Fall Colors and Seasons of Change Means Shifting Gears

I like Autumn, it does close Summer and puts a lid on the harvest season and opens a whole different mind set on the Homestead. I will be pulling down the solar water heater as the snow and temps no longer support it. The fall gathering of wild mushrooms, nuts and other free goods mother nature hands over is the final reward before hunting season opens.

Hunting season for me isn't about bagging the big buck, and so if he walks in front of my deer stand I will harvest him. I take no real reward in his rack, if it pleases the guy in the next stand over he can have him. I just want to get a buck that is legal and fill my other Doe tags for the food value. I always pass on smaller Does as I know there are plenty of older Does ready for canning. I also grind them up for Sausage, Bologna and Jerky. This year I am going to be keeping the Deer Liver for a Liver Sausage recipe that I found.

I look forward to small game hunting as well as fall turkey season with Joshua who just loves to bird hunt. This year he is excited to turkey hunt as I teach him to use a new turkey call. If I had dogs I would be shifting towards hunting more rabbits, but I am considering raising rabbits next year for food because having a beagle right now isn't on my list.

I will be priming the smoker this weekend for this years seasoning of food for me and my friends. Getting everything ready for winter means putting everything away and stored properly until next spring. I am considering setting up the Greenhouse but haven't decided to do it. I was thinking of putting it over the cold frame.

You have not heard me mention wood splitting as we did split some, but last year it was so warm, we have plenty of wood left over. We processed so much maple syrup, we will be selling off all of our goods this year. That money will sure up my SS fund pretty nice. I still have a few projects to wrap up for the season and do some clean-up and get ready for the holidays, hunting, and wintertime.

Sugar Season Is Coming, Get Your Pork Bellies Ready

Last summer Joshua and I headed into the woods to mark our own Maple trees. Armed with a Canadian flag and pictures of types of Maple trees, we started scouting in the middle of the front yard. Joshua spotted our first tree. Using blue plastic marking tape, we tied the tape around every tree we found that we could tap for sugar season this year.

We found 39 trees on the homestead that could be tapped, 14 of those are sugar maples. So then I decided to gather the two different saps separate in order to sell off the batch made from the sugar maples as the syrup is a better quality. I see that syrup is going for $88 dollars a gallon, so I hope to sell some to pay for the new barrel I had to buy and cover other minor cost. I had wish listed most of my supplies so I consider those as gifts in order to keep my SS fund above $1K. 

Make the task of gathering the sap easier, not knowing how much snow will be on the round, we mapped out our trail around the property to gather the sap. Than I decided it would to our advantage to clear and trim out the path around the property. We removed old logs, used some as firewood, cut limbs below head level. We drove the tractor around to decided which approach would be the safest for us. 

As the cold weather is here now, the smoker is cured and ready for meat. This years bacon video will include a smoking how to as well. In order to the best use of the smoker, we are going to smoke the sausage and bacon together but do two separate videos. As I type this, I have bacon in the fridge curing...

Its a simple 3 ingredient cure and any one can make/smoke their own!!! 

Getting Ready For The Deer Hunt After The Holidays, More meat!

To my disappointment this year, I have been to busy to go hunting outside a couple hours the first day. I have hired seasonal help, but the hunting season escaped me. I have plenty of local beef, pork and chicken, but I have to get these $35 dollars worth of dog tags filled. I love black powder hunting, it fills my "Jeremiah Johnston" side and gives me that good ole feeling of living off the land.

There is a male squirrel who is going to be in my fry pan before to long. He has been clawing on my mushroom logs at the top. He will be deep fried and ate with some greens.

Sugar season is coming up soon, about 8-12 weeks from now. Working on my rain barrel system next month and looking forward to sap gathering this year all on my own. Joshua is looking forward to it as much as I am, a great time spending time together creating memories of living off the land. If there is one seed I am sure I planted with my son on living off the land, it is maple syrup making. 

From Downspout To Sap Out, Interesting Useful Idea

While winterizing this year, confident in my acquired skills of maple syrup making, spotting and marking of maple trees on my own property (more than four I have tapped in the past). Thinking of my resources on hand to start building my sugaring supplies, not wanting to spend more money, I decided to take one of my rain barrels and keep it out of storage for sap gathering. I will need to buy one large barrel to put in the shanty for holding sap while cooking it down. But I decided to spread the idea so that you can take advantage of my newly thought of idea.


In truth, maple syrup making is a skill handed to me by my grandfather. So as you might know, I planned to be at this point a year ago, but the murder of my parents put my life on hold. My feelings of their deaths has been a roller coaster at times, and time does allow us to learn to except the way things are. I still get angry and upset at times, if I didn't I wouldn't be human. I miss them and wished they could share life with us. Being as it is, perhaps they were saved and are watching us from heaven.

Realize that putting a hold on my path of being self sufficient has not taken hold of my ideas and made me put it down and surrender my diet and lifestyle to big corporation. Learning the skills needed by pioneers of the past days keeps me excited and the rewards of my hard work keeps me going. I will have a plan to share with you for what/where I want to be in the next year. I know that I want to expand my diet to include more dried beans.

I am in a better mental state and find myself getting back to normal something to look forward to. I miss my folks but I know although they are gone, they would want me to keep moving forward in my own life.

Hope you hang in there with me while I get things back together in my own life. Peace be with you, and spread some love. Life is too short to hate. Jason

Keeping On Getting Back To Normal, Love Fresh Food

Hello SS folks, long time no post... However as I mentioned after my return from the coast, I am presenting you with the photos of the homestead and where I am at with things.

So we are doing great, and the weather has been bad. With almost no rain, my rain barrel has been dry most of the grow season. I have used both pond water and well water for the garden. The mulch I laid down has been a blessing. Like some of you, I have been getting on with my seasonal duties of putting food up for the winter season. Although I have been eating more veggies since the garden has been growing, I drop almost 25 pounds of fat. Stress fat as well as process food eating I am sure. We all know the difference in the taste of market food and your own.

Well, all that being said, I'd rather explain the photos as they posted. So if you have sometime and want to join me on my adventure of my SS lifestyle, grab a cup of tea or your preferred drink and lets have a mozzy on the farm.
Mushroom Logs setting idle, waiting for some rain


Wind spinners which help run the birds off and add some beauty to the garden



Solar lights in the garden. 4 corners have led colored globes, and again the bean tree fence post topper


Garden Guard


Garden pictures of different crops and general garden stuff







Ground Hog enters garden and eats carrots and beans, I will harvest and stew him soon


Early Garlic processing



Onions



Summer and Zuke squash, dried and ready to be separated into my squash mess vac bags and other cooking recipes. I have a long loved squash mess recipe from my Mom that she taught me how to make. I took it one step further and developed a dehydrated recipe of my own.


Jamming.. Maple syrup too..





So let me set this up and explain to you how some people don't think. At the end of maple season, folks are tired and couldn't be bothered working out the "fines" in the last gallon of syrup. Fines are named as all the small particles left over in the last batches of each go at maple making. They were going to toss them out this year, I got my equal share already, and wanted the stuff they were going to throw away. Anyway, what you are looking at is one jar of the left over "fines" syrup. Somewhat darker than Amber, still a good quality syrup, this jar is 90% maple syrup with the fines settled at the bottom. SO letting it settle and removing the top syrup has given me another half gallon of syrup.


Todays harvest


The root cellar seems to keep at a steady 66 degrees and was a rewarding building project for food stores. It has proved to be a great place for me to safely store both dried foods as well as canned food.

The hedge rows have provided a steady supply of berries for jamming and fresh eating. This year is the first year that grapes are growing. some of the later raspberry plants are still providing berries of pancakes and sugar and milk.


I suspect that I will be drying and canning tomatoes very soon. I will be canning green ones as well. I also will be drying some for soup recipes.

---

You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy.
вегетарианец- Russian word for poor hunter
We are pioneers, trail blazers, we fight for freedom. We transform our dreams into the truth, our struggles, we became a nation.

Maple Syrup Making: How To Video, Another Self Sufficient Skill Accomplished

This year, with the unseasonal warm temperatures, maple syrup making time is cut short. I am not complaining at all, and grateful to see brown/green ground and feel the warmer air around me. Even some of the 600 plus bulbs I planted last fall are coming up, at least the ones the moles haven't eaten. However I am quick to remind myself that flowers bloom at different times and kept the rule in my mind while planting to ensure a beautiful spring.

I had spent a few days over the last couple weeks with Tom Sr. while he was syrup making. He seems to be less stressful when he's not around certain people or has had some rest. Either way, I was so happy to spend some time with an elder learning the self sufficient skills by passing it down. I felt like I was spending time with my own Grandpa learning the skills. It brought me to a different place.

A place that I created in my mind, a place where I am learning the life skills of being self sufficient from the elders of my own family. Its a sad reminder of the loss of people in my life, but life is what it is, and it made me feel good inside to be there doing it with Tom. If I took other peoples lives for granted while they were alive, I am sure I would feel guilty. Karma taught me many years ago to live/love for today, not hoping for tomorrow. The feelings of spending time together brought me some really good, much needed kinship. I suppose we humans, the ones searching to live self sufficient, search/look to elders for knowledge. I can see this idea in many Indian tribes and history that I have read about them.

So gathering sap, boiling it, adding more sap while boiling it, until you run out of sap and end up with a syrup in your pan. Filtering is a small issue to consider when taking this on, but common sense goes a long ways. The more sap you can boil, or larger batch you can do, the less filtering you have to do. I did a quart jar of fines, what is fines? Fines is a term Tom uses to describe the final end product of syrup that contains all the really fine particles that he isn't willing to figure out how to remove, and they are super fine.

So, if you have ten minutes to spend with me and watch my video, it won't be ten minutes wasted. I hope that you learn something about syrup making and enjoy the video.

If you remember it was just a few years ago when I attended a how to class sponsored by the state on making maple syrup. Now I have 7 pints of of syrup to last me till next year.

The Bloopers On Making Syrup!!! No Liquid In Your Mouth Warning

Well, there is nothing funnier then getting together with friends and have a couple drinks and do a self sufficient video on making maple syrup. I also am going to release, " Sugar Shanty Trash Talking" what a whoot!! 

I am going to set this video up for you... You know how we all say things like " WELL WHEN I WAS A KID, THE BUS DIDN'T PULL IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE, I HAD TO WALK 1.9 MILES IN STORMS JUST TO GET A RIDE TO GET AN EDUCATION"

No really, I did have to walk that far to the bus stop... Ask the wife we measured it..

Anyway we were talking, telling stories about these types of things, and Tommy Jr. after trying Toms Yolk carrying idea.....

So anyway, he thought he would cheer Tom up by saying something about all the years they had done this together. Raw and uncut, I present to you his presentation/skit

 

Maple Syrup, Sap Gathering, How To, Production Of, To The Table

In a small rural town, where I live, we often depend on each other for many things. There are calls for help, friend needs a helping hand, working together to hunt/fish/gather food, and keeping/storing food for long term uses. Sometimes it might be helping with slaughtering animals for food, gather mushrooms in the woods, smoking (my department) and canning.

This time of year, in so many small towns, out in the rural America, there are folks hanging out in their sugar shanty cooking down maple sap to make that REAL yummy syrup, maple syrup. There are many prizes/rewards for such hard work, its a social event between generations, the work in the fall to prepare the wood needed for this event. Its a rumor, or in my case a proven point that this is a mans event. Hundreds of gallons of sap needed to make enough syrup for consumption as well as to sell at the market or to visiting city slickers. If your from the city, that isn't meant as a cut down or insult, its used just like you might call us country folk. Some of the images you will see might even make us look like hillbillies, but were not like that at all.

So here are tom Jr. (t) and Tom Sr.(T)  this is a bucket carrying system that allows him to carry up to 10 gallons of sap to the tractor, being that he has to travel up hill, his shoulders/neck hold the weight.

 

This is a food safe 55 gallon collection container attached to a three point hitch. The hitch isn't used in this application and is used only to hold the barrel as its driven down along the higher road so we can bring the sap up to empty our buckets, and return to the woods to gather more. Wrapped with gray tape, a screen is attached to catch large debris.

This picture shows the color of the sap collected, the sample on the left is getting a rusty color, and the right is clear. Illustrated here is what to use and when to stop tapping the sap from a tree.

Collecting of the sap from the trees can be tough if you don't plan ahead. Tom using his tractor, will drive down the road while sap that is being collected is dumped into the large container. On this day, a collection had taken place, and just a few left for the purpose of this blog. I also wanted to show you different methods of hauling the heavy buckets.

Lets head into the sugar shanty AKA Syrup Shed....    

  As you can see, the fire is going, and it takes about one cord of wood to get 19 quarts of syrup. Depending on what type of hardwood maples you tap into, the amount of sap used to make one gallon of syrup will be different. With sugar maples, the final product will be a light color, and only 35 gallons of sap is needed. With the most common standard hardwood maples, it takes 48-52 gallons of sap. Those numbers aren't defined enough because depending on the sugar content of the sap from the year before will be different, from year to year.

In this photo to the left side, on the shelf is a holding tank, it holds sap that is slowly allowed to drip at a rate that the water is boiled from the square pan. It is filled from the barrel that is mounted on the three point hitch from the tractor. There are also two holding containers inside the shed so while collections are going on, a constant supply of sap is near by to keep the square pan full. A small sock place at the end of the tube that drips into the square pan, is a last stage type filter prior to boiling the sap. The sap will again be filtered from stuff collecting during processing.

Also, sap will continue to be added, and the fire stoked/banked through out the night and day until enough of it is ready to be set for final processing. In this case, this is Toms sugar shanty and oven, and owner of the trees we used to gather the sap from.

During the production of maple syrup, in some kind of manly type relationship or social acceptance, a cherished drink is made and shared amongst the men working together to produce this wonderful product. The drink called, in this neck of the woods, Slurple is a traditional method of acceptance and is shared during the processing.

I do admit that this isn't the only drink shared within the processing shed, its the best and most self sufficient.

tommy, bottle in hand, expresses his joy of being the subject of this shot. tommy is Marks brother-n-law as well as a good friend to Mark. I am a good friend to Mark and met tommy through Mark. tommy is the fungi king of all time I mentioned before. He is a centennial soul, and a great fellow to be around, there has never been a dull moment when he or Mark is around.

As the sap boils, it is sifted to remove bits that collect in it as it boils, Tom is shown here using his screen to remove the waste at the top. A small sample is shown once the gravity level is checked, and brought to about 31-32 its cooled, graded to Grade A Amber Medium, canned and stored for future use. I have canned it and used it 5 years later without any noticeable change to taste.

I had a great time today, spending time with good friends, doing something together, and talking about being self sufficiency and making our own. Though Tom, tommy or Mark don't blog about being self sufficient, I can assure you they are as much as me if not more. 

Tom bragged a lot about being self sufficient and how proud he feels about living the fine life. He even mentioned how he wish he had moved to Alaska, a place where he says his skills could be used. He build his own house from wood he cut, and bragged up his own level of skills.