Before leaving home for work, I came upon this beautiful rose touched by the morning dew. I take it as a good sign for the new year.
I had never tried making hot pepper sauce so I thought it would be more complicated than it is. It is neither hard nor time-consuming and the results are truly red hot. I’ve made several batches and the one variable to play with is the amount of cider vinegar to add.
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- Basket of hot peppers
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- Cooking peppers with vinegar and garlic
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- Bottled Hot Sauce
I had a good crop of hot peppers growing in the garden. So I picked a pint of them. To make hot sauce, I cooked them for about five minutes, along with several garlic cloves in a cup or more of cider vinegar. I didn’t want to cook them very long, just enough to soften them. Next, I blended the peppers and the liquid in a food processor. (The fumes from peppers are potent so keep your head back when you open the container.) Then, I put them through a sieve to drain the deep red liquid from the chopped peppers. I let them sit a while and also pressed down on them with a spoon to get out all the juice. That’s it.
I bottled it. I could also use half-pint mason jars. I can keep it in the pantry or an open jar in the fridge.
The solids will separate from the liquid after the sauce sits for a while. I’m sure I could add something to prevent that from happening. However, a quick shake blends the sauce easily. As I said, it’s red hot and just a little bit will add heat to anything you eat. A bottle of your own hot sauce makes a nice gift, too.
Ben and Sara have five new Red Angus calves in a fenced field near their home. These are drop-calves that must be bottle-fed twice a day. The one wear a blue jacket was sickly and needed special nurturing by Sara, include a night inside. Sara was also taking care of Maddox (our German Shepherd), and she reported that Maddox would not stop barking at the calf, driving her half-mad.
The coat of the Red Angus is especially beautiful.
I got started on the end of summer tasks such as canning and pickling over Labor Day. I also baked a loaf of sourdough bread from a starter I’d been nursing for weeks. I was particularly pleased to get the first batch of tomatoes canned. The tomatoes are coming in late this year. I also made a batch of fresh chevre. Since I had the tomato sauce on the stove, I made a delicious tomato soup, adding fresh corn and chives.
It’s kind of a triple play for the kitchen — pickling, canning and baking.
There’s a row of sunflowers planted by our lawn wall. It’s been fun all summer watching them grow to where they now tower over the wall.
Tonight, as the fog was rolling in behind them, the sunflowers were brightly lit by the setting sun. I particularly like the photo of single sunflower, which seems like a scruffy character.
Sebastopol in summer is cool and sunny at the same time, a refreshing mixture usually.
We have rats gaining entry to the chicken coop, eating eggs and causing the chickens to roost on the roof of the coop. Rats are the hackers of farm life, I guess.
We took this one out with a trap in the coop. We caught two others on sticky paper traps and then Ryan finished them off with a BB gun. We’re on the lookout for more. The rat patrol moves at night!
Milo took this terrific photo of the chickens checking out the dead rat.
We harvested garlic today. It was planted last November and was ready now to be pulled up. The water in the bed had been off for a couple of weeks, which helps the heads harden off.
We put a basket full of garlic heads in the greenhouse to dry for a few days. I’d say we have about 50 heads of garlic, variable in size.
The lavender is in peak form. The bees are all over it.
As the strands sway in the wind, the bees don’t seem to care.
The blueberries are ripe and ready, a real delight. It has taken about three years to get a really good crop. The raspberries and boysenberries are in season as well. I love the flavor if boysenberries. The raspberries are so prolific that it is hard to pace picking them.
Nancy made a great blueberry cobbler last night.
The beans and squash are about ready to transplant from the greenhouse to the garden.
