Farm Fresh Friday #11


Welcome to Farm Fresh Friday

This week on the prairie....

Pickles!!

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

In our case, it's cukes
and Peter Piper
is Proprietor Sall....
(that old nursery rhyme comes to mind
whenever I think about pickles)

I'm thinking our basket was a little
shy of a "peck"....

I had to"Google" this 
question and it took me to this
answer at:

"When Peter Piper picked his peck of pickled peppers,
 he picked the equivalent of 1/4 of a bushel. 
While no one knows the origin of this word nor
 how it came to be a unit of measurement,
 we do know that Peter's peck of pickled peppers
 amounted to the equivalent of 2 gallons of dry weight, 
or 10 to 14 pounds."


I think our basket
maybe weighed 1 pound....



Never the less, enough to make
a couple jars of Sall Farm 
Deluxe Kosher Dills

So, with the family here
(for the first time during pickle season)
we let our New York kids
learn the process and 
make the first 2 jars 
of our 2012 pickle season!!





Sall made up a batch of our
secret recipe pickle brine,
while Eric and Rachel
loaded the quart jars
with garlic...
dill....
chili pepper...
and cucumbers...




It was fun to watch these two
artists from New York City
fumbling with cucumbers
and trying to get the 
jars packed just so!
(Sall Farm has standards ya know!)




They really did well considering
the mixed sizes of cucumbers they had to work with!!
Initially the cucumbers are always
varied in sizes for the first couple of picks....
after that they become more uniform
in size (unless we miss one, then it becomes ginormous!)






The hot brine was ladled 
over the top and then 
into the cooker!





Voila!  Two jars of 
beautiful Dill Pickles!!
(ART at it's finest)

Eric and Rachel were
so proud they got 
to make the first two jars...

Wyatt was super
excited when 
Grandpa told him they could
take them home with them!!






And so, last Friday began the beginning
of the Sall Farm 2012 Pickle Season!
After a year off,
we are ready to resume pickling!!

We won't be into it 'big time' like 2010,
when we were canning 160 quarts in one day...
but inching our way back in!
Full-filling a few orders for special pickle fans,
and filling up our own pantry shelf.

The Pickle Tradition
Must Go On!

We feel canning and preserving
our own food is a valuable thing 
and we will do our best to keep 
our kids active in gardening
and teach the grand-kids 
those same values....




"Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared
and your life will have meaning and your heart
will have peace."
                                                               -Kent Nerburn








Please take a little time and visit the bloggers
sharing their farm fresh posts this week...

I am grateful for their participation,
thank you all!!!





This is a place to share all things FRESH,
 homemade and/or home-grown.
There is no rule that it has to be made by you or grown by you,
just the fact that it was 
hand made or grown by somebody
and not mass-produced or imported from Timmbucktu is good enough for us!!

Want more details? See our Farm Fresh Friday Page at the top of the blog.


Here's how to join in:

  1. Publish your Farm Fresh Friday post on your blog. 
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  3. Paste the url into the appropriate inlinkz box in this post.
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  5. Click on "Enter"
  6. Please link back to this Farm Fresh Friday post so that your readers can find other posts related to the party!




Sall’s Country Life




Comments

Nancy said…
Love love your shots, Lisa. And making pickles is fun. Sticky, but fun. :)
Unknown said…
Oldest son just opened a quart of last years HOT pickles and declared them too hot -- that isn't usually him so they must be very hot, lol. Enjoy your pickles and thanks for hosting :)

Blessings!
Gail
Yum, homemade pickles. We don't eat enough of them for me to make but I'll be looking for some at the farmers' market.
After reading how many quarts you've made in the past in one day, you must can pickles in your sleep! :-)
Judith
barb said…
After canning pickles all those years at home I swore I would never can them again. But I do love me one of grandma bertha's dill pickles!
TexWisGirl said…
used to help/watch my mom do pickles every year. thanks for the memories - i could smell the dill and the brine. :)
Melinda said…
Oh, yummy---I love fresh pickles!
I bet the kids had a great time.
Somwhow I got behind on your posts.
Busy busy is what you guys are.

Have fun!

:)
They look so good, can almost taste them!
Candy C. said…
They did a great job, the jars of pickles are beautiful! :)
ann said…
The pickles look so good. Our pickle crop will be meager this year. Some of the seeds didn't sprout. I cannot imagine doing 160 jars of pickles. And I agree that we need to pass on the traditions and skills of growing preserving the food we eat.
ann said…
The pickles look so good. Our pickle crop will be meager this year. Some of the seeds didn't sprout. I cannot imagine doing 160 jars of pickles. And I agree that we need to pass on the traditions and skills of growing preserving the food we eat.

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