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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 11, 2021 13:25:42 GMT -6
Busily Working Berries Again. I've been busy building berry sifters out of scrap 1x4 lumber and 1/4" inch mesh hardware cloth. I built two of them to fit over the top of an 18-gallon plastic tub. After freezing the berries, you just rub the umbrels over the hardware cloth and then the destemmed berries fall right into the tub. It takes about 30 minutes for one person to destem 10 pounds of berries this way. Much faster than doing it by hand or using a fork, like we were doing last year.I've always heard that "Necessity was the mother of invention." I suppose that's true, because we just invented two berry sifters out of what we had on hand, lying about, here, there, and yonder, out in the barn.I've been taking advantage of this terribly hot and dry weather in order to use our drying rack. It's currently 97 degrees out there and the grass is so cruchy dry that it reminds me of walking on potato chips.Thank goodness for drip irrigation!I've got 60 pounds of berries destemmed so far. Six pounds of those are outside on the drying rack. Sixteen pounds of berries have been processed into syrup for Winter.This is one of my homemade berry sifters made of 1/4" inch hardware cloth.This is how it works, just place it over an 18-gallon tub and drag frozen elderberry umbrels over the mesh. They fall off and land inside the tub below.These are some berries being sun dried on my homemade drying rack, made of 1/4" inch hardware cloth. It's 12' feet long by 3' feet wide, sitting astraddle of two saw horses. This 97-99 degree weather sure is good for that!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 11, 2021 20:08:41 GMT -6
I've just finished de-stemming all 80 pounds of the elderberry umbrels that were stored in our freezer. There was about 16% waste attributed to stems and such, so the final tally was 67.2 pounds of clean, destemmed berries.
Over the past two weeks, I've built two berry sifters using hardware cloth and 1x4 lumber, fitted over a 18-gallon tubs. Then, I built a berry press made of two metal cake pans, a steamer basket insert, three spacers, a juice collection pot, and a hard styrofoam cylinder as a piston. The styrofoam piston has a rotating ball bearing type seat from a 5-gallon bucket placed on top to sit on.
To use the berry sifters, you freeze the berries first, then place the stifter over an 18-gallon tub; take the berries out of the freezer and drag the umbrels over the hardware cloth. The frozen berries just fall from the umbrels and collect down below, inside the 18-gallon tub.
To use the berry press, you boil the berries to juice them, then pour them through clean muslin to strain out the majority of the juice. After the berries have gravity drained until they are de-juiced enough to handle, you twist the muslin into a tight ball, pick it up, place it in the press, set the press plate (round, metal cake pan) over the muslin, insert the cylindrcal, copressed styrofoam piston, place the rotating seat on top of the cylinder and sit down on it to excert force onto the press plates. The berry juice runs out the bottom of the press and is collected in a juice pot.
Then, measure out the juice, reheat it to 180 degrees, add sugar, and lemon juice, stir until sugar is dissolved, add citric acid, then pour the finished product into pint size glass canning jars. boil in a hot water bath solution for 10 minutes, let jars rest for 5 minutes, and unload the cooker. Right now, I have enough berries on hand to make 117 pints of elderberry syrup.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 12, 2021 21:13:30 GMT -6
I've got twelve pounds of fresh elderberries in the cooker tonight, boiling down into syrup. Twelve pounds of elderberries along with about 8 cups (1/2 gallon) of water. That was about all my pot could handle, as the berries swell up about 4" inches in height before they begin to boil. That's kind of scary watching a live volcano of berries rising toward the brim of the pot, hoping they'll boil and begin sinking before they tumble over the edge!
I ordered 6 dozen pint jars last evening, hopefully, they arrive here soon! I haven't been able to find canning jars or lids in the stores ever since people started hoarding things when covid hit last year.
I also put 6 pounds of berries out on my homemade drying rack to dry in the sun. (That will make about 2 pounds of dried berries). It takes about three days of good, hot, dry weather to dry elderberries to a safe moisture content for winter storage. It was 99 degrees here today and breezy. A good day for drying things from the garden. My drying rack is 12' feet long by 3' feet wide, made of 1/4" inch hardware cloth. The berries are covered with a clean sheet, folded into thirds, with the berries resting in the center. The ends are weighted in place using my two wooden berry sifters, so the wind won't carry the sheet away. This is also a precaution against neighborhood cats or birds deciding the berries look like a good place to land or take a nap.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 13, 2021 16:59:08 GMT -6
Wow! What a toad strangler we had here this evening!
Good thing I pulled my elderberries off the rack when I did! That rain came out of nowhere. One minute it was 95 degrees and humid as all get out, the next minute, the rain was coming down in sheets! Fortunately, I was able to harvest some elderberries just before the downpour. I got 14.7 pounds hauled in, but not before I got a good soaking. That makes 94.7 pounds so far this season, stems and all. About 16% of that will be waste.
Poor Stanley ... I hadn't seen her in two days, so I was kind of getting concerned. I went out to call her after I got the berries in and she came up right as it started pouring rain. All I did was holler, "Hey, Stanley!" Then, ran inside, and closed the door in her face. When the rain stopped, she was gone, so I didn't get to spend any time with her, but at least I know she's still alive. With wild animals, you never know from one day to the next, but she's been coming around nearly every day for a little over a year now. Save for about two weeks back in late-January when she ran away after a heavy thunderstorm. Lightning and thunder scare the wax out of her. It was thundering pretty good this evening.
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Post by macmex on Aug 14, 2021 7:17:25 GMT -6
What a difference 2 miles makes! When you had the toad strangler, I was able to walk in, from chores, practically between the rain drops. I hardly got wet. All the rain we received since yesterday afternoon did nothing more than settle the dust a bit! Here's hoping one of those storms goes directly over my home!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 14, 2021 11:34:10 GMT -6
That Rain last evening came from the North. I came back inside to look at the satelllite images and saw that we were just barely on the Southern edge of the storm. Margaret was driving home from Bentonville, Arkansas during the storm and said she had to pull over because it was raining so hard she couldn't see where she was going.
It rained here so hard that it looked like rain was rising up from the ground to meet the drops in the air. The 95-degree temperatures caused a fog to rise that was being beaten back to the ground by the sheets of rain that created it. I got so soaked, just trying to gather the lawn chairs to throw into the barn that I had to come inside to throw my wet clothes in the washing machine.
I was outside until nearly noon today, enjoying the fine weather. We haven't had a day with pleasant temperatures for so long that it just seemed wrong to come inside.
I got another 12 pints of elderberry syrup put up last evening, from 12 pounds of elderberries. I'm quickly beginning to run out of jars. I'll sure be glad when my new supply arrives. My freezer is about as full of berries as I can stuff in there and still get the lid closed.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 15, 2021 14:01:42 GMT -6
Wow. That’s a whole lot of work, but seeing those in your pantry must be very satisfying.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 15, 2021 17:23:22 GMT -6
It's not too much work if you do it a little at a time. I pick berries about twice per week, so that gives me a day to freeze them, a day to remove them from the freezer for de-stemming, and a day to boil them down into syrup before needing to harvest another batch. It just keeps me a little busier than I'd like to be while attempting to keep the place mowed and still keep my garden weeded.
In winter, I go nuts, with nothing to do. In summer, I'm so busy I nearly meet myself running back and forth to the summer kitchen. Sometimes, it would be nice if there was a happy medium, but I suppose God knows what he's doing when he gives us the winters off.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 26, 2021 14:18:33 GMT -6
Homemade Elderberry Ice Cream During extremely hot weather, one of the things I enjoy most is making homemade ice cream with the family. When I was a kid, it was my job to sit on top of grandma's quilt, 'holding down the ice bucket' while grandpa turned the crank on the ice cream maker. Back in those days, ice came in 50-pound blocks and you had to chip it off by hand, using an ice pick. It took the help of the entire family to get everything ready. It was mama and grandma's job to chip the ice. It was grandpa's job to turn the ice cream maker's crank. It was my job to help grandpa pour in the ice and add the rock salt.
It was a lot of fun helping grandpa turn the crank as it first got going, but as the ice cream began to freeze, it became too hard for a little boy to handle. That's when grandpa would set me up on top of the ice bucket, to hold it from tipping over while he turned the stiff crank with both hands. The hardest part was sitting on top of grandma's quilt, waiting for the ice cream to 'ripen' after the turning was done. If you plan on serving your ice cream immediately after churning, you'll first need to let it freeze a bit harder. This process is known as "Ripening." That's what I was doing, while sitting a top of grandma's quilt after most of the churning was done.
Ripening may not be possible with electric ice cream makers that shut off automatically when the mixture becomes thick. In that case, you'll have to take a few extra steps to firm the ice cream, to develop the desired smooth texture. To ripen your freshly churned ice cream, carefully remove the ice cream container from the ice bucket. Wipe the salt off of the ice cream container and carefully remove the lid and dasher. Scrape the ice cream from the dasher and down from the sides of the container. Place plastic wrap or in grandma's case, wax paper, directly on the surface of the ice cream to help prevent ice crystals from forming. Plug the hole in the lid of the ice cream maker. Pour off the saltwater and melted ice from the ice bucket. Replace the ice cream container to its former position in the center of the ice bucket. Repack the ice bucket with fresh ice and salt. Cover the bucket with folded newspapers, heavy towels, or other insulating material. Let it stand, undisturbed for about 2 hours.Ingredients:▢2 cups of elderberries, stripped off the stems▢1 cup of water▢Sugar to taste▢2 cups of heavy cream▢1 1/2 cups of milk▢3 to 4 tablespoons of buttermilk▢5 egg yolks▢1 tablespoon of elderberry liqueur, cassis, or other dark fruit liqueur (optional)Instructions:First, make the elderberry syrup. To make a syrup out of a seedy fruit like elderberry, add about 2 cups of freshly picked elderberries to a thick-bottomed sauce pan and pour 1 cup of water over them. Heat slowly until the mixture boils and the berries begin bursting. Then turn down the heat to the lowest setting and let simmer. Keep the berries at a slow simmer for about 20 minutes, all the while, watching, making sure the pan doesn't cook dry. After simmering, pour the berries and their juice through a piece of muslin cloth and squeeze out all the juice possible. Discard the spent seeds and skins of the berries, retain the juice.Now, reheat the juice to help dissolve the sugar and begin pouring in sugar. Start with 1/2 cup and stir it in well. Taste and add more if you want. Don’t go higher than 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Simmer for 5 minutes or so and then take off the heat. This will be your syrup.Pour the syrup into a jar and chill it in the fridge. A syrup like this will last for weeks in the fridge, so you can make it far in advance.When you want to make the ice cream, pour the cream and milk into a heavy pot and put it over a medium-high flame. Now, add the syrup. How much? I use 1 1/2 cups of elderberry syrup, but it will depend on your taste. Use as little as 1/2 cup, or as much as 2 cups. Just add and taste, and do it bit by bit, tasting as you go.Bring the mixture to about 160°F, which is steaming but not simmering. Lower the heat a bit for now. Get a bowl and beat the egg yolks.Now comes the tricky part: With a ladle in one hand and a whisk or fork in the other, slowly pour some hot cream over the egg yolks in a large bowl. Do this very slowly at first, to avoid curdling the eggs, whisking the eggs all the while with your other hand. Pour in another ladle full of hot cream, which can go in a little faster this time, then one more ladle, just to make sure. You are tempering your egg yolks in this way, so they do not scramble in your cream mixture — this is how you make a custard. Once thoroughly mixed, pour the hot egg-cream-custard mixture back into the pot with the remaining hot cream and whisk well.Add the buttermilk – you can add more if you want, but use your taste as a guide. Whisk everything really well. Bring the mixture to 160°F, then take it off the heat. Again, this is not quite a simmer. Let it cool on the counter for 15 minutes or so, then add the liqueur. You use this both for flavor and to prevent the ice cream from setting up like a rock in the freezer. (The liqueur is optional).Put the mixture in the fridge to chill thoroughly, even overnight. Once it’s cold, pour into your ice cream maker and follow its directions.Notes:This recipe makes about 1 quart of ice cream.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 7, 2022 18:53:09 GMT -6
Last August, I harvested over 90 pounds of elderberries. It was so miserably hot that I only put up about two cases of juice, and froze the rest of the berries until winter. well' it's finally cool enough to enjoy a big pot of boiling water again, so today, I started canning more elderberry syrup.
Note to self: "Use smaller containers next time, it takes forever to thaw out a 5-gallon bucket full of frozen berries!"
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Post by chrysanthemum on Feb 8, 2022 8:33:32 GMT -6
How much does a 5-gallon bucket full of elderberries weigh? You must have quite some freezer!
Canning does sound like a great winter-time activity.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 8, 2022 11:10:46 GMT -6
I froze my berries whole in August (in brown paper grocery bags, in a small chest freezer). Then, I built a berry separator box from 1" x 4" pallet boards with a 1/2" inch hardware cloth bottom. I actually have two berry separators, one with 1/2" inch squares in the hardware cloth and a second one with 1/4" inch squares. I placed the separator over a big, plastic tub from Walmart, then rubbed the frozen berries across the hardware cloth, stage one, and stage two, to remove them from their umbrels.
Once the berries fell into the tub, I emptied them into 5-gallon buckets with lids and placed them in the bottom of the freezer. A 5-gallon bucket full of berries weighs about 25 to 30 pounds.
After years of tweaking my recipe for elderberry syrup, I finally posted it on page 2, entry # 13 of the elderberry thread. Hopefully, that way, I'll never misplace my recipe. That would be pretty bad, having to start from scratch again, since I lost my sense of taste and my sense of smell back in 2013. Everything I do is by recipe now. No more taste testing as I go along.
A full cluster of elderberries, ready for harvest.
A 3-gallon pot of frozen berries, ready to be boiled down and processed into juice.
A single elderberry bush, ready to harvest. (I have 60 of these bushes). I never got them all harvested before I ran out of freezer space. Elderberries are easy to grow and are enjoyable to work with. If you scroll back to the top of this page, you can see photos of my berry separator and tub configuration. I just pour the frozen berry umbrels over the hardware cloth separators, give them a few quick tumbles and collect the berries that fall into the tub below. I discard the stems and umbrels to my compost pile.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 9, 2022 20:53:48 GMT -6
I canned 16 pints of concentrated elderberry syrup today. It's made in concentrate form to be added, two Tablespoons of syrup, to 8 ounces of cold water.
You can drink this as a cool summer refreshment, or just keep it on hand during the winter months to ward of colds and flu. I'll be offering this particular batch for sale at Oasis Health Food Store in the next few weeks.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Apr 23, 2022 3:01:12 GMT -6
Easy ways to preserve Elderberries!
The Elderberry Guru, Terry Durham, made an elderberry preservation video with "Off-Grid, Doug and Stacy."
Enjoy!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 31, 2022 8:12:34 GMT -6
The elderberries are loaded with fresh blossoms this morning. I harvested about 50 of them for cordials this weekend and can't even notice they are missing.
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