Preparing for Lean Times

There's no denying it, times are strange and uncertain. Life may or may not ever return to the way it once was. It could be understandably easy to sink into a hole of despair. Or you can do like our family is doing and prepare. Who knows what the future holds. I would like to think one day we will wake up and this insanity called COVID-19 will be a faint memory. But, in all likelihood, there's a good chance, this global shutdown is going to last a while longer and have dire consequences for years to come.

Our family has decided to be proactive and focused on creating solutions to our current concerns than wallowing in self-pity. I'm not going to lie, it's hard for me to keep on keepin' on. Some nights I lie awake sick, thinking about how horrible this world has become, and that I have ten children who have to figure out how to survive in it. But, I know that God is going to use all of this for the good of His people. I also know it would be a major disservice to the Lord, my family, and myself if I remained in a depressed state of mind. Instead, I'm hoping to be an example to my children on how to adjust, pivot, and roll with the punches. We don't have to succumb to this craziness, we can rise above it, and become better people as a whole.

Our family is making some consorted efforts to create practical solutions to help us thrive during this time. We want our children to feel safe and know they do not have to worry how their needs will be met. We want to shelter them from the raging storm whirling around outside our four walls. They deserve it, and my husband and I will do whatever it takes to make sure our children are well protected. The following is a more detailed synopsis of exactly what we are implementing within our family dynamics to help us survive the dire circumstances we currently find ourselves in. 

Preparing For Lean Times

1. Reevaluating Needs vs. Wants:
• Now is not the time for frivolously spending. We are praying through each and every purchase whether food, clothing, or any other item to determine if it is a necessity. 
• We are making purchases which help to reduce our over all spending, such as our new clothe line. 
• We are limiting our shopping in person as well as online, making sure every purchase is an essential item that our family truly needs.
2. Intentional Sustainability:
• We have increased the size of our garden with plants and fruit bearing trees/bushes. We are also pursuing meat chickens and other sources for food supply; such as inquiring of neighbors and friends if they know of outlets where we can find fruit trees to pick from. So far we have found a new free source for crab apples and someone who is getting rid of their canning jars.
• As cliche as it may sound, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is at the core of our daily life. We are reusing everything that we possible can ~ just the other day I salvaged a set of stand alone stairs to use as a planter station for my herbs. ALL leftovers are being eaten. Of course cloth for as many things as possible including diapers and napkins. We are trying to become a no waste family. 
• After a month of searching we were able to place our yearly co-op order. While this does not sustain us indefinitely it will meet our dry goods needs for the next year, reducing our need to purchase these items from stores or online. We've also managed to place our yearly order for maple syrup which we cook with and we're working on our yearly order for honey. All of these bulk purchases safe us money in the long run.
3. Immune Health:
• We are focusing on eating clean. Whole foods to promote a healthy immune system which can ward of disease and infection as well as give us the energy to pursue our many avenues of self-sufficiency.
• We are removing as many toxic substances as possible from our home from cleaning products to beauty products. There was a time we had minimal of these items, but I guess you could say I became negligent. I feel now is just as good as any time to get back on that band-wagon, it's really not that hard and it's certainly more affordable.
• We are making sure we have a decent stock of herbs, essential oils and vitamins to help combat ailments. We have always done this, but I guess you could say we are upping our game. We haven't been to the doctor for sickness in so many years I couldn't even tell you exactly the last time. But, the key on this one is to be proactive with necessary supplies so that when there's a need to treat a health situation, you are prepared.

Ultimately, God is in control. But, we can be used by God to fulfill His will. Having a plan and being intentional to work towards those goals is a much more positive way to use our time these days; rather than just hiding inside worrying. It is my deepest desire that throughout these crazy times our family would uphold God's word, look for the Lord's wisdom and knowledge, and not be wasteful with our time here on Earth. We are alive for a reason. None of *this* has caught God off guard. He is still in the business of providing for His people and He will continue to do so until the end of time.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer 

Winter Canning

Oops, I guess this post should have gone before yesterday's post, but that's what happens when your'e as behind as I am in sharing what's been going on around this little ol' homestead. We're just going to roll with it, and hopefully I'll get caught up sooner than later.

Since we've decided to go full on mega gardening season this year, we knew we had to free up some space in our deep freezers. We currently have two fridge/freezer combos and two upright deep freezers. We try to reserve freezer space for venison and produce that doesn't can very well. But, come August when we are all run ragged we often freeze the field peas and tomatoes instead of canning them. So, we often have a freezer full of those two items this time of year.

Now that we're hoping for a bountiful harvest this year, we are acutely aware that our freezer space is critical; so we commenced to have a couple winter canning days. First with our frozen tomatoes and second with our frozen field peas (Mississippi Pink Eye Purple Hull, to be exact). 

We don't do anything special to freeze our tomatoes or peas. Simply shell the peas and put them into freezer baggies, and then freeze. For the tomatoes: we quarter them, making sure all the bad spots are cut off and discarded, and then put them into freezer bags and into the freezer. If it's a cherry or grape tomato we put the entire tomatoes into the bag without cutting. 

To can the tomatoes and peas from frozen, we set them into large bowls to unthaw over night before we plan to can them. I especially like to use my frozen tomatoes to make rich, thick tomato sauce. The frozen tomatoes make a perfect sauce consistency for making pizza sauce, which is why I put these pureed tomatoes into pints. Typically, when I'm making pizza sauce a pint jar of tomato sauce is sufficient.

We had quite an abundance of peas stored in our freezers. I must admit I rarely pull peas from the freezer when I'm wanting to use them in a meal. It's just so much easier to use already canned peas when preparing a meal, because they're pretty much already cooked.

We ended up with 18 pints of tomato sauce and 29 quarts of field peas (one jar of peas is not pictured because we used it for dinner). Not bad for a winter canning session. We've been hugely intentional trying to eat what we have preserved, especially in regards to eating what is in our freezers. After all, we worked really hard to grow the food and to preserve it. Even with life being so uncertain these days, it's such a blessing that another season of gardening to grow our own food is upon is. Normalcy is definitely a positive ray of hope and for that I thank The Good Lord above. 

With Love &Hope,

Jennifer

Super-Sized Watermelon

Our family absolutely loves watermelon, but they're kind of pricey bought from the store so I rarely buy them; which is why we try to grow our own. Some years we have an amazing watermelon harvest and others not so much, just like everything else we try to grow. But living in the south we typically harvest at least a few decent watermelons a year. This year we happened to grow our biggest ever watermelon ~ weighing in at a whopping 41 pounds!!

While it wasn't 'dead ripe' as my people like to say, it was the sweetest watermelon we've picked all season. We try to eat oldest to newest in order of when we picked our produce, but everyone was chomping at the bit to dig into this beast of a watermelon. 

I had to get a picture of the huge watermelon on our garden scale just so we had proof of it's size since the pictures don't always do it justice. 

While this isn't the monster watermelon we picked, it is one of our fresh picked watermelons that was  cut at the same time we were scooping out the 'big one'. Scooping out watermelon is a prize job each of my children highly look forward to doing. Which is also why I have 3 melon ballers. Yes, I could just as quickly slice the watermelon myself, but teaching my children to serve and be a positive contributing member to the family and homestead is a huge part of our goals in raising children.

This picture really shows how big our 41-pounder really was. It spanned the length of our island! And an added bonus to our super-sized watermelon was that it had minimal seeds. Picking out seeds for the little ones is not one of my favorite things to do, but I willingly do it because even the littlest ones of our family love watermelon. 

Yes, the bulk of growing your own food is intense work, but when little (big) rewards come rolling in like super-sized watermelons it makes all the work even more worth-while. It's so fun to watch the children's excitement watching the garden grow, picking the harvest, and then enjoying the fruit of our labors. It's a full-circle beautiful gift from the Lord. I'm so grateful for the privilege to be apart of such life-style, even when we're exhausted and ready to throw in the towel ~ we keep plugging away and God continues to honor our efforts even when we are so undeserving. 

"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men." 

Colossians 3:23 (ESV)

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Blueberry Picking with the Family

Well, the season for blueberry picking is upon us. Today, me plus eight of my crew went out to see if we could fill a 5 gallon bucket. We were only able to get about a gallon, but we also only had an hour because we had to get back to the house to can some bread and butter pickles and dill pickles. The good thing is when you've got private access to blueberry bushes you can get up early and head to the bushes to pick anytime; so we'll be doing that in the mornings for an hour or so until we've cleaned out the berry bushes.

The berries are nice and plump this year!

Little miss Lydia was picking blueberries like she'd been doing it for years. 

Titus picked a few but mostly he ran around chasing Samuel, lol.

Once Lydia had her fill of picking blueberries we put her in the stroller and Matthew pushed her around. He picked a few berries, but mostly just ate them. Seven is a tough age to balance picking and eating, lol.

Two of my main pickers. Tabitha & Joshua filling their bucket like there was no tomorrow!

Even our big teens get involved in the pickin'. Elijah is a great help and rarely complains about the work around the homestead.

Lucas found himself a good spot to hang out and pick, he was quite ambitious with his own 5 gallon bucket. 😁

And mama of course picking berries. I managed to pick a quarter of a bucket of berries, despite spending an exorbitant amount of time child training a certain 4 year old. {{sigh}}

These three escaped the blueberry 'patch' to find themselves some apples on the apple trees 

(more likely the unripe ones that fell on the ground ~ they'll learn eventually 😅).

We have a good many blueberry bushes on our own property, but these bushes we were picking from are located on our neighbor's property. Over the years we've reached out to people in our area asking if they had fruit producing trees and bushes that we could 'pick on halves'. Picking on halves means several different things but usually it means we pick them some of the fruit in return to pick and keep the rest. This especially works great with those 'senior saints' who planted those wonderful trees and bushes oh so many years ago but aren't able to pick from them any more. We've also enjoyed connecting and building relationship as well as gleaning great wisdom from many of these folks who let us 'pick on halves'. Plus it's an awesome way to fill your larder for nothing but sweat equity. 

My blueberry pickin' crew. 

The pursuit of a simple life has led our family to really think outside the box and get out of our comfort zones. Picking on halves, bartering, simply asking to borrow land and/or tools and equipment; you name it, there's a lengthly list of all the ways we've utilized to simplify our lives and build our homestead. I'm a firm believer that it's a simple life/homesteading frame of mind. All the land and money in the world won't get you back to basics, slowing down and appreciating the blessings you've been given. It's working hard and often doing without that often sparks the greatest ideas and the best inventions. 

So, while it may seem like we're just doing a family fun outing ~ picking blueberries ~ it's really so much more. It's instilling in my children a strong work ethic, it's building relationships, it's teaching them to know where food comes from and how God allows it to grow, it's real life, most importantly it's our life. Yes, it's a little different than most, but it's a great life and one I wouldn't change it for anything.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Preserving Corn the Easy Way

There's modern, FDA approved methods for preserving food and then there's old school, tried and true methods. Now, I do agree that it is best to use safe handling procedures when dealing with food,  but most of the time modern techniques are just overkill and time wasters. I do NOT have time to be doing extra work just to be doing it. This is going to be a super short and sweet post with a simple, no fuss one step guide to preserving corn on the cob.

When I first started preserving food I was totally clueless! I mean, seriously, 20 years ago my culinary skills began with spaghetti and ended with hotdogs. Fast forward, and there isn't much I can't cook or preserve, all thanks to some old timers who took the time to show me the ways of those who came before us. Preserving food used to be just what people did, especially women. Unfortunately, now days, many folks can barely prepare a decent meal (hey, no judgement from me, I used to be one of them!).

As a homesteader and a pursuer of the simple life it just comes natural to learn to cook, grow, and preserve as many different kinds of food items as possible. Corn on the cob was one of the first foods I learned to preserve. Why? Because it was so easy and in the south, it's fairly easy to grow corn. We do skin the kernels off the cob to can and freeze, but that's another lesson for another day. Today is all about having corn on the cob in the off season.

Are y'all ready for it? Well here ya go.....once the corn is shucked and silked, simply put the cobs in freezer baggies and put them in the freezer! Yep, it's that simple. You do NOT have to blanche the cobs!!! I've had folks say you must do this for a myriad of reasons and well it just isn't true. I've tried both ways and they taste the same, one just requires more work. You can also store them in vacuum seal bags if you're concerned about freezer burn; but honestly I've never had problems with the corn crystalizing.

When I'm ready to cook the frozen corn on the cob; I just throw them (frozen) in a pot of water and boil or our favorite way: in the Instant Pot. Using the Instant Pot to make corn on the cob is super simple too and makes the corn taste just as good as if it were picked fresh and eaten right away. I'll share that how-to another day, soon. But in the meantime, you can quickly and easily preserve your bounty of corn by throwing those bad boys in the freezer since it's so super easy, right?

With Love & Hope,
Jennifer

Growing Potatoes From Start to Finish

Despite living in the south which is riddled with heat, humidity and lovely bugs, I'm determined to grow our own potatoes!! Another factor which complicates us growing potatoes is that we do not have a root cellar, basement, or crawl space; which makes storing potatoes long term nearly impossible. And as some folks do in the northern states, leaving the potatoes in the ground until we want to eat them is just not a method that would work for us: first because we need the space to plant other crops and second because the bugs would devour them before we could eat them all. We've tried many different methods for storing them over the years, but you'll have to keep reading to find out what we did with our crop of potatoes this year!

Growing potatoes really isn't that hard it just takes a long time for them to grow. We start with freshly tilled soil (with fertilizer tilled in if you're using) and a bag of seed potatoes. The kids and I took the seed potatoes and cut them into sections, cutting off parts so that each cut had an 'eye' (which is the part that leads to a potato plant). Then we dug a long trench, dropping potato chunks into the trench spacing them about a foot apart. After that you cover the trench back with dirt. As the potatoes grow you continue to cover them with dirt. Potatoes love light airy soil.

Once you start to notice the plants turning brown (dying) it's time to harvest your crop of potatoes. You want to be careful digging up your potatoes, because they're basically long vines under ground and it's easy to chop one in half or at the very least cut a potato you didn't want to cut. We lay our potatoes out on a tarp to dry out a little. Any green, mushy, or potatoes with evidence of bug bites we throw out.

This year we decided to further dry out the potatoes by setting them on tables lined with newspaper in our schoolroom. I'm not sure we'll do this method in the future as it did seem that we lost a good many to rot, but I'm not sure if we wouldn't have lost them anyways. After letting them dry out for 2 weeks; turning them after one week, we wrapped the remaining good potatoes individually in newspaper and stored them in an under-the-bed tote without the lid. We stacked the potatoes two layers high, and stored them under our bed. This is the first year we've done this so I'll keep you posted on how long they last.

Since potatoes cost a good bit when bought at our local grocery I don't purchase them all too often. So when our potato harvest comes in we typically eat them up fairly quickly. I wish there was a way we could grow a years worth and store them to last nearly as long, but that just isn't in the cards right now.

Oh I should add that any potatoes smaller than a baseball we canned to add to soups, stews, and to make mashed potatoes. Canning potatoes isn't hard it's just labor intensive! Thankfully, though our whole crew gets their hands into the mix to get the job done, and as they say "many hands make light work". I didn't get any pictures from when we canned our potato harvest, which is totally not like me, but I must have been seriously in the zone, lol!

While our potato preserving system may not be ideal, it works for us and we get to enjoy farm fresh potatoes grown by our hands! Trust me it's well worth all the extra work!!

With Love & Hope,
Jennifer

Growing Your Own Food

The family garden used to be a way a life. It played a huge role in providing the bulk of the family's food supply. Eating fresh produce grown by the hands of the family was the norm. Unfortunately, due to the Industrial Revolution times have changed. People no longer have gardens. Sadly, many children don't even know where their food comes from. Such a sad state of affairs. And now the Industrial Age has led to the Technological Age which certainly has not made the situation any better. We're no better off as a country or as a people in the realms of how and what we eat. Obesity is widespread, the family unit is being traded for electronic devices, and our food is being artificially created. Do we really have to wonder why our health is deteriorating?

Well, for our family, things work a little differently. We grow a LOT of the food we eat. Our children grow up in the garden and in the kitchen. It's not just a matter of growing our own food, but preserving and cooking it. No, this is not an easy job. It takes everyone pitching in to make it happen. But, hard work builds character and the memories we make working along side of each other, AND knowing where our food comes from is far worth the extra effort.

Every year is different as to how much we grow and preserve. After all, ultimately only the Lord can  make our gardens grow. But we usually fill several hundred jars and 2 freezer full of food. And for that I am very grateful. We plan our meals around what we can, dehydrated, and freeze. Over the years we've learned how to really focus on eating fresh as well as from what we preserve. Our main garden is our summer garden, but we also have a small fall/winter garden and a small spring garden to help buffer our food supply. The majority of the produce grown during the fall, winter and spring doesn't really lend itself to preserving; although some years we do some minor canning during the off season.

The simple life can easily be confused with an 'easy life', but I can assure you, it isn't! It's non-stop hard work. Working when you're tired, sick, or there's yucky weather. Some days you really have to force yourself to be the voice of encouragement even when you're just as burnt out and exhausted as the rest of your family. But, the reward is oh so worth it. Knowing where our food comes from as well as cultivating strong family bonds through working hard together is a priceless gift we receive through this nontraditional lifestyle.

I'm often asked where a person should start with their home-growing food efforts and I aways say make a list of produce you enjoy eating and then learn how to grow it in your region. There's no sense in trying to grow something you aren't going to eat. Funny thing is the more you learn to grow, the more you want to grow AND as you are growing your own food the more you want to learn to cook and eat what you grow. It's a beautiful round robin of learning and adapting. At least this is how it happened for me. When I first started out homesteading I didn't even know the beginning of all the wonderful, delicious produce God created that we can grow with our very own hands! And I'm still learning every year!!

From there it's as simple as trial and error, perseverance and never giving up. You may be blessed and figure out gardening and growing your own food quickly, but most likely it will take time. Time to build your soil, learn your region, when the best time to grow, and so much more. It's a never ending process. I highly recommend keeping detailed gardening journals. Including what you did to your soil, where you planted crops, when you planted, the weather, and the outcome and any other notes you may find helpful for future plantings. Growing your own food isn't complicated it just takes commitment and dedication to work hard and follow through.

Despite the few people growing their own food these days there are endless resources available to learn how to garden. Anyone really can learn how to grow their own food. 20 years into this lifestyle and we are always trying new methods and planting new crops. Sometimes the new attempts work and sometimes they don't, but we keep trying and plodding forward adapting and regrouping to make our gardens the best they can be to meet the needs of our growing family. Lord willing our children will continue to pass down the knowledge adding to it as they work the soil, plant, and harvest the blessings God gives them.

At the very least may God restore in us all 

the desire to be good stewards of the earth He has given us. 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer