Aug 27
The cucumber harvest has been plentiful…and relentless. Perfect! They were planted with the intention of making some homemade pickles before the end of summer.
These beauties are a pickling variety purchased from John Scheepers.
Jul 20
I’ve had an interest in making butter for a short while now. The topic came up in conversation and I made a mental note that I should look into it and that was the end of it. We aren’t big on butter as a condiment in this household (except of course slathered on fresh steamed corn on the cob) but use it sparingly for cooking and baking. I cant really pinpoint why the idea was so appealing to me because we so infrequently eat buttered anything but I think the lure was making something that all my life I’d bought at the store without ever considering the homemade alternative. After picking up a homesteading book and leafing through to the homemade butter and cheese chapter my interest was renewed. A few days later while reading Mother Earth News there was a snipit on homemade butter. Now I was convinced I had to try my turn at making butter…and what was there to lose? The process is incredibly easy and if it didnt turn out I was only out a little bit of time and a few bucks but would still gain the experience.
Jul 07
Recently the new dishwasher was installed which led us to the dilemma of finding an environmentally considerate detergent.
We settled on a recipe for a detergent consisting of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda and 20 Mule Team Borax.
20 Mule Team Borax is sodium tetraborate (borax). Its a naturally occurring substance. Interesting history of the company- the brand name was registered in the late 1800′s when borax was discovered in Death Valley. Teams of 20 mules were used to transport the borax to a location where it could be refined with water. Read the rest of this entry »
Nov 30
The country living grain mill is like the grand daddy of all grain mills and if dropped onto most every other one would literally CRUSH IT!
We had always wanted to make our own flour so that we could have the freshest bread and a grain mill seemed like the obvious choice for that. However, we also wanted to be able to use the grain mill if we did not have power, and we wanted one that would last a life time the country grain mill fit the bill perfectly!
Nov 03
To keep our canned goods rotating we’ve set up a Shelf Reliance Cansolidator Harvest 72″ unit. This unit holds up to 600 cans although we don’t have ours filled to the maximum capacity. It’s actually pretty empty at the time this picture was taken.
Assembly took about 2 hours and was a bit tedious. The frame work goes together easily with a little help from a mallet. For each slot there are multiple cross supports that snap into place and they each need to be fitted to the correct can size so the cans rotate smoothly which was the time consuming part.
Once the unit was put together we had to seriously consider which canned goods would get a spot in the cansolidator and which would remain on the shelf in the pantry. Only the foods that we use on a regular basis and felt we could get through before expiration got a spot. The other foods that we don’t keep many of on hand are living happily in our pantry!
Aug 24
Wanting to try something new I decided making a loaf of homemade wheat bread would keep me busy for a few hours. I was anxious to try out our Country Living Grain Mill that had arrived a few weeks before (a complete write up on that will be coming soon). It took me a while to find a recipe with basic ingredients that I already have around the house . I don’t make bread regularly so I don’t have bread flour which was called for in many of the recipes.
