Tomatoes Tomatoes Everywhere...

It's been a looooong time since I wrote anything on my blog.  Life gets busy and hectic and I just never seem to find the time.  I moved away from the city to lead a less complicated life and I think it has become the opposite.  I'm busier but with more important things like food preservation, gardening. livestock and learning new homesteading skills. Since I last posted in March of this year, a bunch of new things have happened and I want to share a few with you today and especially share some tomato surprises.

The summer garden production was over-the-top this year.  The tomatoes, peas and greens were spectacular but the beans and corn, not so much.  Even so, I filled up a chest freezer and my side by side fridge freezer and 4 under bed storage drawers with food and canned goods this year. I also learned to make cheese, use a cold smoker, make homemade medicinal salves, made homemade soap (dismal failure lol) and taught a couple of foraging classes. Somewhere in the midst of all that, I managed to complete my busiest cake season in a long time, lots of wedding cakes and birthday cakes and even a couple of baby shower cakes - one of those being for my first grandchild that's due Christmas day!!

Since my last post was about my new endeavor - Hugelkultur Gardening - I want to update you on how that went.  As you recall, I was trying a new method to be able to cut back and/or eliminate the need to water the garden at all in the summer and I think it was successful.  This last summer was relatively mild compared to what we normally have in Texas since we never reached 100 and had a couple of showers during our normally dry season, but even so, a traditional garden would have needed supplemental watering but not this one.  I watered every couple days after I planted to get the seedlings and transplants started but once they were established in mid May I didn't water at all until the rains started in September - that's 4 months that I didn't water a single time.  Imagine all that water I saved.  I deem this a success!!

This is the Hugelkultur garden at 6 weeks (a month of no watering):

These are some of my harvests:

 Lots of peas and good times with my mother, reminiscing of old times:

I bet I picked 100 lbs of tomatoes.  I had Rutger, Cherry and San Marzano tomatoes and they all produced like crazy.  I canned 12 jars of spaghetti sauce, 10 jars of tomato sauce, 4 pints of Chili Sauce, 3 pints of ketchup and 15 jars of stewed tomatoes not counting the 20 qts of tomatoes I put in the freezer.  I discovered a new way of doing tomatoes that I think is a favorite of mine - Smoked Tomatoes.  I bought an electric smoker and then I ordered an A-Maze-n Pellet Smoker and some JC's Wood Smoking Pellets, loaded up the smoker with 20 lbs of the San Marzano's and cold smoked them for 12 hours.  The result was amazing.  The tomatoes were soft and sweet and incredibly smoky and were almost like eating BBQ sauce all on their own.  I skinned them and pureed them using my wonderful Victorio Processor and canned 6 half pints of Smoked Tomato Sauce. I'll be doubling that recipe next year, it's that good. I used it in some chili I canned and it gives it a wonderful smoky flavor.  I bet it would be good in some enchilada sauce too!  Look at the difference in the Smoked (on the left) and Regular sauces:

Never one to be wasteful, I dehydrated all the tomato skins I had reserved (the chickens got some of them) and ground them up in a spice grinder and made 2 half pint jars of Tomato Powder.  A tablespoon of this can be used in lieu of tomato paste in dishes or even added to 8 oz of hot water for an instant cup of tomato soup. Very cool huh???

So...that's my Hugelkultur Experiment this year.  I think it's well worth trying if you live in an arid or semi-arid area and you don't get much rain in the summer, it'll save you mucho money and valuable time not to mention all the precious natural resources you'll be saving as well. Give it a try, the instructuons and a video are on my Hugelkultur post from March 2014 and I think you'll find it's worth the initial effort.
Merry Christmas Ya'll!