Canning Log Farmdate -310570.77

So the less-sweet relish was http://www.rurallyscrewed.com/12558/2012/07/20/the-best-zucchini-relish-you-will-ever-have/ and it works out not-too-badly, and it also doesn't use extraneous stuff I don't have growing or which aren't ripe (like onions and peppers).

Apricots, honey & sage isn't as good as it sounds. Maybe it was because the apricots are a little old? Very sweet and aromatic, but unlike the earlier iteration now much mouthflavour. They were perfect for eating, though.

Got a couple pounds of figs from a neighborhood tree, gonna can them as per http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_07/fig_preserves.html

I need to make more relish, but not sure when I'll get around to it. Need a free day, but there's a farm party coming up Monday, and work is pretty busy right now.

I also have some blueberries coming, but I'm coordinating with my brother to maybe dehydrate them. I'm not the biggest fan of preserved blueberries- too sweet. Blackberries are a different matter. I need to make blackberry juice this year. A lot of it.

Rabbit Furs

So I have access to a lot of rabbit furs from meat rabbits, and I love those rabbits and don't want bits of them to go to waste, and I love fur, and I hate waste in general. Long way of saying, I'm trying my hand at tanning. Here's what I've done:

I was going to tan them with alum, but it's impossible to find in quantity near transit (I guess the supplier isn't shipping it right now? Places that normally have it, don't). So, my backup plan was battery acid. That is ALSO hard to find ("too dangerous so we only sell it in 20L pails") but I finally got a hook-up.

So I'm using http://www.offthegridnews.com/2011/01/25/rabbits-tanning-hides-for-beautiful-furs/#

I ended up with a LOT of hides, and I'm still going to have to throw some out due to space constraints, but I have right around/right over a dozen per bucket. I'm hoping that's not too many. In a week is the next step.

This week I slit them up the middle so they weren't tubes, washed them, and put them in the solution of 2 gal water/2lb salt/8oz battery acid.

I'm thinking for the next batch I may order a chemical kit that's easier on the environment (but more expensive than battery acid); I guess we'll see how this one goes.