God is good!  The garden is producing and the goats are producing.  We are doing the best we can just to keep up!  This is what we have been up to…

Peaches:  We are trying to capture this summer gold for winter sunshine!  We have canned 12 quarts of  sliced peaches and 24 small lunchbox size jars.  I am so grateful for my mothers help with this.  It is so true that many hands make light work.  Everyone had a job and we were a well oiled machine.

Tomatoes:  This week we are putting up diced tomatoes in their own juices.  This is an easy job, thankful for the break.  We were able to chop and process 18 pints of diced tomatoes.  I put chopped hot peppers in 9 of those jars so that it would be ready for Queso.

Peppers: Peppers are still producing like crazy.  We shared some peppers with a friend and we froze a gallon chopped.  Last year we did not freeze any peppers so we are thankful for the bounty.

Dairy Processing: We are almost out of yogurt so I made a gallon of that.  I am doing an taste test experiment, to see if we like cultures from our yogurt in the fridge or powder cultures.   I will drain at least half a gallon of this for greek yogurt.  I prefer greek yogurt for breakfast and regular yogurt for smoothies.

I made a batch of cheese.  It is a farm cheese, kind of a mix between a cheddar and a provolone.  It is great in eggs and melted on garlic bread.  We use it like you would a cheddar cheese.

We also broke down an cheese wheel that I made 3 weeks ago.  This way it would keep better in the fridge.  This cheese should have aged longer, but it is still good.

With the whey I  made two batches of bread dough.  I will turn one batch into bread for the week and the other I will make pizza dough for a quick pizza night.

The Herb Garden:  I harvested basil which is in the dehydrator for cooking with this winter.  I also harvest lemon balm.  This is being air dried for hot tea in front of the fire! Tomorrow I jar up all the dried herbs that I harvested last week.  I think we will have plenty of everything for the winter except dill.  I replanted dill and cilantro.  There is nothing like fresh cilantro on tacos and dill in salad dressing!

The food cellar is filling up, the freezers are filling up, we feel so blessed.  It has been a great summer so far, thankful for the blessings we have been given.  We are getting closer and closer to raising all of our food, with a couple exceptions!

Thanks for catching up, keep growing!