Tips to Homesteading

Posts Tagged ‘harvest’

If you’re new to homesteading or even a seasoned veteran – one topic that often has many many tips to it is how to preserve your harvest once the garden starts putting out food!

Below are a few options:

Canning - This is one of the most widely used forms of preserving and putting up the harvest used in (at least) America.  You can CAN just about everything and many items last for several years! 

  Looking for canning items? CLICK HERE

Dehydrating - Dehydrating is one of the oldest forms of preserving. Beef (and other meat) jerky came from the sun drying process that is so closely related to dehydrating. If temperatures are kept low enough, this is the most reasonably close method to keeping foods at a nutritional peak for long term storage. 

For many dehydrating options – CLICK HERE

 Fermenting/Pickling – This is also another low heat option for storing the garden harvest. The composition of each item does change a bit and the taste may be an acquired one, but the process is more simple than one may think. Nature does most of the work and you get the extra nutritional benefits!

Harsch Miracle Fermenting Crock – CLICK HERE

Freezing - Nothing replaces a good sized deep freeze on the homestead for keeping the harvest lasting long into the winter months. One trick is to be sure items are dry and as free of air as possible when you put up the harvest for freezing.

Most homesteaders put up the harvest in a variety of ways. The biggest tip to saving your garden harvest is to try many methods for each food and find what works best that you’ll use the most!

EnJOY the journey!

Best Blessings!

The Millers

Technorati Tags: canning, dehydrator, fermenting, food storage, freezing, garden, harvest, pickling, preserve

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Tuesday’s Tip to Homesteading: “Start Smaller than your Dream” is by NO MEANS a damper on your vision of homesteading! If anything, it is to keep that from happening.

Once you’ve gotten the homesteading ‘bug’ it is almost impossible to get rid of it. We had a short stint in Southern California suburbia that down-right almost killed me! Who mows the lawn with an electric PLUG IN mower? Yikes!

But that ‘bug’ can also make you bite off more than you can chew. Those dreams of land spreading out so far and wide, possibly crops or livestock, rolling hills or wide open prairies, mountains to climb or root cellars in the ground, stream, creek, river or lake, it doesn’t matter, your mind can wander all day long once you’ve gotten the homesteading ‘bug’ – but if you can’t keep up with that land (and yes, any homesteader knows it really doesn’t just SIT THERE) then you will lose sight of your dreams as they give way to tired bodies and aching muscles. So start small.

Our first journey into homesteading was my back yard garden in a quiet suburban neighborhood. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just know I loved the smell of the dirt, getting dirty and then reaping the rewards.

Next we moved to about 7 acres and expanded to some fruit and nut trees, figs, two rows of grapevines, and a much larger and more productive garden. Closer to the house we built a small chicken coup with a run outside (although the chickens roamed freely all day) and a bunny cage with four bunnies (for fertilizer purposes, they were pets). We also managed to have an acre out back for some sheep and goats. This was quite manageable even with small kids and work, this was enough room, yet not too much to manage. It was a very, very productive little homestead.

Currently we are on 15 acres of which about half of it is woods. Don’t let those woods fool you, they too need occasional tending. When they are yours, and a stray cow or neighbor’s livestock wander into your woods, you need to know you can get through there to find it. Also, woods tend to attract ‘wayward’ hunters and their hunting dogs (that will wreak havoc with your livestock if they spy them through the trees). So don’t assume a lot of woods mean ‘care-free’ land.

On what can be utilized we have expanded our fruit and nut trees, have other grapevines and the garden is about 20 times the size what was in the first back yard garden. Our livestock did not make the move here, so we are slowly rebuilding the chickens, bunnies, goats and sheep. The grain business keeps us busy as well.

But I share all this to say it is a process. Don’t shoot for your dream 288 acres right out of the gate! You might just get overwhelmed and give up and regret giving up! Build those homesteading skills like any other skill – with fundamentals and practice.

Take into consideration what you want to do, start small and build on it. Most people who truly want to homestead know the patience of growing things and the seasons it takes for planting, growing and harvesting are in order. So, don’t jump the gun and bite off more than you can chew (how’s that for combining two clichés?) and get overwhelmed!

Two books that I highly recommend are listed below. You can find them online.

Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management by Maurice G. Kains

Ten Acres Enough: The Classic 1864 Guide to Independent Farming  

by Edmund Morris

Best Blessings and enJOY the journey!

Donna Miller

 Donna Miller is a work-from-home wife and mother. She delighted to share her trials and triumphs of learning to homestead anywhere. The Millers own and operate 

Millers Grain House  which offers Organic and Chemical-free Whole Grains, Bosch Mixers, the NutriMill, instructional tutorials, recipes and more.

Technorati Tags: acreage, acres, bunny, chickens, crops, dirt, fruit trees, garden, gardening, goats, grapevines, harvest, homestead, homestead garden, hunter, land, livestock, nut trees, rabbit, sheep, skills, woods

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