It has been a busy summer here at Exotic Gardening Farms and Wildlife Habitat. The flower garden is not looking good due to lack of rain and my lack of time for weeding. I do see lots of rose hips forming however and am anxious to pick them to make jelly as well as other items once the first frost hits them. I also noticed hops on my vine and am waiting on those to be ready to pick.
Today I will finish dehydrating some grapes for raisins. I still have oranges, grapefruit, apples, tomatoes and pears to can. I will make more applesauce and juice from the apples. The tomaotes will yield more tomato sauce and tomato juice. I have plenty of plain pears so may make some more cinnamon ones or look for a new recipe. The citrus I will juice and use the peel to make zest and candy. I just found out the white part of the citrus has medicinal value and so I will save some of it to dehydrate. Jon said to just add it to any food to gain the medicinal value.
I have some oregano oil that I used a sun distillation method on that looks like it is ready to preserve for winter usage. I am thinking of using it in some of the lye soap I made.
Today the soap will be ready to come out of the first mold, be cut and begin curing. Later, when the canning season settles down, I will hand mill the soap and add herbs, color and fragrance. Once my molds are free again I will make a second batch of lye soap. It should be a nice soap when it is done. At this stage it has lard, olive oil and cocoa butter in it.
Soon it will be time to get Leonardo sheared. I am really looking forward to my first kid mohair. It should spin up into a nice batch of yarn that I can use to make something or the other with. With winter just around the corner I am looking forward to some time off from yard work so I can begin spinning and weaving again. They say for everything there is a season and that is beginning to make sense the longer I live here.
So far here is a list of what is canned and stored for winter. While I would like to see more vegetables such as green beans and corn on the list I don’t think this is a bad start at all. I have 280 packages of food so far. My goal was 1500 packages. The weather has not been real cooperative and the corn and green beans did not do well. I had planned to can 100 pints of corn, 100 pints of green beans and freeze 100 packages of brussell sprouts (which have not come in yet) and 100 packages of sugar snap peas. If I fall short this year, there is always next year.
2 Pints Strawberry Juice
1 Half Pint Strawberry Juice
6 Half Pints Rose Jelly
2 Half Pints Rose Honey
2 packages of 2 pound mix of Honey Wheat Bread
2 packages of 1 1/2 pounds mix Honey Wheat Bread
1 package of Orange Sugar Cookies
4 packages of Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Cookies
5 packages of Dinner Rolls
1 package of Honey Spice Cookies
One and a Half Pints 1 Chicken BrothQuarts 3 Chicken BrothPints 14 StrawberriesHalf Pints 1 StrawberriesPints 1 SpinachHalf pound 5 Sugar Snap PeasOne and a Half Pints 3 Grape JuicePints 8 Grape JuicePints 1 CarrotsPints 1 Grape Jelly4 Ounce Jars 14 Grape JellyPints 13 Tomato JuiceOne and a Half Pints 4 Tomato Juice4 Ounce Jars 7 Lemon Balm and Lemon Verbena Jelly6 Ounce Jars 1 Lemon Balm and Lemon Verbena JellyHalf Pints 3 Mixed Herb Vinegar4 Ounce Jars 9 Mixed Herb VinegarPints 1 Black Stem PeppermintPints 2 SageQuarts 1 Lavender Flowers
Quarts 1 Chocolate Mint
Pints 1 Lime BalmQuarts 1 RosemaryQuarts 2 TarragonPints 1 TarragonQuarts 1 RaisinsPints 1 OreganoQuarts 2 CherriesHalf Pints 1 CherriesQuarts 1 Dill WeedQuarts 3 Passion Fruit MojitoHalf Gallons 3 Dehydrated Potatoes12 ounce 2 Roasted Garlic Italian VinaigretteHalf Pints 4 Raspberry Syrup30 ounce 1 Strawberry JamPints 1 Honey Cinnamon Pecan PeachesOne and a Half Pints 2 Honey Cinnamon Pecan PeachesQuarts 1 Honey Cinnamon Pecan Peach Sauce
Orange Marmalade
Berry Preserve
8.5 ounce 1 Pineapple, Banana and Passion Fruit Jam8.5 ounce 1 Pineapple, Banana and Orange JamHalf Pints 2 Cherry JuiceQuarts 7 Green BeansPints 5 Green BeansOne and a Half Pints 1 Tomato Sauce4 ounces 1 Tomato SaucePints 4 Seasoned Tomato SauceQuarts 1 Seasoned Tomato SauceQuarts 38 PotatoesQuarts 1 Apple JuicePints 2 Cinnamon Red Hot ApplesPints 4 Cinnamon Apple SaucePints 11 Apple Pie FillingPints 1 Lemon BalmPints 1 Caraway
Bell PeppersPints 1 Banana PeppersQuarts 2 Raspberry LeavesQuarts 2 SpearmintQuarts 1 Black CuminQuarts 1 Dill SeedQuarts 1 Orange PeelPints 1 Passion Fruit PeelQuarts 1 Ancho Chili PodsQuarts 1 CamomileHalf Pints 6 Raspberry Vinegar4 ounces 1 Raspberry VinegarCup 1 Raspberry and Mulberry VinegarHalf Pints 1 Raspberry and Mulberry VinegarPints 14 PearsPints 9 Cinnamon PearsPints 8 Pear JuiceQuarts 1 Pear JuicePints 8 Cucumber Mix (Dill Pickles)Pints 4 Jon’s Armenian Cucumbers
Liters 6 Pomegranite Juice
Sheri
Filed under Homestead Happenings, Miscellanous by on Oct 31st, 2009. Comment. 
It has been a busy past few weeks on the homestead. The baby goats are growing like weeds. We are still milking so even though breeding season is here, it isn’t happening just yet.
The goat milk is being turned into cheese, soap, butter, ice cream and of course, some is being frozen for winter use.
The chest freezer finally was moved into the kitchen, a task I had wanted done for several years. The hoops are in place in the garden and seedlings are started. It will simply be a matter of covering the hoops with plastic when the time comes then walking outside to harvest fresh lettuce, carrots, radish, broccoli and cabbage during the winter months.
The past few weeks have been spent dehydrating tomatoes, peppers, garlic, herbs and whatever else I have come across. I have been canning, mostly tomato products such as sauces and soups.
Last year I canned lots of grape juice with the intention of making wine. The year came and went without that happening. However I am happy to report that the grape juice has finally been turned into wine. I have four gallons of grape wine in the carboy fermenting now. It is a beautiful burgundy color.
Speaking of making things to drink, I made four gallons of cola as well. I chose to sweeten it with half clover honey and half regular sugar. Although it was flat when I bottled it, it did taste good. In a few weeks the carbonation will be complete and we will open our first bottles of homemade cola.
Besides making lye soap recently, I have been making hydrosols, essential oils and spinning wool into yarn. Winter is certainly not far off and whatever is not used up of summers bounty will be lost. I have produced a number of hydrosols and essential oils. To date I have distilled chocolate mint, orange mint, spearmint and black stem peppermint.
I have some new lye soap creations I am excited about. I milled the soap so I could add spearmint hydrosol and goat milk to it. The new scents are Snowman Soap, a rich blend of spearmint, juniper berry and pine; Lavender Bliss, a relaxing and invigorating aroma made up of spearmint and lavender; Nature Soap, a mix of clove bud, spearmint and rose geranium and Peachy Dreams, a cool soap scented with lemongrass, clary sage and vanilla.
If that were not enough, I am finally finding some time to spin. I started with Johnny’s lamb’s wool. Johnny is white, so on the spinning wheel I have almost a full bobbin of white yarn, single strand. I decided a little color wouldn’t hurt, so tonight I dyed some of his wool neon purple. It is a gorgeous color. Of course I will not know what the finished color will look like until it dries and I wash it, card it and spin it into yarn. Besides spinning wool alone I have been coming up with other pleasing combinations of fiber. I have rolags made of a black alpaca/llama fiber; rolags of black wool from Pearl, silk noir and white angora from Gizmo; rolags of mohair dyed with walnut shells, silk noir and white angora from Gizmo and rolags of alpaca and cashmere from Tulip. These mixes of fiber should make some pretty interesting yarn.
Other current projects include making homemade noodles to put into the freezer for winter use and making beef jerkey to snack on. I also have plans to make some corn chips to keep on hand for late night snack binges. There are pears on the tree, the last batch, that need picked. Then it will just be a matter of waiting on the first frost to pick the persimmons.
Winter is indeed just around the corner, but our little homestead will be ready.
Filed under Homestead Happenings by on Oct 30th, 2009. Comment.
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