It's hot outside!

The last week and the upcoming week have been and will be HOT! It's been rough but we'll make it.

I've been updating my chicken page each week with new photos of the chick - here's a link to that if you want to check it out, or you can just click on it at the top on the menu bar. CHICKENS

I've been looking on craigslist for turkey poults and finally found a few that seemed worth getting. They are Bourbon Reds (a heritage breed). I'm not sure of the sexes yet but we have 3 so I'm hoping they'll be opposite sexes. We'll see! The previous owner was not sure how old they are ... they just noticed them following around a hen one day.

The garden is quite full of weeds but producing well. Brianna has been selling produce and I've been dehydrating it. My goal this year was the dehydrate more and it's been going well so far (it seems anyway?). I have learned that about 25-30 POUNDS of tomatoes can fit into one quart jar. ONE. How many jars would that take if I were to can them? I'll do a blog post on it some day but for now I'll just share my method. I slice them 1/4" thick with my nifty Borner V-Slicer Mandoline (love it!), dehydrate them at 135*, grind them into powder with my coffee grinder (seems to work a little better than the vitamix but it might just be because it condenses it down so small), and then vacuum seal them into a mason-jar. I purchased a few oxygen absorbers that I'll use when I'm ready to do several at once. To use, just simply add water until it's the desired consistency. Easy! I'm excited about this method because it takes me much less time and energy, it does not heat up the house, and it really saves on space and jars. We'll see what I think about it after the year is up and I've used the dehydrated food a while.

Ok, time to go.