s book American Cookery from 1798. Nasturtiums are actually a close relative of true capers in the Mediterranean, so making “capers” out of their seeds was a great substitute in the new world.
We’re all busting our butts in the summer sun, and this little guy’s napping. He loves keeping the tractor seat warm year round, but no one has the heart to tell him that it’s not really necessary mid-summer.
Canning recipes with corn that I put up this month, including Peach and corn salsa, chicken and corn chowder, Mexican corn relish, classic vegetable soup, pickled corn, and chicken vegetable soup.
Red currant-infused gin made with local VT spirits. My jam shelf runneth over, and I’ve gotta find some other ways to use red currants. (They do make a wicked good pound cake, too, but this liqueur is going to be perfect come the holidays.)
Elderflower season is usually Late May to Early June in most places, but up here in the north, we’re often a bit behind. These beauties will develop right alongside the early apples, and there’s an old-fashioned recipe for “pineapple apples” where you store apples in a box with fresh elderflowers for a week or so. The scent of the elderflowers infuses into the apples and gives them a tropical flavor that tastes like exotic blooms and pineapple. It's a fun way to get a taste of the tropics up north, especially back in the day before global shipping.
Old-fashioned raspberry jam is one of my favorites. Just raspberries and sugar, nothing else.
Fresh silk and silkworm cocoons. Most school kids in my area growing up were given a few silkworms to raise in the 3rd grade, and I kept mine going for years. I’d pull leaves off an old mulberry tree in the backyard and watch them go from egg to squishy little caterpillar to docile grey moth over and over again. But in the 3rd grade, they were pets. I just came across a woman at the farmer’s market cleaning her silk cocoons and prepping them for spinning. She’s been raising silk in VT for years and planted a yard full of mulberries years ago in preparation. Now that’s got me wondering…Vermont-grown silk? Maybe. I’m spinning home-raised rabbit Angora with the littles; why not silk? She wasn’t selling silk; she was keeping her hands busy working it, waiting for customers, but she was kind enough to give me a handful of fresh silk and a few cocoons to watch with the kids because I asked her about her fiber arts. We’ll see where this new adventure goes!
We have a huge patch of milkweed that we keep for the pollinators, but cutting it early in the season (to use like asparagus; yes, it’s edible) encourages blooms across a longer season. It also encourages suckering and spreading, so eat a little, and the bees get more.
Here’s a quick glimpse at the pollinator party on the milkweed:
This year, I’m going to use it late in the season, too, as milkweed is a fiber plant that has been used for centuries. The stalks at the end of the growing season can be processed like linen, and the fluffy down around the seeds can be processed like fine angora…giving you two very different fibers for weaving from a plant that’s fed people and bees all season long.
The littles love busying themselves with colorful art, and they’ve recently developed an interest in dyeing wool and other fabrics, especially with homegrown and wild foraged plants. My son is really into big, long-term projects, and when he sets his mind to something, it’s happening come hell or high water. He wants to make a homemade hooked rug with all home-dyed wool, that’s dyed with wild and homegrown plants. It’s a tall order, but he’s wicked patient for a 7-year-old. So, here we are, reading about colorfastness, mordants, modifiers…and the whole crazy world of natural dyes. Here’s our summer reading material…I’ll keep y’all updated as we get to work.
What are you working on, harvesting, or just plain excited about in high summer?
Ashley, you are a wonder! I love the photos of your creative canning. The tomato photo had me yearning for a BLT. Never seen silk worm silk-how interesting. Your son sounds like he will be a wonderful project manager later. Vermont is somewhere I would like to visit in the late summer (like now!) as the tempts may hit triple digits here in Texas this week. Thanks for not sharing the weeding photo—I have been weeding my immense flower beds early each morning and the pile is huge on the two massive stumps I am trying to get rid of from last spring. Thank you for an excellent read.
Your life looks ideal. I'm hoping to be set up on my own land in the not too distant future and look forward to being as self-sufficient as possible. I love how your kids are also involved in the whole process. My son grew up in an apartment in Madrid, but he was homeschooled so we had opportunities to join groups learning foraging, cheese-making, etc. I also taught him to make dye from berries and leaves, and make felt from some sheep wool we found in the countryside, as well as knit, sew, cook....I wish they taught this stuff at school. Beautiful photos by the way! 😍
Ashley, you are a wonder! I love the photos of your creative canning. The tomato photo had me yearning for a BLT. Never seen silk worm silk-how interesting. Your son sounds like he will be a wonderful project manager later. Vermont is somewhere I would like to visit in the late summer (like now!) as the tempts may hit triple digits here in Texas this week. Thanks for not sharing the weeding photo—I have been weeding my immense flower beds early each morning and the pile is huge on the two massive stumps I am trying to get rid of from last spring. Thank you for an excellent read.
Your life looks ideal. I'm hoping to be set up on my own land in the not too distant future and look forward to being as self-sufficient as possible. I love how your kids are also involved in the whole process. My son grew up in an apartment in Madrid, but he was homeschooled so we had opportunities to join groups learning foraging, cheese-making, etc. I also taught him to make dye from berries and leaves, and make felt from some sheep wool we found in the countryside, as well as knit, sew, cook....I wish they taught this stuff at school. Beautiful photos by the way! 😍