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By the grace of God we started our home school year on Monday. My hectic schedule means that I have to prepare, grade, and teach on Fridays. The 3 school age girls are then doing their assignments Monday through Thursday. We'll have to cut back to 2 days a week for school when we kick in to high gear for preserving, so they started a little early.
Yesterday we spent the evening carefully packing our largest freezer with our beef we got back from the butcher. The heifer weighed in at 842 pounds hanging weight! We had our first steaks tonight and were pleased with the meat. The cutting by the butcher could have been better, but it will feed us for the next year.
Tonight we had a lot of preserving and prep work to do. We grated zucchini for freezing and we diced zucchini, blanched it, and laid it on a baking sheet to freeze. I have not had good luck freezing zucchini to eat in the winter as a veggie, but I am hoping the diced will work to throw in a soup now and then. If you have any tips on preserving zucchini I would love to hear them. They are one of my most favorite veggies. I will can some with tomatoes when the tomatoes are ripe.
We also canned green beans and froze some whole. We froze some blackberries. We also ground some pork shoulder roasts to mix in with some ground beef to make summer sausage tomorrow. I found a recipe that calls for mustard seed, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and pepper. After you mix it and put it in the casings, you smoke it for 4-5 hours until it is cooked. I am pretty excited to try this as we have had good success making our own pork sausage, bacon, and hams.
I was asked to share about making sauerkraut, so here it goes. I slice the cabbage after washing it and mix one medium to large size head with 2 tablespoons of sea salt. I then push it down in the bowl with a wooden spoon so it releases some of it's water. I pack mine is 1/2 gallon canning jars, continuing to press it down as you put it in. I use plastic screw on lids to cover the jars tight and leave them on the counter for a week. I leave on the counter for longer if I am planning to eat it without canning it first. However, for canning I pack it in wide mouth pint jars after one week. I pour some of the juice into each jar. I heat 4 cups of water with 4.5 teaspoons of sea salt and add it to the jars until there is 1/2 inch of head space left. I process the pints for 15 minutes in water bath canner. If you like your sauerkraut stronger, leave it on the counter longer before canning it.
This coming weekend I expect we will being canning applesauce and apple pie filling. The kids have been eating windfall apples for weeks, but I have been waiting patiently for them to be perfectly ripe for canning. The tops of the trees look ripe so we will pick there to get started and should be able to spread out the canning as they continue to ripen. We will also be drying apple rings.
I am researching planting wheat this winter and spring and hull-less oats in the spring. If we are going to do it, we will want to turn the soil once or twice before the weather is yucky. Now I know that lots of people say it is not worth it because of the amount of work it takes, but I still want to try. With wheat and oats, we are only a milk cow and beehive away from food independence. Sure there are a few little things here and there like baking soda and salt that we would need to purchase, but it would be extremely minor.
DH is seriously talking about starting my greenhouse. We got a false start last summer and it didn't go anywhere. He has been able to salvage some sliding glass doors to use for the roof and walls, so now he has a vision. Before I had a vision and he had the know how and muscles. Somehow it was not a winning combination. Do I dare order some seeds and start some greenhouse cucumbers and tomatoes for the winter?
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