Blackberry and Blood Orange Marmalade

     We have a glut and I mean a glut (in excess of 40 pounds) of citrus fruit here. The children are eating 2 or 3 oranges a day plus an occasional grapefruit and still the fruit lies in piles on the table. I decided to make more marmalade and even after 12 jars were on the shelf there was still plenty of fruit. I wanted to try something different, I get so tired of the same old stuff year in and year out. But what? So I made up a batch (and then another because it was so stinking tasty) of Blackberry and Blood Orange Marmalade.

      The recipe is super easy and really worth the effort. Peel 6 Blood Oranges removing as much pith as possible. Shred 1 whole lemon- peel and all, but discarding the seeds. Add 6 ounces of blackberries, 2 cups of sugar and 3 cups of water. Boil until lemon pieces are tender and it begins to jell. Marmalade is a deceptive thing, by the time it looks cooked down enough it will actually have the consistency of road tar when it's room temperature. Aim for under cooked and see how it looks as it cools down, you can always cook it more if needed. Jar it and process for 10 minutes. We use most of our marmalade as a meat glaze, it pairs wonderfully with chicken and pork; but this stuff is too high class for that. I'm thinking this will be best eaten directly off the spoon late at night when the children can't see.

Mandarin Oranges

     I've been canning mandarin oranges this last little while; since their season doesn't generally coincide with when we think of canning it does seem a bit odd to have the canning supplies out again. Canning season for me generally runs from May through October, unless I have a glut of meat which then gets canned in the winter. However, you must can when the season dictates and mandarin orange season has been running for a few months and is about to wind down.

     A mandarin orange is actually a tangerine, you've probably noticed the prepackaged bags of "cuties" in your store. To can citrus you peel the fruit and then remove as much of the pith as possible. Most of the cuties have a string running up the outside that is easily removable with your thumb nail and a larger amount of pith along the inside curve.

Fruit in the jar before adding liquid

   I prefer a blend of citrus, but couldn't find blood oranges or any other good deals, so I settled for grapefruit. I used the ratio of 1 pink grapefruit per 3 lbs of tangerines. The grapefruit isn't as cooperative and most of my pieces were shredded trying to remove the tough inner skin. Add sugar if you wish, I used a scant half cup. Place the fruit in a clean jar and boil your jar rubbers for a few minutes (or wash your metal lids if you prefer. :)  ) Leave about an inch headspace and fill with orange juice, or pineapple juice or sugar syrup if that's what floats your boat. Final headspace should be 1/2", remove air bubbles and process for 10 minutes in a boiling waterbath.

Jars filled with orange juice. Not quite so pretty.  :(

     A had a gal ask me once if I liked to can. The answer is no, no I don't. I can because it's an economic necessity, it has literally kept us alive when we had little else. I can because I have definite ideas about how people (and children especially) should eat and so I need to buy fruit in season and set it back against the time when fresh fruit choices are limited. I can because I believe that it's the epitome of hubris to think that God is going to step in and provide when I'm not willing to work for it. I like the feeling of satisfaction from seeing the shelves fill up with jars, I like feeling proud of myself and I like that our children are learning to appreciate this way of life, but I don't jump up and down and think "Oh goody, I get to process fruit and jar it. Woot!Woot!"  I'm like that about many things: sewing, knitting, spinning, canning, cheese making, butchering......... I like a job well done and I'm glad to do it, but I don't do it for kicks and grins. We must be careful to guard against the mindset that we should only do what we love, we should do what needs to be done cheerfully and thank God for the ability to do so. That's what I'm striving for.

Plugging Away At My Eulogy

 Autumn is having an impromptu meeting with Winter right now in my yard. The sky is pale faced and looks a bit sickly, as though it wishes to put this meeting off for a future date. But it is not to be, snow is hurtling to the ground, not in gentle flakes but in hard bits that sting.

      Today was a good day to make cranberry sauce, so that's what I did. We love homemade cranberry sauce so I'll make one more batch for a total of 14 pints or so. If you'd like to try it you combine 3 12 ounce bags of washed cranberries with 6 shredded Granny Smith apples, skins included but not seeds. Add 6 cups sugar and 4 1/2 cups water, boil for 15 minutes or until berries pop and it looks thick. Remove from heat and let cool, if it's thick enough to suit you then jar it up and process for 15 minutes, if it isn't thick enough then boil it a bit longer.

     Lately I've felt the need to make soap again so I've made 2 batches so far, the first was pine tar soap and this last batch was made with comfrey tea and a bit of cinnamon. I like soap making to be an economical venture so I tend not to use expensive oils or much fragrance, fresh soapy clean is perfume enough to satisfy me. I want to get a few more molds and then make enough soap to last until Spring, that's my goal anyway, unless life has other ideas.

    This is one of my canning shelves, the jams, pickles, fruits and sauces are all elsewhere. With the chili that I canned yesterday and the cranberry sauce today I have around 425 jars filled. I do have beans soaking now in preparation for canning them tomorrow and pickles are brining so we'll process those on Saturday..... that will give me about 443 jars. I still have applesauce to do and a few other little things, I think I'll get to 500 jars or thereabouts.

     I read a quote from an elderly lady written around the turn of the century and she said that if a woman saw all the dishes that she would have to wash in her lifetime she'd lay down and die right then. So much of a woman's work is used up, or eaten up, or goes unnoticed as anything extraordinary, but the quilts she had sewn were different. They would be kept and cherished as something that Aunt Jane had made. Aunt Jane was writing her eulogy, though I doubt she thought of it that way. I think of that. What will my children remember about me? That I spent a lot of time on facebook? That I valued forgotten skills? That I sewed their clothes and mended socks? Or that I couldn't make crisp pickles to save my life? Everything I spend time on tattles on what I really value, both good and bad.

     It's so easy to get caught up in comparisons, to think that somebody else's life is perfect or pretty close. And it's easy to think "well, I'd do thus and so if only..." I'd like to encourage not to wait one more day to start writing the eulogy that you want remembered. You probably can't jump right into your dream life, I know that I didn't, but begin to build it one baby step at a time. Your dream life won't be mine, but the important thing is that it be what you want it to be. Perfection is overrated, allow yourself the privilege of learning and doing and making mistakes. Life is but a vapor and passes so quickly, to be able to die well with as few regrets as possible takes effort. Monumental effort, for nothing worthwhile is ever easy. If I've ever encouraged you or influenced you, let it be in that.

A Beneficial Barter

I grew up in the grape country of Western New York and though I've been away for a long while, my family still lives there. Where I live is moonshine country and after sending my almost 90 year old father a jar of Maraschino Cherries Stewed in Moonshine we decided to swap 'shine for grapes. My sister boxed up 35 pounds of Concord and Catawba grapes for me and shipped them down (incidentally, for less cost than what I could buy them for locally.) They arrived on Thursday last and by Friday we had them all jarred.

Steam Juicing the Grapes

35 pounds yielded 12 quarts of grape juice concentrate, 7 pints of grape jam, and 2 grape pies.

We are soaking the grape seeds and pulp in cider vinegar to extract the many benefits.

 A bit about grape seeds:

Although not particularly tasty, whole grape seeds are completely edible, and scientific evidence suggests that they are good for you, too. Packed with essential fatty acids, amino acids, and powerful flavonoids (such as proanthocyanidins), these little bitter seeds have been associated with a whole slew of health benefits. Eating grape seeds on a regular basis may, for example, improve cardiovascular health, reduce leg swelling and varicose veins, provide some protection against certain types of cancer, offer weight loss benefits, treat depression, and even fight yeast infections caused by Candida.

In addition, thanks to their remarkably strong antioxidant properties, grape seeds might (at least in theory) help fight certain skin conditions – such as inflammatory acne, psoriasis, and premature wrinkling of the skin – and some more serious health complications such as asthma, joint inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis patients, and problems related to eye health.

Whole grape seeds are naturally rich in flavonoids including gallic acid, catechin, epicatechin, gallocatechin, epigallocatechin, epicatechin 3-O-gallate, and perhaps most importantly, oligomeric proanthocyanidins. According to research, the antioxidant capacity of proanthocyanidins is 20 times greater than vitamin E and 50 times greater than vitamin C.

In addition, proanthocyanidins have beenshown to enhance the effectiveness of other antioxidants. As a result of the remarkably strong antioxidant power of proanthocyanidins, it is not surprising that supplement manufacturers have began to process grape seeds into pills and capsules.

Autumn in a Jar

I just canned this:

It might be called Apple Pumpkin Butter by some, but I think the picture sums it up better.

Here is the recipe if you'd like to try it. Beware the smell as it cooks, if drifts everywhere and makes your home smell like a scented candle.

You will need:

• I used one pretty good sized pie pumpkin, cut it in half, scraped the seeds & strings out, cut it into 2"x4" slices and shredded on my cheese shredder. This worked a lot better than trying to chunk it up. 
• I added 3 Granny Smith apples, shredded. 
• 2T vinegar
• 1/2t salt
• 1t nutmeg
• 1T each, cinnamon and ginger
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 cups water and more if needed. 

Cook until done, adding more water if needed. My yield was 3 pints of very thick butter. 

The smell was divine, the taste was even better. I got the idea to make some from a book I'm reading, it's the Foxfire book detailing the life and interviews with Aunt Arie. She mentioned that they would make pumpkin butter in HUGE quantities and store it in multiple 5 gallon crocks. I find that mind boggling, my little batch was quite a bit of work, but to make gallons is nothing short of amazing. 

Happy Autumn!

Domestic Economy

Summer is slowly, almost imperceptibly winding down; I can feel the change in the air though the workload is still as heavy as it ever was. We finally finished canning green beans, but the corn and carrots are far from done. We try to do a few canner loads every day and that way it isn't overwhelming and the jars do add up little by little. I'm thankful for the ease and convenience of having home canned foods on the shelf, meals can be made in a hurry and I know they're wholesome. I want to can some corn with red and green peppers in it, we'll add that to cornbread sometimes and we really like it that way. I also want to make a batch of salsa using all Green Zebra tomatoes, green salsa will be different and I do get tired of the same old things all the time. Home canning is a relatively recent invention, at least canning as we understand it today is- though people have been preserving food for later use since time immemorial. Our understanding of cooking has also undergone a radical change in the last hundred years. It’s rare today to find a woman who cooks meals for her family at home, much less a woman who has the knowledge of how to cook from scratch. We’ve gone from a nation of self reliant women to a nation of women who don’t cook or can’t cook anything more involved than Shake-n-Bake chicken and Stovetop stuffing. Obviously there are multiple nutritional benefits to cooking wholesome food from scratch, but there is also the satisfaction of knowing that you aren’t relying on Proctor & Gamble or SaraLee to decide what your family ought to eat.

By the same token, relying on a lot of "labor saving" devices might prove unwise if you are unable to cook without them. My "modern"kitchen equipment consists of a blender and a Victorio

Strainer (we just got the Victorio this summer). That’s it. All of the canning/preserving we do is done with those 2 tools, we dice all fruits and vegetables by hand and cut corn from the cob with a knife. We've canned 430 jars this summer so it is feasible to do all this without a lot of extra gadgets. Our philosophy has been to learn to do jobs the old fashioned way with the least sophisticated equipment and only then switch to more modern methods/equipment. If nothing else this certainly makes us appreciate how easy we have it! I think that it's a beneficial exercise to study old cookbooks and try to cook sometimes using these receipts and ingredients that our Foremothers would have used. Maybe we will never find ourselves in the position of needing to rely on these books and methods, but it's certainly better to be prepared and never need the knowledge than to find ourselves in a desperate situation with "if only" on our lips. Several receipt books that I enjoy perusing are Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book 1850, The Great Western Cookbook 1857, The Frugal Housewife 1830 and The New England Economical Housekeeper 1845 . In addition to the usual recipes you will find directions for cutting up and preserving meat, keeping flies out of your house, remedies for illness, how to choose a domestic servant and other quaint advice. My plan is to print these books out and put them in pages protectors in a 3 ring binder, I prefer browsing through an actual printed book rather than on a computer screen. Today is the day to turn our energies toward acquiring useful skills that will serve our families whether it be canning or cookery, sewing or knitting, animal husbandry or gardening.

Candied Ginger Blueberry Jam

We'll have a new culinary experience this winter when we finally get to eat the Candied Ginger Blueberry Jam that I made last week. I've never really liked blueberry jam, most recipes call for too much sugar for my taste, but since I tweaked this recipe extensively I think that I might actually enjoy it! Here's the recipe if you'd like to try it, this yields 7 half pints.

4 heaping cups smashed blueberries

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Combine ingredients and allow to set for 1-2 hours

Add a heaping half cup of diced candied ginger

Heat slowly on stove until very hot but not boiling

Set aside and in a different kettle bring 1 cup sugar, 1 box sure-jell lite and 1 cup water to a brisk boil.

Add contents of sure-jell kettle to the blueberry kettle

Bring to a boil stirring constantly
Remove from heat and place in jars

Can in a boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes

I made 2 batches of this jam and then we canned the rest of the blueberries like I wrote about in the Canning 101 post. I think we got 11 quarts and 11 pints. We are also in the thick of canning peaches which came right on the tail of cherries. Aleks told me that the peppers are almost ready, they will become salsa and Cowboy Candy *and* we've got green beans coming! I think this is why most farm families (those who can anyway) really look forward to winter. :-) The pace is crazy all through summer and autumn, but oh is it worth it!
My one canning shelf still needs to be taken outside and scrubbed and then it's getting a fresh coat of paint. Until then there are jars of food completely filling 2 cupboards and much of the counter space. I feel rich!

Home Canned Fruit 101

If you're interested in learning to preserve food at home, canned fruit is the perfect place to start. Canning fruit is easy to learn and requires the least specialized equipment, perfect for the beginner! An excellent resource for all things canned is the Ball Blue Book, they walk you step by step through canning peaches; however, my method is slightly different than theirs and yields a vastly superior product. Generally fruit today is canned using a sugar/water syrup the proportions of sugar making either a light, medium or heavy syrup. Canning fruit with water necessitates adding more sugar since you're in effect making "fruit soup"; the overall effect is a watered down, super sugary, vaguely fruit tasting product. My method is easy to implement and I think you'll be pleased with the result.

1. Wash fruit to remove pesticide, bugs and unripe/overripe fruit.

2. Peel and slice fruit if needed (such as peaches) most berries can be left whole.

3. Layer fruit and sugar in a mixing bowl or bucket. I use 1/3 cup sugar per pineapple and 1/2 cup sugar per quart of Black Raspberries for instance. The amount of sugar is a personal preference and some things, like rhubarb, need more sugar.

4. Cover and allow to set at room temperature for 12-18 hours. Fruit doesn't juice up well in a refrigerator or other cold environment.

5. Place fruit in jars with a slotted spoon and top off jars with reserved juice.

6. Affix lids and can for the amount of time specified in the Ball Blue Book.

That's it! If you're used to canning fruit using the syrup method you won't find switching over to be difficult at all. Allowing fruit to make its own juice really makes sense when you think about it!

Mother's Kitchen

Hello friends, I've been rather neglectful of this blog lately. Summer is a very hectic time for us and leaves little time for virtual reality when concrete reality in the form of produce makes faces at me everyday begging to be put in jars. We're complying at a breakneck pace but still, some days it feels like drowning. Things will settle down around October and then I can engage in other pursuits like sewing and knitting. On especially stressful days I try to remind myself to be doubly thankful for so much food and for the ability to preserve it. Some people just aren't able to put the harvest by and have to rely on grocery stores. That's a picture of my canning shelf (square nailed and mustard milk paint, Tiff :D) it's loaded with: blueberries, dark sweet cherries, light sweet cherries, peaches, rhubarb, Cowboy Candy, mulberry/black raspberry jam, blackberries, pineapple, mulberry/apple jam, black raspberries, peach jam, Lemony Sticky Sour Cherry Jam and blueberry/candied ginger jam. It's only a fraction of what we have canned and an even smaller fraction of what we will can. All of the canned dry beans, corn, green beans, carrots and most pickled things are stored elsewhere. I look at it and I feel rich. :-) I know that we will eat well this winter regardless of what happens with the economy and that gives me a peace.
We have many things that grow wild here and I feel obligated to preserve them since God has provided them. We have an abundance of mulberry products because we have mulberry trees, the black raspberries grow wild as well so they get put in jam, we will have chokecherries that will become waffle syrup and maple trees to tap in the spring. If I would neglect to take care of what has provided for us for free, then how could I ever complain about God's provision for us? If it's here and I'm able, then it goes in a jar. Our Forefathers understood this principle, that we must labor in season to provide for ourselves out of season. Modern dwellers have become accustomed to relying on an outside entity to maintain life, that's risky business in this day and age.
Take care, I hope you're enjoying your summer!

Wassail Apples

Today we are canning Wassail Apples. This is a recipe that I came up with as a healthier alternative to Spiced Apple Rings which I like, but not the corn syrup content. They cause one problem (diluting the appley-ness by using water) and then "fix" the problem by adding lots of corn syrup. Yuck! My recipe is healthier and yummy besides.
Wassail Apples
*Bring to a boil 2 quarts of water, 1.5 cups white sugar, 1.5 cups brown sugar, 1 tablespoon cinnamon and a pinch of cloves (optional)
*Fill quart canning jars with apples (I like Empires) cut in eighths or twelths (apple rings waste space and so require more cider to fill the jars)
*Add cider to apples, leaving 1/2" head space
*Can for 30 minutes in a boiling water bath canner
These are a tasty compliment to ham or sausage and are delectable atop pancakes or waffles with whipped cream!

We are making pulled pork sandwiches for supper tonight and the whole house smells good. It's chilly today so the fire is going in the living room, adding the wood smoke smell to the sweet scent of the spiced apples and spicy smell of the pork. Mmm!

Perry Cider

We reached another Fall milestone last week when we pressed apples for the first and only time. Actually, we have "perry cider" not just plain cider this year. Our neighbor brought over 4 bushels of pears which we pressed along with the apples (pressed pears being perry) and the yield was 67 gallons! We use the community press here in our community and the cost for the 67 gallons was $43, over half of that charge was the plastic gallon jugs that we brought it home in, the actual pressing charge is a pittance. I was very pleased with such abundance and as of Sunday evening we have it all canned. A few jugs got a bit of a "nip" to them, the children love this stuff, it fizzes like pop and Sunday morning they were drinking it for breakfast. :-D I have so many half gallon jars full and it makes a very striking sight, but our camera isn't feeling up to par and doesn't want to take any pictures. A have a few of the jugs set aside for vinegar making; hopefully the camera will straighten up before then so I can take pictures step by step. Making vinegar is an important part of homestead life and being able to home manufacture it will be a boon for food preservation should very hard economic times become a reality.

Saturday was my 40th birthday and we spent it rearranging the living room and moving chicken fence in anticipation of getting 30 more layers. In the Winter we bring the dining room table and benches into the living room so that we can eat where it's warmer, it makes a snug fit but it is also nice to have all evening activities center in one room, I like being all together. Our neighbor is giving us their 30 laying hens as they no longer want them so I will be raiding the recipe books for recipes heavy on eggs!

Sewing and knitting are carrying on as usual, but I don't really want to write about something that I can't take pictures of. I hope that situation will rectify itself before long.

An Abundance Of Fresh Meat

Today we went to pick up the meat from the pair of pigs that we had butchered this month. These were grass fed Tamworth pigs, born right here on our farm; they had an ideal piggy existence with one very bad day. :-) Because Tamworths are an old heritage breed they don't reach market weight in 6 months, they were also slower growing than pigs that are exclusively fed grain. We could have butchered them last Fall, but we held them over for another year and consequently they were huge. We ended up with well over 400 pounds of meat! We have 8 large hams, 70ish pounds of bacon, spare ribs, 100 pounds of sausage and about that much of pork chunks to can. I am going to be very busy getting as much as I can into jars because we have chickens to do next. For the curious, our butcher's bill was $336, I have no idea what we would pay for that much meat if we had to buy it retail. I'm pretty sure it would have been more than that though. :-)


I stopped at my friend Anna's house on our way home. They have 10 children and haven't butchered yet this Fall so it has been a while since they've had fresh meat. I left some bacon with them and got a box of zucchini to turn into pickles. Anna is the one that I have make shirts for Mr. G and the boys, she charges $10. When we gather apples in the Autumn and have cider pressed we always take some over to their place because they don't have apples to turn into cider. I enjoy the rural give and take friendship that we have, it is the "community" that is largely lost in our modern world. Both Anna and I live in a world that has more similarities to the 19th century existence than it does to the 21st century. So, anyway, for Supper tonight there are fresh porkchops and homemade baked beans. And tomorrow we will have ham! Which, as a matter of fact, is another vestige of a by-gone era. What I mean by that is what was once common place, plain rural food such as: maple sugar/syrup or organic fresh meat is now a high priced specialty food that is beyond the means of most people. Only by creating an underground, homemade economy can I enjoy the life that I do. Of course the downside is that there is an awful lot of hard, unromantic work involved. :-) I don't know if you envy me or pity me, I hope that I paint a realistic picture of my life showing both the good and bad.

I Am In Canning Paradise

We have a lot going this week in the canning kitchen. Over the weekend we canned tomato juice-21 quarts, salsa-10 pints, chokecherry/peach jelly-10 half pints and the Cowboy Candy that I blogged about before. This week we have more of all of the above to can as well as pears, more peaches (hopefully),

and Tennessee Sweet Potato Squash (that's it above, they're huge) and Pie Pumpkin. I'm canning both the squash and pumpkin in a sugar syrup, the pumpkin will have cinnamon and nutmeg added, then you can open a can and voila'! pumpkin pie, pumpkin muffins, steamed pumpkin pudding, pumpkin bread, the list is almost endless. I will can some pumpkin plain because we like it in Winter Vegetable Chowder (that has parsnips, carrots, beets, squashes and pumpkin). I'd like to can beef tips this week, but I might not get to that. I love canning but the sewing suffers when I'm busy putting things in jars and the canning suffers when I'm sewing a lot. Such is life. There isn't enough "me" to go around some days. :-) I put an advertisement in our local newspaper to purchase canning jars and over the past few weeks I have acquired about 600 more jars, there are jars *everywhere*! We have hundreds of jars filled already and plans to fill most of the rest. Life is busy, work is good, I am happy.

Cowboy Candy

On the canning docket today was Cowboy Candy, a yummy blend of hot peppers in a bread and butter pickling sauce. It's good on hotdogs, burgers, scrambled eggs or poured over cream cheese as a cracker dip. I am a complete wimp about hot peppers but I do like this!

Cowboy Candy
12 cups of pepper rings: bell, jalapeno, sweet banana, chili, any peppers that you like or if your name is Reber or Shumway then add lots of habanero or cherry bomb. :-D
4 cups of onions of onions
2 1/4 cup vinegar
1 1/2 cup or water
6-8 cups of sugar (8 cups if you like it sweet)
2 TBS of mustard seed
2 tsp of turmeric
2 tsp celery seed

-Wash and cut peppers & onions into thin slices and put in a large pot with the water and vinegar...bring to a boil
-Reduce heat & simmer until tender, about 10 minutes
-Add remaining ingredients
-Bring back to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for another 10 minutes
-Pack clean, hot, sterilized jars and lids leaving 1 inch headspace, adjust lids.
-Water bath can for 20 minutes
Yields about 7 pints

A Busy Day in the Kitchen

We've had a busy week in the kitchen putting things into canning jars. Hot, tiring work to be sure, but I know the reward will be worth it. Katie canned a canner load of Rattlesnake pole beans this morning, our first of the year. I was working on Rebekah's birthday presents while she did that and then we canned blueberries and pickled heirloom beets this afternoon/evening. Our beet varieties are: Chioggia, Golden, Lutz Winter Keeper. I don't think I'm a huge pickled beet fan, but they will add variety to the dullness of Winter's protein-heavy repast. I think we're about finished with the blueberries, I ought to make more syrup since what I did make is making its way to New York before long and I have none left for us. We'll see, I know we'll be elbow deep in peaches tomorrow and/or Friday and I don't want to bite off too much. This is our Pickled Beet recipe, it's from 1911.

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Pickled Heirloom Beets

1. Wash beets and trim off beet greens. Dispatch a child to feed the greens to the pigs; meanwhile leave roots and 1 inch of stems and cook until tender, about a half hour more or less.

Drain beets, cool and peel. Next, admire them on the plate.

2. Cut into slices or cubes, place in jars and pack them in but don't crush them. Then admire them some more and call all of the children in to remark on the pleasing aesthetics that beets entail.

3. In a separate kettle combine: 4 cups cider vinegar, 2 cups brown sugar, 2 cups water, 1.5 teaspoons canning salt, and in a spice bag put 2 cinnamon sticks, 12 whole cloves and 1 teaspoon whole allspice. Add spice bag to vinegar/sugar and boil for 5 minutes or the amount of time that it takes a 4 year old to tell you about the presents that she wants for her birthday which is still 4 months away. Remove spice bag and ladle syrup over beets in jars.

4. Put bands and lids in place and can in a boiling water bath canner for a half hour. Watch the storm roll in as you frantically grab the laundry from the clothesline with clothes pins flying every which way. Let it occur to you at 5:30 that you have nothing prepared for Supper and call for pizza.

Be thankful for everything that was accomplished in a day's time and doubly thankful that every day isn't like today. :-D

Using bail canning jars safely in the 21st century

The home canning authorities no longer recommend using bail lid canning jars, their official ruling states that only modern bands and lids are safe. However, I'm sure that I can't be the only person on the planet who wants to use these for something more than a button jar, so here is a step by step tutorial to ensure your safety.

1. Bail jars need 3 pieces to function: the jar, the rubber gasket and the glass lid. The jar and lid must be without chips and the gasket should be free from weak spots or cracking. I buy boxes of gaskets from Kidron Town and Country store but Lehman's also sells them.

2. After jar is filled, using recommended head space, wipe any food residue from the jar and stretch the gasket over the mouth of the jar. There will be a "shelf" that the gasket rests on. Make sure that the gasket is flat and not twisted.

3. Place glass lid over gasket and put bail closure in place.

4. Process for recommended time and allow to rest on the counter for 24 hours and then check seal. To check seal you remove the bail closure and pick the jar up by the lid. The picture shows me checking the seal on a jar of blackberries. Hold the jar only an inch or two above the counter to avoid a broken jar in case it didn't seal.

I only use my bail jars for foods that are canned with the boiling water bath method, I don't use them in my pressure canner. Certain foods need to be pressure canned to kill any botulism spores, but foods canned with a water bath canner aren't prone to botulism. Food spoilage will generally unseal the lid from previously sealed jars, look funky and/or smell bad, any of these will be obvious in a regular canning jar and will be equally obvious in a bail jar. Observing proper safety measures can make using these vintage jars a rewarding experience and less like a death defying act by a crazy women who enjoys flirting with death. :-D

Abundance

Our gardens are producing bountifully, I've never seen such abundance before. The beans are doing fantastic, the pumpkins, squashes, and cucumbers look great, the tobacco is huge, and the beets promise to be a bumper crop. We are exceedingly blessed this year. And all of it is due to the extraordinarily hard working sons that I have. :-D

We braided the garlic today, first we sorted out the 60 biggest bulbs to plant next year and then we braided the rest. They are hung on the porch and smell wonderfully, if you like garlic that is. Earlier this week we made blueberry syrup. Blueberry syrup, for those of you who are so unfortunate as to have never had this delicacy pass over your palate, is a sweetened, thickened blueberry juice that is the perfect topping for Belgian waffles. You mush up any berry and boil for 15 minutes, strain and add an equal amount of sugar, return to a boil for 1 minute and can it. It is all of Summer's sunny goodness packed into a canning jar. MMMmmmm!


I received my knitted sontag this week. It was hand crafted by the very talented Sarah H and is beautifully knitted. All of the girls are getting something similar to stave off the cold this Winter.
I am very pleased with it, it is quality workmanship through and through!


I have been busily knitting and sewing up some needed clothing. Rebekah's birthday is in exactly 2 weeks and everybody gets a new dress or two for their special day. :-D More peaches are coming today so I better get going as there are jars to wash.......

My week

It's been a busy week here, after a little break in canning we're back at it full swing. We canned 14 quarts of sweet cherries, 7 pints of blackberries and 12 quarts of peaches with lots more to do this week. Have I mentioned yet this week how much I love bail lid jars? Well, I really do, I have never, ever had a seal failure with them. Ever. I certainly can't say that about regular bands and lids. Sigh. To can fruit I prepare the fruit as usual: wash, peel, slice or whatever and then I add sugar. I added 1 cup of sugar to 10 cups of sweet cherries, 1 cup sugar to 8 cups peaches, pretty much however sugary you like it. Let sugar coated fruit sit, covered, at room temperature for several hours or overnight and it will get juicy. Place fruit into jars, top off with juice and voila', canned fruit with no added water. When using the canned fruit you can freeze the juice into ice cubes and use them with iced tea for mulberry flavored tea or raspberry or peach. Mmmm. The fruit tastes so much better than fruit canned with water, try my method and I think you'll like it.

An outside shot of the cans to try to demonstrate the richness of the fruit.

Also this week we harvested the garlic. There are a few hundred bulbs, after they dry out a bit I'll braid them. Hopefully Katie will photograph the process and I can blog about it. We really like garlic, it's so good for you.

And today, oh the thrill of it I can hardly write. Today, I got to rewash all of the clothes that I washed yesterday. They got rained on and didn't dry quickly enough so now they stink. In case you might think I'm a big whining baby and should just blog about pertinent topics, I'd like you to know that for the past 3 months I haven't had a washing machine, all of our laundry is done on a washboard and with a scrub brush. Let me expound upon the good points of doing laundry this way.

1. We now do laundry together as a family, usually anyway. The littlest girls can rinse, everybody can hang clothes on the line, we are working together.
2. We are way more careful not to needlessly dirty up garments.
3. The clothes get so much cleaner when scrubbed with a brush than any automatic washer I've ever used.
4. My biceps really got toned up, lol. There is nothing in this world for getting in shape like good, old fashioned manual labor.

Seriously, I try not to bemoan things like this and look on the bright side. I have so much to be thankful for that what's a little trial here and there? Happy Fourth day to you.

It Pays To Can!

This is my most recent Farming Magazine artice, it will be in the Fall issue, enjoy!

Home Canning Saves Money
I was sharing our food philosophy recently when a man piped up and dogmatically stated that home canning is a nice hobby but “you’re never going to save money doing it!” He went on to say that he bought his canned goods by the case load from Save-A-Lot and $.40 a can was cheaper than any home canned goods could ever be (needless to say, he isn’t a Farming magazine reader :-)). So, does home canning really save money? Let’s look at the facts. A typical 600 square foot garden will yield, on average, one pound of vegetables per square foot. Seeds, plants, fertilizer and tools cost approximately $60 amortized over 5 years, using these figures brings the cost of raising vegetables to 10¢ per pound. Obviously if you buy direct from growers or at pick-your-own farms the price is somewhat higher. Canning jars purchased new cost about $8 per dozen, amortized over 20 years brings their cost to 3¢ per jar per year, add the cost of lids (which shouldn’t be reused) and the cost for jar, band and lid is 20¢. Figuring 2 pounds of vegetable in each quart jar brings the grand total to 40¢ per jar, so indeed, canning does “pay”.
Home Canning Assures Quality
Home preservation of food also assures that my family is eating the quality of food that is important to me. Pork raised in China, fed on human waste, at bargain basement prices from my local mega-mart food chain might seem like a thrifty purchase until you factor in the real cost. Some people don’t mind, but I do. Likewise, we raise or buy locally our own vegetables; what goes into my canning jars is naturally grown, non GMO wholesomeness. It hasn’t gobbled up fossil fuels by flying 2000 miles across the country before hitting my plate, in all probability it was picked only hours before we ate it or put it into jars to enjoy this Winter.
What About The Value Of My Time?
Farm wives of a generation or 2 ago didn’t view home canning as a separate, optional activity apart from their regular duties. It was taken for granted that if you wanted to eat in the winter then you worked to preserve the harvest in the summer. The old farm families never accounted for their time or what it was worth. Only today, the modern woman, city dwellers or those new to the homesteading way of life do that. It’s part of the city mentality (and Marxist “labor theory of value”) that they cannot get past the fact that their time is worth money. Back to the 40¢ canned vegetables that my friend buys, why doesn’t he factor in the time he spends in the car and the store plus the gas money he spent to get there? The true cost of the 40¢ can is the number we should really be using for an honest comparison. From all angles home preservation is the healthiest, most economical, environmentally friendly way you can feed your family!

The 13 jars of strawberry jam that we canned yesterday. I do all of my jam in bail lid jars, I only wish I had more! I have never, ever had a seal failure with bail lids, but I've certainly had plenty with regular lids. The lids today are made so cheaply (like everything else) compared to lids 20 years ago and I think that's why they fail so often. I want to try these lids.

I am canning lemonade concentrate today, it's on sale locally and will be a nice treat this winter.

Of vintage canners, planting by moon, and 1940's rationing

I wanted to blog about everything that doesn't have to do with Katie's birthday today, mostly farm and kitchen related happenings. I needed a second pressure canner, so many things take 90 minutes to process plus the heat up and cool down times that 7 jars can take a few hours all told. New pressure canners cost a bit more than I'm willing to pay for such a thin walled contraption (they say it's to make them heat up and cool down faster than the old style but I don't believe it, it's all about cheap, shoddy goods) so I kept watch for a nice used one and I found this beauty!

I think it dates to the 1930's, it has wooden handles instead of the usual Bakelite. I really think it's cute, or as cute as a pressure canner can reasonably be anyway. :-)

We planted the crops that bear above ground last Wednesday and Thursday, the ground was dry and we didn't water them at all and!!! the plants are up, way up, yesterday morning! That is so amazing! I have never, in all my years of gardening seen seeds do this. Planting by the Moon was one of the smartest gardening moves we've ever made. Above is one of the hills of corn with a bean also up (they use the corn stalks to trellis themselves).

On my way back from taking the garden picture I snapped this picture below. I didn't "artistically arrange" the snaths or the yoke. They rest at the corner of the porch and the yoke does its duty daily in the hauling of water to the pigs, chickens, turkeys and cow. The yoke is surprisingly comfortable, light weight yet strong. Aleks used it this Spring in hauling sap, that was its original purpose but now it assists in water hauling. Following the old ways brings such a sense of "rightness" about it, there's something about doing the same things in the same way that people have been doing for hundreds of years that meets a need that humans have to feel connected to the natural world. There's a peace in it that isn't readily found in our plastic, throw away world.

I dispatched Levi to go take a picture of the Buff Orpington hen with her Chocolate turkey baby, as you can see by the ruffled neck feathers the hen was irritated at the intrusion. She was so anxious to go broody that Aleks gave her a turkey egg and she struts around proudly with her surrogate baby. :-)

Doesn't it look like a little bandit? Chocolate turkeys are very rare, one of the rarest heritage breeds that there are.

And lastly, have you read about the gal who decided to lose weight following 1940's recipes using rationed food proportions? Her goal is to lose 100 pounds and she's well on her way. I thought it was an interesting idea and certainly a worthwhile goal. She lists an authentic recipe for every pound she loses, I think there are 30 some on there now.