More Pickles!

We picked a bunch of cucumbers and made more pickles. We used the following Dill pickle recipe:

Dill Pickles

Boil together:
3 quarts water
1 quart vinegar
1 cup pickling salt
(makes approximately 8 quarts of pickles)
(approximately 1 pound of pickles per jar)

Line bottom of jar with a grape leaf, slit cucumbers with knife (top and bottom to aid in absorption of above solution).  Place 2 cloves of garlic in jar along with 2 heads of dill or 1 head and stem plus leaves in the jar.  Pack pickles in jar and add boiling solution. Seal (keep lids and rings in boiling water until you remove them to seal jars)

If you don't have grape leaves you can add a piece of alum as big as the end of a finger and place on top of the pickles in the jar.  Both grape leaves and alum will keep the pickles firm.

Pickles!

Our friend V has a large garden and he just gave us a lot of cucumbers. We let them sit too long to be dill pickles (they loose their crispiness when they sit), but they made good sweet pickles (which are sliced).

Here are some pickle recipes and the one I used. The dill pickle recipe has been in my family for decades.

Dill Pickles

Boil together:
3 quarts water
1 quart vinegar
1 cup pickling salt
(makes approximately 8 quarts of pickles)
(approximately 1 pound of pickles per jar)

Line bottom of jar with a grape leaf, slit cucumbers with knife (top and bottom to aid in absorption of above solution).  Place 2 cloves of garlic in jar along with 2 heads of dill or 1 head and stem plus leaves in the jar.  Pack pickles in jar and add boiling solution. Seal (keep lids and rings in boiling water until you remove them to seal jars)

If you don't have grape leaves you can add a piece of alum as big as the end of a finger and place on top of the pickles in the jar.  Both grape leaves and alum will keep the pickles firm.


Old Fashioned Sliced Pickles

6 quarts sliced cukes
6 medium onions
3/4 cup pickling salt
6 cups cider vinegar
6 cups sugar
1/2 cup mustard seed (12 oz package)
1 Tbs. celery seed

Combine cukes with sliced onions and salt.  Let stand 4 hours or overnight.  Drain, rinse well, drain and rinse, drain again.

Combine other ingredients and bring to a boil.  Gradually add the cukes and
onions.  Heat to SIMMER and cook until slightly softened (appx. 40 minutes)  Put in jars and seal.

Approximately 12 pints.

Smoked Chickens...

My neighbours have gone to visit relatives, they asked me to take care of the chickens (open the coop, stock food and fresh water, close the coop at night) while they are gone. No biggie... How hard could that be...

The first night I go over there, there was smoke coming from the top of the coop. The heat light for the chicks fell down into the bedding and the bedding was smouldering. I removed the cardboard box that  acted as a small shelter, and it burst into flames once it got moving air on it. The chick box is charred on the floor and the coop smells of smoke. but the coop is still good and all the chickens are safe and sound.

I brought the 4 chicks to my house to stay warm, it's fun listening to them peeping and rustling around.

Even with no lights on (they are letting the chickens moult this winter), I am collecting 5+ eggs a day from the 20+ chickens. Omelets anyone?

Chickens in the freezer

I split the costs with the neighbour to raise 30 Cornish cross chickens (they are meat birds). They add on the pounds fast, but they had a good life running around the yard, eating grass, and doing things that chickens do (they make a lot of poop).
But it was  time to harvest them, they were getting too big for their bones to carry them anymore. The last week they sat around a lot and ate. Ate a lot.
SO over 2 weekends we harvested them and into the freezers they go:

Here are part of the birds ready for the freezer:

Book Review: Growing a Farmer

I just finished 'How I learned to Live Off the Land' by Kurt Timmermeister. Tim has written a very good book about how he changed his 4 acres of overgrown land into a 12 acre successful small farm.

He really goes into good details on how he's had to adapt and learn to work out his problems that he encountered.
His chapters are:

• Growing the Farm
• Bees
• Fruits, Apples, Vinegar
• Sheep, Goats, Pastures and Grazing
• Cows
• Dairying
• Raw Milk
• Vegetables
• Fowl
• Pigs
• The Slaughter
• Butchering
• The Present-Day Farm
• The Table

All in all, a good read and worth the money to acquire it and learn how to plan for a homestead.



Amazon info:

Book Review: 'The Good Food Revlution' by Will Allen

I just finished Will Allen's book 'The Good Food Revolution'. This is a great book on growing food and ways to do it organically and w/o lots of chemicals. He covers composting, vermiculture (composting with worms), intensive growing, aquaculture (closed loops with fish and plants), and how he gets it all working together. It's a great book, check it out!

Amazon info:

Mushrooms!

My son is interested in mushrooms, so when I was out getting a small container to do some container gardening, I ran across  the Back to the Roots mushroom growing kit. It's a plastic bag filled with used coffee grounds that has been inoculated with Oyster mushrooms.
I saw it at my local HomeDepot, the website for it is:
 Back to the Roots Mushroom Kit.
A picture of the kit:

Some basic info on it:

The Back to the Roots' grow-at-home mushroom kit lets you grow up to 1 1/2 lbs of gourmet, tasty oyster mushrooms per box.... harvest your first crop in as little as 10 days! Mushroom Garden will last in the box before opening - No Shelf-Life, Can Grow All Year Round

	Features Grow up to 1 1/2 lbs of tasty pearl oyster mushrooms per box Multiple crops (at least 2, though some have got up to 4!) Grow your first crop in as little as 10 days! Just 3 Easy Steps - Open, Mist, and Harvest (spray mister included). All indoors - just set on a kitchen window sill and mist twice a day (mister included) The soil inside is 100% recycled coffee grounds - safe & sustainable 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Vanilla extract! Yummy

Well, I set up some vanilla extract tonight. I got tired of paying $4 for a 1 oz bottle of imitation vanilla extract. I bought 2 vanilla beans from my local Chuck's supermarket ($5.99), and bought a bottle of cheap vodka ($7.00). Total cost: $12.99.

I split the beans, put them into a dark brown Grolsh type 500ml bottle from Rabbits Foot Meadery (thanks Rabbit Foot for your excellent products!). And then poured the vodka into the bottle. I need to give is a shake every day for a month, then every other day/week for a month. At the end of 2 months, the vanilla should be ready to use. As I use it, just add more vodka and let it age, it should be going for quite a while. I can barely wait to see how it tastes.

Dehydrating berries

On the way back from taking the dog to the local 5-acre dog park, we stopped and picked some late season strawberries and early season raspberries. Both are so yummy! I decided to dehydrate a test batch. The strawberries came out really weird looking (but still taste good) and the raspeberries came out good. I'm looking forward to move berry picking since I want to make more jam/jelly and do some berry cyders.

First batch of fruit leather

My neighbor loaned/gave me an American Harvest Food Dehydrator they had laying about in a closet. So I started a batch of blueberry/strawberry fruit leather last night. 4 cups of blueberries, 1 cup of strawberries, 1/4 cup of my bees honey, and 1 tbsp of almond extract (which I spilled all over myself). I may have made it a little too thick. This is the recipe I used.

Started it around 10pm last night, when I left the house @ 7 am today it was still slightly gooey but smelled good. I asked my wife to check it around 10 and turn it off if it seems done. I'm curious how it will turn out. The puree tasted good last night. I remember my Mom making fruit leather when I was a kid and I enjoyed it back then (it also was a high value lunch time trade item).

Berries galore!

Last weekend we went berry picking. We picked 20 lbs of strawberries and 8 lbs of blackberries. Combined with the 15 lbs of blueberries I've got a lot of resources for making jams/cyders/pies/etc!

Book Review: A good back to local food book

Not quite a homestead book, but getting back to the locally grown foods. Esp their own.

A good read.

Amazon info:

Their website can be found here.

Berry season starts!

Berry season is starting, time to start picking the delicious fruits of nature. I especially love raspberries and blackberries. Time to learn how to can/make jam of them.