Sweet Vidalia Onion Relish

On the 4th, my MIL brought us fifty pounds of Vidalia onions. I had mentioned to her that back in April or May DH had made a business trip out to Florida, passing through Georgia on the way. I had asked him to bring me a fifty pound bag of Vidalias from Georgia. As it turns out, the timing was a little early for the Vidalia season. So now, here it is July and I have my onions!

I have a new book, 'So Easy to Preserve', published by the Cooperative Extension of the University of Georgia. I am real excited about the information in this book! I found out about it at a class on preserving the harvest taught by Beverly Coombs of the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service. She calls it her canning and preserving bible, and I can see why... but you will have to buy the book and see for yourself!

Here is the recipe for Vidalia Onion Relish that I made today...
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Vidalia Onion Relish

1 1/2 gallons ground Vidalia onions (about 20 lbs)
1/2 cup [canning] salt
1 quart apple cider vinegar (5%)
1 teaspoon turmeric
4 teaspoons pickling spice
4 tablespoons pimento, chopped
4 1/2 cups sugar

Grind enough Vidalia onions to yield 1 1/2 gallons, add 1/2 cup salt and let stand 30 minutes. Squeeze juice from onion-salt mixture and discard juice. The pickling spice in cheesecloth. Combine onions, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, spice bag, and pimento in a large saucepot. Bring to a boil and cook until thick, (approximately 30 minutes), stirring often. Remove and discard spice bag.
Pack both onions and cooking liquid to cover in hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Wipe jar rims. Adjust lids. Process 10 minutes in a Boiling Water Bath.
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The recipe says that this will yield about 8 pint jars. I ended up with almost nine, the ninth jar being about 3/4 full went straight into the fridge to use right away.

Another bonus is the two quarts of onion juice that I drained off before adding the salt. I thought that if I freeze the juice into ice cubes, this will make an easy way to pop some flavor into soups or stews, etc. I also saved about a quart of the onion juice that was extracted after the salt was added. Why throw this away when I can make good use of it? :)
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This recipe and others like it are found on Cooks.com.

Processing Day

This is the day that I dread and I try not to think about it too much. It's actually painful, but as DH says, "We gotta eat!".

We have thirty-two broilers to do in all. We were only able to handle seven today. Not that it was such hard work, but we were set up outside on the picnic table and anytime the breeze was not blowing (most of the time) there were those pesky flying buggers buzzing us.

This is only our second time raising meat chickens, but we have figured out the best way for us. I am not very good at this whole thing, but DH has all kinds of experience processing wild game. He says the chickens are 'just like a pheasant'.

So this is what we did: The birds have not been fed since the night before---fresh water only for the last twelve hours. First thing in the morning, I got up and separated all of the layer pullets out and locked them into the coop with food and fresh water so they could eat. Then two by two, we take the meat birds over to the picnic table (which is out of sight of the chicken run). DH dislocates the necks to kill them quickly and humanely as possible. We then hang them upside down from a rod between two trees using twine. He cuts the jugular veins so that they bleed out. After they have stopped flapping and the blood stops flowing, we can start cleaning them.

We have decided that for us, we do not need the skin, so we do not bother with plucking them. We simply skin them and this seems to go alot faster for us than the idea of plucking the birds clean of all those feathers. Outside at the picnic table, we get them skinned and gutted. The remainder of the whole chicken then goes in a tub, the livers, hearts and gizzards go into a bowl for the cats and all of the waste goes into a wheelbarrow to be hauled to the burn pit. We have a large cutting board on the picnic table and a couple of sharp knives to get the job done. All of the carcasses are hosed off before going into the tub.



At this time, we take them inside the house to finish up. Using a sharp pair of kitchen scissors, I cut on either side of the spine to remove the legs. Another short cut with a sharp knife separates the leg (thigh and drumstick together) from the carcass. The final once over and rinsing under fresh cool tapwater, then into a clean tub. I filet the breasts, removing all of the bone. Using the sharp filet knive, I slice on either side of the keel, keeping as close to the ribs as possible. These then are rinsed and go into the tub. The wings are disjointed with the knife, rinsed and into the tub. Last, but not least, the neck is cut off and this goes into the bowl for the cats.



Not to waste anything good, all of the carcasses, bones and all go into the stock pot. I will add water, carrots, onions, celery, bay leaves, salt and pepper. When this is all cooked down and full of flavor, the solids are strained out. I will can them by the quart using the pressure canner, of course. Wish I had a lot more carcasses as I could always use more chicken stock than what we will get from the number of birds that we need.

Viola! Well... seven down and only twenty-five more to go.

Some Seeds Started Today

Before I get too far behind the curve, I went ahead and started some seeds in a protected seed bed to be transplanted later. This is just a few things to get me started and I will add more when the new garden bed is ready. I have a BUNCH of beans and I am thinking about a whole new place for those. Most are hybrids, but one is an heirloom kidney bean. I will not plant all of them, but hold some for next year and maybe try to save some seed then-- when I learn more about preventing cross-pollination. I especially wonder about the surrounding soybean fields...lots of questions! Also one thing I did not realize, but read recently is that most or all of the bush beans are harvested at once like determinate tomatoes!? Unlike the pole beans that I have always grown and are harvested over a longer period of time. This is actually fine that I have chosen several types of bush beans this year as most of them will be for freezing and canning. I will plant those over several weeks to try and space out my canning work and also I will go ahead and plant some of the Kentucky Wonder pole beans that I still have on hand for fresh eating. All of my tomatoes are heirlooms and indeterminate, except for one that is a hybrid.

This is what went into the seed bed today:

Cilantro
Florence Fennel
Basil; Cinnamon and Swift
Sage
Italian Parsley
Muskmelon; Hale’s Best
Hot Pepper; ‘tabasco’ and ‘Santaka’
Acorn Squash; Table Queen and Table Ace
Sweet Pepper; ‘Sweet Havana’ and a color mix of bell peppers
Zucchini; ‘Black Beauty’
Summer Squash; Yellow Crooked Neck
Okra; Clemson Spineless
Tomatillo; ‘Salsa’ and an unnamed variety (I think these are the same)
Beans; ‘Fejol Huerto’
Tomato; heirloom rainbow blend
Cucumber; ‘Sweeter Yet’ and ‘Cool Breeze’
Milk Thistle
Summer Squash; ‘Cashflow’ and Medley Blend

Why Can't I Grow a Sweet Onion?

The following is an exerpt from a newspaper column written by Jan Phipps, Master Gardener Extraordinaire. She writes in behalf of the Edgar County Master Gardeners. This appeared in the Paris Beacon in January of 2001. I think Jan wonders where on earth I come up with some of these gardening ideas (such as strawberries making onions sweeter)...well, in this case it was on the internet-- and you know that if its on the internet, then it must be true! LOL! We are both waiting on pins and needles to see how my 'strawberry' onions turn out this year.

WHY CAN’T I GROW A SWEET ONION? You buy onion seed or onion sets advertised as “sweet”, or advertised as the same seed used to produce Vidalia onions. You plant them, grow them, harvest them, and dry them according to the directions. The big moment arrives. You take a bite of your expertly grilled hamburger with a deliciously thick slice of onion expecting that sweet Vidalia taste but get the same hot zing of every other onion you have ever grown. Why? Two reasons: the growing conditions and the soil in Edgar County. Vidalia onions are a yellow granex type F hybrid grown in many areas of the country, but only in a 20 county region of southeast Georgia are the weather and soil conditions just right to produce the mild, sweet flavor. In Georgia onions are grown in the winter, in sandy soil that doesn’t hold sulfur, and are affected by the amount of sunlight, heat and water of that region. In Illinois we grow our onions in the summer in heavier soil. Sulfur is trapped in the soil and is what gives an onion its heat. Therefore, gardeners living in the southern part of Edgar County with sandier soil probably have the best chance of growing an onion that has the least amount of burn. Everyone else will have to be content with hot onions.

Strawberry Onions

Today I interplanted my onion sets into my new strawberry bed. I found in several 'companion planting' sites that the onions are supposed to help protect the strawberries from pests and the strawberries supposedly will give the onions a sweeter flavor. I still have two of the three types of onions left, so I think I will try planting them elsewhere for comparison's sake. So fun to experiment!

I love the idea of companion planting...and so many other gardening ideas to explore...so much to learn. Crop rotation along with companion planting makes things a little more challenging and fun. For example; my June bearing strawberries will remain in the same bed for three to five years (or more). If the strawberry-onion pairing turns out to be valid for me, then how would I rotate my onions? I guess I would need a new strawberry bed every year. If I grow day-neutral or everbearing strawberries, then I could keep the onions with the new strawberries if I treat them as an annual. But do I need to treat the day-neutral or everbearing strawberries as annuals here in Illinois? Being frugal, I would have to say that I would not turn them in after one year. I would have to over winter them and see what happens.

I only have so many places that I can move a strawberry bed, especially if I am supposed to avoid any area that has had other Verticillium Wilt susceptable crops in the last four or five years.

Companion Planting

Golden Harvest Organics
Companion Planting--The Natural Way to Gardening
Rodale's Organic Gardening
Ed Hume Seeds
No Dig Vegetable Garden
MSU Problem Solvers-Companion Planting

Pastured Chicken

As noted, (Check out these chicks!)we bought Rock Cornish cross chicks for the freezer a couple of weeks ago. It has been four years since we bought chicks, but I think that this will become a new annual tradition for us. We are going to need another freezer, but each spring we can raise enough meat birds to get us through one year.

I have found that the price of chick starter/grower feed has gone up at least 50% and even 100% since four years ago. Right now that seems like our only option. What we are using is Purina non-medicated chick starter/grower and paid $18 for a 40 pound bag at one place, but have since found another place that charges $13. I have not done the math since the chicks are not yet ready to butcher, but considering how much these birds eat, it seems like I am going to need to look for another way to feed them. Ideally, I should have a portable brooder that I can move daily onto fresh green grass. This would be the healthiest option for the birds and also for us. They will still need more according to what information I have found so far. Here is a website on chicken feed which looks like it has some good information, but I have not yet had the time to read it thoroughly.

It will be easy to graze the goslings as the adult geese should protect them, but the chicks will need some more protection. That is where the portable chicken tractor will come in...I will think about electric fencing too, but that will not address our main concern around here which is winged predators.