Blog

I noticed Irish Soda bread recipes use Baking Soda instead of baking powder which keeps indefinitely and is useful for many things including cleaning, deodorizing and even for brushing your teeth. It needs an acid to react to rise quick breads. Traditional recipes use Buttermilk, but you can substitute milk with vinegar or thin enough yogourt for the recipe. If I had none of those I'd use warm water and vinegar. For milk 1 Tbsp vinegar to 1 cup milk is recommended. I used white vinegar which is another very... Read more →

Life is full of surprises! With this pandemic my family and I are staying home. Thank goodness we are well stocked and we are thankful that delivery people are hard at work. I have been especially busy packing seeds. There are many first time gardeners this year. We had some nice warm weather mid March and were able to till some of our garden and I sowed lettuce, spinach, beets, dill and peas. It looks like almost every seed germinated. Then the weather turned very chilly and we had snow,... Read more →

Everyone does not have a large family at home. When cooking for just a few, it is hard to find smaller equipment to cook with. There are two major ways to save time and energy. One is Slow Cookers also called Crock Pots and the other is Pressure Cookers to cook very quickly indeed. It is hard to find smaller models of both. I have relied on my 1 quart Rival Crock-ette for years but they stopped making new ones a long time ago. I went looking for a new... Read more →

For Christmas in 2018 I received a cast iron pan for making corn bread. The bottom is shaped like 5 little ears of corn which come out of the pan like bread sticks. There are other styles of corn bread pans to make various shapes and you can just use a hot oven safe frying pan. During the Winter while our wood cooking stove is going is a perfect time to bake corn biscuits and now I can make corn bread sticks too. A hot oven around 400 degrees is... Read more →

The first canning of the season began yesterday when 14 pints of Bread & Butter pickles made it into mason jars. My family loves this recipe and I needed to replenish last years supply. You can find this recipe in one of my videos on Seed for Security site. Read more →

All Summer long I have been busy putting up food. I have canned many quarts of vegetables, fruit, pickles and relishes. Some of which I have entered in County Fairs.That is a lot of fun!The last part of August I planted a second crop of lettuce and spinach. It has been very dry here so that needs to be watered twice a day.My dill and millet have been harvested when totally dry. I seperated the dill seed from the plant and stored it in a cool dry location.That is seed... Read more →

Planting Apple trees was one of our first projects after buying our land roughly 30 years ago. I have always wanted a cider press, but they seemed so expensive. Many homestead projects are best solved one step at a time. Just keep looking for opportunities to piece together what you want. If you had unlimited money, you could shop for the best. If you had unlimited ability to fabricate, you could build what ever you wanted. Like most everyone else, I am some where in between. This article will... Read more →

Finally all of our canning is done for the year. It was a great year for so many vegetables.Our jars are full!! We still have turnips, beets, spinach, lettuce and dill growing for a nice Fall crop. Read more →

Summer is such a busy time of the year. I began my canning this year with 25 pints of Bread & Butter Pickles. Two days ago 11 quarts of stewed tomatoes went into the jars. Many more tomatoes are slated to be canned. We like Tomato juice and Salsa as well as stewed tomatoes. They say that tomatoes are very healthy for you I know they taste delicious! Tomorrow I will be harvesting beets to make Pickled Beets. My grandma had a great pickled beet recipe and that is the... Read more →

Here in New England, Fall is the Harvest season when we get ready for the long Winter ahead. There is great satisfaction as each thing we need is stocked up. It is such a great feeling to look into a full cupboard, see a large wood pile or know our fuel tanks are full. Seeds and herbs drying here and there around the house are a delight and bring real security. Learn now to save your own seeds and keep enough for a couple years ahead. Some preparations actually save... Read more →