Monday, July 25, 2011

Canning season is upon us

Canning jars on my shelves filled with goodies make me happy
My pantry as a whole, mess and all
Lake County, Indiana Blueberries
Lime pickles and Lactic cheese
My son's first muck boots!! 
Septic leech field supplies
Caerphilly ready for wax 


It's been busy around here.  I've been doing lots of canning (I need to update the side bar totals, I'll do that later) making zucchini pickles, lime cucumber pickles, green beans and dry beans.  I would say I make blueberry jam but really its not properly set so its yogurt flavoring.  I did make blueberry syrup and its not terribly sweet but for us its perfect.  We don't need that much sugar.

I've really been making a lot of cheese.  I've recnetly made a caerphilly, monterey jack, several balls of mozzarella, "velveeta" from lactic cheese and one of my favorites, fromage blanc.  For some reason since my last yogurt success post my yogurts have been all contaminated with yeast....I think I jinxed myself!  I need to throw out my freeze dried starter and I bought some store yogurt to freeze for starter.  Luckily around here, even my mistakes don't go to waste.  They go to the chickens.  The chickens absolutely love it when I come there way with my mistakes.  They love whey too.  Its almost as good as having a pig.


Speaking of pigs, we are considering that as our next homesteading project animal.  One problem is though that I'm not a fan of pork, or at least commercial pork.  I'll eat bacon, canadian bacon, ham and sausage but once you start talking ground pork or pork chops I'm eating vegetarian that night.  I really need to get over my distaste of pork so I bought some chops.  I don't know how to make pork chops so this might be interesting.

My kiddo is getting so big!  He's reading off letters everywhere he sees them and loves to point out everything he sees and identify it.  What a chance from a year ago where he was just learning to walk.  Did you see those cute muck boots?  I couldn't resist, that and he's always stepping in places in sandals that he really shouldn't be. 

4 comments:

  1. Love your shelves filled with lots of put up goodness!

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  2. What an inspiring post! Love the muck boots he is too cute. Looking forward to learning more from you. Hugs, Bobbi Jo

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  3. Hey! I found you from Indymoms like me! I live in the southern part of Indy. Your blog reminds me of http://twwly.com/ !
    I can't remember how I found you on that site though? Not sure if it was through the cloth diapering moms or not. Anyway love the site! It is a dream of mine to live like this but we live in a lake community where livestock is not allowed even though I see chickens running around from time to time. Although after reading this(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock) I think chickens are not considered livestock... but just explaining that to the neighbors!

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  4. I used to participate on IMLM on the cloth diaper board. I'm not on there much these days though. Glad you found us...you'll figure out pretty quickly we have no idea what we are doing but we have a lot of fun figuring it out :)

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