A season of perserving

Jun 8
6 min read

Welcome back to the homestead our friends and family. We hope life has been treating you well. The first thing you will notice that I did a little updating on our web site. I was tired of the orange. Changed up the font for the blogs and added a few links down below the blog. I added a subscribe here link and a link to our amazon wish list. Please do not feel obligated.

We have done absolutely nothing since the last time we talked. Just kidding. We keep quite busy around here. Maybe a little too busy, because we just want to get things done. We did get our temporary outdoor kitchen set up. We set it up just outside of the camper. We store a lot of items in there...cooking pans and utensils, dish soap, paper towels and cleaner. When we do create our permanent outdoor kitchen we will have storage for all of that. I put the kitchen to good use that last week or so. More on that in a little bit.

We are so lucky that we live here. We have been enjoying nature at its finest. We finally got hummingbirds to come to our feeder. The birds, butterflies and dragon flies flitting around. We have little lizards that scurry around out stumps and log borders. At night we enjoy the bats flying around. We have spotted a black snack on our property. It is the good kind, so we leave it be. The funny thing we have experienced is a pair of birds were attempting to nest in the bumper of the jeep. Rick would rip it out, and they would get back to work. He finally had to stuff cardboard in them, so they would move on. Oh and we have a rogue rooster that our ex neighbor left behind. He likes to stand outside our bedroom window in he morning and non stop crow. Just want to throw an alarm clock at him. At least he is not destroying gardens and such. The flowers have been amazing. Our lily, rose bush and moon flower have all bloomed. You can see photos below. I will be adding more and more flowers as time goes on.

We had been waiting on pay day, so we did as much around here as possible without having to go buy. We repurpose and think outside the box. We broke down some pallets that we got for free. Rick then ran the boards through the table saw. He decided to make the cupboard doors with that wood. He did a really good job. He sanded down the edges, but they are sitting aside for now. He had to wait to buy a bit we needed to install the hinges that we purchased awhile ago. We also had to wait to get some more black stain. We have the bit and the stain later this weekHe, so we are working on that this week.

While Rick has been working on the cabinet doors, I started to start preserving our harvests. As you know, it is hot and humid here. We do not have air conditioning, and we do not have a root cellar yet. Frig space has been a premium. So, I made the decision that I will have to can and freeze as much as I can. Canning the preferred method. I have been waiting for us to clean out the conex so I could have all of my canning supplies. Now that I have them, I got straight to it. I had a bunch of items in the freezer that were waiting. So I literally had a sink full of food that needed thawed. The first item up was 2 cow tongues. I know it is not everyone's cup of tea, but it makes good lunch meat. I boiled them up and sliced them. I packaged them up. I put one bag in the frig and the rest in the freezer.

Next up, I had beef and pork bones that needed boiled down into bone broth. I did not have a lot of each so I just put them all in one stock pot. Not the first time I have done that. It probably won't be the last. Once it was done, I got several quarts of broth all canned up. While the broth was cooking up. I canned 9 quarts of turnips. Now a first for me. I made my first jelly. I had several bags of blackberries in the freezer. I got them cooked down and ran them through the food mill. We do not like all the seeds. I found a recipe in my new amish cookbook. I had so much juice, it was a two day process. I have several jars of jelly for the shelves. I had a bag of peaches and 3 bags of raspberries. I cooked them down to make a butter. Ran it through a mill. I only ended up with 3 jars, but it was very tasty.

I harvested my fall garlic. It did not get very big. I minced them and put them in molds in the freezer. I have the onions another hair cut, so those are drying now. I will have to rethink the whole drying process for the future. With it being so humid, items are just not drying as fast as I like. Not fully either. I harvested all the lettuce and got it stored in the frig. I harvested all of the radishes and put them in the frig. I am letting some go to seed. The lettuce is growing back. So, that is exiting.

We harvested our potatoes. The next day, I spent all day dicing and canning them. We had 30 quarts go into the canner, but 1 did not make it. The bottom literally fell out. It was a clean break, so I made the potatoes into mashed for dinner. Now The kohlrabi has been coming in spaced out. My son suggested we make kohlrabi fries. Oh they were amazing. I will be making more of them. Today I made pickled beet greens. The beets will be canned tomorrow. This were an awesome gift from our friends. Ours are not ready yet.

While I was working my butt off in the outdoor kitchen, my poor foot and ankle was sore and swollen. It finally subsided after a few days. I tried to spend time off of it, but it is hard, when you things to do that are time sensitive. Rick and I got one half of the food forest weeded. We just do not have the time to cardboard, make wood chips and spread them right now. We intend to, but we have to prioritize. Even though it took us 3 hours to do it.

We worked on a bunch of little things as well. I made comfrey tea. It will be ready in 3 weeks. It will stink really bad, but it will be amazing fertilizer for the garden. Rick caulked the sink and back splash. He also had to tweak the solar system. He also made a trash can. We needed one for under our kitchen sink. We found one that would fit, but they are so expensive for tops that will wear out sooner than later. He just needs to get it stained. He installed the white board in the conex. I went ahead and wrote down all of our projects we want to do. A second list of the projects in progress. Rick also built trim and a handle for our frig slide out. I picked out and purchased the family photos for my frames that I found in the conex. I will be getting those in the frames this week and we will get them mounted on the wall with my tree of life.

This past weekend we headed up to Tom and Theresa's house. The guys were going to finish the roof, and I was going to help Theresa with her garden chores. We all worked our butts off. It was very humid, but still was a good time. We love spending time with them. Great fellowship. We get work done and we share knowledge back and forth. Theresa spoils us with amazing food. I also got to go to a food and water preservation class with her. We stopped at a few estate sales on the way home. I scored a kitchen sink for my outdoor kitchen for $2.50. How amazing is that. Theresa never sends us home empty handed. She has one of the biggest hearts of all the people I know. She send me home with 2 grocery bags full of beets and greens, red poppy seeds, a black eyed susan plant, hyssop plant, 1 sedum plant, 2 rhubarb plants, 6 tomato plants, 2 pumpkin plants and 1 basil plant. She even sent 2 homemade muffins. Spoiled. I got the plants all in the ground today before it poured.

I believe that was all that I put on my list of accomplishments. We thank you for stopping by and reading our blog. We really appreciate it. We will be busy preserving, working on the cabinets and the jeep needs some repairs. Take care and we will see you soon.