Canning Chili Today for a Chilly Tomorrow

Kelli Peet taught us how to use a pressure canner today as we "put-by" several pints of scrumptious chili using venison harvested by Kelli's husband and fresh veggies from Ridgway Family Farm. Using a pressure canner is absolutely necessary for canning low acid foods including meat, beans, and most vegetables. We tripled the recipe from http://www.pickyourown.org/canning_chili_with_meat.htm using the following:

*only 6 cups dried pinto beans - soaked over night then boiled 30 minutes in 11 cups of water.

PLUS *3# red onions plus *2# green and red peppers chopped and browned in a skillet with 3 Tbsp olive oil. After they were browned we added *10 pounds of Ron's ground venison and continued to brown it with the peppers and onions.

Using rubber gloves for handling the chili powder, we added *1 Tbsp black pepper, *1/2 cup chili powder, *4 Tbsp paprika, *1/3 cup ground cumin, and 2 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano.

Instead of using canned tomatoes, we used *10# fresh tomatoes that we chopped after peeling by dunking in boiling water to loosen the skins. And we added*1/3 cup apple cider vinegar instead of lemon or lime juice.

 We set our clean, chip-free jars on a towel to fill.

 Kelli's 1-cup measure ladle with pour spout made filling the jars easy.

 She also had a canners' measuring stick so we could leave exactly 1 inch of head space in each jar.

 Then we stacked the jars in the preheated canners...

secured the lids, brought them up to temperature, and let them steam for 70 minutes while we ate lunch.

Once they cooled enough to open safely, we used jar grabbers to unload the canners and set our jars to cool and seal. Summertime stored in a jar! Thank-you Kelli!

Waising Wabbits Workshop

Meeting at Alden's Rabbitry, we learned how Alden and his dad raise rabbits as meat for their family and to sell as pets, breeding trios, or live for meat.

They use three different type bucks: New Zealand White, Satin, and Lop. First time does are usually bred to the New Zealand White because he predictably casts the biggest kindles and the fastest growing bunnies. However, for flavor and for delightfully soft hides, Alden prefers the Satins. .. especially prepared with his mom's creamy mustard sauce.

 We agreed that they are wonderful to cuddle.

 Each cage has a removable tray for catching the droppings. Alden and his dad empty the trays directly onto their garden every week, then hose them clean. Rabbit manure is not "hot" and won't burn the plants. However their urine is extremely concentrated and will bleach your clothes if you spill it on them.

Keeping a breeding trio for one year will produce about 150# of rabbit meat for less than $2 a pound That's three litters of 8 bunnies/doe, dressed out at 3# each at 9 weeks of age.

Rabbits need hay every day and pelleted rabbit food. Blue Seal Feeds sells it for $16/50#. Tractor Supply sells organic pellets for $12.50/10 pounds. Jacqui Gueft at /LightningTreeFarmProducts.com/ in Millbrook, NY bags organic rabbit feed and resells it almost at cost for $16/25 pounds. Call her at 845-677-9507 to have it delivered to /RLocalFarm.com/ in Cornwall, CT if that's more convenient. You can feed them almost anything from your garden, but NO cabbage! Cabbage kills rabbits! Too many greens will give them the runs.

Rabbits don't tolerate heat or wind well. They also may not breed if they don't get enough light during the day. Put a doe in the buck's cage to breed and take her out as soon as he falls off or she'll likely tear him up. 33 days later she'll kindle. Put a nest box with steep sides and fresh hay into her pen approximately 26 days after her date with the buck. Right before she gives birth she'll pull hair from her chest/dewlap to make a soft nesting place in the hay in the nest box. Check in the box within three days to be sure there are no dead bunnies rotting in there. 9 weeks later you'll have rabbits ready to harvest.

Next, we went to Local Farm to harvest some rabbits we'd pre-purchased from Alden's Rabbitry. After a pot-luck lunch featuring Rabbit Pot-Pie, Margaret demonstrated and we learned to break the rabbits' necks using a broom handle to hold their heads in place. We were fortunate to find the killing went quickly and relatively humanely. We were also very thankful not to have set off the ear-piercing, heart-wrenching, nervous system vocal spasm that sometimes happens.

  Under the guidance of Margaret and Kate, we skinned and gutted the carcasses.

Margaret told us about her experience tanning rabbit hides and we left ours with her with possible plans to return to help her with that. We washed, cooled and bagged our fresh lapin and went home with plans of how we'd prepare it after thoroughly chilling it for 4 to 12 hours.

Visit Honest-Food.net fried-rabbit-recipe/ for how to cut up a rabbit and batter fry it. YUM!

Best BEEginnings Yet!

Today's Old Style Life-Skills Series workshop BEEginning with Bees held at the Taghhannuck Grange Hall was BEEzy and inspiring!

 Todd Shearer showed us his top bar hive...

 

...with honeycomb the bees had built last summer 

 

...and filled with honey. 

 Jen Worden showed us her Langstroth hive...

 ...with a homemade candy box she uses for feeding the bees during winter.

Joe Benete demonstrated using a stethoscope attachment to listen for vibrations of living bees in the hive...

...and a special board he designed for wiring foundation wax into the frames.

We learned different techniques for installing a new package of bees,

...how to use a hive tool for cleaning and prying the frames,

 ...how to use a smoker, and many other tricks of the trade.

After a honey of a pot-luck lunch, we hand-dipped beeswax candles and made a batch of Alton's bee-candy for feeding the bees.

Wreath-Visiting Bailing Twine Wreaths

 Making wreaths out of reused bailing twine is both challenging and rewarding.

Although I don't have written directions... here are some hints:

*cut twine at the knots as you feed out hay - this makes it easy to pull individual pieces from a bundle and creates a nice starting place for the braid

*count out three equal bundles of twine and wrap one piece of the bundled twine around the bunch just below the knots

*put all three together and similarly, wrap them tightly together with one piece, & tie so the end dangles inside the bundle.

*bend a wire coat hanger in a circle with pliers and the hook down to make a ring for hanging up the finished wreath

*lay the bundled knots on the wire coat hanger circle, directly across from the hanging ring.

*braid around the circle, incorporating the hanging ring when you come to it.

*when you get all the way around, wrap one of the end pieces of twine around the bunch of knots and the other end pieces so they hang together.

*I like to trim the hanging end pieces so they are the same length.

*check the photos in these blog posts for more ideas: 

* you just have to fiddle with it until it looks right to you.

FreeBEE Honeybee BEE

25 beekeeping enthusiasts BUZZED over to the Taghhannuck Grange Hall to Motherhouse's first FREE-BEE honeybee BEE. BEEginner, experienced, and wanna-BEE beekeepers shared their stuff!

Todd Shearer brought in and showed us a top bar hive designed by the Barefoot Beekeeper, He chose this style BEEcause he could build it himself and the bees are usually calmer to work. His family is dedicated to working with nature to create a permiculture, bio- and educationally diverse yard... I call it "Shearer Heaven."

Wyatt Whiteman showed us his elegantly simple homemade solar wax cleaning system. Using all recycled materials; wooden box with scrap lumber props, black plastic paint tray, food tray, hardware cloth, and window frame painted with leftover paint,
Wyatt lays wax scraps on the hardware cloth, closes the window; the sun melts the wax; it drips onto the paint tray, runs down into the lower edge, thru the small center opening, into the smaller food tray; leaving debris behind.

To make candles, he pours the wax from the food tray directly into a mold. He threads the mold with a long length of wicking, and winds it around the mold to keep it closed. When removing the candle, he pulls just enough wick through the mold to set it up for the next candle.

Joe Benete showed us the "tools of the the trade." Then a panel of  backyard beekeepers waxed enthusiastically about their experiences.

Fair-trade, organic coffee and chai tea made with local B&B honey and Thorncrest Dairy milk was generously provided by Coffee, Tea, Etc.
To deter bears, panelists recommended Sonpal's Power Fence (860 491-2290) and/or keeping goats, and a cow, and many active children in the yard.

After a honey of a potluck lunch, local herbalist Alicia North of North Star Botanicals , gave a BEEutiful presentation of foraging honeybees and BEEnificial plants.

Visit the Motherhouse website for a fellow beekeeper's poem about beekeeping and life.

A SUDSational Workshop

We met at the Taghhannuck Grange hall for an evening of fun and lather...

Sharon Laughlin of Made for You soaps started off the evening by demonstrating how to use the cold water lye process to make Gardeners' Soap with a natural degreaser... coffee!  She makes a batch of coffee and freezes it in ice cube trays. Wearing rubber gloves, a surgical face mask, and full plexiglass face shield, she sprinkles the correctly measured lye over the ice in a heavy duty plastic pitcher. The lye melts the ice and the resulting mix is around 100 degrees. Sharon lets it cool as she warms her oils.

When oils and the coffe-lye mix are both between 80 and 98 degrees she mixes the coffee-lye into the oils and blends with two(!!) hand held blenders...
.

...until the mixture thickens and begins to "trace." Then, she stirs in ground coffee beans and pours the whole mixture into molds.

She has beautiful hand-made molds of Corian scraps leftover from her husband's kitchen business. The ends pull out so she can easily push the soap out after it hardens. To prepare the molds, she slathers them with mineral oil, lines them with parchment paper, and oils the paper.

Once the mold is full, she covers the soap and wraps it up in a blanket to keep warm as the lye and oils interact or saponify.

In about two days the soap will be ready to slice. Again, Sharon shows her clever use of Corian scraps with her own home designed soap slicer. Once sliced, she'll label the soap with the date and recipe and lay it on racks to cure for 6 weeks. She uses ph paper to check for when it is fully cured and safe to use... around ph7.

Then I talked about making milk soap and using lard instead of vegetable oil. You can see last year's post for information about that.

Next, Alicia North of North Star Botanicals showed us how to use melt-and-pour glycerin soap base to make "Earth and Ocean Lemon Grass Soap."

 First she used a knife with a big blade to cut the block into cubes and put them in Pyrex measuring cups.

 

Then we heated the soap cubes in pans of boiling water until it melted.

Alicia added castor, jojoba and avocado oils to the hot liquid base. After the mix cooled slightly, she stirred in ground calendula blossoms for a golden color that won't spoil or turn brown and skin healing properties, kelp powder for additional minerals, and essential oil of lemon grass for the lovely scent as well as its antimicrobial/antibacterial action. Alicia warned us to be cautious with lemongrass on delicate tissue!  We then poured the mix into molds...

... spritzed them with rubbing alcohol in order to break any bubbles on the surface, and took them outdoors to speed-cool.

To get them out of the molds, Alicia puts them face down on a cutting board and (VERY) firmly presses from outer edges toward center of each mold until the soap releases.

Finally, for a soothing wash for poison ivy sufferers, we stirred a decoction of jewelweed into another batch of melted base. I harvested the plant late last summer and simmered it in water for about 20 minutes, strained out the plant matter, and froze the brew.  We added about 1/4 cup to a pound of soap base.