As many of you already know, I live on a farm.  Being a city girl who married a farm boy, I had to learn  how to make things from scratch.  I had to learn quickly too!  Hubby's mother has made his family's food, clothing, and basically everything from scratch.  She made their butter, yogourt, bread, salad dressings (yes, she even made homemade mayonnaise!) and she made their clothes, quilts, etc.

Those are some pretty big shoes to fill!

Hubby, having not grown up with anything pre-made, from a box, from a can, or from the frozen section in the grocery store, has had to learn that though I love cooking, I have no time to make sure there are freshly baked desserts at every meal.  I know it's what he's accustomed to, but we certainly don't need it! At least our waistlines don't!

I did pick up a few tricks of the trade from my mother-in-law.  She has taught me how to cultivate and harvest all our produce and preserve them for Winter use.  Yes, that's right.  You work at the garden in the Summer and come Winter, you won't go hungry.

I've been married to a farmer for six years, and I've been having fun learning all about things farmers' wives do. Ummm...like make jams and preserves!
Cucumbers from the garden are great in cucumber sandwiches or cucumber salad, but they can also be pickled. Beets can be pickled. Tomatoes, green peppers, onions, and other veg can be made into a sauce that my mother-in-law calls Borden Sauce (the jar on the far right in above photo).

The only thing I'm not too keen on about making preserves is the amount of salt or sugar that needs to go into the recipes in order to properly "preserve" fruits and  veg.  Though I do some preserving and jam making, I prefer freezing our produce for Winter use.  Most of the prep just requires blanching, ice bath, and freezing.  With our corn, I blanch, cut the corn off the cobs, store in freezer-safe baggies or containers, and freeze.  Some produce, like berries can be frozen as is.
We have three large chest freezers.  This one is for mainly produce from the garden.  I have everything from beans to raspberries in there! The above photo is from the other year, but our freezers pretty much look like this every year!

Amazing to think all of the above started out like the plants in the photo  below!
We have a lot of apple trees on our farm.  Every year, we get tons and tons of apples.  One of the things I love to do is to make apple sauce.  I make huge batches of apple sauce, store them in ice cream containers and freeze them until I need to use them.  All I do is thaw the apple sauce and it's ready when I need it. I use it in my baking, and sometimes when I'm making homemade BBQ sauce.  It's great with pork.  Most of the time, Little One just wants to have apple sauce for dessert or for a snack.  We always have it handy in the freezer.
 HOMEMADE APPLE SAUCE

• Wash apples
• Cut in quarters
• Place in big pot and add water so that it covers apples
• Cook until tender (not mushy or falling apart)
• Drain water
• Place a few apple quarters into colander/fruit press like the one below
• Press apples through colander to make the apple sauce

•  Bottle up your apple sauce and freeze it for later use, or eat it as is! It's delish!

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