New things

Well! Where to start?  I have been given an amazing opportunity to work with some wonderful minds on a website called Modern Homesteaders. This website is the go to place for self sufficiency and self reliance. Subsequently also a go to for preppers since these ideals seem to cross into each other on many instances.  If you looking for a group of people to help your homestead thrive, this is the place you will find them. I am excited to be a part of this group and will continue to post here on my blog also.

I have also been gifted an amazing gift of books. Books that will broaden my horizon and help me to help others. I was gifted books that are for emergency medical services and pre-hospital trauma life support.  I hope to eventually relay this information onto my followers in hopes that the lessons I learn may one day help others. 

Also we have started on a new path with our garden here at the HOMEstead. When our local powerline company came through to trim the trees around the lines, I talked them into dumping three loads of mulch into my back yard.  They don't charge for this service but you have to ask for them to do it, otherwise it ends up at the landfill.  I have already started covering our garden in mulch, manure, banana peels and eggshells.  I am looking forward to a spring with no tilling and little weeding. We also planted rhubarb which I have never tried to grow or even tasted for that matter. I am looking forward to learning more about this method of gardening by diving straight in.  Fingers crossed. Hope you guys follow me over to modern homesteaders too, it a wonderful sight.  Check it out, and make sure you subscribe so you can see all my post as well. http://www.modernhomesteaders.net/membership-account/membership-levels/?ap_id=dirtyfeetmaggoo

Pumpkin Harvest Muffins

Let me start off by telling you I will try anything pumpkin flavored any time of year.  I am that weirdo that goes into the coffee shop in July asking if I can get a pumpkin latte and hoarding cans of pumpkin puree when they finally start stocking them in the fall so I can have pumpkin pie in march.  I am also a mother too though, which means I have two little mouths to feed and it better taste good or it is not going to get eaten. So I have been working on a recipe for muffins for a while trying to get it just right. 

TOPPING
1/4 C. Butter (softened)
1 tsp. pumpkin spice
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 c. brown sugar

Mix all of this together just until it resembles a crumble. and set aside, this will go on top of the muffins just before putting in the oven.( You could also opt not to do this part, and just sprinkle a little powdered sugar on top of the muffins, after they have cooled, which is pretty tasty too)


MUFFIN
1/4 c. butter (softened)
3/4 c honey
1 egg
1 c. Pumpkin puree

mix all of this together first and then assemble your dry ingredients

1 1/2 c. flour (all purpose)
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

You will get the best result if you sift these ingredients into a bowl and mix before adding to your wet ingredients. If you like you can also add 1 cup of walnuts if you like nuts in your bread or muffins. We opt not to since I am sending these to school where there are children with nut allergies.  Spoon the crumble on top of the muffins before putting them in a 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes if you are making regular size muffins. Or until the edges start to brown just a tad.  We make them in the snack size since they fit perfectly in our little snack Tupperware for school lunches. They don't last long here either.

New pig

Well like most houses, we have a picky eater and a drive by eater. My daughter is the picky eater and my son the drive by eater. And if you don't know what a drive by eater is, it is a child that eats only when they want to by snacking all day. It leaves us with a lot of boxes of crackers and cookies left open and gone stale and inedible. I felt like we were throwing a lot of food away and the chickens can't always keep up with all the scraps that we toss to them and we end up with crows and stray cats sneaking their way over and under the fence to munch on the leftovers.  So we thought of an idea that would help us utilize all this food that kept going to waste, and it came upon us when we were at a friends house shelling peas.  This friend told us that they feed the purple hull pea shells, which are inedible to humans or somewhat unappetizing anyways, and mashed peas to their pigs.

The thought, how awesome it was that these animals were eating something that would just get thrown in the compost. Not that I am against compost, it is a much needed thing, but I love bacon and to think for a mere 50$ I could have my very own too. And in six to seven months have a years worth of pork.....where do I sign up??

It took a little while, but we eventually found an 8 week old female Berkshire piglet.  And boy is she loud. I just thought my chickens were noisy but when she wants to be heard you can here her a quarter mile away. Of course most of the time she is settled down and not making all that noise but she will let you know she does not like being picked up, but loves to be scratched.

Her admiration towards being scratched behind the ears is what got both of us in to trouble the first time I put her in her pin, which is made of cattle panels. She could fit her head through the larger holes on the panels and was nosing up to me while I was trying to feed her some kale, trying to get me to give her a good scratching.  Well she got what she was looking for a good scratching behind the ears and didn't want me to quit. She decided she would try to reach me and reach a little further discovering she could fit through the fence...well crap...now she was loose and didn't want to go back into that pin when it was so much fun to run in the yard.

She ended up going under the neighbors house trying to explore and no doubt making me worry thinking she would damage the neighbors plumping or worse the gas lines. We had to lure her out with a bucket of feed and a handful of pears. Thankfully she is a sucker for pears which we have a full tree of.  She squealed her little head off all the way back to her newly adopted pin, which we call chicken tractors that we keep our young chickens in to raise them up either for meat or laying hens.  its a 4 foot by 8 foot pin that is movable. She does fine in there for now. We quickly discovered why some people opt to put there pigs in electric fence though as this wouldn't have happened if we had also.

So she is here eating and making bacon for us. I must say she has eaten everything we have given her even a half eaten corn cob which seemed to be one of her favorites. I no longer feel like we are wasting food. And looking forward to having a years worth of pork for what little entails of taking care of her in the evenings. I hope for the day when we have enough room to keep a pair and raise piglets. But until then this is a great way to help us be a tad bit more frugal and teach our children that food doesn't just come from a store.  It is such a reassurance to know where our food is coming from with all the recalls you see now days. Definitely the best 50$ I have spent in a while.

Wild berries, Foraging the forest.

While out putting out corn and tending to our food plot I noticed what I thought looked like a litchi tomato, except this plant had yellow fruit. Well this is where I put the internet to my use and started looking it up. I love knowing what I can and cant eat in the woods. Some of the best tasting berries are the ones that grow wild. Blackberries and dewberries are a prime example of this fact.

The plant that I came across was not a litchi tomato, and it was definitely not edible.  Good thing I didn't eat it.  Honestly that was only under the advisement of my husband, because if it were just me in the wood I probably would have had a tiny taste because of its likeness to the litchi tomato. And for good reason too, this plant is actually called the devils tomato, bull nettle, horse nettle, or apple of Sodom. It is part of the nightshade family from which the tomato derives.  Although it looks somewhat like a tomato it is poisonous. It has thorns and the fruit is a yellow, sometimes striped fruit.

Another plant I came across while in the woods caught my eye because of its beautiful and unusual clumps of bright purple berries. Just by looking at it I thought, this has to be poisonous. But when I smashed some of the berries in my hand and smelled them I was delighted at the scent of these tiny purple beauties. It was a sweet smell that reminded me of fruit. So I was most anxious to find out what these berries were. To my surprise these berries were not only not poisonous but used for remedies and cures among Native American tribes. It is called Beauty berries.

 

The Berry itself is used commonly in jelly and is said to taste like a cross between a grape and apple jelly. It is not advised to eat the berries because of their astringent nature. 

 

The leaves are also used in folk remedies as a natural bug repellent.  It is still used to this day for this as it has been patented by the USDA as a mosquito repellent.

Because of its sweet smell and uses for keeping bugs at bay, I harvested about a quart of these berries and leaves to make an essential oil for some of our homemade soap. We will have to see how that turns out, hopefully a hunters soap for women.

 

 

 

And while I am sharing I thought I should mention some common wild plant that I do know a little about from growing up in Oklahoma. The first is Polk salad. It also has purple berries but unlike the beauty berry these berries are not edible but can be used as a dye or paint. Growing up we would use the berries along with Indian paint brushes (a common red wild flower in Oklahoma) to paint on rocks.  The leaves on the other hand are edible if cooked right. It is important to only harvest tender young leaves as the older ones will have a hard string in them that is unappetizing. When cooking them it is said that they need to be boiled and drained three times. I remember eating these greens as a child with some scrambled eggs mixed in with them, but I do not recall actually seeing them cooked.

 

 

Granted I could not get any pictures of ripe berries at the time being but they will turn purple and make fun paint.

 

 

The other plant I noticed is easily recognizable by it unusual flowers that look like no other flower I have come across. It is called passion fruit and is edible but takes a long time to ripen and looks like a dried plum when it is ready. But by the time it is ripe, raccoons have usually found the plants and eaten the fruit.

 

 

I hope to bring more knowledge to anyone who reads this so that maybe if you ever find yourself in the woods lost and hungry you might know what you can and cannot eat. Or maybe you could use this information to bring yourself closer to nature and take a stroll in the woods. Knowledge ways nothing and we always carry it with us even in the woods.

 

Blackberry Cobbler

Well not technically blackberries or so a southern would say they are dew berries. What is the difference? Not much really other than dew berries grow lower to the ground and are larger berries than blackberries. Dewberries are ripe in the spring where as blackberries are ripe in the summer. Dewberries are also sweeter which makes them excellent for eating right off the bush, which is why my husband is not allowed to pick them since he eats two and puts one in his bucket.   A little bit of berries will go a long way for this recipe you only need two cups of berries, you could use more if you like but we like our berries to last through the winter since they freeze very well nothing like hot cobbler when it is cool and the leaves are falling.

Berry cobbler
2 cups berries
1 cup sugar
put sugar over berries in a saucepan, stir and then let them sit until some of the juices start flowing from the berries into the sugar. Then heat berries and sugar to a boil  and then pour into a oven safe dish, I use an 8 x 8 pyrex dish. Now for the topping.

1 stick of butter softened (if you take this out when you start your berries it should be just right)
1 cup of sugar
cream together sugar and butter and then add
1 cup self rising flour
1 cup milk

after mixing thoroughly pour over the top of your berry mixture and stick in a 350 degree oven until the top is solid and turning brown and the edges. you can use a toothpick to check for doneness as long as you don't stick it into the blackberries at the bottom. This is best eaten warm with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream, my favorite way.

Small batch Homeade Shampoo bars

I used to be afraid to make soap....used to. Now that I have done it and see how easy and cost effective it is, I love making soap. I recently tried my hand at making shampoo bars. My goal was to make something akin to the shampoo bars that a popular store called lush makes called "new". It is one of my favorite shampoos because of how different it is, it smells of cinnamon and is perfect for helping with thinning hair that is a common problem for everyone the older we get. The herbs in it are said to stimulate follicle growth, but is the price worth the punch? Yes it is but I can think of so many other things to spend 10$ on than one bar of shampoo....and why have one when I can have eight?  My recipe is not a copycat of the infamous bar shampoos but a mimic, I think it smells somewhat like Christmas....or what it should smell like.

Before you dive into making your own shampoo bars though, you need to take the time to learn the process and be certain of the safety  precautions that come with using lye. I mix my lye outside in my glass measuring cup. You can watch a video on lye safety here.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adCWVeCnMb0

I make my bar in a crockpot. It is one of the small crockpots that they usually have at Christmas time for around ten dollars.  This makes for easy cleanup and If you like you could probably let you soap set up in the crock and slice it into triangles. Me, I like cheap and simple so I let mine mold in an old clean pringles can....yeah pringles.  the can is round and long and the perfect size for a small batch of soap.  After the soap has cooled for twenty four hours you simple cut the can and start peeling the wrapper back until you unwrap the lovely log of cinnamon scented goodness.

Here is a great video on the hot process soap making in a crockpot.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f87XTLlV_dY   Although you can use just olive oil or just coconut oil, I choose to make mine with beef tallow. It creates a harder bar and lowers the initial investment cost of making soaps since you are already going to be getting fat when you order most larger beef cuts (Most of ours comes from the brisket).  Here is a video on how to render the beef fat into the usable white substance called tallow.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlHagpaONbk

The process are super easy and just takes a little patience. Now you don't need fancy equipment like the blending stick used in most of these videos. I use a simple wooden spoon with soap written on the handle in sharpie...we don't want that one stirring our macaroni and cheese.


The recipe is as follows

2 oz olive oil (I had rosemary sprigs soaking in my oil to make it smell better)
6 oz coconut oil
8 oz tallow
2.144 oz lye
6 oz water (I use rainwater to keep my bars as nice as possible)

now you could use just this part of the recipe to make a plain soap with no scent but I like mine to smell, you could also change the amounts of scented oils to change how it smells to suit your own liking.

scent mixture
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (also used as a natural colorant)
.125 fl oz spearmint oil
3 drops eucalyptus oil
.25 fl oz cinnamon oil

this recipe will yield about 8 bars if you follow in my footsteps and make it in a pringles can. You want to slice the soap within a day of making the soap so that it is easy to slice and let the cure (harden) on a shelf where they can get air all around the bars. The longer you let them cure the more suds the bars will make when you go to use them. Granted they will never make as much suds as a store bought shampoo full of chemical latherers. Remember the more HOMEmade it is the better it is for you and for your wallet.

Doughnuts are for morning people?

So your a morning person? But there is not a donut shop near you,  you have to get up and feed animals and children alike.  The hardest part of doughnuts is that you have to get up early (and find a recipe too).  It takes roughly an hour to make the dough and let the dough "rise". Hello doughnuts glad to see your up :) Ok all puns aside this is a good recipe to start before your chores giving it rising time.

GLAZED DOUGHNUTS

2 cups warm water
3 packages yeast
1/2 cup sugar
2tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1/2 cup dry milk
6 cups all purpose flour

Glaze:
4 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup water
1 tablespoon vanilla extract


So you start off by combining your sifted flour, dry milk and salt into a large bowl and set aside.  Then in your stand mixer (you can do this by hand but the dough will be very hard to stir and sticky), combine the sugar and butter and cream together until the mixture resembles wet sand and no more clumps are visible. Then add the egg to the mixture and mix until thoroughly mixed . Then add your yeast and water to the mixture and once it is thoroughly mixed add the flour mixture slowly until it is all mixed. Then it is proofing time. Proofing is when you put a yeast based food product into a warm spot so that the yeast can breed and feed so to speak which causes the rising action of the dough.  Just make sure to put it in a lightly greased bowl and cover with seran wrap so that the dough does not stick to your favorite kitchen towel that you cover the bowl with to prevent any draft from hitting your dough and interfering with the rise.   Once the dough has doubled you can punch it down and flop it out on a lightly floured surface and roll it out. Now if you do not have a doughnut cutter this is where you will have to turn into MacGyver and figure out a way to cut your doughnuts out. You can use a glass some pvc pipe really anything that is clean and will press out a circle. Of course if your not comfortable with that you can cut them into squares and call them beignets, we wont tell.  Once you've figured out all the little details of cutting out the doughnuts put them on a lightly greased pan to rise once more and then its time for the fryer.  I'm not going to tell you what temperature your grease should be like most people would because I never check the temperature I just throw one in and if the grease is hot enough you know. I will tell you that I do use vegetable shortening to fry mine in and it is best to dip them in the glaze when they are barely dry from the grease. I still haven't figured out a good chocolate recipe, But once I do I will be sure to share because who doesn't love chocolate mmm...