Henderson Settlement Happenings~ Jackie

Rebecca's Miller and Gail Brock from Bell County Extension Agency
getting ready to start the canning class.

On Thursday we had our second canning class with participants from both Grow Appalachia and the several from the surrounding area.  Rebecca, Gail and I were pleased with the turn out for the class. We had 14 Grow Appalachia participants and 5 people from the surrounding area attend the class.





I eat local because I can! ~Pine Mountain, Kathleen Powers

Despite a growing season of extremes it seems that Grow Appalachia sites as a whole are harvesting like crazy, and of course canning everything possible. To add to the chorus of blog posts here is a synopsis of the canning and food preservation workshop that we held several weeks ago.

Jennifer and Maggie preparing the beans

One of our Grow Appalachia members, Jennifer Hockenberry, led the workshop and taught us all how to water bath can pickles and pressure can green beans. Jennifer is a wonderful teacher, she is confident in her canning skills and willing to try anything, when we threw a new dill pickle recipe at her to make she said, “I’ve never made it before, but I can do anything with a recipe”. I love this attitude towards cooking and food preservation and I hope that workshops such as this will instill that same confidence in other members of Grow Appalachia. The things we can do with garden produce are endless and I think creativity and exploration are more than half the fun of cooking and using the food you have grown to feed yourself and the people you love.

Jennifer talked a lot about the basics of canning and did her best to dispel the common sentiment that pressure canning is a frightening endeavor. She demonstrated each step of the process and really made canning look easy all while answering an array of questions concerning everything from how to clean and store a pressure canner to how to prepare canned goods for delicious meals later in the season. One reference that we have found to be priceless in the canning process is the Ball Blue Book, it has recipes, basic information, diagrams, and much more to help new and experienced canners alike. We sent each of our participants that attended the workshop home with one of these books so that they might feel confident canning in their own kitchens!

Pickles in the water bath canner

Dill pickles!

Jennifer with her wonderful assistant, Adi

We also briefly discussed other ways to preserve produce, such as freezing, and dehydrating, which, I wrote about in this previous post. This year we decided to stock up on canners and dehydrators to lend to our Grow Appalachia participants, and so far we have been getting great reviews, with many people successfully canning more pints and quarts of produce than I can even imagine. Several of our participants are also really enjoying dehydrating and have been trying all kinds of new things with the promise to let us know how it all works out, dehydrated beans anyone?! 

Armilda and her cornfield

A small portion of Talt's corn harvest

ASPI Rockcastle Co. GA participants are busy harvesting produce.  On follow-up visits we are finding good harvests in spite of the drought and heat.  With many farmers losing their corn crops, the superb corn harvests some of our participants are reaping, with no irrigation no less!, are very impressive.  Talt has been selling from one of his sites, as well as donating to a local nursing home.  He harvested and sold 80 dozen just yesterday.  He is out harvesting again today.  Great!  Armilda put in 2 acres of corn for her and her family.  She chooses a different path, in that what she can’t use she gives away.  Many of our participants choose to give extra produce to friends, family and churches or food banks rather than sell.  Even those who sell tend to donate a portion in addition.  While encouraging our participants to get involved in farm marketing is something we are supporting, the principal of sharing through giving is an important part of the local culture and to be respected and supported as well.  Supporting our participants in this is a way to extend the reach of the program to many additional people and to respect generations-old local customs – a much more important duty than turning a profit. 

Site visits are continuing, fall plantings are being prepared for, and the weather is more pleasant.  What more could we ask?

Pressure canning for the first time...: Tina

We want to give a big thanks to LCAAHC Grow App. Coordinator Wayne Riley for his help with pressure canning. We have never used a pressure canner before and Wayne explained to Ricky and I how to use it, he even gave us the beans to can. They are called Derby beans and are string less and heat tolerant. We ended up with 8 pints. He was right, it's not difficult to use once you start using it. Now that we feel comfortable with using a pressure canner, we will be canning potatoes next.

We fixed a kettle full to try and let me say they are delicious. So if your looking for a bean to can that are easy to prepare and great tasting, then you might want to give these a try.

Again, thanks Wayne and Grow Appalachia program. We have learned so much about gardening and preserving food. Definitely, my family has been eating healthier home grown vegetables.

On another note, we have had so many tomatoes that needed to be canned. These are Roma and Big beef varieties.

We ended up with 53 pints of tomato sauce,  25 pints of pizza sauce, 7 quarts of diced, 9 pints of green tomato slices and 36 pints salsa. Up until now we have only used the water bath canner but using the pressure canner opens gardening to a whole new level. We also have been sharing our vegetables with Horizon Adult Day Care Center, most are elderly and are no longer able to grow a garden of their own but still enjoy the wonderful taste of homegrown.

Getting your garden ready for fall planting----Chad Brock ---Red Bird Mission

Summer is traditionally thought of as vegetable gardening season, but fall has some qualities that make it great for planting crops that prefer cooler temperatures or wetter conditions.

    If your vegetable garden has been well tended all summer, keeping it weeded, removing diseased or spent plants, your garden won't need much work to prepare it for a fall planting.  Just clear the space, maybe add some compost and start planting. But if you're like most of us, your garden probably got a little ahead of your best efforts and could use some attention before you start a second season of planting.

If there are weeds hiding out under plants, get rid of them now before they go to seed. This will limit the amount of weeds you are left to deal with in the future.

   You will also need to get rid of any spent plants. You can leave your tomatoes and peppers to ripen, but many other plants, like early planted beans, cucumbers and lettuce, are pretty much done for the season and they're just luring disease and insects that will attack your fall plants. Dispose of anything diseased by placing in a garbage bag and sending it out with the trash. You may compost the rest.

   If you have any small fruits that have dropped off the plant, make sure you get them out of there because rotting fruits also attracts pests.

        Try and choose varieties with short days to maturity and get them in the ground soon.

If this will be your second planting season, make a map of what was where, so you can rotate your crops as best as possible. Good Luck and Happy Planting

Here is something that I found very unusual, Just wondering if anyone else had ever saw this happen and what had caused it??

The date on the photo is wrong, his tomato was picked a week ago from
 my cousins garden
As you can see the tomato has seeds sprouting and trying to
grow plants. 

The date on the photo is wrong, his tomato was picked a week ago from
 my cousins garden
As you can see the tomato has seeds sprouting and trying to
grow plants. 

Rhubarb and Strawberry pie made by my Sonya Brock

                                                    Rhubarb and Strawberry Pie 
                                                           1 cup white sugar
                                                        1/2 cup all-purpose flour
                                                   1 pound fresh rhubarb, chopped
                                                      2 pints fresh strawberries
                                                    

                                                     Recipe shared by Sonya Brock 

Humbled by Home Visits

Saxon at ASPI

Today Nancy and I visited some of our gardeners.  I think today was particularly awe-inspiring.  One of our gardeners, Armilda Barnes was busy shucking corn when we drove up.  Armilda has a 2 acre plot with beans, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, sweet corn and hominy corn.  She also has a smaller plot on the other side of her house with a variety of fruits and veggies growing.  In addition to canning something out of her garden pretty much everyday, Armilda raises three beautiful grandkids that are full of kindness and imagination.  On her property she also has an orchard heavy with fruit, hogs, and chickens.  She raises and prepares food for an eight person household.  She keeps busy and with a joyous, seize-the-day attitude.

Armilda shucking corn

Armilda's Helpers

I didn't really grow up canning and my mom only had a garden when I was a real little baby.  I started getting into gardening, the farmers markets, local food movements when I was a preteen and have always been involved with food culture since that time.  I spent 3 years at Berea College working for the Agriculture Department and now I work here at Grow Appalachia.  I am grateful and blessed to have learned all that I have over the last several years about soils, harvesting, planting, and more.  However, I still feel like there's so much to learn!  The knowledge and confidence that Armilda has within her are golden, I really admire her and all her hard work.

BDVP Make It Take It: Jam and Pickles: Jessica

We recently offered another installment of our Make It/ Take It series.  This month we decided to can blackberry jam and pickles from the garden.  Participants gathered together to make traditional low sugar jam.  As we warmed the berries on the stove everybody chopped cucumbers, peeled garlic and chopped peppers for our batch of home-made pickles. We didn't have any dill in the garden so we actually used basil for our pickles (which I have done in the past... and love!).      Most of our group participants had never done any home canning.  I wanted to let them know what a fun and easy project jam making can be. We really had a great time in the kitchen that day! We were able to make a big batch of a nice quality product and everyone got their own jar to keep. 

Our next official Make It/Take It class wil be held in a few weeks and we will be canning tomato sauce and making an enormous batch of pesto to freeze. In the meantime we are considering doing another pickling class and using up some of our beets and the rest of our cucumbers.  We will surely keep you all posted!

Jam........

Warming up the berries

Adding Sugar

Pickles.....

Wash em'



Chop em'

Pack em'

Pickle em'