Okay since we are talking garden product... canned goods
My grandma used to make this amazing home made currant jelly. it was so psectacularly delicious. Living out west I am unable to even begin to experiment.. This is tempered by the fact that because of where I live, I have Santa rosa Plums... THe BEST jamming plum ever. Not to mention Apricots.... a special small sweet variety (Blenheim) that is grown specifically for drying and jamming in my area. MMMMM the golden fragrant fruit is just a few short months away.
Home canning is neither difficult nor expensive however it is time consuming and tedious. The reward is worth the effort. Two extremely important items: sanitization and following the instructions for your particular items to be canned down to the "T's". Non-acidic plants such as beans or asparagus usually will call for some acid to be added, be it vinegar, lemon juice etc. You have to be very careful with beans which can be subject to botulism. Naturally acidic plants such as tomatoes are easy.
Ball is of course the corporation that made home canning an industry and they are still the benchmark in safety and quality. The web site below carries all of there canning line - however most of it you can get in your grocery store. I highly recommend that you start with the Ball Blue Book on canning.
Leafy, I doubt I could have free range chickens right now. I have two labs that live in the back yard. We had Rhode Island Reds and some sort of chickens that were rather large and had all white feathers.
rumrunner, in these here parts it is the all holy Mason jar; good for canning and being used for the likes of sipping sweet iced tea and storing moonshine....so the southern lore goes about moonshine.
About the only thing I don't can is corn and red and green bell peppers. I blanch and freeze it. Red and green bell peppers just slice, toss together in a little salt and put in freezer. Near the end of the mater season when there is not enough to can just core, peel, toss a little salt in with them and freeze. I have a chest deep freezer. All items to be frozen are put in freezer containers and then wrapped in freezer paper or butcher paper. For those who only have a refrigerator freezer if you wrap your frozen foods like this they will last a lot longer. It helps tremendously to prevent freezer burn. Most of the time freezer burn results from the defrost cycle of the fridge. Notice during that cycle how the interior of the freezer is a little warmer and seems to thaw a little or become more "liquid" as I call it. The same thing is happening to the exterior of the food.
I use a pressure canner for beans, peas and squash.
Leafy, I doubt I could have free range chickens right now. I have two labs that live in the back yard. We had Rhode Island Reds and some sort of chickens that were rather large and had all white feathers.
rumrunner, in these here parts it is the all holy Mason jar; good for canning and being used for the likes of sipping sweet iced tea and storing moonshine....so the southern lore goes about moonshine.
About the only thing I don't can is corn and red and green bell peppers. I blanch and freeze it. Red and green bell peppers just slice, toss together in a little salt and put in freezer. Near the end of the mater season when there is not enough to can just core, peel, toss a little salt in with them and freeze. I have a chest deep freezer. All items to be frozen are put in freezer containers and then wrapped in freezer paper or butcher paper. For those who only have a refrigerator freezer if you wrap your frozen foods like this they will last a lot longer. It helps tremendously to prevent freezer burn. Most of the time freezer burn results from the defrost cycle of the fridge. Notice during that cycle how the interior of the freezer is a little warmer and seems to thaw a little or become more "liquid" as I call it. The same thing is happening to the exterior of the food.
I use a pressure canner for beans, peas and squash.
I use the pressure canner too. it is great for stuff that you would normally have to worry about. I always follow the instructions to a T including sanitization instructions. I make soups and salsas and applesauce too.
I use both Ball and Mason supplies
and Peppers are great because you can just throw them in bags in the freezer and pull out as you need them. For beans I use the blanch method Waysider mentioned.
I have found that those vacum packaging machines work really well at keeping freezer burn to a minimum.
So I do both but send lots of canned stuffs home with both daughters and friends.
BTW yeah dogs and chickens do not mix. and bird dogs especially would have difficulty. Also any Dog with Dingo blood is out they have a one track hunt and kill mode and can bring down a bird in mid flight Chickens are easy prey for them.
I was wondering if those vacuum pack amchines are a good idea. We can and freeze what we can.
We can't have chickens in the city limits, but one of my neighbors has a pygmy goat smaller than many dogs. I'm not sure if its allowed or that no one has bothered to call the city! It sure is cute.
Kim dear - the holy Mason Jar contains - ummm never mind - but it ain't iced tea - sun tea is done in gallon jugs
rumrunner, in these here parts it is the all holy Mason jar; good for canning and being used for the likes of sipping sweet iced tea and storing moonshine....so the southern lore goes about moonshine.
I hate to sound amorphous to you gc but with garlic it really depends on the average climate where you live as well as soil type and drainage. Garlic tends to like a fairly wide range of soils, however too sandy or too much clay or hard packed earth is not going to give good results. They prefer moderate watering on a daily basis but in soil with good drainage - too little drainage and the bulbs will rot under ground...this applies to pretty much all edible plants whose "fruit" grows underground. In CA where I live there is a type of snail or slug that like hanging onto the cloves...oddly enough they don't eat the garlic - but kids get the yukkies if they see them hanging off a freshly pulled garlic plant. Garlics, essentially being bulbs, can be planted at your last frost. I usually sprout them in the kitchen until the first bit of leaf growth shows and then plant them - takes about 2-3 weeks in the kitchen.
Hope that helps.
Rum, Thanks for the info. I think my soil/drainage is good. I've got them in a couple of places and both spots have clay soil mixed with top soil, bark and a multi purpose. I think the watering is fine since I'm in rainy England. "Gardener's World", one of the gardening experts here, said to plant the garlic toes in December, which I did. Southern Devon, where I live, is much milder than much of the UK since we are on the south west coast. I think I'll go ahead and plant out those six garlic plants I had in the house.
Kimberly, the large all white chickens were probably leghorns. They had a boatload of them at Rome City. Dumbest animals God ever allowed on earth. Dirty too. They poo on their eggs in their own nests.
It's finally spring here, sort of, and we have all kinds of flowers in bloom, and lovely little flats that Mr. Garden is starting lettuce and such in. He has them out of the front porch and hopefully the wind, which is almost as bad as Kansas, will leave them alone. We also have spinach started - Yum!
The large all white chickens could be Rock X's too They were bread for the roasting oven rather than laying.. but I agree about the leghorns... they are not the prefered chicken for me.. I didn't have the poop issue as much as the silly thing would just freak at any little thing and run willy nilly all over the place.
The Rock X was a rooster he was quite calm but by four months old was getting quite large and by six months was just about too big to get a round. I gave him to a neighbor who had a large family so they could butcher and eat him and then they kept him.. he finaly died from a heart attack, I think... poor guy.. he was actually a nice rooster as far as that goes.
Foghorn Leghorn, my favorite!!! I say, I say...then after he had little Leghorn...That's my boy!
Holy smackeral, it has rained non-stop since the 26th. And I don't mean a sprinkling. From last Thursday until Monday it has been steady RAIN. It let up a little Tuesday. It has been non-stop since late Tuesday. I can not believe how much the lettuces have grown in a week. I need to clip them but the ground is too wet to walk in the garden. Today, I looked out of my kitchen window and they seemed to be doing a hula dance. The windy rain was swaying them back and forth. Yummy, good eats when lettuce has had plenty of rain.
The cabbage is growing nicely. Gonna try my hand at an old fashioned sauerkraut recipe...more yummies.....The snow peas...we shall see. They seemed to have stopped growing.
Thanks! :) I've always loved stone walls and they are all over the place in England. So, I tiered the top part of my husband's slopped back yard and built the stone wall. I'm very proud of it! I am going to tier part of his front garden next and build my second wall soon :)
Kimberly, I have no idea what that shrub is. A couple of years ago I helped someone clear out some raised beds, my payment was that I could take any of the plants I wanted. This shrub was part of the payment. It has branches of beautiful white flowers with yellow centers every spring.
Leafy, not only keeping the raft close at hand but dodging tornadoes here in the southeast. Just last Friday night trees down, power poles snapped in - two across four lanes of traffic. Many folks shaken but safe, thank God. But I do have to say the lake is back up. Last year it was down 22 feet. Now it is only down 8 feet. And honey, everything is green, green, green.
Had some bare spots in the front yard so I planted grass seed a couple of weeks back. We have baby grass!!! Yeehaw!!
No chance, just yet, getting out in the vegetable garden. Too wet. The Romaine is looking kind of yellow. I know I put enough nitrogen in the soil. The hosta and ferns are thriving in the shade garden. It looks like they have grown a foot in the last week.
gc, my family is from Ireland. I have always been fascinated with the stone walls. It is so real and natural.
We live in the Rockies where the growing season is short. We plant our garlic in the fall and mulch it heavily. During early spring(which is pretty much winter weather here) we will water it during thaws, when the temps are in the forties. We get a really nice crop in late summer.
Moving here from the midwest, we heard all kinds of dire warnings about the difficulty of gardening here, but we have found it best it ignore most of that. We do have to start plants early in a home made greenhouse( mostly peppers, tomatoes and broccoli), and we mulch alot due to high winds and dry air, but we've been able to grow most things we love. We finally have asparagus established, and this year we are trying a big bed of quinoa. I'm also doing a three sisters hill, just for fun (corn, pole beans and squash planted in the same hill.)
We also have lots of tarps for those awful hail storms!
We've decided to take all the lawn out of our back yard and replace it with raised beds, fruit bushes(elderberry, chokecherry, gooseberry) and wild flowers. The lawn requires alot of water here, and all we do is mow it and look at it, the kids really don't play in the back yard now they can drive.The quinoa is supposed to look much like a wild flower patch so I'm excited about that.
Bramble, What is the deal with the three sisters hill? I've never heard of that before, and it sounds fun and interesting. How's it doing and do you have a picture of it? I'd like to grow corn here, but the wind is horrible. I thought of staking the stalks, not sure if that would work. I've done a similar thing with my back garden; replace the grass with raised beds. One of mine is a perinnial bed, it has fruit bushes and the hope of asparagus for next year. I've only done this to one side, the other has lawn and a border. My dog likes the grass, my husband's cat likes the clutter :) It would be nice to see how your back garden looks with the raised beds, fruit bushes and wild flowers, or is it still a work in progress?
Bramble, What is the deal with the three sisters hill? I've never heard of that before, and it sounds fun and interesting. How's it doing and do you have a picture of it? I'd like to grow corn here, but the wind is horrible. I thought of staking the stalks, not sure if that would work. I've done a similar thing with my back garden; replace the grass with raised beds. One of mine is a perinnial bed, it has fruit bushes and the hope of asparagus for next year. I've only done this to one side, the other has lawn and a border. My dog likes the grass, my husband's cat likes the clutter :) It would be nice to see how your back garden looks with the raised beds, fruit bushes and wild flowers, or is it still a work in progress?
gc
Okay I started to write out instructions but decided to see what was already out there.
These are excellent instructions if you have a square garden.. Adjust accordingly.
Regarding the Wind we live in a very high wind area.. so what i do to ensure my Corn is polinated is plant them in a rectangle with the narrow side facing the wind and the plants stretching out behind.. I make at least 3 rows... with at least 4 plants to a row.
I hope that makes sense. The biggest issue with the wind is pollination Now sometimes in the first corn stalks at the front of the row I get 1/2 pollinated ears but all the rest are fully pollinated.
I did do the beans and corn together one year and they both did very well.
I do a bit of companion planting as everything is happier with a friend.
Some interesting combination's I have found.. Apple trees and zucchini LOVE each other.
This is also true of Bush beans and cucumbers. and another happy pair is basil and sweet peppers.
some plants that hate each other are black berries and raspberries.. If they are too close together they both fail to thrive.
Tomatoes and apricots also hate each other... Be sure your tomatoes are completely away from your apricots...
any fruit will be happier with mint near by
and I have heard that Loveage is a plant cheerleader... all your plants in your garden will be happier with a Lovage bush around.
I have been trying to get some for a while but have been unsuccessful so far.
My house is a wind break from the west wind so i think the corn will do all right, but I might have to stake it.
I thought about planting some Lovage. I hear it tastes like celery. I thought I might research more tea herbs since we all like herbal teas in the winter.
My house is a wind break from the west wind so i think the corn will do all right, but I might have to stake it.
I thought about planting some Lovage. I hear it tastes like celery. I thought I might research more tea herbs since we all like herbal teas in the winter.
I have never had to stake the corn.. i think because it grows up with the wind blowing it so it's roots and stalk compensate for the wind. Now tomato plants those I have to stake and use guide wires to keep them upright in the wind especiially when they are full of fruit.
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kimberly
gc, black eyed peas are for luck and collard greens are for dollars. I plant enough collard greens the end of August to last us all winter long. Oh, honey everybody, I have maters and more maters.
kimberly
Bramble, so sorry about your garden. Our weather has been crazy too. This time of year we are accustomed to the feeling of a hot wet towel wrapped around the face when we are outside. But it has
kimberly
When referring to the herb garden I meant the annuals. I broke down and watered/fertilized the dill and basil. I am hoping for a comeback. The perinnial's (sp?)are forging on. Nothing seems to f
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leafytwiglet
Okay since we are talking garden product... canned goods
My grandma used to make this amazing home made currant jelly. it was so psectacularly delicious. Living out west I am unable to even begin to experiment.. This is tempered by the fact that because of where I live, I have Santa rosa Plums... THe BEST jamming plum ever. Not to mention Apricots.... a special small sweet variety (Blenheim) that is grown specifically for drying and jamming in my area. MMMMM the golden fragrant fruit is just a few short months away.
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RumRunner
Home canning is neither difficult nor expensive however it is time consuming and tedious. The reward is worth the effort. Two extremely important items: sanitization and following the instructions for your particular items to be canned down to the "T's". Non-acidic plants such as beans or asparagus usually will call for some acid to be added, be it vinegar, lemon juice etc. You have to be very careful with beans which can be subject to botulism. Naturally acidic plants such as tomatoes are easy.
Ball is of course the corporation that made home canning an industry and they are still the benchmark in safety and quality. The web site below carries all of there canning line - however most of it you can get in your grocery store. I highly recommend that you start with the Ball Blue Book on canning.
http://www.goodmans.net/get_dept_597.htm
Enjoy
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waysider
An alternative to canning is "blanch and freeze", which we did in Fellow Laborers.
We had 50 people to feed.
Here's a link. http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/5333.html
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kimberly
Leafy, I doubt I could have free range chickens right now. I have two labs that live in the back yard. We had Rhode Island Reds and some sort of chickens that were rather large and had all white feathers.
rumrunner, in these here parts it is the all holy Mason jar; good for canning and being used for the likes of sipping sweet iced tea and storing moonshine....so the southern lore goes about moonshine.
About the only thing I don't can is corn and red and green bell peppers. I blanch and freeze it. Red and green bell peppers just slice, toss together in a little salt and put in freezer. Near the end of the mater season when there is not enough to can just core, peel, toss a little salt in with them and freeze. I have a chest deep freezer. All items to be frozen are put in freezer containers and then wrapped in freezer paper or butcher paper. For those who only have a refrigerator freezer if you wrap your frozen foods like this they will last a lot longer. It helps tremendously to prevent freezer burn. Most of the time freezer burn results from the defrost cycle of the fridge. Notice during that cycle how the interior of the freezer is a little warmer and seems to thaw a little or become more "liquid" as I call it. The same thing is happening to the exterior of the food.
I use a pressure canner for beans, peas and squash.
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leafytwiglet
I use the pressure canner too. it is great for stuff that you would normally have to worry about. I always follow the instructions to a T including sanitization instructions. I make soups and salsas and applesauce too.
I use both Ball and Mason supplies
and Peppers are great because you can just throw them in bags in the freezer and pull out as you need them. For beans I use the blanch method Waysider mentioned.
I have found that those vacum packaging machines work really well at keeping freezer burn to a minimum.
So I do both but send lots of canned stuffs home with both daughters and friends.
BTW yeah dogs and chickens do not mix. and bird dogs especially would have difficulty. Also any Dog with Dingo blood is out they have a one track hunt and kill mode and can bring down a bird in mid flight Chickens are easy prey for them.
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Bramble
I was wondering if those vacuum pack amchines are a good idea. We can and freeze what we can.
We can't have chickens in the city limits, but one of my neighbors has a pygmy goat smaller than many dogs. I'm not sure if its allowed or that no one has bothered to call the city! It sure is cute.
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RumRunner
Kim dear - the holy Mason Jar contains - ummm never mind - but it ain't iced tea - sun tea is done in gallon jugs
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gc
Rum, Thanks for the info. I think my soil/drainage is good. I've got them in a couple of places and both spots have clay soil mixed with top soil, bark and a multi purpose. I think the watering is fine since I'm in rainy England. "Gardener's World", one of the gardening experts here, said to plant the garlic toes in December, which I did. Southern Devon, where I live, is much milder than much of the UK since we are on the south west coast. I think I'll go ahead and plant out those six garlic plants I had in the house.
Thanks again.
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leafytwiglet
DOn't forget lemonade.. Hard and soft!
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Watered Garden
Kimberly, the large all white chickens were probably leghorns. They had a boatload of them at Rome City. Dumbest animals God ever allowed on earth. Dirty too. They poo on their eggs in their own nests.
It's finally spring here, sort of, and we have all kinds of flowers in bloom, and lovely little flats that Mr. Garden is starting lettuce and such in. He has them out of the front porch and hopefully the wind, which is almost as bad as Kansas, will leave them alone. We also have spinach started - Yum!
WG
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leafytwiglet
The large all white chickens could be Rock X's too They were bread for the roasting oven rather than laying.. but I agree about the leghorns... they are not the prefered chicken for me.. I didn't have the poop issue as much as the silly thing would just freak at any little thing and run willy nilly all over the place.
The Rock X was a rooster he was quite calm but by four months old was getting quite large and by six months was just about too big to get a round. I gave him to a neighbor who had a large family so they could butcher and eat him and then they kept him.. he finaly died from a heart attack, I think... poor guy.. he was actually a nice rooster as far as that goes.
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waysider
I say, I say----Did he look like this?
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leafytwiglet
LOL MOre like this
http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/product/ju...sh_x_rocks.html
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kimberly
Foghorn Leghorn, my favorite!!! I say, I say...then after he had little Leghorn...That's my boy!
Holy smackeral, it has rained non-stop since the 26th. And I don't mean a sprinkling. From last Thursday until Monday it has been steady RAIN. It let up a little Tuesday. It has been non-stop since late Tuesday. I can not believe how much the lettuces have grown in a week. I need to clip them but the ground is too wet to walk in the garden. Today, I looked out of my kitchen window and they seemed to be doing a hula dance. The windy rain was swaying them back and forth. Yummy, good eats when lettuce has had plenty of rain.
The cabbage is growing nicely. Gonna try my hand at an old fashioned sauerkraut recipe...more yummies.....The snow peas...we shall see. They seemed to have stopped growing.
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leafytwiglet
Pictures please whwen ever the rains let up .. keep your raft close to hand Missy ;)
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gc
testing
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leafytwiglet
Very Nice!
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kimberly
gc, how precious! I love the stones. What is that beautiful bush with the white flowers?
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gc
Thanks! :) I've always loved stone walls and they are all over the place in England. So, I tiered the top part of my husband's slopped back yard and built the stone wall. I'm very proud of it! I am going to tier part of his front garden next and build my second wall soon :)
Kimberly, I have no idea what that shrub is. A couple of years ago I helped someone clear out some raised beds, my payment was that I could take any of the plants I wanted. This shrub was part of the payment. It has branches of beautiful white flowers with yellow centers every spring.
gc
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kimberly
Leafy, not only keeping the raft close at hand but dodging tornadoes here in the southeast. Just last Friday night trees down, power poles snapped in - two across four lanes of traffic. Many folks shaken but safe, thank God. But I do have to say the lake is back up. Last year it was down 22 feet. Now it is only down 8 feet. And honey, everything is green, green, green.
Had some bare spots in the front yard so I planted grass seed a couple of weeks back. We have baby grass!!! Yeehaw!!
No chance, just yet, getting out in the vegetable garden. Too wet. The Romaine is looking kind of yellow. I know I put enough nitrogen in the soil. The hosta and ferns are thriving in the shade garden. It looks like they have grown a foot in the last week.
gc, my family is from Ireland. I have always been fascinated with the stone walls. It is so real and natural.
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gc
Bramble, What is the deal with the three sisters hill? I've never heard of that before, and it sounds fun and interesting. How's it doing and do you have a picture of it? I'd like to grow corn here, but the wind is horrible. I thought of staking the stalks, not sure if that would work. I've done a similar thing with my back garden; replace the grass with raised beds. One of mine is a perinnial bed, it has fruit bushes and the hope of asparagus for next year. I've only done this to one side, the other has lawn and a border. My dog likes the grass, my husband's cat likes the clutter :) It would be nice to see how your back garden looks with the raised beds, fruit bushes and wild flowers, or is it still a work in progress?
gc
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leafytwiglet
Okay I started to write out instructions but decided to see what was already out there.
http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html
These are excellent instructions if you have a square garden.. Adjust accordingly.
Regarding the Wind we live in a very high wind area.. so what i do to ensure my Corn is polinated is plant them in a rectangle with the narrow side facing the wind and the plants stretching out behind.. I make at least 3 rows... with at least 4 plants to a row.
I hope that makes sense. The biggest issue with the wind is pollination Now sometimes in the first corn stalks at the front of the row I get 1/2 pollinated ears but all the rest are fully pollinated.
I did do the beans and corn together one year and they both did very well.
I do a bit of companion planting as everything is happier with a friend.
Some interesting combination's I have found.. Apple trees and zucchini LOVE each other.
This is also true of Bush beans and cucumbers. and another happy pair is basil and sweet peppers.
some plants that hate each other are black berries and raspberries.. If they are too close together they both fail to thrive.
Tomatoes and apricots also hate each other... Be sure your tomatoes are completely away from your apricots...
any fruit will be happier with mint near by
and I have heard that Loveage is a plant cheerleader... all your plants in your garden will be happier with a Lovage bush around.
I have been trying to get some for a while but have been unsuccessful so far.
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Bramble
My house is a wind break from the west wind so i think the corn will do all right, but I might have to stake it.
I thought about planting some Lovage. I hear it tastes like celery. I thought I might research more tea herbs since we all like herbal teas in the winter.
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leafytwiglet
I have never had to stake the corn.. i think because it grows up with the wind blowing it so it's roots and stalk compensate for the wind. Now tomato plants those I have to stake and use guide wires to keep them upright in the wind especiially when they are full of fruit.
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