Poppin’ and Lockin’

One of our friends gave us a bunch of cucumbers, so we thought we would go ahead and pickle them.  Our cucumber plants haven’t produced very many cucumbers this go round.  I sliced up all the cucumbers, and some jalapenos for the pickling process.  

 

Here is the water bath (back) and the pickling solutions (front).  The pickling solution is 3 cups White Vinegar, 3 cups water, and 3 teaspoons pickling salt.

Here we’ve added the jalapenos, cucumbers, garlic, mustard seeds, and some dill to the jars.  Now we put the lids on and drop them in the water bath for about 5 minutes.

 

Here they are in the water bath, this helps remove excess air which creates the vacuum when they cool.

The finished products, we ended up making 14 jars and two of them didn’t seal so we now have 12 jars of pickles that will be ready in about 3 months (2 months now since I’m slow at writing blogs).  Next project will be to pickle some okra and maybe some green beans.

Return of the Living Kiln

This week I’ve also been working on our other little kiln; this one is still set up as a down draft.  I took off about half the thickness of the soft brick on the walls in hopes that this will allow more airflow while firing which should allow the fuel to combust more efficiently and we might be able to reach much higher temperatures.  This is exciting because we might be able to glaze some work that has been sitting around.  I’m going to test what temperatures I can get with this kiln and the properly working burners, and then see what kinds of glazes we can make for that temperature range.

I’m also working on some large bowls that came out a few firings ago:

 

I started banding these bowls:

And next I will add some designs around the rims and a nice picture in the middle.  My idea for these bowls is to hang them on the wall, so I threw a catch on the back side so it will sit on a nail.  We’ll see how that works, but I think they will look nice hanging on a wall.