Farmers – Merry Heart Crafts

This is my new canner. I stopped at a yard sale a few weeks ago and the lady had this canner for sale. One of the handles was missing so she sold it to me for $5.00. Yesterday, I stopped at Farmers Supply here in Floyd to see if they could order new handles. I had no idea if they could or not as the canner appears to be old. Well, they could and they only cost me $8.00. I then went to the extension office and had them calibrate the guage. It was off 1 and 1/2 pounds so I thought I probably should get a new guage too. This cost $l8.00. Amazing. These parts will be in by Friday. So for roughly $30.00 I got a new canner. This one is much taller than my other ones. It will hold 1/2 gallon jars which I plan to use for our juice that we can.

Then we went on over to Vicki’s and had a great visit. We ate lunch together and then Vicki and I made homemade deodorant.

We used tea tree oil in the solid deodorant and lavender in the powder. I really like it. It smells so fresh and clean. I am impressed. I definitely will be making it again.

Today the girls and I are making spaghetti sauce. This will be our last batch of spaghetti sauce. I think the rest of the tomatoes will just be used to make tomato juice. Our tomatoes are doing very well this year. I think this isthe best ours have done in a long time.

I better go stir the spaghetti sauce as I do not have Mrs. Sally’s good kettle any longer. I took it back to her Sunday. Enjoy your day and God bless.

So I finally got around to making the blackberry syrup this morning. I used about 3/4 gal. of blackberries and got three pts of syrup. Pretty good. I’m not sure how it will turn out but it tasted really good when I sampled it. I put the blackberries in the steam juicer. This is what it looks like.

This is a very handy piece of equipment. We bought ours at our local Farmers Supply. I’m not sure if they sell them at Wal-Mart or not but I know you can order them online. You might even find them on Ebay. The name brand of ours is “Back to Basics”.

This is the bottom of the juicer. You put 3 qts of water in this.

This fits directly on the water container. This catches the juice as it comes out of the fruit.

You put the fruit or veggies in this basket. It fits directly on top of the other container. Then put the lid on. You see in the first picture the tubing. This is how you drain your juice into jars. Put it on your stove and when it starts to steam, you start timing. Different things need to steam for different times. Blackberries steam for 60 min. You can then use the juice for whatever you want to make. The pulp that remains in the basket from your fruit or veggies is still usable too. I will show you all another time what I do with the leftover pulp.

Here is the recipe I used for making the blackberry syrup. I got it from the internet and it is very simple. I hope it will be good.

4 cups blackberry juice, 4 cups sugar, 1 tsp. lemon peel. Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil. Boil for 2 min. Fill jars. (I used a strainer here as I did not want the lemon peel in the syrup) Process 10 min. in water bath canner.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

Tag: Farmers

New Canner and Homemade Deodorant

Blackberry Syrup