Of Tomatoes, Butter and Eggs

Hey Everyone,
Because of work, overtime and rain, Outside work has come to a stand still. This was suppose to be my 3 day week-end ( Sunday, Monday and Tuesday). But I was asked to work overtime Sunday, and yesterday and today RAIN! A lot of rain and because my land does not drain very well, Lots of pond size puddles!
I have been doing a lot of research to see if I can correct that problem without doing a lot of digging and found a device called a SUBSOILER.
Ever hear of this and has anybody used one before? It is a device that hooks up to a tractor on the 3 point hitch and using the hydraulics, It digs a 2 inch trench 14 inches below the surface in areas that water has a hard time getting into hard packed soil (witch is the problem I have on all 3 acres here!). The price is not to bad ($130.00) and my compact tractor has the HP required to operate it (22 - 50 HP). The cutting blade is mounted on a narrow beam that cuts the surface very little, as the blade cuts a 2 inch trench 14 inches down. And that surface cut can be closed by running back over it with the tractor tires. That 2 inch trench stays open to give the water someplace to go.

But title of this post has to do with other things!

Tomatoes:
We have been able to keep the Deer out of the paste tomatoes (San Mariano) and have been getting quite a few each day. I have been putting them into gallon zip-lock bags and into the freezer until we get enough to do something with.
And that time came yesterday! We took 5 bags out of the freezer and cut them in half. Put them in baking pans with garlic, olive oil, Balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and roasted them in a 400 degree oven for 20 min.

The first 4 pans of tomatoes in the oven!

And the next 4

Two bowls waiting their turn.

And the garlic (That's from the garden too!

Once we got the roasting done we ran all of them Thu a food mill and ended up with a crock pot full of sauce. We set it on low and let it cook down all night with the lid opened at one end to allow to allow the steam out.

That's a full crock pot!

Better picture.

Ended up with 3 jars of sauce. I will freeze them. Not enough to fire up the Caner!

While the tomatoes were roasting,

The Butter:
I have read several posts about making butter from store bought Heavy Cream and decided to give it a try!

A quart of Heavy Cream from Wally- World!

A Stand mixer, covered with a towel. It went faster then I though it would! 10 - 12 min

12 OZ of salt free Butter

And about 8 OZ of Butter milk. We used it to make a salad dressing with plan Yogurt and spices. It was really good!

And here are two Kohlrabi that I got out of the garden. Believe it or not, the big one was sweeter and more tender then the smaller one!

And last the EGGS

The Chickens are 22 weeks old now and I got the first Egg on 16 July and then nothing until Aug 2. And I got just one Egg for the next 5 days. Now I average 3 Eggs a day, One of witch is a Brown one. As you know I have two RIR's and I though that they both were Roo's! But Knuckle Head has decided to be a girl and she is always sitting on the Eggs when I go collect them. So to date, 34 Eggs!!

 Last night we have grilled Pork Chops, Hash Browns and Farm Fresh Eggs for dinner. I fried the Eggs in the Butter we made and they were Wonderful! Mark was surprised at the color of the yoke and the flavor (That's a city Boy for you!).

So I think this is about enough for one post. The next one will be a review of a new DVD I just got. It's called "Back to Eden" and is a gardening film. But you will have to wait until the next post!

Have a great rest of the week everyone!
Tom