{"id":11114,"date":"2025-08-11T17:35:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T21:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=11114"},"modified":"2025-08-11T17:35:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T21:35:18","slug":"harvest-is-starting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2025\/08\/11\/harvest-is-starting\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvest is starting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although we have just got a few ripe tomatoes, I’m starting in canning in earnest. I already did my batch of rhubarb conserve, then on Friday, I went out and picked all of our ripe jalape\u00f1os to start Cowboy Candy. They were nice and big with thick walls. Just perfect! I sat on the front porch and sliced them up. When I mixed up the syrup, I made a triple batch as I use lots of it in my various relishes, Cowgirl Candy (sweet peppers in the syrup), Vaquero and Gaucho Relishes. All in all, I ended up with 16 half pints of Cowboy Candy and eight pints of leftover syrup. And that’s just a start!<\/p>\n

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Here are the fat jalape\u00f1os I picked.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Enjoying the breeze and flowers in the front yard, I cut up my peppers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As our chokecherries are almost ripe and the Cedar Waxwings have preyed on all of our other wild berries so far, I decided to pick them a little unripe to beat the birds. I cheated and sat in the old golf cart to pick the low branches as standing in one spot for a long time really kills my knees and hips. It worked great and I ended up with an ice cream bucket full.<\/p>\n

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I was so happy to pick a full ice cream pail full of chokecherries while sitting down in the golf cart!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I already have a full case and more of chokecherry jelly, so I’d decided to make chokecherry syrup. I use this on pancakes and waffles plus drizzled over cheesecake and ice cream. As I use only cane sugar, I can skip the GMO beet sugar and high fructose corn syrup (also GMO) in commercial syrups. Nothing but sugar and juice. I juiced the chokecherries in my Mehu Liisa steam juicer and ended up with nine cups of juice. To each 3 cups of juice, I added 4\u00bc cups of sugar, making a big batch. I boiled it for 10 minutes at a rolling boil, ladled it into pint jars and water bathed it for 10 minutes. I had a little left and it was perfect. Just thick enough.<\/p>\n

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Mittens kept a close eye on me, enjoying the sun on the drive, while I picked chokecherries.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve got lots of chokecherries out there to pick. What a blessing that is! — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although we have just got a few ripe tomatoes, I’m starting in canning in earnest. I already did my batch of rhubarb conserve, then on Friday, I went out and picked all of our ripe jalape\u00f1os to start Cowboy Candy. They were nice and big with thick walls. Just perfect! I sat on the front […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11119,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11114\/revisions\/11119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}