Something new to me starting last year is fermentation of foods.

Things started out great but then kind of fizzled when the heat of Summer kicked in.

At least three batches failed before I gave up for the Summer. I read up more and decided it was the heat, I don’t have air conditioning.

That being said, in my research I’d read that you didn’t necessarily have to use distilled water. So I tried a batch of cucumbers. I’m saddened to report it didn’t work out so well.

From here on out my jars, lids and springs will be throughly sterilized and I will only use distilled water. I will be distilling my own water. Seems since the pandemic distilled water has become a fast seller here.

From everything I’ve read fermented foods are really good for you and I like the taste. The way I see it, with things going the way they are, the more one can learn to do things the old ways the better off they will be.

I currently have a quart jar of fermented jalapenos in the fridge and I prefer the taste to store bough. It’s a bit of an acquired taste but after eating a few, all I taste is vinegar when I eat the store bought.

I’m constantly learning how to do things they way they were done before industrialization came along.

For my salt I’m using Ball canning salt, it’s finer than table salt, however most all the videos I’ve watched say they are using sea salt. Something I can’t get locally.

I’ve included links to two videos that may be helpful to you if your wanting to try fermentation at home. The first link is on fermentation and the second is about making your own distilled

https://youtu.be/IgO0g4l9KkI

https://youtu.be/KPCwXkC-3Hw

My version makes a block just shy of three inches square. I also have some that are original size and they all work well.

Still working on the composition of my blocks but feel like I’m closing in on my favorite recipe, I think.

There are of course proven recipes that can found online, however the ingredients are not available locally for me.

So I’m working on using what I have on hand or can find cheaply. Much of the ingredients being mixed in are recycled materials that would otherwise be tossed into the compost pile.

I’m hopeful that I’ll eventually be able to use my compost for this instead of store bought potting soil.

It seems the potting soil I have on hand is not good for onions. So I’ll need to figure out if it’s lacking something as I’m ready to start my onion seeds.

I currently have six blocks made up, I am trying some onion seeds, hoping my mix will work for them. There are some anaheim peppers, tomatoes a nectarine and a potato.

This coming week I’ll get serious about making blocks and filling pots to start plants to sell.

I had a potato that had an eye that was about an inch long, I broke it off and stuck it in a soil block. I’m not real happy with the block but it’s holding together so far and the potato vine is growing. In the picture you can see a root and a leaf starting to form.

I haven’t had much luck with potatos to date, it just gets too hot too soon here. I’m hopeful this will be a game changer for me.

There are of course pros and cons to soil blocks so you’ll have to decide if they make sense for you. If they make sense I encourage you to give it a try.

Pros. Air pruning of roots, stops plant from getting root bound. No more plastic pots, no transplant shock.

Cons. If you have to buy a soil blocker they can be a bit expensive, however they will likely pay for themselves over time. Especially if your selling plants. Also they may dry out a bit quicker and need to be watered from the bottom.

Pooring water on the tops may cause the blocks to break down or dislodge germinating seeds that don’t have enough root to be anchored to the soil.

I’ve read you do not need to cover the seeds and can just drop them into the indentation formed by the soil blockers dibbler. This may be true but I still cover mine with soil.

You’ll probably also want to figure out some sort of plactic cover to help hold moisture in until your seeds sprout.

I’m of the opinion that you could find a square plastic container or even an old tin can, cut out both ends and use that to mak a soil block. Just be careful as there will be sharp edges.

Basically anything you can compact soil into and get it back out of in fact should, at least in theroy work okay, if your wanting to try soil blocking but don’t want to buy a soil blocker.

Good luck and may all your ventures be met with success!

  Beef jerky is one of the kids favorite snacks.

  At one point in time I decided to make jerky to sell. I’d bought a Lem big bite dehydrator and was pricing a new slicer.

Then covid hit, meat prices rose making jerky to sell seem impractical at best and so I scraped the idea.

While I have a hard time seeing making a profit with it where I am now.

That being said making jerky at home is a great way to preserve meat and save money, it’s also easy to do.

I put the meat in the freezer for about an hour or untill it firms up. Easier to run through the slicer that way.

I like using a slicer because of the uniformity but you could use a good sharp knife if you don’t have a slicer. As with all things be careful.

After the meat is sliced I like to let it marinade over night in the fridge. A large bowl or a zip lock type bag will work, just make sure the meat is covered with the marinade.

To make the marinade I’ll use some variation of the list below.

• Beef round roast– Though you can use most any meat.
• Worcestershire sauce
• Honey
• Soy sauce
• Liquid smoke
• Smoked paprika  – Regular paprika works well also.
• Brown sugar
• Ground black pepper
• Cayenne pepper – You can also use crushed red pepper flakes.
• Garlic powder
• Onion powder

I don’t have set amounts, I generally use around 3/4 of a cup of Worcester sauce and 3/4 of a cup of soy sauce. The rest is just whatever I feel like adding at the time.

Then I lay the strips out on the drying rack after letting it drain for a bit. Put in the dehydrator and let it dry over night at 160°

As with most things I post about I recommend you watch some videos or read up on it, there is usually at least a little bit of a learning curve involved.

At some point in time I plan on adding videos to better explain myself.

Best of luck and may all your ventures be met with sucess!

Homemade yogurt is just as good as if not better than most any store bought brand in my opinion. Personally I prefer the Greek style yogurt though many find it a bit strong for their liking.

  I can’t get the kids to eat it, even when adding fruit they will complain it’s bitter.

  However where I live it’s the only kind I can find that is plain yogurt to use for my starter.

  Using a good quality plain yougurt as your starter is the best way to go that I know of. Though there are cultures you can use.

  While you don’t necessarily have to have a yougurt maker, I find it makes it much easier. I have yet to have a failed batch using mine. They can be a little pricey depending on which one you buy but it will pay for itself in savings.

  Below are six basic steps to help get you going, however I suggest you do some research and watch several videos on the subject before attempting your first batch.

1. Heat the milk to 180 degrees fahrenheit. This kills whatever microbes may be lurking in your milk and ensures you’ll have no remnant bacteria, pathogens, mold, or spores. When you create an environment for bacteria to multiple, you only want the good bacteria (which you introduce to the milk) to multiply. Heating the milk also creates a thicker yogurt by changing the protein structure.
2. Cool the milk to 112-115 degrees fahrenheit. After you’ve made the milk inhospitable for the bad stuff, you want to make it hospitable for the good bacteria, your starter mix. Use the same thermometer  you used when heating your milk, to know when it’s cooled to 112-115 degrees.
3. Add your yogurt starter.                  Pour one cup of warm milk and stir in either a yogurt starter or 3 tablespoons of pre-made yogurt. For a good starter, look for lactic acid forming bacteria.
4. Stir the yogurt starter in with the rest of the milk. This spreads the good bacteria throughout the milk.
5. Pour the milk into jars and incubate for 7-9 hours. A consistent, luke-warm temperature is great for all your good bacteria and promotes their growth. The longer you incubate your yogurt the thicker and tangier it’ll be. And after about 8 hours, you’ll have delicious, healthy, thick and creamy yogurt.
6. Place the jars in the fridge to cool and set. Cool the yogurt in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. As the yogurt cools it will get even thicker!

  This will hopefull be enough information to help get started with yougurt making. It’s easy, fun and saves money while providing a healthy food for you and your family.

May your ventures be met with success!

With the price of eggs more people are taking to keeping chicken as a way to offset the cost of eggs.

Where I live 2 1/2 dozen eggs are now just shy of $20. They was $7 at the start of last Summer.

I had gone into a farm supply store looking for the brew kits they sold. I learned that they no longer sold them but I was offered a dozen chicks for free. At the time I wasn’t set up for them and didn’t feel I had the time to build proper housing for them and so I turned the offer down.

Little did I know eggs would become so pricey.

When it starts to warm up I will build a coop and order some chicks. I have the location picked out and most everything but the wire.

The coop will be insulated and have a heat lamp along with a decent sized portable run that can be moved to where weeds are starting to grow.

I will try to find a smaller non working ice box to use for storage of their food. I have a kitchen cabinet that will be modified into a coop/nesting boxes. The cabinets could be modified fairly easily to work with a couple of the free coop plans I’ll give at the bottom.

I may even get some ducklings, though they take more room and work. The eggs are bigger though so the extra work may be worth it.

I’ve been saving my kitchen scraps for the compost piles I have going, however after I get chickens, all scraps that are edible for chickens will be given to them.

The resulting mess will then be cleaned up daily and put into the compost pile or used for side dressing in the garden.

If I end up with more eggs than we can use, I will dehydrate them for later use. So far I have dehydrated some 3 dozen store bought eggs and they take hardly any space in storage.

The shells will be broken up small and mixed into their feed for extra calcium or sprinkled in the garden area. If shells are left in tack it could lead to them eating their own eggs. If that happens throw a few golf balls in the coop and they will stop peckingvthe eggs fairly quickly.

Here is a link for information on keeping chickens.

https://www.almanac.com/raising-chickens-101-how-get-started

And as promised here is the link to free chicken coop plans.

https://www.almanac.com/raising-chickens-101-how-get-started

  A great way to save and store food stuffs for long term storage, canning and vacuum sealing are great ways of saving food.

  I’ve had and used a vacuum sealer for many years. We started using one to cut out loss to freezer burn.

  At the start I didn’t realize freezer burn doesn’t actually ruin food. Yes it looks bad and affects the flavor. However if the burn is not too bad, one can add seasoning to make it more palatable. Or just cut out the burnt spots.

  Vacuum sealing will reduce freezer burn and allow food to be stored for much longer than just putting it in a zip lock bag.

  If you get a jar attachment you can seal dried goods as well and keep bugs out of things.

  While I have not used it yet, my sealer has a setting for wet things. Which if your putting up a soup or stew it would be handy and while you’d be able to store it longer, vacuum sealing is no substitute for pressure canning.

  Unless your freezing foods I wouldn’t reccomend trying to store meats and other foods that can spoil quickly without pressure canning them.

There are things like grains that don’t like to be sealed into plastic bags. I put up a bushel of wheat and ended up having a good percentage fail because the wheat poked little holes through the plastic. Some in smaller bags I double bagged, others I stored in the freezer.

Raw meat will work some what better if frozen first, needn’t be frozen solid first. Just enough to keep the juices from being pulled out. They can get into the sealing area and cause a failed seal.

As with most of my postings, this is to help out or get you to thinking about things. By no means can I include everything you need to know.

Read a book, google, check your local extension office or consult someone you know who has used or uses a vacuum sealer. By all means make certain to learn what you’re doing because there are certain bacteria that can grow in oxygen free environments.

Be proactive and safe, use best practices at all times. You wouldn’t want to make yourself or others sick, especially when you think your providing them healthy foods.

  I would list my vacuum sealer by brand but I find it to be a bit temperamental and I’m constantly cleaning the sealing tape and adjusting bags to get it to work, sealing jars is even more difficult at times. But jars can be a pain on a good day, many use two lids because the attachment has a tendency to stick to the lid. With two the main one stays put and the second one is the one that gets stuck. Or so the theory goes. I get mixed results.

  I’ll get it working and it will take care of everything I throw at it but when I go to use it another day, I’m back to fiddling with it to get it working correctly again.

  I get frustrated enough at times that I could throw it in the trash but it cost far too much for that, I have an antique sealer that works everytime,  it just doesn’t have the fancy attachments, and it takes longer to pull a vacuum and is a bit noisier. Did I mention sealers can be loud?

    If a vacuum sealer interests you I highly reccomend you get one, do some research to learn about sealers, read reviews etc and then buy the best one that you can afford, or at least one that has all the features you want and maybe ones you think you may want one day.

  Like everything else there is a learing curve and the sooner you learn, the easier it will become. Below is a link to help get you get started.

  May your ventures be met with success!

https://extension.umn.edu/preserving-and-preparing/vacuum-sealing-food-home-safely

  I have read there are about 35 species of elm trees. Of course covering all of them would be a lengthy process and is a bit beyond the scope of this blog.

  And not all of them are important to homesteading, which is my primary focus.

  American Elm is used for making furniture and many other things. I’ve seen cabinets and such and I like the way they look.

  I’ve turned bowls and candle holders from elm and made small boxes with elm and found it hard to cut, though it is hard to work I find it worth the effort, assuming you can find a piece that isn’t split out from drying.

  It’s also tough to split, especially if it’s still a bit wet. However it puts out a respectful amount of heat, some 20 million btu’s per cord.

If there is a bit of moisture left in the wood it will not put off a pleasant smell like pine does but will instead stink and be smokey.

  There are better woods to be sure, however where I live there is an abundance  of it and I can generally scrounge a couple of cords for free. More if I get serious about collecting it.

  One year after a really bad storm I picked up four cords. All for free. Elm trees give great shade and make decent firewood among other uses. And I encourage you research into it for yourself. They drop a lot of branches and I’ve heard old timers call them widow makers because of huge branches falling out of the trees and killing people.

  Slippery Elm has medicinal uses, since I’m not personally familiar with the tree or it’s uses I’ll share a link to information.

Whatever you do, do not try using elm in a smoker or cook directly over an open flames, the flavor imparted is, well, gross at best.

The seeds are edible and the young leaves may also be, I’m not sure if it depends on the type of elm or if they all are. One would need to research the matter for themselves to know for sure. Here’s a link for the seeds.

https://www.eattheweeds.com/chinese-elm-a-tree-that-doesnt-go-dutch-2/#:~:text=Young%20leaves%20raw%20or%20cooked,Florida%20elm%20are%20also%20edible.

https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/herb/slippery-elm

May your ventures be met with success!

Above is a picture of the one I ended up getting. It was around $25 at Walmart.

The blades are really sharp and it has sliced everything I’ve thrown at it. From paper thin to around 1/4″ or so. It has four settings but to be honest, I’m not sure what they are. I generally use the first and thinnest.

After I got more serious about dehydrating and fermentation, I decided I needed a better way of slicing my produce.

Yes a good sharp knife works well and I could have continued on indefinitely using the knives I have. I even bought a couple of the crinkle cutter knives for making pickles.

I however, wanted a faster more uniform slice and I suppose looking back I could have used the meat slicer the wife had bought me for making jerky with.

But that isn’t practical for smaller items. A mandolin works perfectly and I can slice up a 10lb bag of potatoes or a 2lb bag of carrots, or anything really, in short order. I haven’t timed it but it takes seconds to process a large potato.

A word of caution though, get some Kevlar gloves. It may seem silly, you normally have a guide that you hold onto which easily keeps your hands away from the blade. So why waste more money on something you don’t need in these tough economic times?

One little slip and you will quickly realize like I did, the gloves are great advice. More than likely given by those who know all to well what it feels like when you run your knuckles across the blade. It will happen sooner or later, if your fingers will be protected or not is ultimately up to you!

If I was to go back in time, I wouldn’t touch my mandolin until after I got some Kevlar gloves. My fingers healed in about two weeks and it turns out the chunks of flesh you chop off will probably grow back but it’s gonna hurt for awhile until it does!

I haven’t quite mastered making waffle fries or potato chips yet and may not. I don’t have a lot of patience when I’m wasting food. Of course anything that doesn’t turn out isn’t truely wasted, it goes into the compost pile but still.

If you’ve been thinking about getting a mandolin to make life easier I say go for it. They generally aren’t overly expensive and thet are extremely handy to have.

May your ventures be met with success!

I’ve done something a bit different today. To be honest I was hoping it would just show the whole booklet.

It’s 44 pages and feels like it takes forever to download. However that being said, this is good information.

It was put out in 1917 by the United States and Bureau of Plant Industry. Back in a time where the American government actually worked for the people and offered information to help make being self sufficient easier.

At least that is my take on it.

I am working on setting up a food forest, however I will continue to have a garden area as well. It’s amazing the amount of food one can raise, even in a small area.

Even just container gardening can produce an impressive amount of food.

Below is a link to a video about victory gardening. Bare in mind this may not necessarily be for the lazy gardener, however one can adapt these plans, thoughts and ideas to fit their needs. Or so I believe one can.

After you watch the video, come on back and give the booklet a read. Much of the information is dated and you may need to learn what the modern alternatives are.

However if you grow your own food, food shortages at the store won’t hurt you and your family as bad as it would millions of others.

https://archive.org/details/victory_garden

Being able to produce food could well provide a source of extra income to help pay bills or perhaps buy something you’ve been wanting. In any event you’ll save at least money on food.

One could even grow food to donate to those in need if so inclined. The fresh air, fresh wholesome food, exercise and the bacteria in the soil that promotes good mood are just icing on the cake.

Make a garden plan, get some seeds or starter plants and get growing. You’ll be glad you did. The booklet below offers dated information but it’s still solid, you may just need to do a little digging to learn what still works. Some of what they mention will no doubt no longer be available but there will be alternatives.

If your nervous about downloading from a site you may not be overly familiar with, here is a link straight to the source.

https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/catalog/ORC00000267

May your ventures be met with success!

Last year I found a tree growing in my yard, I’m assuming a bird or squirrel dropped the seed it started from. It’s pushing 12′ now. All Summer I’d give it a good long soaking about every week.

After looking into it I figured out it was a shag bark hickory tree.

I had about as many people telling me I should cut it down before it got big as I did telling me it was a good tree to have.

Since I’m trying to get a food forest going, I will let it grow. I have read the nuts are good to eat and have a good taste. I figure any free food is good food and I will learn as much as possible about this tree and it’s uses as possible as time goes by.

The wood from the tree puts out good heat when used as firewood I’ve read. It’s also good for use in the smoker.

It also serves many purposes from making cordage and tool handles to wood working. It also serves as food for wildlife as well as humans

All in all I consider it a win and so far I’m happy to have it as a part of our food forest. I’ve added a couple of links to information you may find useful. And if you do some searching you’ll find plenty more. Your local library or extension office will have information as well. Happy foraging!

Shagbark Hickory Nuts: Harvesting, Cracking and Cooking

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/shagbark_hickory_another_tasty_local_nut#:~:text=Black%20walnuts%20are%20not%20the,is%20also%20well%20under%20way.