Our lenten homesteader experiment...

One of the very few holdovers I have from my Catholic upbringing is observing the practice of giving something up for lent.  I always thought stuff like giving up chocolate or not eating meat on Friday were kind of lame, but some years I would do stuff like save all my change and send it to a charity or one year I tutored some friends for free (it was college, they were musicians and needed to pass a math class--'nuff said).  This year I decided to choose my lenten challenge for myself based on our homesteading lifestyle.  I decided to give up shopping and eating out from Ash Wednesday until Easter.

Over the past year that we have lived at our homestead (I can't believe it will be a year Feb. 28th!), I've been slowly building a stockpile of groceries in the basement.  I read several takes on the stockpiling idea and decided the best approach would just be to stockpile things that we use on a regular basis.  In other words, if I would usually buy three jars of pasta sauce every two weeks, buy six every two weeks until you have enough for a length of time.  It might sound like we ended up spending twice as much on our grocery bill as we normally would, but with all that we harvested from the garden last year, the deer meat we got this fall, the rabbit meat, eggs and chicken meat we get from the animals we raised, it wasn't too much more of a cost.  I think we are finally to the point where we can comfortably go for six weeks or more without going shopping.  

We did have to make an exception for two things.  We don't have a source of milk on our homestead yet, so we will have to buy milk and since this is not growing season, we will need to buy certain fresh produce items in order to cook.  I thought about buying some of the fresh produce and freezing it, such as celery, but we ran out of room in the deep freezer (maybe a sign that we need a second deep freezer).

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and Easter is April 12th.  With the exception of milk and fruit and veggies...and gas for the cars...we are not going to purchase anything until then.  

There are already two things that I forgot about.  I forgot that the Easter bunny will need to purchase a few things for the easter baskets.  I also forgot about my son's birthday on April 10th.  Maybe I'll just make everything I need for those two holidays.  I think I have a few things for my son in the closet anyway and I made sure to stockpile cake mixes.  I mean, if something tragic happened and we HAD to live on our stockpile of food, I would be a much more pleasant person if I had chocolate cake occasionally. :)

Homesteading Books #3

Here is hopefully the last list of homesteading books (I need to get them off the office floor!):

The Chopra Center Herbal Handbook by Deepak Chopra and David Simon:  I'll be honest...I put Deepak Chopra on the same level as the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi...which is a money grubbing Easterner that is smart enough to dupe us Westerners into believing the mystical magical stuff they pander.  This book, though, is valuable because of the encyclopedic section on herbs and their potential uses.  He also give precautions about herb usage, which is something hard to find in other herb books.

Readers Digest Herbs by Lesley Bremness:  This is a great reference book for herbs and how to use them.  The color pictures makes this indispensable, in addition to the directions and recipes for using herbs and the growing recommendations on each herb. 

The Doctors Book of Home Remedies from the Editiors of Prevention Magazine Health Books:  This is another encyclopedic volume, organized by illness, that offers simpler home remedies for each malady.  Some are obvious, like asthmatics should stay out of smoky rooms, but others are things I had never heard, such as switching to butter milk to help with lactose intolerance or using fresh beer instead of mousse in your hair.

The Complete Outdoorsmans's Guide to Edible Wild Plants by Berndt Berglund and Clare Bolsby:  This book is a collection of recipes using wild plants found in various parts of the country.  The recipes are organized by plant and before each set, there is some information about identifying different plants and how to store and use them.  Since the plant pictures are just pen and ink drawings, it is a little hard to identify them (which can be dangerous) but there are directions for making acorn flour, so the book definitely has its upside.  I think I would want another resource with more reliable pictures before I would start scavenging the woods, but the recipes in here look awesome to use.

The Complete Woodsman's Guide by Anthony Acerrano:  This book is much like a wilderness survival manual.  It isn't so much intended for permanent homesteads, but more for backpackers and people who may need to be in the wilderness for extended periods.  There is some information on firemaking, cooking, reading the weather, knot tying and other skills that would benefit just about anyone.

Deerskins into Buckskins by Matt Richards:  This is a beginning to end instruction guide on not only how to tan deerskins, but also how to make all the tools you need to do it.  Sewing instructions are also included.  This book is great for all its pictures and explanations.

The illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book by Sharon Rosenberg and Joan Wiener:  This book cracks me up.  It is written by two hippies (aren't most homesteading/back to the land books) and is copyright 1971.  The clothes designs are definitely dated and some of the prose is hilarious, but it takes a lot of mystery out of sewing clothes for people like me who have trouble using patterns.  I made the Joseph costume for our church's live nativity using this book.  My husband would like me to make him a Joseph costume to wear around the house (maybe if I make it in woodland camo print, it wouldn't look like such hippie garb).  Does anyone know what AC-DC clothes are?!?

The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward C. Smith:  This was our first book on vegetable gardening and this guy really has some good ideas about gardening in it.  He is all about organic methods and though I think he takes it to the extreme, there are certain tips we've picked up that work well for us.  If you were going to buy one book on vegetable gardening, I would think this would be it.

Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers by Edward C. Smith:  This is another book by Mr. Smith that focuses on vegetable gardening using containers.  We have tried this on and off for a few years now (there are awesome directions online for making your own self-watering containers for really cheap!) and there are certain things that grow better in containers than others.  I'll never try growing eggplant in the ground again.  They just don't compare to eggplant grown in a container.  Cherry tomatoes do really well in containers too.  For people who come to me wanting to start vegetable gardening for the first time, I suggest making some containers and starting there.  It is best to get yourself hooked on growing stuff without worrying about weeds and hoeing.  Then move on to the bigger garden.

Toymaking with Children by Freya Jaffke:  This is somewhat misnamed because I'm not sure most of these toys could be made by children or even with them helping (I think it is translated from German, so this may be why).  This is a resource for making simple Waldorf toys.  A lot of the directions require wood carving or knitting knowledge, but a fair number of the projects could be made without it.  There is definitely a Waldorf slant to the writings, but it is a good resource regardless.  

Soapmaking for Fun and Profit by Maria Given Nerius:  The first part of this book has directions on how to make all kinds of soaps, mostly melt and pour, handmilled and lye soap.  The second half of this book is about starting a craft business and a lots of the nuts and bolts involved there.  It is an excellent resource on either account.

Smart Soapmaking by Anne L. Watson:  This is strictly about making lye soap and it involves her own method, which uses a stick blender.  Since you know I haven't made lye soap yet, it should be obvious that I haven't tested her methods, but they come very highly recommended from reviewers on amazon.com.  Hopefully in a few weeks, I'll be able to report back on her methods.

Handy Farm Devices and How to Make Them by Rolfe Cobleigh:  This is a reprint of a book written in 1909 that gives directions, some thorough, some cursory, about making farm implements yourself.  As much as I would love to use the hawk trap for trapping the hawks that bug our chickens, that is now a federal offense.  I may try other things and I'm sure I'll blog about them.

There will probably be one more homesteading book post because I know there are various books around the house that I haven't written about.  At least this gets these books out of my office!!!

Science projects and grow lights

Well, I dumped science project #2 in the sink today.  I tried another sourdough starter and instead of following my own advice and making bread when it first started smelling yeasty, I kept it the full four days and today it stunk so bad I gagged when I smelled it.  After making and tasting the first batch, I know what smell ends up as tastes in the bread and I know what I was smelling was not something I wanted to taste.  Maybe I'm not keeping the starter warm enough.  It is hard to keep anywhere in the kitchen 80 degrees consistently this time of year.  I think I will try the sourdough starter again in the late spring when it is warmer.  As for now, I'll chalk the pursuit up to failure and maybe hunt around on the internet for a good sourdough starter.

My husband ordered the seeds for the garden last week and they have slowly been trickling in. I bought him a shelf and he bought some used fluorescent lights and we are in the process of building a grow light stand so that we can start the plants from seeds early.  This weekend will be the right time to start the early crops like peas and cauliflower from seed (I'm dreaming of pickled cauliflower...yum, yum).  I can't believe the garden is creeping up on us like this.  I also want to get a cold frame built for when the plants get beyond seedling size.  We have two big double hung windows that we will use for the top of the cold frame and then probably scavenge some wood to make the sides.  The ground is so sloppy right now, it might be a great time to start digging out the pit for them.

I want to start trying to make soap, but I keep getting scared about it.  I guess the scariest part is having to use the lye.  I keep telling myself that I use cleaners that are just as harsh as lye is all the time, I shouldn't freak out too much, but it's not helping.  I have deer fat and duck fat stored that I need to use soon.  Maybe this weekend or next will be my soap making weekend.

Finally, a recipe for good sandwich bread

My main goal with all this bread baking recently has been to find a recipe for a good, solid sandwich bread.  If I can make my own bread, that is one less thing that I need to make frequent trips to the grocery for.  I know, I could buy bread in bulk and freeze it, but honestly, I'm not that crazy about thawed out bread.  It's cheaper to bake my own, too.

With my current attempt at a sour dough starter heading the same direction as the last one did, I decided to give a different bread recipe a try.  I made the Whole Wheat Bread recipe from The Joy of Cooking and it turned out pretty good.  It definitely has a dense enough texture to make a fine sandwich bread.  The taste is a little lacking, but I think next time I'll use the upper range of the honey suggested (she suggests 1/4 to 1/2 cup of honey and I used 1/4).  I think some add ins would be nice too, like flax seeds or sunflower seeds or maybe some wheat germ.  The recipe makes three loaves, which is cool because I like to make a bunch of bread at once, but it may have been a little much for my stand mixer to knead.  Yes, gasp, the happy homesteader has given up hand kneading and instead kneads her bread in a stand mixer.  Well...unless I'm mad at someone, then I knead bread.  Kneading bread by hand should be reserved for therapeutic purposes.  I'm a little nervous, though, because I heard a weird grinding sound from my mixer and I hope I didn't hurt it.  Keep your fingers crossed for my mixer.

First major failure of the homesteading adventure...

The first major failure is...starting a sourdough yeast culture in my kitchen.  I used the recipe in the Joy of Cooking book for starting a culture from the yeast in the air in your kitchen.  The first day, it started bubbling and had that scrumptious yeasty bread smell.  The directions, though, said let it go for 4-7 days before using it.  I did and yesterday was day 5 and it was super sour...not in a good way.  I decided to give it a shot and see what it tasted like anyways and used it to make a half loaf of the sourdough bread.  It was disgusting.  It had this sickingly sweet sour taste and it didn't rise at all.  I have to admit, I was afraid to eat it and am still worried that I'm going to fall over dead in the next few hours from eating something that...well...let's just say that you shouldn't make bread from anything that would get first prize in a middle school science fair!

I will give starting a starter from scratch one more shot before breaking down and ordering a sourdough starter off the internet.  If I get that good yeasty smell again on the first day, I may just use that and see what happens.  We bake so much bread in our kitchen that I'm sure we have spores floating around.  If I could get my husband to brew a batch of homebrewed beer, that may add to our airborn yeast count.  I'm sure women 75 years ago didn't get the best starters the first time around, either.