Frugal Friday and Homestead Happenings!

Wowza, what a busy week we had.  Apparently way to busy to do a Homestead Happenings post on Wednesday so I am combining it with Frugal Friday, which works because it all melds together for this family.

I finished up all my canning projects.  My water bath and pressure canners are all cleaned up and polished waiting for next year.  My goal was to use up every canning jar in the house and this year it was close.  I am left with one case of quart jars and one pint and a half jar.  That's it!  I'm not sad about the quart jars because I will use them for fermenting foods like yogurt and beets when I harvest the last of them from my garden.  

I was able to process all the frozen foods out of our large freezer and unplug that energy sucking machine down.  I dehydrated the frozen veggies I had and vacuum sealed the flours and let's just say then animals are eating very well this week.

Dehydrated veggies from freezer

Expensive flours and nuts vacuumed packed.

It  was our anniversary this month so we did our typical date.  I love a road trip so we always take an exploration drive.  This year we did it in the mechanics "Big Truck" and took a drive on the beach and then around the North Fork which is a beautiful drive up the mountain on dirt roads looking at Fall colors.  We also picked up lunch from our favorite take out but not until the next day.

Stormy learning to drive Big Truck on beach.

Driving all by herself!

Anchor Point Beach on a cloudy day.

North Fork Road.

My mother in law is up visiting for the rest of the month so we are slowing down enough to enjoy spending time with her and this week I am anxiously awaiting the birth of chicks.  Both our broody hens should be hatching their eggs soon but I gotta admit they are terrible broody hens.  Many a night I have to chase them on the right nest after finding cold eggs.  If any chicks are actually born, it will be a miracle.

Lazy Wolf Dog

Not a frugal pet but very good company.

Canning, Preps and Storage - August Journal

For the past year I have been meaning to start a canning journal that would include my preps and food storage.  I tried to put in on paper and in a spreadsheet but I just wasn't keeping up with it.  To increase the excitement level, I will try to place it here in this blog, which is largely my personal journal anyway.  I'm shaking my head too.  We all know how sporadic I am with this blog.

August is a busy canning month for all canners.  The gardens are producing and it's time to put things up.  My garden pretty much took care of our needs so I did purchase some veggies and plan to purchase more.  Next year I will put in a larger garden including a potato patch where the chicken run is right now.

I was motivated to do a bit more canning after we received our last electric bill.  It was up on a month where it should be low.  One of the things that I noticed was our big chest freezer always seemed to be running.  My first step was to defrost it but my goal is to unplug it for good.  Hello smaller electric bill!

Later that night I had a sink full of various meats that I canned up the next day.  For my family, canning our meats is smart.  We do not eat a lot of meat and I really do not like touching, cooking or smelling it.  I loved that I cooked up a sink full of meat in one canner load.  

Next, I was honest with myself and turned the items we were never going to eat into chicken food.  A couple large bags of carrot pulp from our juicing days, a small bag of frozen grapes, some lentil soup that turned an ugly color of gray, all mixed up with a bit of oatmeal fed the chickens for days and made delicious eggs.

I am making an effort to use up the frozen veggies.  Thawing and canning them would destroy them so veggies are on the menu.  In the future I plan to can only the veggies that we enjoy, not the ones that I think we should be eating and never do.  

From the chicken scraps and a bag of frozen vegetable ends I made up bone broth in the crockpot and canned it.  I still have 2 whole organic chickens in the freezer that I will cook and eat and make and can up more broth.  It's like free food for us and more chicken food.  I wonder if it's considered cannibalism to feed live chickens dead chickens?

I canned up pinto and white beans because I love having them on hand for a quick burrito or refried beans or easy soup.  Here's what I canned in August:

Garlic - 14 half pints
Hot peppers - 8 pints
Pickled Beets - 5 pints
10 pounds Hamburger
10 pounds Chicken Breast
3 pounds Fish
8 quarts Pinto Beans
8 quarts White Beans