HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

I cannot believe it is Chanukah again. Once again let me say:

May your dreidle always land on Gimel.

May 2010 bring peace to the world.

May we all know joy and love in the coming year.

May whichever holiday you hold dear
Bring fulfillment of the promise of your faith.

--Yvonne

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Homesteading: Making it Pay

Someone asked me to follow up with a return-on-investment for my 2009 summer garden. The life of a homesteader, even a kitchen gardener, is a life of chance. There is a chance that the elements will be favorable and a chance that the elements will not.

The summer of 2009 was not a good one for farmers and gardeners in this area. A sudden, violent rainstorm dropped 19 inches of water onto my garden just as it was going good. The rain beat down many healthy plants and drowned many others. Most of the butter beans and all of the okra rotted in the field before they had a chance to produce a crop.

Then, before I could recover from that, a heat wave destroyed almost all of the corn crops and my daughter-in-law and I had to scramble to get the potato crop in before it, too, was ruined. We salvaged about half of the potato crop. I did manage to eek out the can-equivalent of the following.

Veg/ INVESTMENT Can equivalent *Cash-equivalent Profit

Potatoes $6.00............95 lbs. .....................$47.50............$41.50

Corn $4.50..................17.............................$16.15.............$11.65

English Peas $0.45......8..............................$6.00..............$5.55

Okra $0.28................**0................................0.................-$.28

Lima Beans $0.50........2..............................$1.70...............$1.20

Green Beans $0.68......10.............................$7.50..............$6.82

Tomatoes $12...............60............................$45.00............$33.00

*Based on the quality of product purchased for this household.
**What the rain didn’t wash away, the heat burned to a crisp. Last year okra was such a bumper crop, neighbors were sneaking into yards and anonymously leaving bags of it on doorsteps just to get rid of it. This year there wasn’t any. C’est la vie of a homesteader.

The final cost of the garden was $24.41. The estimated profit was $99.44. Of course, this does not take into account the cost of fuel for the tractor and the tiller or the cost of the electricity used to run the irrigation system. The water is from my own well so the water itself is free. Also not taken into account are the many, many hours of back-breaking hoeing, thinning, weeding and harvesting of the plants.

I suppose $99.44 is not enough profit for some. But for me, it was not only profit enough but the pleasure was immeasurable. I got farm-fresh food for many days before nature turned against my efforts. I also managed to freeze/preserve/can enough to get me and my family through the winter. Most importantly, what I did can or freeze was done so with no artificial preservatives and under conditions that I know for a fact were as clean and wholesome as humanly possible.

Will I do it again next year?

You darn betchya.

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ENJOYING THE WEATHER

Finally the weather has changed. It is cooler; the bugs are gone; the skies are clear;

and the crops are in.

It's fall. The chickens
roam fartherafield on
days like this because

the grass is filled with

grasshoppers, a
delicate treat

for chickens.

Turnips are starting to get larger and should be ready to eat in just a couple of weeks. Certainly ready in time for Thanksgiving. The collards will be ready then, too.

I love the fall.

It's the time here in the country for our Heritage Festival. Some communities call it Founders' Day. We call it the Heritage Festival.

Local churches have Homecoming. So does the high school. There are parades with floats and beautiful young women riding in open convertibles waving at eager young viewers who line the small-town streets hoping one day that they, too, will sit on the back of a convertible in an evening gown and wave the royal wave.

The band plays what might or might not be a Sousa march as their shoes make shuffling sounds on the blacktop of small-town Main Street. And an embarrassed trumpeter just misses hitting the right note. But no one notices because they are watching the majorettes who, like our own grandmothers did, toss their batons high into the air and easily catch it when it falls back to earth.

The parade with its one band and five floats, not counting the Boy Scout troop, the Cub Scout troop, and the Ruritan officers, travels from the pharmacy to the parking lot by what used to be a car dealership. About 3 blocks.

Here in rural America, there are a lot of empty buildings that used to be something but now sit vacant. But we still turn out for our Homecoming parade. And people do come home.

Aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings, in-laws and outlaws, and even exes who owe more back child support than they can ever pay come home to watch their "kin" in the homecoming parade. Traffic is backed up for at least a whole block.

The smell of burning leaves lingers in the air after sunset. Families here still sit down to dinner at the table even if dinner is pizza from the local gas station, our only place to get pizza.

This is fall in small-town USA. I love it.

More later....

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HOMESTEADING: GROWING OLD GENTLY

Today I'm 60. I don't feel any different. Well, maybe a bit different physically than I did at 30 or even 40. But mentally, I'm still the same. Same old anti-fascist I've always been. If I've mellowed at all, it's only to be more forgiving of people. I shrug off hateful comments more than I did when I was young. I think part of that is because I live on this homestead. I think people who are closer to the earth and closer to the rhythms of nature are gentler with others. We see a lot of diversity and a lot of life, and death, on a farm.

Today I got a nice birthday surprise from one of my young hens. A green egg! Five months ago, a couple of weeks before I bought my own incubator, I took several eggs to a friend who had an incubator. She hatched the eggs for me. When she gave me the chicks she told me she had also been hatching eggs for a friend and she might have confused some of the eggs.

She was right! Apparently she gave me an Araucana chick! Araucana chicks and Rhode Island Red chicks look amazingly alike when they are days old. Araucanas lay eggs that can be anywhere from blue to blue-green to olive green.

I went out this morning to gather eggs and there in the pullet's coop was a beautiful green egg. My special birthday present from one of my girls. I feel special, indeed. What a nice gift on this my 60th birthday.

I hope I am growing old gracefully.

More later....

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BROKEN LIFE, BROKEN HEART, BROKEN DISHES

I've been told that the death of a spouse is like childbirth used to be--no one talks about it. Those of us who have suffered the loss of our beloved spouse know what others think: "It's been 9 months, why hasn't she moved on?" The lack of understanding isn't really a bad thing. The death of a husband/wife is something that most haven't experienced. That's a good thing. Yes, it has been 9 months since my beloved died. And, no, I haven't moved on. What others don't understand is that losing the one you shared every breath, every moment of life, every joy, every sorrow, every trip, every life cycle event with is akin to losing your own life. In essence, you do lose your own life. The life you knew for years is gone. The light that illuminated your existence has been turned off as surely as if someone reached into your heart and flipped a switch. My life has no bright light. I live in a world shrouded with shadows. I say things and wonder if I said the wrong thing. I dress and wonder if this is the same thing I wore yesterday and, perhaps, the day before that, too. I go to the post office and wonder if I brushed my hair. I ask questions and wonder if I already asked it and forgot the answer. I ask a question of the original source of information, was deemed impolitic, and was remediated for it. I lock myself out of the house. I lock my keys in my car. For 10 minutes I sit in my car crying before I can go into class. I walk in shadow. No one knows it but me. Also, I break things. Somehow items slip out of my grasp. I've lost my focus. I'm distracted. I guess it had been at least 15 years since I broke a dish. But since my Ronnie died, I have broken every glass drinking glass I owned and at least half a dozen dinner plates. I have dropped jars of jam and pickles, 2 casserole dishes along with their matching lids, and numerous coffee cups. I am now relegated to plastic glasses and rapidly closing in on plastic coffee cups. I sometimes wonder if those who are so concerned with the smaller details of life know that they should be spending more time cherishing the ones they still have with them. Oh, if only we knew when the span of our life ended, we would spend the last days so very differently. Then again, it is best that we don't know. I have learned that much. No matter how we live, death hits us with a powerful, knockout blow. We are too stunned for the first several months even to talk about it. By the time we can talk about the pain we learn that talking to the living about death just is not done. Why should we impose our shadow on their light. More later....

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Homesteading: Preparing for Winter in the Heat

By the Fourth of July, canning is finished here in Northwest Florida. Gardens are dry and crackly and all fruits and veggies have pretty much been harvested and preserved.

A bushel of green beans becomes this.

225 lbs of tomatoes (minus the ones we ate)
















turns into jars of canned tomatoes,
chili sauce and tomato juice.







4 dozen ears of corn get shucked



















and await canning.






There's little opportunity for more canning this season. I'll make a few more jars of tomato juice, but the time for preparing for the winter months has ended.

The ant prepared while the grasshopper fiddled. Now I can spend a quiet
summer trying to escape the oppressive heat of the Florida panhandle.



Enjoy your summer!



More later.....

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Homesteaders have Jammin' Good Times!

Harvest season is upon us. My sister, who just moved to northern Virginia from southern Pennsylvania, says they have a saying about corn: "knee high by the 4th of July." Our corn here in NW FL is grown, picked, and canned/frozen/eaten by the 4th of July. And by that time, our cornfields have already been plowed under.

I've been canning and making jam all week. I've included some pictures for you. I made a batch of spaghetti sauce this week. I picked up 40 lbs of tomatoes at a price I couldn't refuse.

Here is a site you might enjoy. You can see a step-by-step instruction of making sauce.

www.paulnoll.com/Oregon/Canning/canning-tomato-sauce.html

The website shows a process that is close to how I do it. Which is probably how everyone does. Our recipes are different but our process is the same. Especially the use of a pressure canner.

Did you know that tomatoes are the #1 most common home canned item in America? Probably because they can grow just about anywhere (even on a patio) and you don't have to use a pressure canner to preserve them.

You do not have to use a pressure canner for jams and jellies either. You don't have to use one for tomatoes if you aren't putting anything else (carrots, peppers, okra) in it.

But you MUST have a pressure canner for non-acid foods. It is the only known safe way to can low-acid foods. Yes, tomatoes are a high acid food, but today I'm making spaghetti sauce. I add other veggies in the spaghetti sauce (onions, peppers, carrots and maybe a zucchini). So we need the pressure canner.

To make my spaghetti sauce, I started off with 40 lbs of tomatoes. I bought them from a produce stand.

I clean them.

I chop them up and liquefy them with other vegetables and seasonings that I want in my spaghetti sauce. If, like me, you like wine in your spaghetti sauce, DO NOT add it here. Add it to your sauce when you prepare the sauce to serve over your pasta.

I cook the sauce until it is the thickness I prefer. See the rings? It was up to the top ring when I started. Yes, It took a couple of hours to cook down this far. But it's worth it.

I fill the jars leaving 1/4" head space. Head space is important! Too little and the jar could burst as the contents expand. Too much and the jar won't seal properly. There are many sites showing head space requirements. Check with your county extension office

Or buy a copy of the canner's "bible" the BALL BLUE BOOK: Guide To Home Canning, Freezing & Dehydration.

It is an invaluable tool to the home canner.

Here is my spaghetti sauce: cooked,

jarred, processed, and ready for use.

Here are some of the jars of peach jam and blueberry jam that I made. Y-U-M.

The peaches we bought were not good for eating. They were too sour even though they were ripe. But they made magnificent jam!

Go ahead!! Try your hand at making jam. It's fun! And economical!!!

In the next few weeks, I'll use the pressure canner to can dozens of jars of green beans, potatoes, gumbo mix, corn, and whatever else I have grown or can pick from a U-Pick farm for a very cheap price. I won't bore you with the process again. But I might show you the pictures of the finished product.

Comments are welcome!

More later....

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Homesteading: Planning for the future

Remember the fable of the ant and the grasshopper? The ant was busy storing food for the winter while the grasshopper fiddled. Then when winter came, the ant had food and the grasshopper didn't. Well, I've been busy as an ant today.

The potatoes are ready to be harvested. Potatoes grow underground so you have to dig them up. You know it's time to dig them up when the above-ground part starts to look dead. When I was a kid, Mom used to give us a big spoon and send us out to the garden to dig for potatoes. What kid doesn't love digging in the dirt! It kept us happily occupied and saved her from a chore.

We use a fork to dig potatoes. A manure fork. A clean manure fork used only for the potatoes. We got about 20 pounds this time. Add that to the 10 lbs I got last week and we have already harvested about $12 worth of potatoes. In addition, I have harvested about $5 worth of beans and $3.00 of peppers. So I'm almost at the break-even point on my investment. I still have 2/3 of the potatoes left to harvest. The corn will be ready in about 3 weeks and the okra in about 3 weeks.

Here are the potatoes we dug up today.
They are red potatoes. My favorite.

I have already frozen about 10 lbs. I canned about 12 lbs. I saved the rest to eat.

To can potatoes, You need a pressure canner. Pressure canning is the only safe way to can non-acid vegetables.

I first gather all my materials.

Here are the jars, rings, and lids.

You can re-use the rings every year or until they get rusty.

You can re-use jars as long as they do not

get chipped, cracked or broken.

You absolutely cannot re-use lids.

I had to clean the jars then boil them for 10 minutes.

Home canning is wonderful but a lot of work. Everything must be sterile. Botulism is real and deadly. Some people think that just washing the jars and rings in the dishwasher is enough. Maybe they are right. But I take no chances. I wash them in the dishwasher first then bring them to 212 degrees (boiling) for 10 minutes.

I had to wash, peel and cut-up about 12 lbs of potatoes!

Then I put them into the jars, put them into the canner and processed them at 11 lbs. pressure for 35 minutes. I used large-mouth pint jars. If I had used quart jars, I would have had to process them for 45 minutes.

Here is my pressure canner. It has reached 11 lbs. of pressure. It holds 7 quart jars or 9 regular pint jars or 8 large-mouth jars. For potatoes, squash and green beans, I use large-mouthed jars. It's hard to pour large veggies out of small-mouthed jars.

Here is the finished product.

It's a lot of work for just 8 pints of potatoes. But the first batch is the most work. After that, you already have the materials assembled so the subsequent batches are easier. A lot of work, but I know what's going into my food.

Canned potatoes are great in stews or casseroles. Here is a good recipe for a potato casserole.

Ingredients

2 pounds potatoes, sliced thin
1 large onion, sliced into rings
1 quart buttermilk
3 tablespoons *kosher salt (more or less to taste)
3 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
1 (16 ounce) package sharp Cheddar cheese, shredded

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x12 inch glass or ceramic dish with olive oil.
Layer 1/3 of the potatoes on the bottom of the dish. Then 1/3 of the onions. Pour 1/3 of the buttermilk over the potatoes and sprinkle with 1/3 of the salt, pepper and cheese. Repeat 2 more times, ending with cheese on top.
Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until hot, bubbly and golden brown.

*FOOTNOTES
This recipe calls for kosher salt, not table salt. If you would like to substitute table salt, you will need only a fraction of the salt called for; season to taste.
Using a food processor to slice the potatoes will make it easier to achieve very thin slices. Remember, thicker slices will take longer to cook

Enjoy. More later....

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Homesteader's First Fruits

Ahhh...the fruits of my labor are starting to come in.

Here is a handful of sugar snaps that I picked today. Up north they are called English peas. People pick them when they are a little bigger and shell them.

Here in the south, we pick them when they are young and tender. We eat pod and all. Y-U-M! See the spots on a couple of them? That, unfortunately, is a result of too much rain.

This is the apron-full of green beans I picked today. I'm having some of these for dinner. These are Blue Lake Green Beans. A popular brand. I'll clean and freeze the ones I don't eat tonight. I'll save them up until I get enough to can. It's raining again. I hope the rain doesn't spoil them like it seems to be doing with the sugar snaps.

Here is the "Second field of corn. This used to be the pasture where we kept the goats. This year a neighbor plowed and disked it for me. I planted Golden Queen corn. It seems to be doing okay. At least this half of the field is. the other half was washed out by the flood.















Look at the baby tomatoes! My tomatoes are having a good year. They like a lot of rain, though. So maybe they will make up for the loss of the sugar snaps.


















These are the Blue Lake Green Beans. They look "happy."

My "girls" are having fun during their free range day. At right, proud rooster Chaunticleer is with 2 of the Rhode Island Red hens.

A Rhode Island Red hen is making sure that the feather-footed banty cochins don't get anything she doesn't get.

A Celebrity variety tomato plant in bloom.

The corn in the primary garden is doing well. The potatoes, in front, are doing very well.

A better view of the corn in the primary garden.

The result? A nice chicken dinner. No! Not one of my chickens! I just can't do that. But green beans from my own garden and my onions from last year. I could have used my own potatoes but I had 2 left in the pantry that I needed to use.

There is a great feeling of pride in making a meal with the things you grew by the sweat of your own brow. I highly recommend it.

I work in the garden while Trudy, my "watch cat" hides in the tall grass waiting to pounce on anything that passes her way....mostly the dog.

More later......

Homesteading: Welcoming the Spring

Time does pass and spring does arrive eventually. With more activity comes greater chance of injury. I broke my foot. Well, I didn't break it. Bad lighting and a nearly impossible to see sunken living room broke it. While I was writhing in pain, another person confessed that she, too, had stumbled in the same spot but was able to catch herself. Sunken living rooms are lawsuits waiting to happen!

Meanwhile, here on the homestead, we had nearly three feet of rain one week! My roads washed out, the bridges collapsed, and I was a refugee in my own home for 5 days. When I did get out, it was only due to the fact that I have 4-wheel drive in my vehicle. Here's a look at what the rain did to my cornfield!

Some of the corn washed away.

I'm not overly concerned though. Rain is not the big problem here in northwest Florida. Heat is the problem. The relentless summer heat and frequent drought are much more likely to cause crop failure than too much rain.

Yet signs of spring are everywhere here on the homestead.

The peach trees have fruit on them.

Baby chicks have hatched.

The proud papa, my rooster Chaunticleer, is strutting about as proud as any papa can be.

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