salsa | Shades Of Lavender

We are really working hard to become as food independent as possible. We know that we will still need to buy grain products; flour, rice and chips. As well as, baking products, like baking powder and chocolate.

Here is an update on what we are doing this week to get closer to that goal.

The tomatoes and peppers are producing great which mean salsa! We have put up several batches of salsa. As of today we have 28 jars. My boys love salsa so I am estimating that we will need 48 quart jars for the year. This will be made up of 24 jars of HOT salsa and 24 jars of mild- medium salsa.

So far we have canned 7 jars of beets. This is no where near enough. We are praying for a strong fall beet harvest. We need at least 15-20 jars of beets for the year.

Peaches are in season. We work with a local family owned orchard for all the fruit we do not grow on the farm, or we do not grow enough of. We will have to plant several more blueberry plants to not have to buy those. Peaches, back to peaches, free stone, yellow peaches are the only way to go. They are amazing. The only problem is while I am canning I believe I ate at least 5 peaches one slice at a time. We canned 7 jars of peaches with two can in the fridge to get us through the week till we go to the farm again. I see a peach coffee cake in my future! We also froze blackberries. Can you say ice cream and smoothies!

Our onions did not do well so we had to get a bushel of onions. I have been using them for salsa as well as freezing chopped onions for the winter. I have frozen 12 pounds of chopped onions.

Peppers have been doing so well that I have been freeing them as well as adding them to salsa. We have frozen 5 gallons of chopped green peppers. These are great in the winter for chili, omelets, sloppy joes, and pizza. We easily can go through 10 gallons in the winter.

Okra! This is a new one to freeze for me. I put away 2 gallons of chopped okra. I am hoping to use it in stews, soups and sloppy joes for the winter.

There are at least 4 months that we do not milk the goats. So we freeze milk during the summer. Whole milk for winter yogurt. As well as spun milk for drinking. The cream from the spun milk gets turned into butter. I have frozen several pounds of butter.

The summer squash is slowing down. So I am freezing some yellow squash for winter muffins. I will freeze about 8 cups, which is four batches of muffins. I already froze zucchini for bread. I may try to freeze zucchini noodles, but I am worried that they will be mushy. I also froze some zucchini tortillas for tacos.

Alright, back to chopping! Happy Harvesting!

We have had a wonderful tomato season. Our tomato plants are 6 feet tall and we are picking tomatoes everyday. In the past we have only grown enough tomatoes for sandwiches and salads, the kids would eat them faster than I could save enough to can them. Today, I finally had enough tomatoes that I needed to can them or they would go bad, we just could not eat them all. I was finally going to make salsa from the tomatoes, peppers, garlic and herbs that I grew on my property. I was so excited. My mother-in-law and I spend the morning processing produce. I did not chop the tomatoes small enough and I chopped the peppers and the onions too small, we ended up with every watery salsa. 9 jars of very watery salsa, I was so disappointed. Finally here I was canning my own produce and I messed it up.

Instead of throwing away all these tomatoes that we worked so hard to grow, we water bathed canned the tomato mixture and I will just use it as a soup base. It will work great in chili, tortilla soup and vegetable soup. I hope that my tomato plants continue to grow and produce more tomatoes so we can get another chance to make salsa. When I create the perfect salsa recipe I will make sure to post it.

Here are some pictures of my amazing tomato plants. A little rabbit poop goes a long way, it certainly helped these plants grow big and strong.