Preparing for Winter & Dehydrating Peppers

Fall feels officially over now that we have snow on the ground.  Were you able to get everything ready for winter?  If not, look for some nice days ahead and give your yard some TLC.  Next spring you'll sure be glad you did!  

This is what we (ok, mostly Todd) did to prepare for winter.  Are any of these things also needed in your yard?

VEGETABLE GARDEN

• Picked remaining produce.
• Removed dying plants and vines.
• Rota-tilled in fallen produce and fertilizer/compost from chicken yard.

  

CHICKENS

• Removed all wood chips and chicken pooh from chicken yard and coop to put in garden.
• Added new wood chips.
• Added warmer under waterer to keep water from freezing.
• Set light to automatically turn on in the early morning so the chickens have enough hours of light (14) to continue laying eggs.

FRUIT TREES

• Anchored trees that needed help growing straight.
• Cut off fire blight from pear tree.
• Planted another pear tree.

GENERAL

• Turned off automatic sprinkler system  and water valve so sprinklers can drain.
• Removed hoses from hose bibs.
• Winterized small engines (lawn mower, rota-tiller, weed whacker) by adding fuel stabilizer to gas tank.  After running engine for a few minutes, dumped out fuel.  Then ran until dry.
• Applied last fertilizer treatment on grass so grass will green up quicker in the spring.

With the final garden picking, we had a LOT of peppers.  Since I've already frozen quite a few peppers, I need to follow my mom's example and dehydrate this final batch.  

To dehydrate peppers, they just need to be chopped beforehand.  A food processor makes this step easy.  Be sure to wear gloves when working with hot peppers.  Otherwise, your hands will sting for quite awhile after you are done handling the hot peppers.

 Peppers ready for the dehydrator.

  Stacks of peppers on trays drying.

 

From the dehydrator to the freezer in plastic bags separated by variety - bells, sweet bananas, jalapenos, salsa, and red peppers.  Keeping them in the freezer retains better color and pungency.

Thanks to my mom for sharing her pictures.  Don't the dehydrated peppers look pretty?  Now if only my peppers were also already dehydrated and in my freezer!

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WHAT ELSE DO YOU DO TO PREPARE FOR WINTER?  ARE YOU READY?

Freezing your Harvest

There are many ways to preserve your harvest.  Lately I've been using my freezer and dehydrator more and more.  We now get enough produce that we definitely need more ways to preserve our produce than just canning.  This post has a few tips for freezing, but I'll post on dehydrating soon--promise.

When deciding how to preserve produce, consider the following:

• What will my family eat?
• What is needed in my food storage?
• How much work and time is involved?

After considering these questions, it made sense for us to freeze peaches, blackberries, raspberries and peppers.  All of these are very quick and easy to prepare for freezing--big bonus.  Plus, we already have plenty of canned peaches and various freezer jams to last throughout the year. 

Berries are so simple.  First wash them and make sure the excess water has drained through the colander.  Then spread on a jelly roll pan and place in freezer.  If you don't drain the excess water well, the berries will freeze in little pools of water and make it difficult to remove from pan.  Once the berries are frozen (after several hours or overnight), place frozen berries in freezer bag.  Freezing them first on a jelly roll pan keeps them as individual berries and not one solid blob of frozen berries.  That allows you to be able to use as many or as few as you need each time.

 

When freezing peaches, wash, remove pits, remove any bad spots and quarter.  As with the berries, place on jelly roll pans until frozen before placing in freezer bags.  It is also a good idea to label and date your freezer bags for anything you put in your freezer.

Since we use our frozen berries and peaches for making smoothies throughout the year, I do not remove the skins.  Once the peaches have been through my Blendtec blender, the skins are not even noticeable and the book that came with my blender says removing the skins is unnecessary.  Does anyone know if this is the case for all blenders?  I'm sure it would also be true for Vitamix blenders, but wondered about the average blender.  Not removing the skins is sure a huge time-saver. 

Using the frozen fruit for smoothies works wonderfully.  The flavor tastes fresh and no ice cubes need to be added to the smoothies.  I wonder if all blenders are capable of blending peaches straight from the freezer.  Anyone have experience or insight with that?  I would hate for someone to try this only to wind up with a broken blender.

Now on to peppers!  This year was a bumper pepper crop for us.  We had more than we needed for eating fresh and making salsa, so freezing was an easy way to preserve the excess.  I cut the bell peppers into strips after the seeds were removed so they would be ready for fajitas.  Again it is important to freeze them on a jelly roll pan before putting in a freezer bag so they freeze individually.  I can now pull out as many peppers as I need each time I make fajitas.  They obviously can be used for other things, but I know our family will probably eat them all in fajitas.

Our Banana Peppers were also prolific this year.  Banana Peppers or Hungarian Wax Peppers (whichever plants we happen to find for that year) are mild peppers that we love to cook with our zucchini and summer squash.  They can be substituted for recipes that call for a can of diced green chilies or any recipe that would benefit from peppers, such as enchiladas or soups. To prepare for freezing, just chop in a food processor.  I did not include the seeds because we like the more mild flavor.  Put the chopped peppers into ice cube trays and freeze.  The chopped pepper freezes together into little pepper cubes.  Pop the frozen pepper cubes out and put into a freezer bag.  For my peppers, each pepper cube equaled a little less than one pepper.

 

Zucchini (mostly in bread form) is another one I fill my freezer with.  I also can't forget the freezer jam since that is almost a daily staple with as many school lunches as we pack each week.  Freezers really are an easy way to enjoy your produce all year!

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Please share if you have other ideas for freezing your harvest or if you have answers to our burning blender questions!  What do you freeze?