Still worth it?

A quart of hard work ruined.

Even if you don't do much homesteading, gardening or farming, there are times in your life when you have to ask yourself if whatever you're doing around your home is still worth the work or not. If you have raised kids and eventually move on to that Empty Nest stage of your life, you usually have to re-examine everything you are doing -- how you're cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and even vacationing -- because while you weren't watching, your life moved onto its next phase somehow, and it all needs re-evaluation.

This is where I've been with canning the last few years. This morning, a quart jar of relish broke inside the canner, which happens sometimes (the newer quart Mason jars are usually only good for about five years before this happens), but which was very frustrating, as it represented several hours of hard work, come to naught.

Is it still worth it?

Too bad it took a quart of ruined relish for me to start pondering whether or not I actually still need that much relish stored up in the pantry. Like most people, I tend to just keep doing the same things I've always done until it becomes impractical for some reason, and then I start re-thinking whether it's needed or not. 

So after cleaning up the canner and thinking about things, I've decided that, for the time being, I'm still saying yes to canning. BUT, it's a modified yes. If it's something I can put up in pint jars, like strawberry jam, apple pie filling, blackberry syrup, etc. it's definitely worth it. Pickle relish is also still worth it -- in smaller jars. But quarts of things? Not really what is practical or needed anymore for our household of two, broken jars or not. 

So in thinking of ideas I can use to supplement our pantry in other homegrown ways, one thought I had was starting to make my own mayonnaise. I've got the eggs, and if I'm not tethered to a water bath canner filled with quarts of tomatoes all summer long, I also have the time. One other thing I've already started doing is switching our dog over to completely homemade dog food and treats, which I've wanted to do for a long time. But I'm pretty sure I can find other things that will make us more eco-friendly and healthy plus save us money if I re-order my thinking just a bit.

I'll still keep those quart jars around, though, as they're such brilliant multi-purpose containers, holding everything from flowers to leftovers to frozen broth. So the quart jars I have left will get a break from the literal pressure of canning, and I catch a break, too, in terms of workload. Less pressure on all of us. 

That's a win for everyone, I'd say.

Mason jars -- still the Swiss Army knife of household living, even without the canning.

Makin' space!

I am in the midst of attempting to use up food. Luckily the weather has turned cold and rainy, which gives me a great opportunity to make some hearty dishes that use the items I need to get rid of. Those are:

Probably 25 percent of what's in my freezer right now, in order to make room for the Thanksgiving turkey, which we'll buy in another town and bring home to the freezer for a week or so. So the frozen 2014-15 harvest of carrots, chicken broth, onions and other items that I can use to make dinners now will get used quickly, to pick up a little freezer space in the chest freezer out in the garage. I won't completely decimate my stores of the above-mentioned items, just use enough up to create some space for a turkey.

And speaking of turkey, I actually got a summons for Jury Duty the week of Thanksgiving. This could throw such a wrench in the works I'm refusing to even think about it at this point. Keep your fingers crossed for going on stand-by, with no trips to the courthouse necessary.

I also have a LOT of tomatoes hanging around the pantry at this time (I know, "hanging around" makes it sound like they are loitering on a  street corner, smoking cigarettes and harassing passers-by). But the truth is, I actually still have canned tomatoes on hand from 2013. Those, obviously, need to be used NOW....and ideally should have been used last year . That's because your water-bath canned goods should be used within 12 months of the canning date, but since I was the canner and know how careful I was, I'm comfortable doubling that time. But no more than double.  As 2013 was a banner year for tomatoes, we'll be having quite a bit of tomato-based recipes in the days to come, like this goulash (above) I am making for tonight. 

To riff, in a very respectful way,  on The Book of Ecclesiastes, there's a time to can and a time to eat; a time to store and a time to draw down your stores. A time to raid the freezer and a time to fill it. 

It's eating and drawing-down-the-stores time here at the homestead. Yum.

Weekend

Sometimes your weekend can be pretty much summed up in what you Google:

1. What does Trouble Code 38 mean on a Subaru?

2. Can you freeze raisins?

3. How do you keep tarantulas from coming into the house?

Oh, and 3 1/2 quarts of relish happened too, plus a couple of days' work at the winery. It's definitely the busy season both at work and at home, but progress is still happening around the homestead and somehow I'm keeping up with the vegetables that are coming in from the garden. And the Red Flame raisins turned out amazing. Hmmm, maybe those tarantulas that keep finding their way in here are actually after the raisins.

And as if visiting spiders, canning relish, caution lights on cars and making raisins is not enough activity for one household, we should also have the pergola installed by tomorrow, so I will post some pics then.

Tomatoes in an arid land

This last week I have been up to my elbows in tomatoes, putting up spaghetti sauce, paste, and salsa for winter. This is a mostly enjoyable activity, but this year, due to triple digit temperatures and our ongoing drought, it's been painful. Painful to stand over a hot boiling stock pot blanching tomatoes as the steam rises, and painful to see the water running down the drain as I clean the blanched tomatoes, separating the meat from the seeds and skins before running another stock pot full of water to can them once they are mixed with onions and spices and are sauce. Water, water everywhere. And not a drop to drink -- if you are using it to can. That won't do.

Promotional pic for the Victorio Food Mill

And so I purchased this: A hand-crank food strainer which can separate the skins and seeds without having to blanch the tomatoes first or even rinse them in water (except to lightly clean them before starting). This will not only save time and help keep the house cool but will also save gallons of water.

I used it this morning and was amazed how something probably invented in the late 19th century could make life in the early 21st century so much easier. All morning long, I processed tomatoes...probably 40 pounds total. There was no heat on, no electricity being used...just the quiet churning of the arm turning tomatoes into paste. Both the house and the stovetop stayed cool as the heat blazed outside. I listened to Dave Brubeck on Pandora and worked through the morning, freezing my paste once I'd finished until I process enough that it makes sense to turn on the canner. I might do it next week when it cools off...or I might do it in November when I'll be more grateful for a warm kitchen. 

Either way, today I'm enjoying the feeling when you've purchased something and realized it was totally worth the investment...in comfort, in conservation of energy, and in efficiency. Winner!

The FInal Tally

Here's how the canning tally looks this season, not counting store-bought goods.

Fall 2014

31.5 quarts of diced tomatoes

10 jars Marmalade

12 jars sliced pickles

14 jars relish

6 jar whole pickles

5 jars icebox pickles

10 jars strawberry jam

11 jars olallieberry jam

5 quarts peaches

8 quarts apple pie filling

7 quarts spaghetti sauce

9 quarts salsa

1 jar Apricot Jam (for basting ham)

(I may get off the stick and do a few more jars of relish, it goes pretty quickly around here. Everything else is right on track for how much we use in a year, except diced tomatoes, which I always can in excess just in case next year's crop is a bust.)

Oh, and in case I forget, L'Shana Tova everyone!  Happy New Year!

How many years do Mason Jars last?

These need preserving!

Today is Canapalooza at The Hot Flash Homestead. The bulk tomatoes are long finished and put up for winter, but with a still-ongoing harvest, I also decided to put up another 60 pounds of fresh, new tomatoes in salsa and spaghetti sauce.  This last weekend I sent Big Ag out to buy some new mason jars, because I don't use mine for canning if they've seen three canning seasons, maximum.

The answer to the question of "why not?" is that horrible, sinking, panicked feeling you get when a full mason jar breaks in the canner and a quart of tomatoes goes floating around in the water you are trying to can in. Or when you lift a jar out and the bottom cracks open, splattering hot goods all over yourself.

The fact is, mason jars are one thing where the phrase, "they don't make them like they used to," is a valid one.  My really old mason jars, which are over 20 years old, are just fine and will probably last forever.  But the newer ones, the ones between 4 and 10 years of age, are unpredictable and have a shorter shelf life than I would have thought.

Voila!

For a long time, I blamed myself as the culprit in any jar-breaking accidents, since I am the usual first suspect when things go south in the kitchen (that assumption is usually correct, too). I figured that maybe I'd put the jars into the canner too cold, or with over-tightened lids -- you name it.  But as I became more and more careful and it still happened, I was forced to admit the jars I'd bought just three years ago had become structurally unstable, somehow.

Some of the problem may have been that I had been using my jars in between when they had canned goods in them.  I would fill them and stick them in the microwave when I wanted to heat water. I drank from them.  I stored leftovers in the refrigerator using them.  In short, once they've been used a couple of times, I tend to heat, dishwash, refrigerate, and even freeze those old glasses a lot, to a point where I think sometimes they just can't handle one more super-heating like the canner provides.

Best friend and occasional foe.

So every couple of years, I have now resorted to buying some new ones, since new jars have never broken in the canner -- one once.  I try and vary my stock so I know what year they are from (narrow mouths one year, tinted for a different year, wide mouth for yet another), in order to identify which ones should be put aside for one or two more canning seasons, and which ones need to become drinking glasses. 

How has your experience with mason jars been?  Have you ever broken one in the canner? 

Relishing

So with the tomato harvest so late (we now have lots of fruit on the vines, but it's all still very green) I found myself in the unusual situation of sitting around on an August morning with nothing to can.  And then I remembered all my cucumbers.

If my tomatoes have been a disappointment so far, my cucumbers have been the opposite. They have far exceeded every other vegetable harvest this year, including zucchini (and that's saying something).  So now that we've had our fill of tsatsiki and cucumber salads, I decided to use the rest of this harvest for relish.

Why not pickles? I hear you cry.  The answer is simple.  My family is very picky where pickles are concerned. They go in these bursts of pickle-love, where they consume massive amounts of them, and then for a couple of years it seems like the eat none.  So canning pickles becomes an exercise in frustration, as the pickle boom becomes a bust and I'm left with jars and jars of them in the pantry.

But not relish.  After all, relish is a staple in tuna salads, on hot dogs, and in potato salad.  If the family does not always have a yen for relish, I can always use it in my own creations.

And so today was all about relish.

We begin our story with relish mix and a hot canner.

Cukezilla, you are a seedy sort and are not welcome at this party.

Into the bath for everyone!

Some relish and leftover cucumber juice for cocktails or smoothies! (Who am I fooling.  Cocktails for sure.)

Mormons, Survivalists, and Overproducing Homesteaders

There's a funny thread that runs through both survivalists and the Mormons' food storage methodology, and that is the idea of the Two-Year Plan, or having enough goods to last you two years, without needing to visit the grocery store or raid the neighbor's pantry at gunpoint. 

I pondered this Mormon/Survivalist common idea for a long time, wondering who started it first, and why.  And then there was this summer, and now I know exactly how and why the Two-Year Plan developed.  At least I think I do.

Both groups took the Two Year idea from earlier agricultural societies.  Back in those times, you put up two years' worth of a crop whenever you could, in case the next year produced a shitty crop -- or no crop at all -- due to circumstances beyond your control, like weather.

My tomatoes, as well as the tomatoes of most of the folks around here, may be heading for such a year.  It's been extremely windy, also warm, but also quite humid.  We can go from a 70 degree day to a 106 degree day in 24 hours.  

And the tomatoes are responding by producing a lot less fruit than normal, and losing a lot of their flowers before they even have a chance to be pollinated. With this weird summer happening now, it appears that the fruiting season is going to be substantially shorter than normal, and if frost happens at approximately the same time as usual, we will still lose our ability to grow tomatoes at about the same time as we normally do. Meaning there are going to be a lot less tomatoes produced for canning. 

Last month (before the weird weather had really set in) I went through the pantry to figure out exactly how many quarts of tomatoes we'd used these last 365 days, and found that we used exactly half of what I put up last year. 

It turns out, I actually carried out a two-year plan without ever intending to, which means in addition to survivalists and Mormons, there is actually a third group that has a Two-Year Plan, and that is homesteaders who got out of control with their canning and accidentally oversupplied themselves. Can I see a show of hands?

But this is not a bad thing to do, when you think about it, so don't be too hard on yourself if your hand is up. It turns out, the Mormons, survivalists and your great-grandparents were on to something.

Especially in these times of extreme climate uncertainty, having a two year supply of things you can preserve from your land is great, because as temperatures and other conditions grow more and more unstable and unpredictable, you never know when that shitty season is going to happen.

Add to that potential disasters, such as the huge solar flare we missed a couple of months ago (by nine mere days!) and there's a certain wisdom found in the habits of some Mormoms, survivalists and accidental overproducing homesteaders, who manage to put up more than they can use in one calendar year. When Mother Nature gives you more, preserve more.  

You won't be sorry you did. But if you don't, you may very well be sorry you didn't when that inevitable shitty season hits.

High Summer

"High Summer" by Bruce Morrison

We are heading towards high summer here on the Central Coast.  The fruit trees offer ripe fruit, with nearly as much fermenting beneath the branches as are still on the tree.  Vegetables are abounding, and we're enjoying everything from grilled eggplant to fried squash blossoms.

Yum.

Fried squash blossoms are a particular favorite of mine, but as they are extremely calorie-laden, I eat them sparingly.  In fact, I'll usually only make them once or twice in a season.  Fried squash blossoms are to summer what latkes are to winter -- a ceremonial food that honors the season the way nothing else can.  

I am also having a go at growing some lettuce in high summer -- no easy task.  I pick the baby leaves early, before they get big enough to get bitter, and so far it seems to be working.  For the first time in..well, ever....we have summer salads, albeit small ones.  But with newly pulled onions, ripe tomatoes and cucumbers, you can make a pretty large salad without using a lot of lettuce.

Summer lettuce

Perennial cabbage

The cabbage I harvested from my perennial cabbage plant was absolutely delicious, and made several servings of slaw, always nice on a hot day.  And already more leaves are sprouting, which gives me hope of yet another harvest in a few months!  Who knew?

The tasks of high summer are harvesting daily, watering, hanging wash out to dry in the sun and reading novels in the afternoons when its too warm to spend a lot of time outside.  We close up the house at 9 a.m., before the heat sets in, and open the windows back up around 7 p.m., when it starts to cool off.  If we make a dedicated effort to do this, as can eschew using the air conditioning entirely and just capture the cool of each day and lock it in for later. 

Eggplant, cukes, nasturtiums, squash, tomatoes

The other big job for high summer is canning, and I currently have 20 pounds of ripe peaches sitting on the counter, waiting for tomorrow when it's predicted to be the coolest day of the week.  That will be the best time to fire up the canner and put up some sweet goodness.  Last summer I did not get around to canning any peaches and, come springtime, I missed making a nice peach cobbler or two.  

(I did can some nectarines from our trees last season, but discovered they do not hold together well while getting water-bath canned.  This spring I opened them up to find them watery and too mushy to use in anything. Lesson learned.  Blech.)

Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I hope you are staying cool and enjoying the tasks and rewards of high summer.  After July, we're officially on the downslope to fall, which is bad or good, depending on how you feel about summer heat, and how bad your particular summer as been, weather-wise.  This has been a cool summer for us, so far, so there's definitely a lot to enjoy.

Time, transitions and tasks

I just realized I addressed a very similar topic in a previous post called "The Simple Life."  Forgive the repetition.  Obviously this is something on my mind a lot these days!

The other night I started reading a journal I kept during the junior and senior year that our sons were in high school.  It's been a very enlightening walk down memory lane, and coincides perfectly with the upcoming anniversary of my husband and I moving to this area and our sons going to college. 

Children leaving home is one of those events that you know is going to change your life, much the same as giving birth does.  And just like giving birth, what follows is a period of readjustment -- of schedules, lifestyles, and interests -- and one's general happiness depends on how well we transition.

It took a few years for me to make the transition, but I think it's safe to say now that I have successfully transitioned now and am no longer mourning the loss of my role as a hands-on Mom to a family, and no longer wondering what comes next. What comes next has been happening for some time now. In fact, I've noticed that my social calendar is more booked with work, dinner parties and events than it has been in probably 20 years.

But within that change, or any change we go through in life, for homesteaders the question can become one of integration.  For much as I learned how to integrate my homesteading activities with the kids' schedules when they were in school, I have now had to learn how to integrate them as a working, mostly-empty-nester.   

For me, it means I've had to learn to say "no" again. Frequently. Last Wednesday, for example, Big Ag and I were invited to a dinner party.  the same day, a family friend wanted to come up for a visit.  A group I'm active in scheduled a board meeting that night.  And a couple we like to socialize with came into town and wanted me to go wine tasting with them during the afternoon.

I said no to all of those lovely happenings except the dinner party, because there is only one of me and only so much time in a day.  And more than just having things that I also needed to do here, there were things I wanted to do here...things that I consider part of the good work and the good life we live.  And I wanted to be here doing those things more than I wanted to be doing any of the other things (although make no mistake, all of the aforementioned social activities would have been fun.)

So, for me, the biggest lesson I've learned is that if I want to keep growing my own food and doing all the other homesteading activities I enjoy doing, I have to give it priority scheduling, which means turning down other things.  Unless I want to be making soap at midnight, or canning at dawn...slogging through chores during times I'm sure to not enjoy doing them.  

We choose our friends.  We choose our work.  And we also get to choose how we spend our time.  But in choosing the homesteading lifestyle, sometimes we have to choose our own homemade soap over a day of wine tasting, or a morning spent watering and weeding over coffee in town with a friend.  

These may not be easy decisions, but if you value what comes out of your kitchen or your garden, they are necessary.  And they carry with them a peace, a mindfulness, and a tangible reward that is extremely satisfying.

Because saying "no" to one part of your life can often mean saying "yes" to another.

Spanish wines and strawberry jam

Last week was a social whirlwind, so this week will be a homesteading one.  

Bodegas "Vaca Rojo." Yum. Just Yum.

We had two parties to attend this last week, the first being a full paella dinner with wine tasting, featuring Spanish varietal wines.  We all bought a wine, no one knowing much about Spanish wine beyond Tempranillo, all of us hoping for the best.  The results were amazing.  From Cava to Mencia to Monastrell, each wine was amazing, complex and delicious, capable of pairing with foods far beyond just Spanish dishes.  We will be buying more, especially since a couple of local wineries actually produce great wines from Spanish vines.

The second was the pick-up party at the winery, where we were again wined and dined and where I get to take off my "employee" hat and put on my "wine club member" one. Lots of friends, lots of wine and great food. 

So as you can imagine, between preparing for parties and working, not much got done on the homesteading front other than planting some lettuce transplants.  This week, I will be hitting the ground running.  I have horticultural vinegar to spray on weeds, chickens to attend to, strawberry jam to make and banana buckwheat pancakes to serve. I even have a container of shea butter so I can make some lotions, to soothe my hands, which have become a little dried out from digging in the dirt. 

I may even make some hot cross buns, because, well, hot cross buns. (They need no other reason.)

Sometimes being out and about actually inspires me to get back to this good and simple work I do here, proving the theory that we're better at whatever we're doing when we take a break and do other things for awhile.

I'm happy to be heading back to the kitchen, the chicken coop and the pasture, full of paella and wine, grateful for spring and the good life on the land we have here.

My inner homesteader's idea of a shopping spree

Quality

I am on my way out to do some erranding in town this morning, and one of my tasks is to find a new candy thermometer to use in my jam-making.  My old one wore out and then finally broke.  First, the numbers wore off so I couldn't tell what the temperature was.  Then the casing around the thermometer itself broke, to a point where using it was dangerous (mercury in your marmalade is never a good food additive, IMO).

One of the hallmarks of homesteaders, though, is that we try and choose products that will last a long time, recognizing that cheaply-made metal or plastic tools simply result in more "fill" in the local landfill.  But that can be a challenge, given the mass-production of most goods on the market these days.

So how do you decide what to buy when choosing kitchen or yard tools, furniture, or even building materials for your home?  Because, so often, eco-friendly (or just built-to-last) also means prohibitively expensive.  And USA-made is also often more expensive than imported.

My solution is to be aware of these things and do let them guide your choices to some extent, but not to let it ruin your day if you can't. Pay more when you can, if its obvious something is of better quality.  But if its not in your budget, there's no sense in going into debt or racking yourself with guilt over it.

In general, antique store finds last longer than today's store bought goods, simply because they were made better....unless it's electronic, in which case "older" can also equate to "fire hazard."

I have a manual hand mixer from 1934, plates from the 1950's (sans lead) and wooden utensils of all kinds -- spoons, spatulas and potato mashers, all because I figure if those things have lasted a half-century, they'll last for me, too.  But things like candy thermometers.....well, you just have to take what you can get.  Not too many 50 year-old candy thermometers out there.

The one thing I do know is that you can sit up nights, losing sleep, because you're worried about the eco-friendliness of your choices. A couple of years ago I had to choose flooring for the house, and I went with laminate over bamboo because of cost.  And now I find out that my friend who does have bamboo floors is replacing them because they scratch too easily and already look ruined.  So how eco-friendly did that turn out to be? 

Sometimes it's between the devil and the deep blue sea....the laminate that will last, versus the bamboo that is eco-friendly but will show scratches like crazy. Or using 50 gallons of precious drinking water to clean an empty jar of peanut butter before throwing it into the recycling, versus just throwing the dirty jar into the trash and leaving it at that.  Which is better?  You got me.

 I just know that you have to make the best choice based on what's available and then live with it.

Over the years I have learned that one thing that often comes with eco-mindness is eco-guilt.  and eco-guilt is usually a double edged sword, good only for cutting yourself up and feeling bad.  

As they used to say when we took tests in grade school, just do your best.  Who can ask anything more?

January Tasks

With the new year often comes a renewed sense of organization, routine, and normalcy, which I'm always thankful for after Holiday Craziness. I've spent the last couple of days cleaning out closets, getting rid of things we don't need, thereby making more room to consolidate and put in order what we do have.

January is also the perfect time to get back to canning, taking advantage of fall and winter's bounty to replenish your stored goods.

This month, for instance, is when I usually put up orange marmalade and lemon curd.  Both are useful in a wide variety of dishes and desserts, and both have a place in my pantry.  Well, the marmalade goes to the pantry, the lemon curd goes to the freezer because it keeps better there.

There used to be four.  I have no willpower.

This morning, I used the last of 2012's lemon curd to make some lemon pies.  Don't they look good?  

While we're on the subject of citrus, this is also a great month to start some Limoncello, using fresh lemons.  The recipe I like to use is here: Tramie's Kitchen -- Limoncello

I am currently also dealing with the last of fall's pumpkins.  We've had soup and pumpkin spice bread since December and are all about bloody well sick of it about now, so I will puree our remaining pumpkins, plop the puree into a Mason Jar and then forget about it in the bottom of my freezer use it later. 

 

Someday it will look good to me again.

While I don't anticipate any more calls for pumpkin pie, we may get a wild-hair urge to have some pumpkin bread come October or so, before next year's gourds are ready, so this is a perfect solution.

Pretty cool

Today we were blessed with cool, breezy weather.  In the last four days, we've gone from a high temperature of 102 to the high today of just 66 degrees, and I am not complaining.  Mainly because my chores run by the weather.  And I needed a cooler day to accomplish some tasks I could not do without Mother Nature's cooperation.

First on the agenda was transplanting next fall's butternut squash into the ground, along with some late season tomatoes and some marigolds (the last purely for color and decoration).  A cool day is a perfect one for transplanting.  If temperatures go much above the low '80's, plants here will struggle as they try to recover from both heat and transplant shock, and I've had many plants either die this way, or just barely hang on, producing nothing, because I planted them while it was too warm and they never quite got over it.

The other task I needed to do was put up some of the apricots Big Ag brought home over the weekend.  I did two quarts of canned fruit, and four pints of preserves this morning, which used up about half of the apricots I had.  The other half I am going to dry, because there is nothing better than the sweet but tart taste of dried apricots, either on their own or in recipes which call for them, like a Moroccan Chicken recipe I like and make a lot.  Since commercially dried fruit usually has sulfites, it will also be nice to have some apricots on hand that won't induce an asthma attack in anyone.  

But I'm waiting on drying the fruit until later this week, when it is supposed to warm up once again.  I can't say I'm looking forward to having the heat back, but I'm glad I will get at least a couple more days of cool ocean breezes before it comes back.

First fruits

First squash of summer!

Summer's first fruits are finally showing up here at the homestead, while the last of the fall crops are harvested.  The last of the carrots came out of the ground yesterday, along with some of the onions and radishes I planted in October, if you can believe that. The cool nights here really help keep things in the ground for a long time, which is great when you want an extended harvest -- picking a few here, and a few there, as needed. The carrots will be blanched and frozen today, along with some more mustard greens.  The rest will be eaten now, or in the case of the onions, hung up to dry and cure for use later on.

Big Ag is bringing home 20 pounds of apricots for me tonight, for canning and making preserves with this weekend.  And my first cucumbers and squash plants are on the vine outside as we speak.  I even found three or four raspberries and a couple of ollalieberries off my first-year vines yesterday, which I ate promptly, before the birds could find them.

Last summer at this time we were busy with two high school graduations plus packing and moving, so we weren't doing much homesteading, and it's funny how easily I forgot just how busy the regular routine of picking and canning keeps me, most days.  It's hard work, but it's rewarding work.  I've said many times that there's no sound better than that of a canning lid snapping into place after it comes out of the canner.  It sounds like satisfaction from a job well done and the promise of good things to come, all at the same time.

I'm working this Saturday at the winery -- hopefully indoors, because it's expected to be 103 degrees outside -- but after this I will be cutting back to working outside the home just one or two days a month (whenever the winery needs help most, if they do) and using the rest of my time to begin putting up our winter stores.

Good work, done in pleasant surroundings -- anywhere that happens, you really can't ask for anything more.

Foolproof Marmalade Recipe

This morning I finally got around to finishing the marmalade I'd begun making a couple of days ago.  The recipe I use is great, because there are several logical stopping places where you can put all your food in the fridge and leave it until you have time to fire up the canner, sterilize your mason jars, etc. So this morning I took the pulp, the little matchstick-cut peels, and the sugar, and brought them all to a boil.  

The exact recipe for this is almost foolproof, hence perfect for me.   You need one cup of peels, and then equal amounts of pulp and sugar.  I ended up with about 3 and 3/4 cups of orange pulp, so I added the same amount of sugar.  The peels, sugar, pulp, and a half teaspoon of butter (to cut down on foaming) are put in the pot to boil, until they reach 220 degrees F.  At that point, you will want to place a little on a cold spoon (I'd freeze two or three in advance for this purpose) and put it into the fridge.  When the marmalade on the spoon cools, it should be thick enough that when you push on it, it wrinkles up a bit.  This lets you know your batch has cooked enough to gel.  I have to emphasize that it MUST hit 220 degrees for this to happen.  Otherwise you'll end up with some lovely orange sauce.

Once the right temperature and consistency is acquired, you can then shut the heat off and ladle the mixture into hot jars and place them in a water bath canner for 10 minutes or so.  

When you are done, you will end up with delicious Scottish-style marmalade! 

Inside Days, Outside Days

I've realized recently that my days are pretty much divided into two categories -- inside days and outside days.  I don't have a preference of the two, unless the weather is doing something extremely hot or cold, but I've noticed I get more work done if I devote my time to either one or the other -- not both.

Inside Days

Inside days involve doing laundry, cleaning, making soap, laundry detergent, lotions and salves, doing canning and preserves, and often fixing a dinner that requires maximum involvement. Think oven-baked chicken, biscuits, a fresh salad and homemade dressing, and a cobbler for dessert.  My family loves inside days, because on outside days, they're sometimes left to fend for themselves, meal-wise.

Outside days are harder physically, but it's incredibly rewarding to work out in the fresh air and sun all day long.  These days usually consist of cleaning out coops, planting, watering, sweeping, digging, and other manual labor-oriented tasks, as well as running into town to errand and do my weekly grocery shopping.

But trying to do both in the same day often proves problematic.  The days I spend outdoor digging and trudging up and down our hill are NOT the ones that leave me with enough time or energy to fix a real, made-from-scratch, sit-down dinner.  The days I've spent indoors, cleaning up after the family, don't always leave me with a strong desire to go out and get super dirty (and bring a bunch of dirt back inside to the clean house).  And it's hard to shift gears, once you've been doing one thing all day long.  

Outside Days

I'm thinking my great-grandmothers probably had a similar schedule, and may even have felt the same way as me.  They probably had to choose between canning and gardening, planting and preserving, making soap or making rows for crops. Of course back then both spouses worked the land and so chores were divided on a daily basis (perhaps at least somewhat based on gender), but I'm sure my grannies used to wake up, look at what needed to be done and ask themselves if they were going to have an inside, or outside kind of day.

Whatever kind of day you're having, I hope it's a good one.

She's a beaut!

My new Ball Canner arrived today, which means I can begin canning in earnest next week.  I already have my large Graniteware canner, but it has a wavy bottom that the makers of my new electric stove say will not safely work on the glass-top burners.  So off to Amazon I went to purchase one with a flat bottom, and this is it!  Pretty, isn't it? I even have a side burner on our propane stove outside, which means I can do my canning outdoors in summer using either the new or old canner, something I'm very excited about.

As I sift through what homesteading activities mean the most to me, I can definitely state that the canning part of it is here to stay.  I love the preserves, tomatoes, and pie fillings I'm able to put up, in season.  Anything that comes out of my canner tastes about 100 times better than the replacement item I'd buy in the store.  I can be picky about the fruit and vegetables I choose to throw into whatever I'm making, which I can't do if I buy a canned or bottled product that someone has already made.

I occasionally read a blog written by a woman who lives alone and lives the homesteading lifestyle, and she was saying this morning that she stayed up all night keeping the fires in her wood stoves stoked so the temperature inside the farmhouse wouldn't drop below the 40's or 50's.  She talked about how thankful she was to not have central heating, because she felt the way she was living was more authentic.  

It gave me pause, because I do not agree about this sort of  extreme, Colonial Williamsburg kind of "authenticity," and I depart from many hard-line homesteaders on this.  If I have central heat, I may not use it as often as my Modern Living neighbors, but I do use it.  It's on right now. I will heat my house up to about 70 degrees this morning and then shut it off, crank up our pellet stove and let it keep us warm until this time tomorrow morning, when I will crank up the central heating once again for an hour or so.  It's a system that works, it's inexpensive, and it keeps us comfortable.

A lot of people who heat with wood have not even thought of the fact that, if everyone heated with wood alone, there would be no more wood for their woodstoves because the forests would all be cut down by their neighbors, in order to quell their own appetite for heat.  Then they'd be reeeeeally cold. So the practicality of practicing an "authentic" lifestyle en masse is even more questionable than the practice of it as an army of one family, here and there.

But I like to can, I like to grow food, and I like to limit my gasoline and electricity consumption, because those are things I find valuable.  So I do those things, and I no longer feel guilty about the things I don't do.  

Everyone should know what to do to survive in primitive conditions; I certainly believe that.  But that doesn't have to mean you live in them now.  Maybe it has something to do with being 50, but I have little tolerance for suffering for the sake of suffering or to prove to yourself or a public that you can.  And if you're trying to sleep in a freezing house, you're suffering, whether you care to admit it or not.  

Perhaps the greatest thing about getting old is knowing you have the right to not participate in something, and feeling perfectly comfortable in not doing whatever it is.  Because it's not only in the doing, but also in the not-doing, that contentment and happiness (not to mention comfort) are found.