Category Archives: dehydrating

Gift Ideas From the Homestead

by

Every year I tell myself this year will be the year that I do not procrastinate. This year I will start my Christmas gift preps early. I will make a plan and get things done long before Thanksgiving. Well.. it IS before Thanksgiving but I wouldn’t say its “long before” Thanksgiving. Maybe I’m writing this to inspire myself to get on the ball and perhaps to help you to get on the ball if you haven’t made your plans yet.
This is the time of year that the big box stores have Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas decor out all at once. It is a big fat reminder that the last three months of the year just zip by in a blur. From costume parties, Thanksgiving dinners, and all the holiday parties that get crammed in December, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed trying to plan Christmas gifts especially if you’re trying to make homemade goodies for the people you love.
I find the best thing to do is to make a list of all the people you give gifts to and fill in with ideas for what kinds of home made goods you could make for them. Pinterest boards with gift ideas are a great way to help you sort through all your ideas. 

Homesteaders tend to come with an array of different skills from sewing and crocheting/knitting to wood working, soap making, home brewing and so much more.  Use the skills you already have! This might be a fun time to step outside the box and learn a new skill! Look around and see what kinds of things you can do with what you’ve got. If you have bees, obviously honey and beeswax products are a good place to start. Getting the kids involved is the best especially if the gift is for the grandparents!


Below is a list, in no particular order to help inspire some gift ideas. A launching point, if you will. Quite a few of these require some advanced planning times. You may have to add some of these to next years list. Thats ok! Get a head start on next year’s planning! There are so many more things that can be added to this list. Please feel free to comment on this post to help expand the list!

-DIY flower press (or gifts made with flowers you pressed) This is a fun gift for a child or adult so they can make their own pressed flowers. Out of the pressed flowers you can make all sorts of things from jewelry to stationary, magnets, sun catchers etc. 

-Rag rug. This may be one of those “learn a new skill” kinds of things.

-Homemade basket (wooden, rope, fabric, crocheted) 

-Woodworking and wood burning. The options here are endless. (Porch sign, wooden tray, noodle board, bird house or feeder)

-Grape vine wreath. If you have grape vines or access to wild vines, making wreaths are a fun way to use them.

-Gourd bird house or other gourd crafts. Put part of the garden to use in growing your own gifts! 

-Herbal tea blends

-Soaps 

-Crocheted or knitted items 

-Candles 

-Canned goodies (pickled items, jams etc)

-Baked goods 

-Baking mixes. Put together a baking mix into a jar with a cute label with instructions. Everything is better when it comes in a mason jar.  

-Soup mixes. Use your home grown beans and dehydrated veggies to put together soup mixes.

-Home made vanilla extract. This takes a little time to be ready but is super easy to make. 

-Infused vodkas. This one also takes a while before they are ready but its fun and easy to put together. I like to make a bunch of small ones so there’s a variety.

-Bath bombs

-Dehydrated food. Get creative with your dehydrated goods for the year. Veggies, fruits, herbs, you name it.

-Wood carved items (such as bowls or spoons) This may be another “learn a new skill” gift. It’s always fun to learn a new skill.  

-Grow Job’s tears to make jewelry (from these are a plant that produces “beads”). 

https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/grains-and-cover-crops/job-s-tears

-Body butter

-Lip balms 

-Luffa items packaged for bath or cleaning. Growing luffa has been super popular in recent years. Find ways to make them into gifts.  

-Home made beer

-Home made wine or mead

-Pottery 

-Homemade room sprays with essential oils 

-Seeds form your garden

-Propagated plants 

–Meat rubs 

-Herbed salts 

-Herbed or flavored sugar



Every year I try to make a few home made gifts for the people on my list. Here are a few I’ve remembered to take pictures of! 

What kind of home made gifts are on your to do list this year ?

Happy Homesteading!

What to do with that Abundance of Fall Peppers!

by

One of the shining stars of fall is the pepper. They love the heat and have a hard time in early spring getting going. They do start to shine in summer but there is something special that happens in the fall for peppers. They explode with fruit! Our jalapeño plants are DRIPPING with peppers!  Actually to be more factual, my uncle’s pepper plants are, not mine haha. He plants several jalapeño plants along with some flowers in his one and only little edible garden. He grows them for my aunt who could NEVER eat as many as they produce. He doesn’t even LIKE spicy things. That’s love I tell ya.

I stick to growing other varieties of peppers and just walk next door to pick as many peppers as I can haul back home. That’s the wonderful thing about gardening friends. Someone is bound to have a better crop of something than you and sharing is the best!
So what in the world do we do with all these peppers? Other than giving away many to friends and stuffing our selves with jalapeño poppers and salsa, we have discovered some delicious and creative ways to use up and preserve this abundance:

***Word of caution! When handling hot peppers, it’s not a bad idea to use gloves. The oils in peppers are difficult to completely wash away and you don’t want to make the mistake of rubbing your eyes after processing a bucket of hot peppers!

-“Cowboy Candy.” It’s candied. Sweet and Spicy! It’s so delicious on a sandwich, a salad, a baked potato, tacos, or just standing at the fridge scooping them out with a fork! Don’t toss out that extra brine! It can be used to make a glaze or a marinade for meat, add to a Bloody Mary, etc.

-Pickled Peppers Water bath canning them is the way to go and super easy to do

-Canned Salsa. Better make sure you get this done before all those tomatoes disappear for the year!

-Dehydrated Either in a dehydrator, oven dried, or air dried. Store in a mason jar with tight fitting lid. We use the dehydrator and set it on the back porch. Otherwise it runs the kids out of the house coughing haha!

-Powdered. Once you have your dehydrated peppers, you can pulverize them into powder to use as a seasoning.

-Freeze. Cut into slices and freeze. You can remove the seeds or leave them. Remember, if you’re freezing hot peppers, the seeds and the membranes will make it spicer. Add the frozen jalapeños to various dishes throughout the year. Freeze in small batches. 

-Frozen for Jalapeno poppers. Pick the biggest of the peppers to cut in half length ways, scoop out seeds, and freeze to whip up some quick jalapeño poppers later. 

-Hot Pepper Jelly. This is nice on a cracker with some cream cheese.

-Hot Pepper/Fruit Jelly. There are also recipes out there that add fruit such as peaches or figs to the hot pepper jelly. I haven’t tried one yet but it sounds delicious and is on the list! 

-Hot Sauce. There are tons of hot sauce recipes using so many kinds of peppers and some have various fruits added. I will recommend that the spicer the pepper, the more careful handling you should pay attention to. Trying to do preparations outside is also helpful to disperse some of the capsaicin molecules in the air. 

-Fermented. Fermenting sounds scary at first but I promise you is just a few simple steps to preserving your harvest and providing amazing probiotics in this delicious LIVING FOOD! 

Now if you would excuse me, I have about a 5 gal bucket full of jalapeños that need my attention! Preserving is hard work but I never said it wasn’t worth it!
So get to preserving and …

Happy Homesteading!

Leather Britches

by

In the fall, just before it starts getting really cold, those green beans tend to go nuts one last time. They had a great run in the heat of summer then they putter out for a while but they like to go out with a bang at the end. When I plan it right, I have tons of beans in the fall. And truth be told, this year isn’t actually that year. I do have them steadily rolling in but it’s definitely shy of being a bumper crop.

My family loves green beans and we grow a few different varieties. I ALWAYS grow Purple Podded Pole Beans (try saying that fast a few times) and this year we also grew Thai Soldier Beans. This year the Thai Soldier Beans was more of an after thought. I just squeezed a few into a spot I had available. They really ran with that spot and are producing more than I thought I’d get.

In addition to canning green beans and freezing green beans and fermenting green beans,  I like to DEHYDRATE green beans! They take up less space that way and are lighter, easier to store and I don’t have to worry about losing them in the freezer if the power were to go out. I have a run-of-the-mill dehydrator that I use regularly in the summer to dehydrate all kinds of things. And yes, I do have a fancy 9 tray Excalibur dehydrator siting in my wish list… one day… But sometimes you gotta go back to the “good ole days.” Long before modern day canning was a “thing” (which really didn’t take off until the late 1800s early 1900s) people dehydrated and fermented a lot of their food. Dehydration doesn’t have to require fancy machines. In fact, they don’t need much at all!

Have you heard the term Leather Britches? It’s the Appalachian method of air drying your garden beans. You simply use a needle and thread to string them similar to stringing popcorn garland.

How to make Leather Britches 

What you will need:

Sturdy string or unwaxed dentil floss pieces cut to 2 or 3 foot 

Large sewing needle 

And a whole pile of green beens

Steps:

-Wash up those beans and dry them on a towel. (Can I just take a moment to tell you guys how much I’m loving the Turkish towels?! Seriously they are amazing!)

-Pick out any with bug nibbles or bad spots.

-Snap the ends of the beans (specifically the blossom end but I always snap both ends). 

-Remove any strings from the beans.

-Break the beans either in half or, if you have a long bean variety, break into pieces about 2-3 inches long. I often have help from little ones in my house and they don’t always end up in the uniform sizes I would do if I was doing it by myself but it’s important to let them help. So I will cherish the too big and too small pieces for now. 

Now for the fun part! The stringin’

-Thread your needle and tie a knot at the end of the thread. (If you’re concerned that your thread might not be strong enough, double the thread over)

-String that first bean on and wrap it and tie it off well. You want to make sure that the whole string of beans stays on the thread and doesn’t slip off.

-Now you just get to stringing! 

-Once you’ve gotten all the beans that you can fit on a thread, leave room to tie it off. I make a loop so that I can hang it.

The goal is to have one string contain about the amount you would want to use for one meal. If you have a large family, you’ll need multiple strings for sure.
To hang these, you will want them in a dark dry place and don’t squeeze them together. You want air flow around the beans or they will mold. A closet or a pantry works fine. It takes a few weeks or so to dry out and can last a year or so dried.

Cook em up!

Now that you’ve got your leather britches strung and dried, how do you prepare them?

Pull them off the string and soak them overnight. The next day you will cook them for several hours low and slow, traditionally with pork (ham hock, fat back, whatever you want) You also can skip that and do in a veggie stock if you want a vegetarian option. The best part is, they don’t get mushy like green beans can get from over cooking. They maintain a nice chewy texture. 

These beans go by the name Leather Britches but also have been called Shucky beans depending on where you come from. Either way, they are delicious and easy so we are going to continue to add them to our food storage.

Get out to that garden, grab those beens, and get to stringin!

Happy Homesteading!