Time for reading

This is the time of the year that I actually have a few minutes to sit down and read up on things.  I love books, and have a bad habit of needing to own them all.   The picture above shows a sampling of the many books I own.  I love books on gardening, homesteading, preserving, frugality, and well, you get the idea.

At the library yesterday, there was a copy of John Jeavons book, The Sustainable Vegetable Garden.  Its very interesting and extremely detailed.  I need more though.  My library is pretty pathetic these days as a result of budget cuts, but I have lots of credits on paperbackswap.com. 

Some books that I really love are in the picture above.  Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living is amazing.  There is so much information in that book on everything from gardening to being frugal, cooking, preserving and raising and butchering animals.  Just amazing.

I also really love Eliot Coleman's book Four Season Harvest.  It has so much practical information on season extension for your garden. 

The frugalista in me loves The Tightwad Gazette.  Its funny to read it, since although it was written about 15 years ago, the economy was doing poorly then and there were lots of people looking into the frugal lifestyle.  Her basic recipes are wonderful to make something from just about any ingredients you happen to have laying around.  Some things are outdated, but overall its a wonderful resource. 

Some other good ones are Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth.  My sister in law is currently borrowing it, so it isn't pictured.  It has everything you ever wanted to know about saving your own seed.  Then there are all the preserving books, like Root Cellaring by the Bubels, Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator cookbook and Ball's complete book of Home Preserving. 

Recently I've been reading more on the local food and sustainability fronts.  Sharon Astyk has 3 books out right now with a fourth on the way, so far my favorite has been Independence Days.  I also really enjoyed Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. 

Please share some of your favorites with me.

Making pumpkin puree

One of the things I'm asked a lot, is how to process pumpkins.  Its very easy and while the whole process takes a while, it doesn't take much of your actual hands on time.  We got these pumpkins on a field trip with our wonderful nature club.  They've decorated the house for about a month and its time for them to do their part. 

First you need to wash the outside of the pumpkin.  They can get dirty and you don't want that in your food.

Then cut them in half.  This is actually harder than it looks.  The shells of pie pumpkins are very hard.  Hubby used my cleaver to whack these pumpkins for me.  We ended up with shards of pumpkin and seeds all over the place.  You then scrape the guts out.  I saved some seeds for next year's garden.  I'll show the process in another post.  The remaining seeds and insides went to the chickens, although you may want to roast the seeds.  My family isn't big on pumpkin seeds, but the chickens are.

Then lay the pumpkins cut side down in a baking pan.  I slide it in the oven and then put about a quarter of an inch of water in the pan to help them steam.  Let them bake at 350 for about 50-60 minutes.  Then pull them out and let them cool for 30 minutes so that they can be safely handled.

Scoop the flesh out and put it into the food processor or blender to break up the strings.

I then put the pureed pumpkin into a colander lined with paper towels or cheesecloth.  There is a remarkable amount of water in that pumpkin, so be sure to do this step.

Lastly, package it up.  I like to put mine in bags with 2 C of puree, the same amount in a can of pumpkin.  They can be stored in the freezer for quite a while.  Ours is usually gone by the following summer.  I got 6 cups of puree from 3 medium sized pie pumpkins.  Considering how many pumpkins will grow from just a few seeds, its not a bad option for the garden.  

Holiday lighting for chickens

J and I have been talking for a while about how to set up some lighting for the chickens so that they will lay.  For those who don't know, chickens lay eggs depending on the amount of light they get daily.  In the winter they lay very few if any eggs, so many people supplement the lighting to make their bodies think its ok to lay eggs.  The other day I had a lightbulb moment (I know, bad pun) and thought to use the Christmas lights that we no longer put on our house.  So far it seems to be working, the chickens are staying up later and eating and drinking later.  There are no eggs yet, but they are making what appear to be nests in the house.  I'm hoping this is a good sign. 

I'm happy to see the lights get used.  We used to be good little decorators and put them up on the house every year.  Then we got lazy and figured that it was good anyway, since then we weren't using the electricity.  Now we're using electricity for a good cause, not throwing these in the landfill and not buying anything new.  Pretty good option in my book. 

The plan for next year is to get more chickens.  We want to build a bigger, more permanent coop for all of them.  The tractor would still be used for the new chicks, until they're big enough to go into the larger coop.  We can also use the tractor to graze them when it suits our purposes.  The long term goal is to not have to supplement them with light over the long term.  If we let them lay like crazy during summer, then we can preserve the eggs for  the winter.  I have no idea if this will work, but it would be great if it did.  Eggs keep for a long time and can also be frozen if need be.  Has anyone else done this and had it work?

How low can you go?

Around here, many people try to keep from turning on their heat until November 1.  Its an arbitrary date more or less, but many people repeat it each year as a goal.  It seems like one of those guages used to show how rugged or in some cases, cheap you are.  In my case I try to see how long I can take it to try to keep our fuel usage as low as possible.  We live in Southeastern Mass and as a result have oil heat.  Most everyone around here does.  Even if they have a wood stove, they usually have an oil furnace as back up. 

Unfortunately we don't have a woodstove.  Its one of those things I wish I could have, but for many reasons that I won't bore you with, it is not possible.  So we wait and wait as long as possible to turn on the heat.  Hubby is almost always the first one to break down and turn it on.  This morning was his breaking point.  We've had colder than normal temperatures for the whole week with things predicted to get even colder in a few days.  We're actually having mid to late November weather right now. 

So Hubby had turned on the heat and after about a half hour with some warmed up toes, his cheap side kicked in and he turned it back off.  I've been trying to turn down the heat a little more each year.  When we lived in an apartment, the heat was part of the rent and we kept it at 72.  Just the thought of that makes me sweat now.  Last year we had it set at 65 during the day and 55 at night.  Now, when I was a kid we didn't have much money.  My parent's kept the heat at 62 for day and 52 at night.  I swore for years that I would never do that, and yet that is what I would like to do this year.  Hubby isn't very happy with that though.  He grew up with a house at 72 and everyone wandered around in very little clothing.  (His mother is famous for greeting people in her underwear.  Frightening!)  He feels that the house is as cold as he can take and would like me to leave it as is.  So, in the name of marital harmony, I will leave it alone.... for now.  I can't guarantee that I won't change it in a few weeks though.  The cheap/green side of me is strong.  I am Scottish hear me roar!

So, am I the only one struggling with the heat?  What do you keep your thermostat set at?

Getting moving on the Christmas gifts

I signed up for Crunchy Chickens Hand for the Holidays challenge this year. This isn't my first year doing hand made gifts.  Last year my Mom and I decided to do as many home made gifts as possible.  I made hats, scarves, dishcloths, socks and lots of baked goods.  This year I'm doing the same.  I've already done one item for my brother's girlfriend, but have lots to do.

This is the start of a market bag that I'm making.  The kids are wanting to have their own, so I may be making quite a few of them.  The handle on this is scaring me a little.  I've never done an I-cord before, so there will probably be lots of frogging happening before the final product is finished.  There are still lots of other things to be made as well.  Is anyone else working on gifts already?

Orange Marmalade

 

Of all things to be canning in September, I'm making Orange Marmalade.  Miss Morgan decided that she HAD to have oranges while we were shopping at Costco.  She loves fruit and I broke down and bought them.  They are definitely not local and also not in season, but I bowed to the pressure of the screaming 5 year old.  Hey, at least it wasn't candy and toys she was screaming about.  The problem was that when she ate one, she decided that she didn't like them anymore.  The rest of us ate a few and then I was still stuck with lots of fruit that would be going bad soon if I didn't do anything.  

So, marmalade it is.  I ended up making 2 batches. (I still have oranges left!)  They will be eaten, gifted or used in a few recipes that call for marmalade.  

I've never made marmalade before.  I've also never used Pomona Pectin before.  Its a pectin that allows you to use a fraction of the sugar in other jam recipes.  This recipe had 6 cups of fruit to 2 cups of sugar, or you have the option of using 1 cup of honey.  How cool is that?  The recipes use sugar, honey and fruit juice to sweeten, so its much better than the 7-8 cups of white sugar that you would normally use.  Each box is more expensive than other pectins, but you don't use the whole box for each batch.  You can get 2-4 batches of jam per box, so it does end up being about the same money.  So far I'm very happy with it.  The marmalade is jelling nicely and it has a nice taste, not too sweet. 

 

Now, I have marmalade to add to the many other jams and jellies I've made this year.  I don't think I need to make any for the next few years.

Does size really matter?

My kids were playing in the basement today. Noah decided that he would make a fort to play in. He used a smaller blanket than the picture above and it was perfect for him. Then Morgan came along and decided she wanted to play in the fort as well. The problem was, there wasn't nearly enough room for both of them. In this case, the fix was easy. I grabbed an old comforter and threw it over the chairs for an extra large fort, big enough for both of them and all their stuffed animals.

In our real lives, there aren't always any easy fixes for problems of size. We live in a 1200 sq ft home with a finished attic and unfinished basement. The attic is completely taken up with hubby's computer business, so that takes away a large amount of space for us. The reality is that in our society 1200 sq ft isn't very big. In my world it gets rather tight trying to store all the things I've accumulated in my quest to simplify and green our world.

Just the prospect of storing food can be daunting in a small space. First is the equipment for seed starting. Lights, heat mats, pots, soil and seeds all take up a good amount of space. Then I need to preserve all the wonderful herbs and veggies that I grew. This involves a dehydrator, canning equipment and hundreds of jars, rings and lids. All of this stuff needs a home. In my case that home is my basement. I have shelving on every available wall to have space to store all of my goodies. There also needs to be space for all the great things I buy in bulk.

Then there is all that needs to be recycled. We end up with a lot of paper recycling as a result of hubby's business. Since we throw away relatively little, the recycling needs to have a home until we can get to the transfer station to get rid of it.

All of this takes up space. I feel that it all has a purpose in my home. I like my hundred foot diet very much. It helps us to reduce our impact on the earth and keeps us healthy as well.

Now, I certainly have size envy from time to time. I would like to have a bigger home, although not much bigger. I would definitely like to have a bigger piece of land to garden on. We adapt to what we have. We all do the best that we can with what is given to us. But, yes, size certainly matters. It affects what we do and how we do it. The size of our home, our family, our land and our commute are all major factors in life.

This post is my submission to the APLS September Carnival on "When does size matter?" It is being hosted by Tina this month. Head on over and take a look at all the submissions sometime after the 15th.