Friday, July 29, 2011

The garden in early morning
 Life has been full these past three weeks. It has been the good kind of full, with visits from dear friends, making sauces for the freezer, preserving and harvesting, and the usual business of family life. As a result, my blog has been sadly neglected. I have realized that I need to snatch little pockets of time as they are presented to me.

farm girl on a tractor

As I wait for my lovely kotata berries to juice, I realize one of those little bits of time has just been handed to me! The children are all outside, either working or enjoying the perfect blue and golden summer morning. The steam extractor is doing its work on the stove, giving me lots of juice to turn into deep crimson jelly this afternoon. My kitchen smells wonderful,and I always love seeing the rows of jelly jars cooling on the counter, knowing that come winter, we will have lots of jars of summer time goodness to slather on our freshly baked bread! The steamer is an old Saf-t-born my parents bought in the early 70's. It has seen a lot of use!

5 comments:

  1. The steamer is fascinating! In all my years I've never seen one before. You can tell I wasn't raised with these kinds of domesticities can't you?

    Blessings, Debbie

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  2. I have never seen anything like your steamer! I now have steamer envy! I love how the house smells while making jelly and jams...I always have to make a batch of biscuits so this crew of mine won't 'starve' while I'm cooking since it always makes everyone hungry!xx

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  3. The steamer is so cool! It has four pieces: the bottom is the pan for the water, next is the pan the juice is caught in (the hose is attached to this pan), then the basket the fruit is in rests inside the catching pan. I remember watching the little hose to alert my mother when the juice started coming out when I was only about five years old. I actually have another one, but it is missing the lid, so is basically useless. Unfortunately, even with my cool steamer, my first batch of jelly was an epic fail-I used a different type of pectin and it did not set.

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  4. I absolutely love your garden. I like the natural look, like the birds sowed the flowers...that's how it looks in your picture!

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  5. Thank you! My husband (who designed and maintains the garden) will be so happy to hear that. It is beautiful, and I am amazed when I think back ten years and remember it being a cow pasture!Thank you for stopping by!

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