Grape Juice

 

We were blessed enough to be invited to pick grapes at a friend of a friend's backyard vineyard mid-August. He had a wonderful slew of vines, and we came home with a couple bushels of Concord and what I think were Reliance grapes. I can't wait for the day we have a lovely backyard vineyard. We picked wild grapes earlier a couple weeks before, but their yield is just not much compared to these juicy beauties.

 

These are the grapes draining. After I was all finished making juice, and had already tossed the spent skins, pulp, and seeds, my preservation group had a posting that said I could have used all of that to make fruit leather by putting it through my handy-dandy food mill. Something to try next year!

 

We ended up with 8 gallons of grape juice. Grape juice and apple juice are the only things that are safe to can in half gallon jars, and boy does that fact make processing go so much faster. I canned grape juice a couple years ago, but did it all in quarts that time and it makes for a lot of time spent canning. The Concords made a beautiful purple juice, while the Reliance, which were green to pink, made a lovely mauve-y pink juice. All those quarts up there are chicken stock and crushed tomatoes. It was a busy week :)

Soda Syrups

Due to just being around people in general, soda pop made its way into our house. For years I have been battling to get it back out. Rather than throw my hands up in despair while my husband and children begged for it (mostly just on the days they were terribly bored with iced tea or the occasional juice), I figured out a substitute. I hate to see anything thrown out, and I love creative uses of anything else. This led to soda syrups, which we use with sparkling water in a ratio of roughly 3 to 1. These syrups impart more than enough flavor to a drink, and yet are far, far, FAR less sugar (even if they are still a syrup!) than a normal soda, and have none of that "other stuff". I have been using whatever I have left over from canning other preserves, plus the wonderful fruit finds from our local grocery store and markets-ours has a big cart it tosses "going to spoil soon" fruit in for pennies on the dollar. These mixes of fruit (right now mostly stone fruit) make wonderful syrups. We have also been making herbal and foraged syrups. What follows is my basic recipes. These are fabulous added to iced teas in place of sugar, as well. They could be made with honey, but my pocket book prefers I stay away from that until we have our own source. I include the lemon juice in all the recipes because I do not know the specific varieties of some of these fruits, or their precise age and it is my safety net. Plus, lemon is good with any fruit :)

Basic fruit syrup:
Clean, pit/seed and chop up your fruit-whatever kinds. You can mix and match or do all the same.
Put them in a pot with a little water to keep them from scorching while you cook them down. I cook mine around 15-20 minutes, and mash them while while cooking to release as much juice as possible.
Once it looks like they are sufficiently mushy and pulpy, strain the entire mixture into a separate pan, like you would for jelly or cheese (I use a plain, white cotton dish towel and hang it from my cabinets over a bowl). Let it drip until it drips no more. Do not squeeze, unless you want cloudy syrup-which isn't a really big deal. It tastes the same, but you may end up with little pieces of pulp in your glass, too.
Measure out how much juice you have into a stock pot, and add the same amount of sugar-this is a syrup, folks! Bring the whole thing up to a boil and boil just long enough for the sugar to fully dissolve and incorporate. Add 1/4 c lemon juice per batch of syrup.
Fill your sterilized canning jars (you could easily keep this in quarts, though we use pints and half pints as I like to change up my flavors a lot), clean the rims, top with sterilized lids, and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.
We have used grapes, peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, strawberries and canteloupe in all sorts of concoctions for this this summer, and I have a watermelon waiting to become watermelon and watermelon mint soon.

For an herbal syrup (our fave right now is chocolate mint, we are making an almond flavored one from peach leaves today): Take two cups of fresh picked leaves, tear and bruise them, and add two cups of water.
Place in a pan and boil your leaves to basically make a tea-5-10 minutes depending on how strong you want it. Taste it!
Strain out the leaves and add 2 cups of sugar to the liquid. Boil this until the sugar fully incorporates.
Follow the canning instructions above.

These are great in coffee, as well. There are wonderful posts around the net on using foraged items like elderflower and Queen Anne's Lace (just omit the pectin recommended here to make it a syrup) in syrups, as well.

Peach Salsa

Peaches are, by far, one of my favorite fruits to preserve. I mean, I really love canning most fruits, but the things I can do with a peach-wow. One of my most requested recipes right now (and by far one of my favorites) is my peach salsa. I am planning on buying another load of peaches to make more salsa, jam and syrup next week, but took a week off this week to do some pressure canning of summer squash and beans. In the meantime, this is how I make my salsa-I love simple. I have seen other recipes that include extra spices or veggies that just take away from the simple, stunning flavor of this salsa.
Enjoy!

Peach Salsa
6 c pitted peaches, diced
1 1/4 c diced onion
4 jalapeno peppers, diced (seed these if you don't want it too spicy. I personally like only a little edge)
1 bell pepper, preferably red, diced and seeded (though an color will suffice)
1/2 c chopped fresh cilantro or 1/4 c dried
3/4 c white vinegar
2 T honey

Combine all and mix thoroughly. Raw pack into cleaned, sterilized jars and hot water bath for 20 minutes (more if you are too far above sea level).

 This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday with A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa!

Homemade Laundry Soap

I am so, so very picky about how my laundry smells and how I wash it. It has taken a while, and quite the journey through mainstream detergents (I used the free and clear varieties there), to organic/natural ones, to now just making it myself. People don't really realize that clean laundry should smell just that-clean. Mainstream cleaners use so much unnecessary stuff to perfume the laundry, then you add the softeners (anyone heard of vinegar?) and the softeners sheets, and it is intense! I cannot stand to wear clothes or really even be around them, if they have been washed conventionally anymore. It hurts my nose. Clean is that fresh smell when there is an absence of other smells that were previously in the fabric-an easy smell to find when washing things like your husband's work clothes or dirty diapers.

The formula I like to use for my clothes is from here. Very easy. I use their actual brand of laundry soap bars for the soap I use on diapers as it uses less oils in it, thus giving me less to rinse out of the diaper, thus cleaner diaper. I am less picky for our day to day stuff. I use whatever natural/locally made soap I find. It is actually great for the ends of soap. I can grate them up and toss them in and not, instead, get them caught in my hair while shampooing. Like I mentioned before, if you think you need a rinse or softener, just put vinegar in the same slot you would put regular stuff, but not just in with the soap. This negates the effects of the oils in the soap, which help with the cleaning action. It has to come in its own time. We dry our laundry on a line as much as possible, though with the rain here lately, the dryer has seen a little more action. I also have an indoor rack I use, but with the amount of laundry we've had from some basement water/lightning fire issues, it hasn't been enough. Drying outside adds another hint of fresh to the clothes, as well as softening if it is nice and breezy out.
Here is the basic laundry soap recipe...you can add essential oils or just use a soap with them if you like for added hints of fragrance.

Handmade Herbal Laundry Detergent

approx 4 oz. grated soap (comes out to about a standard sized bar)
2 cups borax
2 cups washing soda
1 cup baking soda 

essential oils (optional) 

Combine all ingredients in a widemouth container with a lid. (I use a recycled ice cream bucket). Add essential oils as desired (but they are not necessary). Use 1 tbsp to 1/4 cup per load of laundry.

Notes on ingredients: You can use any kind of soap - non-superfatted handmade soaps are wonderful! I just grate mine with a cheesegrater. Washing soda can be difficult to find in some areas of the world, I understand - usually it is found in the laundry detergent aisle of a supermarket. If you cannot find it, ask a store manager to order it for you. This recipe is VERY inexpensive and I have found it to work really well! 

It's a State of Mind, A Way of Doing Things

Working with the idea posted here earlier about family work weekends, I wanted to give a glimpse of our set up. We have our share of friends and family who are also homesteading on acreages, and then we also have some who live in town and urban homestead. Due to limited space/light/laws we end up sharing our space with them, so they can expand on what they do there. In exchange they help us keep up with what we do. Recently we added a new goat, already in milk to our herd, a sweet Toggenberg named Ginger. We weren't really planning on doing any milking until next spring, but Ginger came from a family who needed to find a good home for many in their herd, and we were itching to be able to supply our own dairy products. This led to a scurry of gathering parts and pieces we were going to need, including (but certainly not limited to!) a milking stand. The home we adopted Ginger from had a wooden milking stand, which they had advised against, as they were having issues with mildew. After searching numerous pages of terribly-expensive-on-a-homesteader's-budget stands made of wood, pvc or metal, I decided that we would chance the wood. The cost of the stands available through catalogs and such were in the area of $175-$200 plus shipping which was generally around $65. The cost of materials for our homemade one: $30. No comparison.

This stand was also built by two terribly talented ladies, myself and one of my closest friends and partner in crime, er, homesteading (she's my urban counterpart, so to speak). It went together easily; we used the directions for a stand from Fias Co. Farm, which is also where we get our animal health products like the herbal wormer we use. I love Molly's site-she is very thorough in her explanations of how and why she does what she does with her goats. The stand works wonderfully, and has already served another purpose as I sheared our Border Cheviot sheep, Chrysanthemum yesterday. It is lightweight and sealed with oil. I wipe down with the same soapy solution I clean the milking dishes with each milking, and dry it to avoid any growth issues.
All of this is not to push Fias Co. farm's site (though I do love them!) or to brag or just chat about how I spend my weeknights, but rather to talk about how many resources (including this blog :)  ) are available to the simply, frugally, green minded individual out there that makes it easier for them to live the way they do. The internet has made it so easy to find others who have been through the same trenches we have been or are in. It is easy to order or follow the insight of the first site hits google brings up, but I find that there is great value in taking time to look at all your options and seek what fits you best. I respect the opinion of the fine farm family we bought Ginger from, and I agree they have an issue with the stand they use. I also know our situation and what we can make work. I took time (though I was on a deadline) and figured out what would fit our budget and time. That wouldn't have worked, though, without the help of our friends, either. I am not a craftsman when it comes to wood working, but by combining talents (every Thursday night, at that) we are able to achieve more, and work towards our goals for more self-sufficiency and frugality. And it was fun. I think too often we see work rather than opportunities for gathering. I actually enjoy working-I know it sounds crazy to some, but the feeling of accomplishing something is far more gratifying than the click of a button in ordering it from some distant company. All in the homesteader's day to day, and I wouldn't change any of it.

Mason Jar Kids' Cups

Recently I was posed with a problem-my husband was fed up with the kids spilling drinks on the floor, but I had no good solution for them to be able to drink things like milk and juice in covered cups. Most mainstream sippy cups are all plastic, something we try not to buy if we can help it. Stainless water bottles are great for water and tea, but are terribly difficult to wash out if something like milk gets left in them. Sometimes, as we recently found, they can even form explosives as the milk ferments. I have rotten milk on the ceiling of my office from a stainless sippy-style cup that formed a vacuum and blew up when my son tried to open it. Gross.
Our other dilemma is storage space. Yes, I have a very large kitchen-I designed it that way intentionally, but that doesn't mean I want to store 50 different styles of glasses for every situation. We also tend to use the canning jars that get opened throughout the season as drinking glasses, making them dual purpose and meaning I need less storage space as they can do double duty.
One last issue that came to light only after I found my solution was that I could find a good use for leftover canning lids, as well. One use is the recommended lifespan, and though I keep them around so I can use them on jars I stick in the fridge for leftovers, or stock in the freezer or dry goods in the cupboard, there are always far more lids than jars. This solution found yet another use for the buggers.

The solution was so, so simple, so much so I wondered why I hadn't done it earlier. I used a punch I found in my husband's garage (now adopted so I make new lids whenever I need to) and my hammer and simply put holes in the lids. You don't need much force-don't swing too hard or you'll end up with broken glass. We keep straws when we might eat out or in various odd things we stumble across and the kids have covered cups that satisfy everyone in the house!

Garden Journaling

One of the most overlooked but most important aspects to growing your own food (and flowers!) is keeping track of what happens from year to year and planning for the next. I have to be honest, it is something I have been kind of slack on in the past, but count my blog as a huge aid now in doing so. I try to keep records of what I plant, when I start it (if it needs started inside), plus pictures of the sprouts for identification (very important for someone who -it never fails-ends up with mixed up seedlings right before their big move outside), when they sprouted, when they leaved, when I moved them out, when I did my direct sowing, where I planted everything, when it blossomed, when it fruited, how well it fruited, pictures of EVERYTHING, any issues with pests and if anything worked to rid them, whether we liked a variety or not, soil amendments, plus our preservation planning is now added in.

It seems like a lot, but just a couple minutes a day should do well. Just pay attention and write it down! You will be so glad you did. I know that I planted a certain variety of lettuce last year we just didn't eat. We didn't like it. So it gets scratched from our list and new varieties come in. I know that four years ago I was planting brassicas on this date outside, but the last three I haven't gotten them out until May, and that the April planted ones did a lot better than my May ones did. This gives me information so that I make a point to really shoot for April plantings (though obviously the weather is my biggest issue with whether this happens or not) and change something I do (fall tilling, which I couldn't last year, or separate raised bed that needs little cultivation and cares not whether it has rained or not for planting) to make sure they see April sun. I could easily forget how things went without my notes.

Another aspect to the journals, though, is also the beauty. This year I made a point of illustrating my plans for the garden. I tried to make them pretty, but with the little time I have, not as pretty as some are able to do. It helps me see quickly what I am doing, make changes as necessary and will be a pleasant addition to my journal. Right now they grace my wall, making my office a reminder of the sunny days to come. Pictures of my produce are handy for when I want to market on the net what we've been doing, but also just in the beauty of food. In the rat race that is the standard American food system, the beauty of homegrown, whole foods is outstanding, especially in heirloom varieties. It gets lost in mass marketed supermarket foods and drive throughs. There is nothing so beautiful as July's bounty caught on (digital) film.

 
One last thought is the heritage that is recorded in such journals. My children can see what we were doing for the growing months by looking at my records. I can put down when they started helping, and also teach them to start their own gardens and journals. My oldest loved drawing pictures of the pea sprouts in her tiny patch last year, and seeing them go from seed to peas. It creates something else we can share in our relationship, also something that they can use as they grow. I get a lot of my motivation for what I do from my time spent with my dad and grandparents as a young girl. Both were big on the homesteading movement in the eighties, and I took all of that with me to use as an adult. One of my favorite pictures is part of my dad's gardening journal-a shot of a huge bounty in the back of his pickup truck, full of color. It is my inspiration every year, and a reminder of how important keeping track of my interactions with our farm is.

Bedding Alternatives for Livestock

Since we started keeping animals out here at the homestead, I have tried to keep on top of the different options for bedding. We started out using ground corn cobs, which I've got to say I was not impressed with. They ended up making it terribly difficult to clean out the chicken coop on a regular basis. From there we went with the traditional hay and straw. That was getting really expensive. Later a company opened not too far from us selling recycled paper bedding. They had a couple different options, and their price was similar to the price of straw. Their two options were a diced phone book paper and a chopped corrugated box paper. We tried both for a while and found that neither held up as well to the animal waste, and neither created a nest my birds would use.
Not long after trying this company, we added larger animals-goats, llamas and sheep-to our farm. They *really* didn't work well with that sort of paper bedding. To be honest I was not happy with the paper dust that came along with it. We try to be green, but at the same time the happiness and health of my animals is more important, so back to hay and straw we went. They were the best multipurpose. I was able to barter for a lot of hay to use as both as feed and bedding this winter-or at least that was the plan. I soon found my hay "disappearing" from the goat barn. Hmmm. I later saw that is was the sheep, who never stop eating. The goats and llamas eschewed eating something they had slept on. The sheep-aw, heck why not? And they would go through a lot of hay that way. Straw is way too expensive to be putting down all the time, so I was searching again for something else to use. That is when I found the old paper shredder from my husband's grandparents. I just happened to have boxes upon boxes of their old documents that needed safely disposed of, and thus our use of paper bedding was born. This was shreds-which do work for nest better, and all the animals seem to tolerate well. I shred every paper that comes in the house anymore. Later, I also found that businesses will often give you their shred so long as they know it is going somewhere safe (for privacy purposes). I get bags from a local school for disabled children. Shredding paper is one of their on the site job training situations. I use a combination of a base of straw, then add paper every other day or so, and deep bed the animals-meaning I don't clean the barns out until it gets warm again. Once we are maintaining weather above 50 degrees F we will start cleaning out regularly to avoid ammonia. I am happy with our findings. Ah, and we tried sawdust, too, which worked well enough, but caked up quite a bit. Cost-wise it is far more frugal for us to buy one expensive bale of straw as a base on occasion and add free paper shreds regularly to extend its life. I also feel good in knowing that the shredded paper that often gets burned or thrown away will be aiding in fertilizing our farm projects, and is getting very nicely broken down with the rest of the bedding.
Our sheeps' figures thank us, as well :)