That’s true, but we’re not complaining. Our hoop house has made a terrific difference in our pepper-growing here on our northern Minnesota homestead. The peppers really love the warmer soil of the night temperatures. Usually when the tomatoes come in for canning, I can barely find enough small peppers to add to my sauces and salsas. This year, that won’t be a problem! I’ve already been canning pickled hot pepper rings and we’ve had all of the peppers we wanted for various recipes like sweet and sour, pepper steak, fried peppers and onions, and one of our favorites: Glop. Basically, glop is fried peppers, onions, mushrooms, seasonings, corn, and tomato sauce — all from the garden and pantry of course. I serve glop with fresh cornbread or buttermilk biscuits. Will said to add glop to the must-have-again-soon list.

 

I’m going to start dehydrating some of my ripest sweet peppers, saving some for stuffed peppers of course. I’ve got several bell peppers that are bigger than two of my fists! They’ll hold a lot of stuffing! We won’t need two for a serving, that’s for sure.

 I finally got most of the garden weeded and mulched; only the onions to go. I saved out the earliest, weed-free reed canary grass hay for the mulch, and have been working on it for two weeks now. I finished weeding the eleven rows of corn yesterday. That was a job as the pig weed had gotten knee high and was threatening to go to seed. That would be a bad thing because each plant produces trillions of seeds. Yuck. If only my parsnips would germinate as well. We’re getting some ripe tomatoes now; Punta Banda and Early Cascade and our late-planted, direct-seeded cucumbers are finally starting to set cukes. I can’t wait for our first cucumber-tomato-onion salad of the year.

 

Will has been working on our new barn and on fencing the new forty acre pasture. Yesterday, he and Eric, our helper, managed to get posts in on all of the North property line. Then Will took Old Yeller and cleared the last hundred feet or so to meet the fence line along our driveway, where he had already pounded posts. The soil is getting very dry and the pounding is hard, but only a few more hours’ work and the entire fence line will have posts. Then we set about building strong, braced corners and line braces. There’s SO much prep work to do before stretching fence! But by taking shortcuts and making poorly braced corners and leaving out line braces, the wire will not stay tight and sooner or later, animals will get out. So we’re taking more time, doing more work now, in order to have a truly strong, long-lasting fence. — Jackie

7 COMMENTS

  1. Karen,

    YES! I’m always looking for great recipes to can up…and otherwise. Thank you.

    I’m sure others would like to have it too.

    Jackie

  2. Darlene,

    I wrote an article on building fences of all kinds in issue 77 of BHM. If you don’t have that issue, it’s also available in the thirteenth year anthology. There’s too much to put on a blog.

    Jackie

  3. Ducks & chickens will eat amaranth in my backyard.. well, at least they did last year. A communist neighbor to the north of our street made me fear for my chickens based on her aggression. They (hopefully) have a happy craigslist home. My ducks still nibble the amaranth, the grape leaves, the ptatoe vine, and anything else that strikes their fancy, I reckon! They give me eggs, and I give them what they ask for! Symbiotic. Anyway, the amaranth in my yard is as tall, plus the wild lettuce is taller. Supposedly one can make an alcoholic, medicinal drink from wild lettuce, but the City Revenuers never let me find out!

  4. To Karen – there’s probably a lot of us that would like for you to share your jalapeno pickle recipe. I have loads of them! There’s nothing better than a tried and true canning recipe.

  5. I am so so so jealous! I picked my first bell pepper yesterday and let me tell you, it wasn’t much to write home about! :-) With this crazy weather we have been having (heat humidity and lots of rain) and the bugs(japanese beetles and potato bugs) and the animals, I am happy with whatever we get this year. Enjoy your bounty!

  6. I have a wonderful recipe for a Sweet & Hot Jalapeno pickle recipe if you’re interested. They are yummy…..

  7. For those of us not blessed with the knowledge of HOW to build a fence, would you consider a post on how to build a proper fence? We could Google a how-to, but then we wouldn’t know if the person was teaching us the “short-cut” method or your method of making strong fences.

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