I managed to give a couple of the Water Melon haul away and sold all my Sugarbaby Melons to a Farmer's Market reseller for the outrageous price of a dollar a melon. That still left us with about eight good sized and assorted Melons and at least that many more if the vines hang on and survive the Squash bug horde a little longer.
Not a very large harvest this year. In fact it is barely a 10th of what I usually get but the Sugar Baby sale alone almost completely took care of my total garden expenditure in cash this year. My Grandfather always told me you didn't have to make a lot of money as long as everything you did stayed in the black. I think he would feel differently if he grew up in today's world but I can still appreciate his words of wisdom.
Like I said that leaves us with plenty of Melons to munch on and figure out what we are going to do with them.
So this evening we canned about two gallons of Water Melon Jelly and then made about a gallon of Water Melon sherbert in the ice cream maker. The final verdict isn't in for the Jelly of course, sometimes in the past we have had issues with it not firming up enough but the sherbert was a bit too sweet for our tastes. It was good and refreshing but just too sweet. Eventually I hope to substitute honey for sugar in all our jelly recipes and such but as it stands right now the demand for the honey is just too great. Until I get the 10 one year old hives all producing honey it is going to be at a premium.
As I mentioned on the Sunday Reading post one more of the yearling hives did hit production mode this weekend so I only have six left now.
We ran out of pectin so the rest of the melons will have to wait until tomorrow evening. The fun part is digging all the seeds out before making our puree of Melon in the blender. I also found another use for my extremely course first stage, stainless steel honey filter. It works great for catching any seeds we missed.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!
melons are good. I love cantaloupe too.
ReplyDeleteRob - Ya I do enjoy the melons. Not that fond of the cantaloupe but in a pinch...
DeleteMade some blackberry jam and sandhill plum jam this weekend and thought I was being wild. Never would have thought of Watermelon jelly. I'm going to have to make some of that.
ReplyDeleteBest,
Dan
Dan - We try it most every year. A local friend of mine will make jam or jelly from anything. I usually cough up all the extra fruits and veggies I got around here for him to make stuff with but I drew the line when he started talking about Jalapeno Honey.
DeleteYou are doing good to cover expenses, I quit selling stuff here and they won't give me what it is worth so I planted grains for animal feed rather than things to feed people, they can work their own gardens. Most of our melons come out of North Carolina and Cantaloups are from Halifax county, those two areas are the best for melons, must be the soil as we have about the same weather.
ReplyDeleteSf - Hopefully this next week or so as the honey starts drying out properly and the Tomatoes ripen I will really start to make some money. The heirloom tomatoes are always a big hit and I don't feel like I am moving into someone's territory because no one spends the time to do the different varieties.
DeleteI love canteloupe with white milk gravy and fried chicken. I can not make jelly to save my life. It usually comes out way to firm, like you could play basketball with it...or it is too runny..
ReplyDeleteJuGM - Ours seems to come out too fluidy (if that's a word) but the sherbert was good. Next time we are going to tone down the sugar in the sherbert though.
DeletePP,
ReplyDeleteWe made watermelon jelly last season, the first batch came out to liquid y, the second came out okay. I ended having to put more pectin in.
Sherbet sounds good on a real hot day. I recently picked up an ice cream maker and made strawberry sorbet. It can out really good, I'll have to try watermelon when our melons are ready to harvest.