Learning self-sufficiency
Every now and then a story comes up about sickness from and recalls of eggs because of salmonella contamination. Salmonella is a serious issue, but one that can be easily managed or prevented in the home flock.
Continue reading “Preventing Salmonella Problems in Backyard Chickens”
This year is our first year trying Tattler reusable canning lids. They promise to be an almost indefinitely reusable lid that is also more corrosion resistant than the common metal lids. Having tried them a few times, we can speak to their functionality. If their claims about re-usability are true, we’re excited about their economic utility as well.
We had an opportunity to pick up some cherries from a you-pick farm and came home with 6.5 lbs. It’s not a tremendous amount, but enough to do something interesting with.
Since we find we don’t usually get through canned cherries, and since we found our brandied peaches to be a fantastic success, we decided to make brandied cherries.
Last year, our search for methods of preserving onions led us to pickling. We didn’t post anything about it at the time because we really weren’t sure how they would turn out. Now, it’s a year later and last year’s batch was good enough that we find ourselves doing it again.
We received another large number of Walla Walla sweets this year and are busy trying to find new ways to process them. One method we learned from a friend from the Walla Walla Gleaners was to caramelize them in a crock pot and freeze them.