Category Archives: Food

Pickle this, Pickle that…

Ahhh….gardening! One of the most exciting parts of our new little homestead is space to garden. Its been a whirlwind of house projects since moving in so this year a small temporary garden is what we have to work with. Beginning this fall we should have our huge homestead dream garden in place. There is a little this and that planted. Just enough to eat, not enough to freeze/can/pickle…except the crazy carrots!

FullSizeRender(3) — Pumpkins in the back mounds, carrots, spinach, beets and one jalapeno and eggplant. Cucumbers are trellising in the front.

When is comes to planting seeds the smaller they are, the less patience I have to properly plant them. Carrots in particular are nearly invisible and always end up thrown out as a handful and end up a overcrowded mess. I have to thin the carrot bed many, many, many times in order to get decent sized carrots. I have learned that thinning the carrot bed always gives great baby carrots that Layla always loves! Sometimes I throw them in stir fry or just eat them. This time, I tried a new recipe of small batch pickled carrots.

This book is really, really great. And its a local Oregon author. (You can see my sourdough culture started in the jar in the background…more about wild fermentation another day).

The thing I really love about this book is its very easy to experiment with the recipes. Most are small batches and just refrigerator pickles. This recipe, for example is based on just 1 pound of carrots. Its not overwhelmingly huge recipes that end in 12 jars of a product you aren’t sure if you will even like. It makes it easy to try new things. There are many ideas in this book I will be trying in the future. This day, 2 pounds of overcrowded garden carrots became delicious little pickled treats.

Beautiful garden carrots with dill, jalapeno, garlic, peppercorn in a white vinegar pickle brine.

They turned out amazing. They will sit in the refrigerator and continue to become more amazing each day (if I can stay out of them). The rest of the garden is on its way. Most things are delayed in Oregon compared to California because, well, its just not hot as hell around here! I have learned that its normal for my corn to be only “knee high by the fourth of July” which was shocking to me as I was thinking my poor garden was just not working. Zucchini and tomatoes, for example has been all over facebook from friends and family in hotter states like California and Tenneseee. Here, they are just starting.

We have plenty of tomatoes planted for sauces, ketchup and sun drying. A couple small rows of corn, zucchini for eating and canning relish, red potatoes have already been harvested, cucumbers running wild, many heads of cabbage that can’t wait to become wild fermented sauerkraut, a few beets, peppers, broccoli, then the greens… lettuce, kale, and chard.

Hopefully soon we will be canning, dehydrating, pickling, fermenting and preserving. Its exciting to have space to grow more and more food each season!!!

Happy late 4th of July…here in Brownsville we enjoyed the town pancake breakfast at the park and amazing fireworks show!

Happy Valentine’s Day Chocolate Scones

We woke up thinking chocolate valentine waffles sounded good today. However, since we have freeloading slacker chickens right now we were out of eggs. Scones it is!!! I am a little famous for my white chocolate cinnamon chip scones so it was hard to venture out into uncharted scones territory but they were amazing! A little chocolate drizzle and we called it breakfast. Perfect fuel (not really) for some hard yard work!!!

My last day off with the dogs was filled with hours of pulling driveway weeds and taking down more branches from overgrown trees. There has been a lot of overgrowth removal and general reshaping of bushes, trees and other plant life here. Today was the day to pick it all up and put it in the burn pile. After one truck load of leaves, there was still a lot of debris to pile up and move. The great thing about only going as far as your own pasture is the truck doesn’t have to be highway safe…..pile it high!

One great surprise here as the rain subsides and days are warming up are bulbs popping up everywhere. Everywhere you look under almost every tree and all along the driveway there are daffodils, crocus’s, tulips and iris’s popping up. Its going to be very exciting when they all bloom.

The little chickens are getting bigger and over 3 lbs now. They have great big tails finally and are venturing around the yard doing their job at pest control. Chicken-Mary has a comb and waddles now and is a little more developed then her sisters.

Chicken Florence in the background, Left-Chicken Diana, Right-Chicken Mary

Nessie plays more and more and even came and meowed at the front door to say hi the other night. She has recently climbed a tree and seems much more adventurous as the weather improves.

Nessie enjoys the catwalk in the shop now and climbs and struts her stuff

We are going to take a break from the yard work now and see what the property brings us in Spring. We may have a little pasture clean-up but will start focusing on the house remodel of the laundry room/hallway/master bedroom in the next couple months. More to come!

Berries!

I have been trying to find local foods and farmers in the winter here. Most farmers markets are closed for the season. Due to our late arrival here we do not have a fall/winter garden this year. Last week I wanted to make granola bars. I was out of dried fruit. I thought maybe I could find a berry farmer that may have cheap surplus berries through the winter. I called nearby Berkey Farms who grow organic blueberries nearby.

Blueberry farm with the crop in the background mulched with sawdust

Sure enough, post harvest freezer berries were available by the gallon. A gallon on blueberries is about 5 pounds.

All I had to do was wash, dry and pick a few green ones from the batch. With granola in mind, these went straight into the dehydrator, no additives, no sugar, nothing but berries. This would also have been a good start to blueberry syrup!

My new dehydrator is amazing and has a timer to shut off on time so these little ones dried over night making the laundry room smell delicious.

Checking and turning them….

The result! Yum! Granola bars to follow….

Happy New Year!

There has been a lot going on around here the past few weeks. Christmas and New Years, friends visiting, new chickens and more! We have had rain, freezing temps, sleet, snow and more freezing temps. We have been working hard to figure out keeping the animals warm and toasting. Here’s a few updates of the past few weeks. We have been relaxing, building, creating, canning, welding, freezing, chicken training and more!

Chicken coop expansion

New chickens meant more room was needed in the coop. Also, the pecking order needed to be worked out with Penny. After a lot of separation then slow visitation everyone worked it out and they are all together in a new expanded coop warming each other up and getting along great. The coop got more room in the house, new perches and a bigger run. Now its a double wide! More pictures once I paint it! Here is the work in progress before the rest of the roof and the new enclosure.

The little chickens spent a couple weeks in the garage until the hard freeze passed and they were monitored until we knew they were healthy and could go in with Penny. There is always that one chicken that pushes the limits….Here is Florence-chicken discovering she isn’t really all that locked up. Soon after this they discovered they can fly and I woke up to them roosting wherever they wanted in the garage…no. Time for the coop!

All 3 living in the garage for 2 weeks to make sure they were healthy

New Years Guests
Our friends the Kings visited for New Years and brought Milo the dog. He gets along great with Layla. On new years weekend went walking around the pastures and property by the pond. I forgot what a lab dog loves most….he was in the water (not bothered at all by the cold and ice) before I saw it coming. Layla enjoyed playing at the pond as well.

Yay for canning!

Thanks to a bigger kitchen I finally have more room and a pressure canner! Can’t wait for the summer garden. First thing I made was chili con carne. Turned out great. I even made soup stock from the Christmas turkey, canned and preserved.

following the canning guidlines carefully for safety

lots of peppers, onions, spices, kidney beans….

in you go for 75 minutes…yes a long time

22 degrees and a frozen, broken gate

Have I mentioned much just how awesome Clinton is?? Well he is. And I have to post a pic of him being amazing fixing our gate on a frozen day. To my disappointment we barely saw any snow. We did, however have a lot of frozen bird baths, pond, chicken waters, etc.

welding the gate back, works perfect now!

Wood stove in the shop

This shop stove was refurbished from a killer deal on Craigslist. With a few parts, some rust removal and fixing up its now keeping things (and cat and dog) toasty in the shop when we are working in there. Here is Layla helping build the chicken coop. She made sure the stove did not go anywhere the entire time we were building. Good thing for Layla keeping a close eye on things!

Apple Butter

apples from Peoria farms, cinnamon, sugar and cloves

We arrived at the new place a little later than expected. That put my plans of harvesting and preserving food from the orchard on hold until next year. Since it’s fall, I went to the local farm and scored some local apples. I decided Applebutter needed to happen.

The only option at this time of the season were Fuji apples. They may be a bit sweet but they will also be good for Apple chips

5 pounds of apples gave me 8 cups of prepared and cooked apples that I needed for my dad’s family recipe. I didn’t have a food mill yet but my potato ricer did a fine job. Every part of the apple is cooked down including the peel and the core to get the most pectin and flavor.

Cooked the apples until they were very soft. After running them through the potato ricer they resembled applesauce

The next step was to add the spices, sugar and cook the whole batch down until it was the proper thickness for the Applebutter. This takes a very long time I may just do it overnight in a crockpot next time leaving the lid a jar for steam to escape. It wasn’t as hard as I thought to remove the peel and seeds from the ricer as I went along. However I can imagine a food mill would be much much faster.

This stainless steel pot is amazing. I use it for everything I make that is going to be processed and canned. It was a perfect gift from mom in law Carol

Since making this batch I have scored a old-fashioned food mill at the local flea market put on by the senior center. I am excited to try the next batch using the food mill and our own apples.

Side note: The following week I was walking out by the pond and was surprised to find two more apple trees nowhere near the orchard. There were green apples still on the tree, a variety that I don’t have in the orchard. Hoping they are Granny Smith. I would love to have pie apples on the property!

Pedersen Homestead

Five acres of 'follow your dreams'…