Good morning, everyone!  I am squeezing this update in as I wait for my mint and apple juice to simmer away.  I had some apples that we were not eating so threw them in for good measure.

I will simmer the juice, apples (and a bit of water) and the mint for a while, until the mint is very limp and the juice is very minty.  Then I will strain the juice which will then become mint jelly.  I have an abundance of mint in my herb bed so I will also make mint pesto to pop in the freezer.  Mint pesto is great on steamed potatoes or other steamed vegetables, or mixed with a bit of mayonnaise for a fresh vegetable dip.  Of course, it is great with lamb!

Today we have more people coming out to view our sheep.  Our last showing on Sunday went very well.  After a meal of roasted home grown chicken, fresh potatoes and carrots from the garden and a broccoli salad, pickled beets, fresh sliced tomatoes from the greenhouse, not to mention a bottle of wine and chocolate pudding with fresh raspberries and blueberries and vanilla yogurt for dessert, we went to see the sheep.  The potential buyers were very impressed with the quality of our sheep.  They all want them so we'll see what happens.  Of course, there is a long distance from wanting something and paying for something.  Sheep farmers here in the north do not have deep pockets!

Back to my garden.  I wanted to show you my cabbages!  I love cabbage rolls and borscht so I grew a few white cabbages and a few crinkle cabbages.  Here is one of my white cabbages.  It weighed in at 11.9 lbs, and that was with the outer leaves off!

This cabbage, and our whole garden for that matter, is grown organically.  We do not spray nor use chemical fertilizer.  We rotate our plantings and use sheep manure, chicken manure and compost to rebuild the soil.  I have always wondered why our super markets have small, shriveled organic produce at exorbitant prices.  Really, our garden had minimal tending and produced huge cauliflowers, cabbages, potatoes, carrots, zucchini, etc.  We still do not have our root cellar built so I give a lot away to those with no gardens.  

The above potatoes and carrots were taken from the garden several weeks ago.  I needed to thin the carrots so made up a bag of baby carrots to take to our daughter in Smithers.

As I mentioned, our garden is prolific.  Zucchini is one of the items that just keeps on coming!  Last year I had a lot of beets so canned them without pickling them.  I did not care for the flavour of the canned beets as a vegetable on it's own, so decided to make borscht.  For you purists, it is not a traditional recipe.  However, through my research, I found there is no real "traditional" recipe.  Some make it vegetarian, some make it with lamb, some make it with beef.  I have two recipes in my Mennonite cook book that don't use beets, yet it is still called borscht.  So, there you go.  Borscht seems to be a soup made from fresh garden vegetables, whatever kind you wish to use, with a meat stock or a vegetable stock.  It can have potatoes or not.  Beets or not.  I will share my recipe with you in my next post.  Right now I have to attend to my simmering mint!

Bye for now!