Magical Beauty Berry Jelly

We have long had beauty berry bushes in our yard.  They are a native species to Florida and pretty easy to grow.  Callicarpa americana is their scientific name.

 I knew they were not poisonous and a year or so ago I saw friends mentioning on facebook that they were making jelly from them.  This year lots of people on my Florida Urban Homesteading facebook group were making jelly from them so I decided to give it a try.

  

It is pretty easy to spot the clusters of bright purple berries.

My chickens love to eat them so as I was gathering them they followed me around, catching the berries I dropped.  I have also observed them jumping up to get the berries from the lower branches themselves.

I used one of the recipes from this book:  Florida's Incredible Edibles by Richard Deuerling that I had purchased for my daughter last summer.  She took a wilderness survival camp at the Tallahassee Natural History Museum and wanted to learn more about wild edible plants.

The recipe called for one and half quart of washed berries.  I was able to gather that quickly from just three of our bushes.

 Here are the beauty berries ready to be boiled down to make the extraction for the jam.

But as you boil them something happens, they turn this brown color.

The extraction looks like tea when you are done with it and you really wonder how this jelly will turn out.

Then something magical starts to happen when you mix in the sugar and pectin.

It turns a pinkish purple color.

And you end up with a very attractive jelly.

It tastes pretty good too (it does remind me of Mayhaw Jelly).  Looking forward to enjoying my beauty berry jelly.

Pickles!

My cucumbers have been doing pretty well and I wanted to try canning pickles instead of just the fridge pickles I have been making.  I like the instructions on the Pick Your Own site.

They suggest to use a canning mix.  The recipes all call for 8-11 pounds of pickles.  That canner used to belong to my late Grandma Anna, it makes me happy to be able to use it and think of her.

I had been collecting pickles for a few days though and only had about three pounds.  So I had to do some math and hope that it works.

My husband wanted some dill pickles so I started with those.

 

I cut off the ends (the blossom ends contain an enzyme that make the pickles mushy) and cut them into spears.  Apparently putting grape leaves in with them make them more crunchy.  Luckily I have four muscadine grape vines in my garden.

 

And here they are waiting to go into the water bath for processing.  Can't wait to try them.

My bees have been very busy (we are planning to do a honey extraction next week) and I am hoping to have some more cucumbers to pickle in the near future.

Today's Harvest

Today's Harvest

 

I hope I have enough cucumbers to make canned dill pickles.  I like some of the recipes on this website and find their directions helpful:  Pick Your Own

Dining from the Garden

Usually I don't get much from my garden.  But this year I am starting to see success.

 

I finally got some carrots to grow in my raised beds.  The trick is to thin mercilessly and to make sure the soil is loose.  They didn't grow very long because they are in raised beds.

 

 

This morning I noticed a huge cucumber on my vines.  I had seen one blossom early on but figured nothing would come of it.  Then I happened to see it this morning while my husband was out checking the beehives.  It weighed in at 14 ounces.  My husband claims that I bought one at Publix to stick in my garden.  I was as surprised to see it there as he was.  There are a lot more blossoms on the vines now, so I am hoping that we will see more in the near future.

I made refrigerator pickles out of it.  They taste pretty good.  They are on the menu for tonight with roasted carrots (in butter) along with BBQ chicken (no, not the ones in our backyard) and some corn I did buy at Publix.  Should be a delicious summer meal.

 

Grow Your Own Mushrooms

Back in October I attended a workshop hosted at Ten Speed Greens that was conducted by Bent Tree Farm.  (Unfortunately Ten Speed Greens will be closing up shop this summer).  We learned briefly about growing your own mushrooms and then made our own shiitake mushroom logs and got to bring one home.

We recently cut down some trees on our property so I decided to make some more.  You start with logs approximately four to six inches in diameter and about 40 inches long.  Oak and sweet gum are the best to use.  I had previously used Fungi Perfect for an oyster mushroom kit but at the workshop we were told that Mushroom People is also a good source.  I ordered their Shitake Mushroom Starter kit.

Here is a portion of the kit, it included 300 plugs of mushroom spawn, paraffin wax for sealing, daubers for placing the was.  The kit also said that it was supposed to have 10 metal tags, but it did not.

 

The logs should be 4-6 inches in diameter and approximately 40 inches long.  They should be stored up off the ground to avoid contamination by "weed" species of mushroom.

Then you drill holes 1 inches deep with a 5/16 inch drill bit.  Place them approximately 6 inches apart on four "sides" of the log, placing each row of holes off center of the next.  Then place the plugs in the holes, tap them flat, and seal with the wax.  Make sure you heat the wax up in advance (I placed it in an old tin can inside a water bath in a crock pot).

 

At the workshop they told us that Florida has enough rainfall that as long as your logs are placed in the open they should be ok, but watering them is better.  Here I am soaking them for 8-12 hours (on each end) and will do this every two weeks.

 

Lets hope this works!  It may take 9 months for the logs to fruit, but then they will continue to fruit during the fruiting season for up to ten years.

Grow Your Own

My greatest goal is to be able to grow more of my own food.  Unfortunately I did not inherit my grandma Anna's green thumb.  But I keep on trying.  We recently had removed some trees (either dead, ill, or endangering structures) which opened up some sun in our backyard.  So I thought I would give a raised garden bed another try.

My eight year old was explaining worms to my not yet three year old.

 

Worms!  Everyone loves worms!

 

And everyone loves the chance to play in the dirt.

 

Planting peas.  We also planted some carrots.

I bought some blueberries from Tallahassee Native Nurseries.  I also really like to get down to Just Fruits and Exotics when I can, and they have great information on their site.  But I didn't have time to drive to Medart this weekend.

Once again putting the kids to work.  My husband helped too.  We had removed some azaleas in this location (they like acidic soil just like blueberries) because we wanted to have pretty flowers and food here.

Blueberries installed.  I am going to work hard to keep them watered (although one watering emptied our rain barrel) and fertilized with holly-tone on schedule.