Fermenting – Beautiful Chaos

Harvesting and processing cabbages and carrots

After the first night frost I wasn’t too worried about the cabbages, since they have a cover, but since it is getting colder the cabbages do not really grow any more. So I planned in to harvest and process them.

After going around in the garden I only found 4 small heads I could process, so I decided to harvest a bunch of carrots as well. We had just eaten the last of our fermented carrots and I really needed to make some more.

After harvest I started with cutting up the cabbages. I used the white cabbages to make sauerkraut, since my son only wants sauerkraut from the white cabbage and not from the red. I mixed in the salt and let it sit for an hour or so before working the cabbages to get some liquid out. Then I packed it in a glass. A smaller glass would have done. Since we are completely out of sauerkraut at the moment I will have to buy some cabbages to make a useful amount of sauerkraut.

The carrots I only washed thoroughly, cut of some bad spots and cut into strips. I had enough for 2 glasses in which I packed the carrots tight. Pouring enough saltwater to cover the carrots and these are done. I put the glasses into our barn to ferment. In a few weeks we will be able to enjoy our ferments again.

For diner I cooked the red cabbage and added some leftover beef and some herbs. Easy and tasty. (I forgot to make a picture of this meal)

My preserved garlic seems to be fermenting

Does anybody know if this is normal?

About a month ago I preserved garlic in olive oil and put it in the refrigerator for quick and easy use as needed. No I have noticed that there is pressure underneath the lid when I take the glass out of the refrigerator. I have not noticed a bad smell or taste, but I do wonder if this is normal and for how long will the garlic be usable?

We will see.

It is harvest time

And we have made ourselves a lot of work in the garden this year.

We have no useable soil on our property, so we have to work with raised beds and hillbeds in order to grow our vegetables.

This means a lot of work before we can even start with gardening.

As you can see on the picture we also mulch all our beds. Our location is ratter warm and dry, so this way of gardening is beneficial to keep the moisture in the soil.

Unfortunately this year was no good for the tomatoes. We only harvested a few handfuls of so many tomatoplants we had started from seed in the winter.

On the other hand we had an abundance of zucchini, even a few broccoli en a bunch of onions.

**Broccoli, Zucchini, Zucchinisoup and elderberry jelly**

A few red cabbages have been turned into sauerkraut and kimchi. And I hope I find the time to harvest and process the rest of the cabbage before the caterpillars eat them all.

The paprika was getting late to ripe due to the cold wetter now and then. So we had to harvest them green otherwise the paprika went bad before turning red completely.

Since we do not like the taste of green paprika I am fermenting and pickling them. Also the chilies are getting fermented.

**Paprika and Chilli pickled and fermenting**

We are so lucky to have a great potato yield. We had a number of different varieties. One did better as the other. Our favorite is the potato “Aromata” which tastes very good and gave us the best yield with a lot of very big potatoes.