Homesteaders

[Beekissed]

Ummm.. they don't think you are little off now? I know mine do.. about me... that is. Good luck with trying to get the kids to can stuff. Usually getting them to help garden is easy.

I helped my mama can when I was young and my oldest son~while in his early 20s~ canned up my whole garden of tomatoes one summer when I was swamped at work. He had never done it nor watched me do it, so he called his grandma and asked her how to do it. He did an excellent job!

Canning is fun to me and quite addictive.

 

[Woodsdweller]

My grandmother canned loads of stuff but, passed before I started (family had to deal with 100s of unmarked jars). My mother never canned... at least not while I was living at the house (wasn't allowed to cook anyway). I taught myself how to can in my early 20s with the help of a Ball Blue Book I picked up at a yard sale for 10cents, it's still in the canning kitchen, looking well used and kinda abused. Over the years I've taught my ex-wives and tried getting the kids interested. My oldest daughter got into it, but the rest could take or leave it. Now I'm trying with the grandkids. When I pass, at least the jars are marked.

 

[Beekissed]

Can something they can't get enough of....I found that to be deer meat, salsa and also green beans. All the sudden, they get REAL interested in my canning.

Especially if you say you are thinking about not canning any of that next year.....

 

[Chicken girl 15]

My kids think not only that I'm crazy but a bit obsessed as well. Luckily my youngest daughter loves every aspect of food from seed to plate so I have loads of help. My oldest 2 boys think I will live forever and they will just come home every night for dinner. My oldest daughter will never move out due to illness so I guess she's lucky. And my youngest son just wants to eat all the time right now, he's 7.

For the sake of my 2 oldest sons I hope their sister (9 right now) is a great cook with a giving heart because once kids move out mom's kitchen is getting downsized.

 

[rancher hicks]

That's a geek point!! Yet another reason I can use for my kids to learn how to garden and can. Fresh canned soup and meals will not only save time but a lot of money in tight times . Who knows, my kids might think I'm a crazy old lady.

My kids used to call me the heat nazi. Now that they're grown and paying the bill they tell ME how to save money. Even my DD unmarried is money conscious. She bought us a membership to BJ's.

IMO, if you have kids you need a freezer and to can at least some food. I think every cook (male/female) has a basic list of recipes they make. From that list they can find ingredients they can grow themselves.

A good freezer even a small one is a necessity.

 

[Beekissed]

My kids used to call me the heat nazi. Now that they're grown and paying the bill they tell ME how to save money. Even my DD unmarried is money conscious. She bought us a membership to BJ's.

IMO, if you have kids you need a freezer and to can at least some food. I think every cook (male/female) has a basic list of recipes they make. From that list they can find ingredients they can grow themselves.

A good freezer even a small one is a necessity.

Not if you live where the power goes out frequently and for extended periods. Then dependence upon a freezer becomes a huge liability, with folks scrambling to get gas for generators to preserve the food they've stored in freezers...that's all well and good until the gas stations start to ration the amount of gas each customer can get during the crisis. I only had to lose one hard earned 50 bird batch of meaties to confirm our old ways were the safest when it comes to food storage and I can all our meats now without fail. Those birds were just being stored temporarily until I got "around to it" and canned them....waited too long, it seems. Now I never put anything into the freezer that I'm not willing to lose....mostly we store deer scraps for dog food, some bags of broth and bags of ice.

 

[duluthralphie]

Up here if the electricity goes off it is normally winter, so no big deal, just move the stuff outside. Also here the electricity is seldom off for more than a day.

I have 4 freezers. They are all 7 cu ft. ones. We could not get bigger ones down the stairs in this old house. Actually it works well as we empty one we combine and turn it off until next harvest.

 

[wyoDreamer]

My husband is talking about doing a batch of meaties. I mentioned that we may want the think about getting another freezer to store them in. The big one we have now is pretty full, and I tend to keep it that way. Hoping to have a deer in there next fall. If we get another freezer it will need to go into the basement. The basement is pretty humid/damp - not wet per se, but humid enough to rust things and make books swell. The problem is that one of the previous owners removed all the gutter because he didn't like the look. The yard is low right around the house, it slopes up for about 2 feet and then it sorta slopes off away from the house, but the down slope of the yard starts about 2 inches higher than at the house, so the water off the roof tends to sit along the foundation and eventually seep in.

 

[rancher hicks]

Well now I don't know about everywhere in the world but seems to me a good generator is worth the investment too. I'm not familiar with generators so I don't know how long they'll run on a tank. I epxect many farms have their own tanks of gas right? We don't have one because we don't lose power often and I'm too old to deal with such things.

Our basement is damp too, so nothing is stored there. We have just the furnace and water heater. I do keep the chicks there now until they move to a room off the garage. Not sure how much longer we'll be here or have chickens. Have a guy coming tomorrow for seven. I'm torn with giving them up.

We did put gutters up but I'm not sure how much they help. Lost some last winter and need to insulate because that's why we lost them last year.

I think I feel old because many of our friends are sick. We just learned another friend has bone cancer. Her brother has brain cancer and not expected to survive. We're all in our 60's. Not old when you consider things.

 

[Beekissed]

The thing with generators is this....if you don't use them often, the hoses and gaskets dry up and crack, so when you really need it, they may not run. Then, you have to run them frequently to keep things like freezers going, so much gas is used...one has to determine if the food in the freezer is worth all the money spent to maintain generators and the gas used. It makes no economic sense at all to even invest in a generator and prepare to be dependent upon one. Best to arrange one's life so they are not dependent upon the electric grid for food, water, plumbing and heat so nothing stand between them and regular living in the case of a power outage, particularly if this happens frequently in your area due to storms~both summer and winter storms.

The time to be prepared for such times is before they ever happen. Replacing one dependency on power for another dependency on power of a different kind is not a long term solution to the problem, IMO.