This week on the Hill
We are finally starting to get caught up with tomatoes. Pulled the 23rd quart of sauce out of the canner last night with only a few more days of tomatoes to go. I was thinking while making sauce that I don’t think the average person has any idea how many tomatoes and how much work is in a quart of sauce. They buy it off a shelf and dump it in the pot, taking it all for granted. We need to get more sauce done because I like chili and like to have it a few times a month. We’ve also been drying romas. I’m still trying to find the dehydrator’s place in our food preservation here. We dry peppers and tomatoes and I gave green beans a try last year. Dehydrating has its good points and its bad points, and we are trying to experiment more with it. We did a bunch of apple sauce this last week as well. The boys and I picked some more today and haven’t decided what we want to start next. By the end of the week we are going to get a batch of wine started, a 2 gallon batch of Up North Whiskey. The pig is growing well, eating lots of dropped apples that are two nasty even for cider. He loves apples. The good pears are ready to be picked and we have been feeding all the sickle pears to the pig. I see on the news wire that the economy is in trouble again, I could say “I told you so..” but I won’t. Matters little to me, truth be told. I have no paper investments at all, no money in the bank and very little FRNs in my pocket. Kind of like the old country song goes, “somebody told us wallstreet fell, but we was so poor that we couldn’t tell”. I’ve been telling folks I know for years to get out of the funny money system and grow some food and invest in some tools and a little gold or silver for savings. They always laugh and poke fun, but these days they are all concerned about their “investments” and act a little worried. Me, I’m picking apples canning a winters supply of tomatoes and watching a pig fatten up before my eyes. Looking forward to deer season and some pan fried tenderloins with a small jelly jar of homebrewed wine. Yessiree, the old simple life is the life for me!
September 24th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
We too are living the good life as far as food goes. We still have debt hanging over us though. We are currently looking for a farm to rent in TN and have had a couple of people interested in buying our farm here. THen we could be debt free,
September 24th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Hi Scott,
Thanks for stopping by my blog. We finished up butchering our chickens today, and I am still canning — we do lots of tomatoes and other things. I am relatively new to this way of life, and sure would like to find some good books on how people did things and compensated for things they didn’t have access to during the Depression. It just might help me be less concerned about the unknown.
September 25th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Hah. Last year I was running low on quart-size jars and still had couple of grocery bags (the paper ones) full of tomatoes, so I decided to make sauce. I think I got a quart of sauce out of that! We will have to have reached a higher level of self-sufficiency before I’m induced to try that again.
:-p
September 29th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Scott,
We dehydrate a lot. Onions are wonderful and squash and zucchini - great to throw in a stew. Salt the squash first and it makes a great snack. Okra too - it s the only way I like okra! Slice tomatoes thin, sprinkle italian seasoning and garlic on them and dehydrate - best flavored “pizza chips” in the world! Have also done grapes - wonderful raisons!
Blessings,
Cheri