Hilltop Homestead

 The harvest and canning season has begun!  Our garden is rather smallish this year, compared to other years, but still there'll be some food for the shelves!

We picked about 30 heads of cabbage - ranging in size from basketball to softball - as long as they were filled out we picked 'em!

SAUERKRAUT here we come!

 Here's some of them after we got them in the house.  The cool plastic bins we picked up at Cabella's (Sporting Goods Store).

We actually picked them all one day and then started our kraut-making the following morning.  They'll keep just fine overnight - you're going to take a couple of outer leaves off anyhow and that's the only part that wilts a bit.

 We use our Cuisinart food processor to make our kraut.  We just trim the outer leaves off until we hit clean cabbage, cut them in wedges and shred on the smallest blade.  We measure out 5# of shredded cabbage, sprinkle 3 Tablespoons of salt over and let it wilt for a few minutes.  (We have several containers, so we do it assembly line fashion!)

 Once the cabbage shreds have wilted a bit, into the crock they go and you push, push, push on it until it packs in and juices up.

 Keep going!  Every 5# gets 3Tblsp of salt.......

 When you've got as much as you want (we filled them to within 6" of the top, but I didn't take a picture of that......) then you make a brine (1 1/2 Tblsp of salt to each quart of water) to fill bags for the top.  I just use new 13 gallon kitchen trash bags, doubled.  The idea is to block all the air from reaching your kraut and to cover it completely.  You want to fill the bags with enough brine to make the edges of the bag reach all the sides of the crock.  The reason you use brine instead of plain water is in case of leakage - that way you won't spoil your kraut by watering it down!

 Now it'll sit in my back room for about 3 weeks and then I'll water-bath can it. 

Here's the goat clean-up crew eating up all the cabbage plant leftovers.

 My black New Zealand rabbit still has all ten of her new kits.  They're looking good!

 I'm still working on primitives.  I work a bit on them each day, so today I finally finished up a few that I've had in the works all week.   Three rag dolls, seven bats, and 7 witches hats.  (Sounds like a poem.....)

 THEN, my husband came home with an unexpected blessing from my aunt.......
a BAZILLION shipping boxes!!!!
WOW!  This will save me a fortune on my ebay selling!   What a wonderful surprise for me!

That's it for today (remember, the kraut was a couple of days.....)
This is our bee house.  It's built like Fort Knox because we've had bear problems in the past.  So, we now call it......(are you ready?).....The Bearicade!

That's all for now.  Until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His mighty hand!