Tag Archives: Recipes

How to Preserve the Fall Harvest: Persimmons (Recipe Included!)

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Persimmons are a fruit, often wild, that is ready for harvest in the fall. Wild persimmons are native to most of the US, and can also be found in orchards in places like Oregon and California.

Harvesting

To look for a persimmon tree, in the fall you will look for the fruit hanging in the tree. In the summer it will be smaller and green, and plump up and turn color (to orange) in the fall. In the spring, you will want to look for their signature ‘bumpy’ bark, pictured here:

When you find a persimmon tree, see if it has fruit on it, or if it is spring, check back as time goes on to see if it starts to get fruit. You will know the fruit is ripe and ready for harvest when they are orange and squishy. Sometimes they will have a tinge of purple, too. You DO NOT want to eat green persimmons! They will dry out your mouth and give you a belly ache!

Often, when they are ripe, they will fall from the tree. This is when it is ready, and it has all the enzymes in it for digestion. This is the best time to eat them! Pick them up off the ground and put them in your container. You can wash them later. If you shake the tree, or if you had a recent windy day, the ones that are ready will also fall.

You will want to get them as they fall, because otherwise the deer, or other animals, will beat you to them!

When the persimmons are ripe, they will have a very sweet taste.

Processing

Take in your persimmons and wash them well. Pick off the stems that stick to them when you pick them or they fall. Put your remaining fruit in a pot, and smash it until it becomes the consistency of pudding. Keep in mind that there will be a lot of seeds, but we will deal with those next.

The next step is to run your persimmons, seeds and all, through a food mill, like the one shown here:

Put your hand crank food mill over an empty stock pot and run it through. The result will look something like orange pudding. This is called ‘persimmon pulp’. You can freeze this or make persimmon pudding! Below is the recipe we like best of the ones we’ve used.

Remember to thank God for providing, and for giving the strength to harvest what he has provided!

How to Make and Can Apple Pie Filling

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Start by washing your apples. Once that is done, peel, cut, core and slice.

Put these slices into a large stockpot. If your apples are really dry, you need to add about a quart or so of water to a very large stockpot full. If your apples are very juicy, you need little to no water. You will have to gauge it by the juiciness of your apples, so that they do not burn. Stir continually.

Shut them off when they are mostly cooked, but still a little hard.

To a large stockpot, add:

4 cups Brown Sugar

3 Tbsp Lemon Juice (optional)

2 tsp. Cinnamon

1 tsp. Nutmeg

Warm water if very thick until it reaches desired consistency

Canning Preparation:

Fill your canner half way with water, and turn on. Put your empty jars in your oven on ‘warm’. If your oven doesn’t have a ‘warm’ setting, just put it on the lowest setting it has.

When everything is hot/warm, you are ready for the next step.

Fill your hot jars with the hot filling, leaving an inch of head space in the top of your jar. Pack filling tightly into jar. Put a butter knife down the insides of your jar (between the glass and the sauce) to let out any air bubbles in the jar/filling. Wipe your rims clean with a rag or paper towel to remove any filling. If you don’t do this, it can prevent your lids from sealing tightly to your jar.

Put on your pre-warmed lids and screw on your rings tightly. Put your jars into your warm water in your canner, with a jar lifter, pictured below.

Canning/Water Bathing

When all the jars are in the canner, you want there to be about 1” of water covering the top of all jars. Put your canner lid on, but do not lock it. Watch for when water starts to boil. When it does, turn heat to medium, and set your timer for 25 minutes.

When timer goes off, shut off canner. Let sit for 5 minutes.

Place a towel on your counter. Take your jar lifter, and carefully remove your jars from the hot canner and onto your towel. Do not tighten your rings if they loosen.

Let cool for 12 hours. Check seals and store.

The reason you want to check the seals is to make sure they are all secure before you store them.

You check the seals by tapping the jar lids with one finger. As you tap them, listen for a jar that sounds different than the rest of them. It will usually make a hollow sound.

If you find a jar that hasn’t sealed, put it in the fridge and use it soon. If you are planning more canning, you can try to can it again. Make sure there are no nicks in the top of jar and a good lid on it.

How to Start, Grow, Harvest and Preserve Your Own Sweet Potatoes

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Starting Your Slips

In mid-winter take your best sweet potato and put it in a quart canning jar filled with water. (DO NOT CUT YOUR POTATO!)

Don’t have a sweet potato you grew? That’s okay, just get a couple from the store.

Set your canning jar in the window sill. Change the water every few days, or when the water begins to stink.

After about 3 weeks, your sweet potato will start to sprout. Once your sprouts/slips are 3”-4” tall and leafed out, snip off the slips and put them in a pint jar of water.

Once they are in the jar of water, they will start growing their own roots.

If the slip or root growing process seems to be taking awhile, adding some compost to the water helps to speed up the growth.

Once your slips have grown roots that are 2-4”, they are ready to transplant.

We have found that it works best to plant them in a pot of dirt that is VERY wet.

This prevents them from going into shock, by just going straight from the jar of water, into the garden.

You want to keep them in your pot of wet dirt for at least 5-7 days, longer is okay.

If it is still cold outside, keep this pot indoors in a window sill as well.

Planting Sweet Potatoes Outside

You want to plant your slips outside after your last frost date. With your hoe, make small hills about 1′ around and 1′ high.

With your hoe handle, make a 4” deep hole in the center of your hill. Take your slips (we like to do 3-4 per hill), spread out the roots and cover with dirt. Then top your hill with compost.

Watering

Water WELL everyday until plants are established. This is VERY IMPORTANT!

Once established water a couple times a week (unless it rains, of course).

Pests

There are many garden pests who will attack your potato vines. These include sweet potato weevils, sweet potato beetles, wireworms, flea beetles, and blister beetles.

If any pests attack your sweet potato plant, spray Neem oil (organic spray) 1-2x per week, or more depending on how bad the bugs are and how much damage they are causing.

If it is blister beetles that are eating your sweet potato plants, remove them WITH GLOVES (THEY DO GIVE BLISTERS) into soapy water. You will have to be on top of it checking daily, or several times daily, until they are gone. Otherwise they WILL destroy your plants.

Feeding the Plant

If your sweet potato leaves are looking a little yellow, or just not growing well, you need to feed the plant. You need to add compost around the hill and plant. It is also a good idea to put hay or mulch around the hills in the dry season, to keep the moisture in.

When to Harvest

Harvesting is an exciting time, and a time to be thankful to God for what He has blessed us with. Ecc. 3:13 says, “Every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.”

Before your first frost date (it is alright if the plants get frosted on, just make sure they don’t get frosted on repeatedly.)

Take a potato fork and dig up the hills, being careful not to dig the fork into the potatoes themselves.

Carefully brush off any dirt with a soft bristled brush, making sure you do not remove or scratch the skins.

Storing

Store them in a cool, dark place to let them cure for about two weeks. You can begin using them after this time; but they longer they cure, the sweeter they will be!

Preserving

If your sweet potatoes are not keeping well, for whatever reason, you will need to can them.

Prov. 12:27 says, “the substance of a diligent man is precious.” We don’t want what is ‘precious’ to us to go to waste!

Canning

You begin this process by washing the potatoes well. Cut them into bigger chunks, (you can peel now, or after the boil) put them into water and bring to a boil. Let them boil for about 10 minutes, then remove from heat. Do not strain the water out of the potatoes; you are going to use it in a moment.

Take the potatoes out of the water with a slotted spoon. If you did not peel them beforehand, you can slip them off now. Fill the jars with the peeled potato chunks.

Ladle the water you boiled them in over the potato chunks, leaving 1” head space between the water and lid. Put your lids and rings on the jars tightly.

Place your jars in the canner with hot water, and slide the lid into ‘lock’ position. Once steam starts to come out of the vent pipe, set your timer for 10 minutes.

When your timer goes off, and your ten minutes in up, put the weight on, and let the pressure build up to 10psi.

If you used pint jars, keep at 10psi for an hour and 5 minutes.

If you used quart jars, keep at 10psi for an hour and a half.

When the time is up, let cool as the pressure comes out. When all the pressure is out (your psi is back to zero) Remove your jars from the canner. DO NOT re-tighten bands if they came loose.

Allow to continue cooling for about 12 hours or so.

Check your seals (use any if they didn’t seal, soon) and store.

DON’T FORGET! Save some of your potatoes to start your slips in mid winter! Then you’ll never have to buy slips from a greenhouse again! 🙂

What to do with Canned Sweet Potatoes?

You can heat them up straight from the jar, mash, and put cinnamon and butter on them, or you can add them to soup.

Have you ever had Sweet Potato Pie? If you like Pumpkin Pie, Sweet Potato Pie is just as good. Some in our family would say EVEN BETTER!

Here is our family’s favorite recipe: