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.
This fall one of the things we did was get rid of the old, inefficient appliances in our kitchen and replace them with new ones. We took a financial hit in doing it, but it had to happen. The dishwasher sounded like a den of grizzly bears wrestling whenever we'd start it up. It washed our dishes in lukewarm water, and consequently didn't clean well. It was old, and was a cheap, bottom-of-the-barrel appliance even when it was new.
The oven was a slightly different version of the same story. It too was cheaply made, and filled the house with a strong odor of propane whenever it was started up. So both needed to go. But while the dishwasher we bought was simply a better version of a dishwasher, we decided to change from using a gas stove to owning an electric one, something I swore I would never do.
Now that I'm adjusted to using the electric stove, I have to admit I actually like it better than the gas one. Cooks fight over this issue all the time, and I was firmly in the "gas" camp until owning this particular stove.
For me, while I was fine with having an electric oven, but was absolutely committed to having a gas cooktop. I'd just heard they were better. And while you can buy what's known as a "duel fuel" range, with an electric oven and a gas cooktop, they are expensive. My other issue was that propane is a big mystery to me...it is NOT the same thing as natural gas, and I've heard, alternately, that it burns cooler/ hotter, and/or dirtier than natural gas does. This may be because, to convert a natural gas stove to a propane one, you must use a conversion kit, and I'm guessing some models just convert better than others.
So I bit the bullet, and went ahead and purchased an electric range, almost crying on the way home. But I've been pleasantly surprised: On an electric stovetop, for instance, you can set the heat on the burners much lower than you can on a gas stove...melting things like chocolate and butter has never been easier. The glass cooktop is extremely easy to keep clean. And you can't beat the even heat an electric oven provides when baking. The other thing is efficiency. A propane stove has a pilot light which always stays lit....when you are in town shopping, on vacation, or sleeping at night. An electric oven remains completely off until you ask it to do something.
In short, I'm sold.
But as I'm wont to do, I do worry about the fact that I won't have much to cook on indoors should the power go out. Which is why we now have an extra tank of propane stored for our barbecue outside. It's large enough to use as an oven, and even has a side burner which would function as a one-burner cooktop in an emergency.
We've faced this question over and over since we've moved in. Do you get the off-the-grid capable appliance, which you mainly own for the sake of an emergency, or do you get an efficient appliance that might not work in an emergency. Can you make do without it in the event something happens, substituting something else, as we can do with our barbecue when the electric stove doesn't have any juice? Can you use your generator to run your pellet stove if your an earthquake hits in the dead of winter and knocks the power lines out of commission, or should you invest in a wood stove, and just make sure you have a good sized supply of seasoned wood stored someplace at all times?
These are not questions you want to dwell on too much lest you be called a prepper, but I would think you'd certainly want a general emergency plan in place, just in case.
I always try to live in both worlds, but I can tell you right now that there's no ideal solution. What works 365 days a year under normal circumstances may not be your best bet in an emergency, and visa versa. So you pick your choice, you write a check, and you take your chances.
