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When ever fall arrives I begin to think that homesteading slows down as we indulge in the fruits of our labor and snuggle in around the fire. My thoughts turn to knitting, baking, and the holidays; but the harvest is not quite over yet. We finished bringing in the unripe tomatoes to ripen in cold storage, harvested the sunflowers and dry beans, dug up the carrots and packed in sand, and brought the pumpkins and winter squash in. I canned a few more tomatoes as stewed tomatoes with peppers. I still have lots of peppers to deal with, whole tomatoes to can, green tomatoes to prepare and can, and apples to pack into cold storage. This is also the time of year when we begin thinking about harvesting from the wild. DH has been out hunting for several weeks, but with the weather so dry he hasn't had any luck yet. He will also hunt elk during the November season and perhaps we'll get luck with a turkey for Thanksgiving. This is also the time of year when the Elderberries are ripe and ready for picking. Elderberries are great for jam, syrup, wine, or medicinal purposes. I have been drying some to make a tincture for all of us to keep our immune system healthy this winter. This weekend we will head out to hunt Chanterelle mushrooms in the forest. We have some good picking around here and I will get enough to can and freeze for the rest of the year. They are great in soups and stroganoff. I am also drying herbs from my garden for both culinary and medicinal purposes. I have thyme, rosemary, sage, parsley, lemon balm, dill, and coriander that are my focus. Many of these are great medicinals as well as they will go in my holiday cooking and upcoming sausage making. We'll be making our own sausage this year as well as bacon and hams when we butcher our pig. Our plan was to send it out to a meat processing facility, but after hearing some stories of meat being contaminated with other people's meat and bad tasting bacon we decided to do it ourselves. DH has lots of experience killing and cleaning hogs, but has never done the cutting up before. I am sure it will go fine and we will have a chance to use our new butcher room we built in the barn. We are assembling the items we need right now, such as a larger meat grinder, knives, and a sausage stuffer. We are also reading up on brines and smoking. We are considering building our own smoker. By processing it ourselves I can also avoid the sugar and nitrates that would be used commercially. I hope your homesteading days are as full and happy as ours . . . |
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Posted by Aligirl