Pickled Beets

Lots of food harvesting, washing, freezing, and canning is happening on our little urban Sweetpea Hill Farm. I've collected a few photos and will try and get them posted in the next few days.

From their last minutes growing to the final stages of processing, here's a chronicle of this year's pickled beets. We have two additional beds growing with beets sown in succession but the final bed will be for storage in our 'root cellar' while the ones just coming on will provide us with salads and summer eating. From these 5 short rows we have 20 pints of pickled beets, in addition to those we ate and gave away throughout the early summer. The varieties are Detroit Red (beautiful deep color), 3 Root Grex, and some Cylindra. We mixed them up in the boil.

The greens were in fairly good condition so we chopped off the stalks and steam blanched, then froze them for soups, calzones, and risottos this winter.

The recipe:

3 lbs beets, boiled, peeled, sliced

make a brine (simmer 15 minutes or longer) with the following:

2 cups apple cider (or white) vinegar

2 cups water

1 tsp whole allspice

1 tsp whole cloves

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Pack beets into sterile jars, fill to 1/4" headspace with strained brine, seal according to instructions, boiling water bath 30 minutes. admire the beautiful color. YUM!

Harvests!

There's nothing like a long, lazy, quiet Sunday morning. The heat has broken and a cool wind blew steadily across town all morning and afternoon. We spend the day picking and weeding in the community garden and at home. Does life get any better than this?

Bounty

We ate some, and gave some to visting friends: Black Beauty Zucchini, summer squash, Golden Purslane, Ruby Chard, Banana Peppers, young Yukons and Kentucky Wonder beans.

Harvests

Lots of harvesting is happening these days. An area about 1.5 feet by 1.5 feet in our freezer is filled with turnips and greens, escarole, beans and peas. The big beautiful tomatoes are almost ready and I've been plucking little orange cherry ones to munch in the garden with a basil leaf. More dilly beans to put into jars tonight. We've been holding off on the pickled beets because its going to be a big job to process them all and its been so hot.

Eggs

When we returned from the Vineyard last weekend a single mini-egg was nestled in the chicken's bedding. Over the next few days two hens worked valiantly to lay our first 6 eggs, clucking vociferously and generally fidgeting in the nesting boxes. Again, we're away for the weekend, this time at Jazzfest in Montreal and our neighbor is collecting the lovely eggs.