Just another Day on the Farm

Ah the joys of wild harvesting..

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

So this spring, my Dear Hubby was thrilled to find a new patch of my wild plum bushes and he has been checking them off and on thought the season, and was very excited to do the first pick, now these plums were all from the new area.

They came home and I looked at them, hmm, a little smaller, a little redder, but soft when pushed and flesh is a nice yellow, tried them and went.. wow, tart, are these ready, cut them open and looked.. yup the flesh is ready..hmm

So make my juice, and then went to make my wild Plum Jelly, well it took double the amount of sugar as normal to get them to the point I like them, but on the other hand, the color is amazing, and the flavor is awesome, its tart-swet, with a lovely undertone of chokecherry, now I am not even going to be begin to try an explain why I find this undertone but that is what it tastes like to me.

Hubby however was unhappy to a point, he wanted the flavor we had gotten at the other spot, made me chuckle a little, and I got to explain that is why we graft and take cuttings so that you know what you are getting, because these bushes grew wild, each group has its own flavor, and he has lots and lots in that other patch that will be coming ready soon enough.

But I will be honest as well, if I had brought home wild harvested plums from the new bushes only, i would not be impressed and I sure would not want to bring them to the farm, on the other hand, I would bring cuttings from the good bushes in a heart beat and see if i can get them started and growing on the farm.

Its luck of the draw to a point when you are wild harvesting, if you are lucky enough that you are picking tree’s or bushes on old farms, then you have a very good chance that they picked those tree’s or bushes because they would give good quality fruit and you have leg up, but if you are picking wild grown fruits, they will change from tree to tree, and you will need to adjust your way of deal with the resulting fruits or berries.

On the other hand the fall rasberries are rocking!, so big, so sweet, so awesome!

Posted in Canning, wild foods | Tagged 100 mile food challange, Canning, Soft Fruits, Wild Foods | 11 Comments

Fall Garden Stew-Canning

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Lots and Lots of Tomato’s Ready-Check
Boatload of green peppers ready-Check
Yellow and Green Beans by the bowlful-Check
Potato’s died down and ready to harvest-Check
Carrots-small but o so sweet-Check
Turnips-Love the flavor to this-Check
Butternut Squash or any other winter squash-Check
Onions-Pulled and drying-ready for use-Check
Horseradish-Check
Green Cabbage-Heads are formed and ready for picking-Check
Lamb meat in the freezer from the butcher out this year-Check

You know when you have a full bushelful of tomato’s coming in and you look at them and then look at your pantry and you know that you have more then enough pasta sauce and basic tomato sauces, or tomato based items, but you are NOT going to waste this bumper crop.. Wash, core and dice them, simmer them up, and use them as the base for all kinds of stews, chili or veggie soups that can be pressure canned for later winter use.

Today, I have made big batches of Lamb soup, Lamb stew and Lamb Chili, all three are in fact quite different, The lamb soup is very heavy on the fall veggies, tons of beans, carrots, turnips, a whole cabbage head diced, with a few potato’s and lots of basil and horseradish greens in there, the lamb stew is loaded with Onions, potato’s, carrots and turnips, with sqaush melted into the broth for added depth, the chili is tradional for me, ground meat, onion, tomato, Green Peppers, , Mushrooms,Brown Beans, Kidney beans and lots of chili powder. Each batch is making about 14 quarts, or 28 pints.

One of the things most amazing about all three of these stews or chili is the amount that is zero mile, other then the Kidney beans and the spices, everything right down to the navy beans for the chili was grown on the farm.. Our meat, our veggies, our herbs, our well water.. To say that its eating local would be fair!

Do you make end of the garden pickles, or you do make soups and stews in the fall for use later in winter, when everything is ready for harvest? What did you have in your last most local meal?

Posted in Canning | Tagged 100 mile food challange, Canning, Food Production and Recipes, Frugal, Garden, Greens, Lamb Recipes, Soups and Stews, Veggies | Leave a comment

Sweet Butter..

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

I like butter, and its the one of the reason’s I can’t wait for my cow to start milking is so that I can make my own homemade butter, I use butter in tiny amount for that amazing flavor, the local butter I can get in my 100 mile zone currently had gone up to 6.99, even the cheapest butter is 4 dollars and up, with the good qaulity made in province typically being at 5.49 or 5.99 depending on what store you go to in town.

Well they had a sale on butter, now it was a drive into the city limits but we needed to get other things in town including banking, so it was a multi trip, not just for butter, so we walked down the isles, with me shaking my head and finding price after price higher then what we pay in our local discount store, and hubby tracks down the butter sale spot, so I said grab that big full box, and hubby slowly turns his head and goes.. ahhh, that would be forty pds of butter hon.. I smile and go yup.. he shakes his head and says, don’t think they will let us buy that much, I smile back and say, lets try (do I own up to the fact that I called the store ahead to make sure that there was no limit?)

So off to the till we go and I now have a full case of butter at just under 3 dollars per pd, a savings of two plus dollars for the regular and a savings of almost 4 dollars a pd from the one that I normally buy at the local store, it will freeze beautifully, and I am hoping that by the time I use this up, either a new sale will come on, or my cow will be starting to milk, and I can make my own..

What was the last thing you bought enough of to get the look at the till, from the other customers, and or from your own family 🙂

Posted in Food Storage | 6 Comments

Lets talk Pumpkin…

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Now most of us know what a pumpkin is, if nothing else from seeing them on the porches in N.A. at the end of Oct when the trick and treaters come out, or at thanksgiving when either the much loved or much hated pumpkin pie comes out!

The pumpkin can be hard to peel, so the most common way to cook them is to cut off the top, clean out the guts (saving the seeds) and giving the rest to the chickens or pig, who love them as a treat, and then cut them into halfs and bake them till tender, when the skin will peel right off at that point you can put the flesh into a pot and simmer it down to the thickness you like and then freeze it up.. if you are going to can it, you cut it into lines and then peel the lines, cubing it into the jars and pressure canning it from there.. You can also make the most amazing pumpkin jam, I highly recommend this, and then do it up into 8 oz jars, each jar is perfect for making a pumpkin loaf or cake, just remember to lower the sugar used, by the amount of sugar used in the jam per jar.

You can make soups with it, you can add peices to stews, it will melt into the broth and add a wonderful depth of flavor, you can make cakes or loafs or bar’s with it, you can cut it up and use it as a extra feed value for almost all of your barn critters, sheep, goat, cow or pig will eat it, chickens too.. you have to cook it for the ducks or geese, and only very tiny amounts for the rabbits but it can be given in small treat sizes.

Most folks are aware of or have bought and eaten pumpkin seeds at some point, either in the shell, roasted with a touch of salt or more likely out of the shell raw, if you are male or have males in your house over the age of 30, and you keep up with the latest trends, then the odds are good that you have raw pumpkin seeds in the house and find ways to add them to your man’s meal plan.

The second use that is often done with raw pumpkin seeds is to grind them up and use them in both human and critter natural deworming programs, on the farm, I will always save, wash and then dry the pumpkin seeds, a few get roasted and used fresh by me, but most get put away for use for the critters in late winter, just as a handfull of sunflower seeds go on top of my rabbits feed for extra in the extra cold, so does pumpkin and sqaush seeds go to my layers, my mothers to be and my milkers.

A few folks, know that they can eat the male pumpkin flowers (always leaving some for their jobs of course), they can be finely sliced raw into salad’s, or added into soups, stews, dried for later use, or they can be stuffed with fillings, veggie fillings or meat fillings or a mix of the above, they can be dripped in batter and deep-fried for a amazing crunchy treat.

But not many seem to know that the pumpkin young greens can also be eaten, you can dried them for crumbles, you can simmer them into soups or stews, you can cook them into greens the same way you would any other strong green, some like to do a first blanch and then use them, I don’t find I need to for nice light young green leaves but if they are a bit of a darker green, I would agree.

Wonder what to do with the big huge old leaves of dark green, well your critters will still love them, they can be hung in bundles to dry and used as a feed green in the very coldest part of winter as a suppliment, they can be used as instant home grown plates for those days you want to serve something just a bit different at the table or at a picnic.

So what is your favorite part of the pumpkin plant? What is your favorite recipe that uses pumpkins in it? Did you grow Pumpkins in your garden this year? if not, will you be buying some to put away for later use?

This is a Homestead Barn Hop Blog Post-Follow the link to see what lots of other homestead folks are up to.

Posted in gardens | Tagged 100 mile food challange, Canning, Farm Life, Frugal, Garden, Health, Veggies | 9 Comments

Power Out-How are you planning on cooking….

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Gotta say, I am a bit surprised at the massive power-outage that took place in the US and Mexico, I mean wow, how can such a huge blackout occur because of one staff member, removed a piece of monitoring equipment, Millions spent on air traffic control, millions spent on strengthing the border, millions spent on making lists and checking them twice but a backup that would stop five million peaple in two different countries from losing power is not in place!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/09/09/us-power-outage.html?cmp=rss

Regardless of where you live, if you lose power, unless you have a propane or gas lined stove, you are most likely losing your cooking means, there are a number of different ways to give yourself a cooking means, you could have a wood cook stove in the house, you could have extra propane for your camping cook stove, you could have extra propane and a good BBQ set up, you could have a homebuilt outdoor fireplace an oven combo, you could have a solar cooker, you could have a rocket stove, either homemade or bought..

As folks know, i got a ecozoom, as I wanted to be as frugal on the amount of fuel needed to cook and or reheat my food, boil my water etc. I promised a little more detail on things as I figured things out myself, and I figured it out.. so lets see what I have learned.

So first, I wanted a factual amount of wood burned so I used precut wood at one inch by one inch by 12 inches long.

So this little one can make flapjacks in cast iron frying pan like no ones business, you only need four sticks to make a full batch in cooking time.

For making Baking Powder in a cast iron cook pot with lid, it took six sticks to cook a pot full, the pan does need to be greased and they do need to be flipped, you can`t seem to do the coal cooking that you would on a real fire, the space in the ecozoom is just to small to do that, you would need to use coal intead of wood fire. But it cooked them in less then eight min from start to finish.

Then I added in 2 quarts of water, brought it to a boil in under five min and put in fresh dug cut up potato`s.. Time to cooked potatos was, (this required a total of four more sticks) right around ten min, its worth noting that fresh dug potato`s do cook about 20 percent faster then stored potato.

Now because I could not stand the idea of letting that boiling water and the rest of the coals and fire go to waste, I put in two cups of rice into it and the rice was done perfectly by the time the fire died out and it was allowed to just sit for 20 min..

Awesome.. for less then one typical fire log in size, I cooked four frying pans full of pancakes, a cast iron pot with five Baking Powder Bisquits, boiled water, cooked potato`s and made a pot of rice..

This post is part of the Homestead Preparedness Challenge

Posted in Just in Case | Tagged Food Production and Recipes, Frugal, Life Happens | 11 Comments

Got Duck-Boy do I have recipe for you try..

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Now I have more little tiny sweet cherry tomato`s then I honestly know what to do with, the amount dropping is sad, the splits are going to the chicken`s and ducks, the good are coming in and being dried into sweet little packages of amazing tomato flavor, good thing I run more then one deydrator at a time. The outside basils will soon be cut and hung to dry, a few new ones have been started for use in the house.. Those two items being top quality will certainly effect the outcome of this project, so here goes..

You will need 2 feet of small casing or if you don`t have casing, just make small flat round 3 oz sausages.

2 pds of duck, mixture of leg and breast with skin
2 slices of your choice of smoked bacon-chopped
1 tsp of course salt
half a tsp of fresh ground black pepper
one fourth chopped fresh basil
3 tablespoons of chopped sun-dried tomatoes
2 tbsp of red wine
1 tbsp of tomato paste

So step one, grind your duck through a fine disk, then put it into a large bowl, add the rest of the list above, mix well, using your clean washed hands. Then grind the seasoned mixure though the fine disk on your meat grinder. If you are stuffing, do so know.

Place the covered patty`s or the sausages into the fridge for at least a couple hours allow the flavors to blend, use within 2 to 3 days or freeze for up to 2 months.

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | Tagged Charcuterie, Ducks, Food Production and Recipes, Garden, Greens, Herbs, Veggies | 2 Comments

Really Liking my new hot smoker

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

I was able to find a proper Hot smoker or grill depending on how you use it on sale at 60% off, and given that its made of steel, it should last years if looked after, I was surprised at how much charcoal it takes about 40 cents worth (at regular prices) per 4 to 5 hours of smoke time, does not sound bad but compared to being able to use free wood in things like my ecozoom or my homemade cold smoker it will add up..

I have been busy with different things on it, learning and figuring out how long for this or that.. its a tough job but someone has to eat the end results, things like this smoked Lamb Chops..

w Or maybe a Maple Cured Hot Smoked Salmon instead!

Posted in Charcuterie | Tagged Charcuterie | Leave a comment

Sign of the times..

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

With late summer and early fall wild crabapple, apple, plum and berry foraging all taking place, it means that I am driving down some roads that I typically only go down twice a year, once in the spring to confirm bloom and or spot new area’s to pick, and mark down what is growing where, so I have a idea of when to head back to the area in general.

Now I live close to a number of biggest cities, within an hour to hour an half in three directions, there is a city but the area I live in is quite rural, and we have the families that have been here for 100 plus years, so we are always going to be those new folks to the area, right now folks direct them to my farm with the comment, that sheep hippie lady, cracks me right up.

Anyway despite it being a farming area, averaging between five to 30 acres for those on small to those that own more but tend to rent out the fields to the big farmers in the area, compared to out west size, our big farms are still small, but switch provinces and they are considered quite large in our area.

It was a surprise to me when I moved here, that most folks that had small farm land, didn’t really small farm, they were single or double income off the farm, and either rented out their fields or left their barns empty, or were what the “old farmers” called, hobby farms which around here means you have horses mainly.

Now I like horse’s and so I readily would learn where and who had horses with their cute little fancy red and white barns and I am always on the look out for anyone who has what I call a small hobby mixed critter farm, they are where few and far between.

Well this year driving around was eye opening, farm after farm that had horse’s, are now missing them, many fields have clearly not been grazed at all, but a number of them have been replaced with either sheep or goats, the place that had the mini horses, all gone, the place with the emu’s, pens empty, the place with the donkey’s, gone.. the place with the herd of big work horses, empty..

However in their place is something interesting, the mini horses are gone, but one pen had ducks in it, one pen had chickens and one pen had a milking goat with kids.. hmmm

Turned down one of those Mc Mansion roads that leaded to a High bush cranberry picking spot, each house is on five acres and normally its mowed lawns, fancy plantings, now I had noticed that every second or third place about three or four years ago had started gardens and they have gotten bigger but this year was a shock, on what seemed like every third house was sudden makeshift, slapped together pens for rabbits, ducks, chickens and turkeys being raised for the families. At two different homes, they have staked out goats and one even had a small homemade lean to with a heavy pallet fence nailed together with pig or two being raised in it.

Don’t think folks are seeing or feeling the rising costs of food at the store, well that one drive down that well to do five acre, half million dollar houses road showed me that O ya, the pinch is being felt everywhere!

Stopped in to do some elderberry picking at local farmers field edge and they popped over to see how I was, and to see how the summer had gone, and one of the first things they said was, have your noticed that the price of everything is going up, and that they had done a couple extra cords of wood up and that they were thinking that they would use more wood this year, less heating oil or power, I can certainly see their point.

So are you seeing more folks with smaller critters in your neck of the woods? Are you seeing that the pens are being done as frugal as possable? Do you see more folks putting up more wood to help control heating costs for the coming winter?

Posted in farm, food | Tagged Farm Fresh Eggs, Farm Life, Garden, Soft Fruits, Veggies, Wild Foods | 2 Comments

Making Homemade Stew and Canning it for future use

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Fall Lamb Stew Recipe (this is the single regular pot for family eating, X4 for canning)

1 pd of stewing lamb meat
1 large diced onion
2 diced garlic cloves
3 quarts of lamb bone broth or make up beef flavored broth.
eight small fresh carrots or four to five big carrots from the store-Peeled and cut into cubes
6 large potato-peeled and diced
10 Roma tomato’s- diced
1 large green and red pepper-diced
Mushrooms if you like them-sliced and diced
Salt-Pepper and a good amount of dried crumbled basil.

Put your lamb and onion in your pot at med heat with a touch of oil to keep from sticking and brown the meat/cook the onion till clear, then add your broth and the rest of the list, simmer for ten min if you are pressure canning, then jar up into your clean hot jars, and into your pressure canner in either pints or quarts, as you are going with your longest ingredent, in this case the lamb stew meat, you will follow your canning guide on how long that is in your area, it changes depending on your sea level and what kind of pressure canner you have etc.

For the dinner, continue simmering the stew till it cooks down and thick’n up all on its own, Here’s what it will look like 🙂 Serve with fresh bread, or make some dumplings to go with, or just lick the bowl LOL

Posted in Canning | 3 Comments

Salve Making-Balm of Gilead Follow Up..

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

As some of the blog members might remember I was on a cottonwood bud hunt this early winter to make a healing salve normally called Balm of Gilead, well it was time to make it into the salve for winter use on rough lips and chapped hands to be.

So I strained out the buds and poured the remaining oil into the pot, after measuring and weighing it out.. then I measured out, cut and weighted my raw bee’s wax..

Gentley heated them together to melted and blended together, and then poured into little tiny 4 oz glass jars, cooled and into a dark cupboard to store, I like a very stiff salve, it warms up and come off well with body heat but otherwise is stiff, you can take a good amout off with a nail if you require more then a light coating on your finger or fingers to do the trick. If you want a softer salve, you just need to use less bee’s wax.

Update: I had a small cut on my thumb, it was quite sore and within a matter of an hour despite cleaning it, I have little red streaks run out of it and it was hot and red, started treating it with my homemade salve, and I am amazed, within six hours, and three tiny rubs of salve later, the red is gone, the streaks are gone, the hurt is down to a min and then only if you push on it, it looks like a small reddish line now, its not healed by any means but I am impressed!