Tag archives for self-sufficiency
How to Render Pig Fat
How to render pig fat for homemade lard you ask? You didn't ask? Let me share anyway because you never know when you will need to. Wilbur and Mabel lived a good life, complete with back scratches, sprays with the hose on hot days, and lots of goat milk as treats. Well, all good things must come to an end and that end was the butcher making a house call. Not going to lie, it…
Homemade Yogurt
I made yogurt! Using my new to me dehydrator! I used Organic whole milk and Chobani with live cultures. bring to 180ish degrees. Enough to scald it. After it gets to 180ish degrees let it cool to removed it from the heat for this. The add 2T of live culture yogurt. After this first batch I will use some of THIS yogurt. I then put it in quart size Mason jars …
Homemade fire starters
As part of our journey to self sufficiency we made fire starters. These will be great for camping or just bon-fire starting. We use egg cartons dryer lint candle wax wood chips We received 2 black garbage bags FULL of wood wouldn't purchase these otherwise. The fire-starters are fine with just the lint, which I have an abundance of. For candle wax I just purchased a used candle from a thrift store and melted it…
Chickens
Since The Principal built the chicken tractor we have been most entertained. Who needs tv when you have chicks to watch How could you not want to sit and watch these entertaining.
Homemade Crockpot Apple Butter
Safeway had a sale on organic apples. .99 a pound! So I bought a a few pounds. I ended up with 9 full trays for the dehydrator. I am hoping I can have enough to store. The kids eat it faster than I can vacuum seal it. I had a few left over so I decided to can some apple-butter. Because I am lazy I didn't bother to peal. I did wash them well though.…
Beef Jerky
I put it in the dehydrator for 4ish hours at 155 degrees. I bought this 2lb roast on sale for $7. Not near enough jerky for $7 Well, probably about as much as a large bag from 7-11 I have read that you can do ground beef as jerky. Definitely looking into that!
Started our Garden Indoors
We are going to attempt to start our Square Foot Gardening again. You can read about last year's attempt here. This year, with my new found hobby of Preparedness, I am DETERMINED to have a healthy garden so I can can our bounty. One way we are attempting to do better than last year is to start before MAY! We also started inside. These are obviously temporary homes for the seeds. It was…
Dehydrating Fruit
I had a request from our oldest for dried mango. These were $1 a piece at Costco. We also did pears. We were cutting them by hand. Then decided to try my ! It worked! Much more efficient! You can't dehydrate without doing bananas! I was going to vacuum seal they are being eaten faster than I could seal them. We didn't peal the fruit to save time. Some of the pieces were ok with…