Zoo Talk: Two day update

I've had two days off and they've been moderately productive.

Yesterday, I pulled all the butter bean plants and got the beans off them. A lot were dry, which is just fine. Others were still green so I'll fix them for the freezer. Pulled the last few purple hull peas, too, which were all dry.

We went around to the spots in the gardens where I could remember planting sweet potatoes. Got a few of those. I'm sure I missed some. The best ones came from the raised bed and the big planter pots I have, so that's something to remember for next year. What we got were nice big ones, though, so I was pleased about that. It was probably only about 5 pounds of them but I didn't plant very many. They were from sweet potatoes that were sprouting in the bin, so basically were free.

I boiled up 3 dozen quail eggs and put them in pickling solution. The mix has minced garlic, minced onion, vinegar, peppercorns, dill, crushed red pepper, and salt in vinegar. I put them into three half-pint jars and stored them in the fridge. We tried them tonight and they were really tasty! So tasty, in fact, that I just boiled another 77 of them to pickle. I'll process them so they'll be shelf safe. They are sitting in plain vinegar right now to dissolve the shells. That takes about 12 hours, so I'll deal with them tomorrow when I get home from work. It's a pain shelling quail eggs. lol.

I boiled up a dozen hen eggs to pickle, too. I selected the smallest ones. They'll still take more than 24 hours to be good, though. The quail eggs only take 24 hours and they are ready to eat. I've been able to sell hen eggs, but we are now getting 11 to 12 a day, so I need to not only sell them but find other good uses for them.

Today, I was walking around outside and found regular potato plants sprouted up, so we dug those. Must have been some we missed in July. There were about 2 pounds of nice size red skin potatoes, which is enough for a meal.

We took care of the animals early because I was afraid it would storm this afternoon. So far, not even a sprinkle. But it's been pretty cloudy all day and windy, so it could still roll in here. Because it could come severe storms, I have the generator set up and ready to run in case the power goes out.

Now I'm about to put ingredients in the bread machines so we can have bread. White bread tonight, then molasses raisin bread tomorrow.