If You Think You Can, You Can!

My sister and I decided that we wanted to can most of what we grew in our garden. Both of us had watched our mom can, but had never really canned ourselves. (Well, that's not exactly true. My sister did a little water bath canning last year, but neither of us had pressure canned before.) So when our mom was out here last May, we asked our mom to buy us canning supplies for early birthday presents. (My birthday is in August, and my sister's is in September.) So she did.

Here is our lovely new pressure canner.

And then we grew stuff - tomatoes and green beans mostly. We had decided to plant roma tomatoes so that we could do tomato sauce. Well, as you might recall, our tomato situation was mixed. We planted one row of 12 plants in May, but we didn't have many cages, so we lost quite a bit to rot from being on the ground. But we still harvested about 500 tomatoes. In late June, we planted another 10 tomato plants. And then we proceeded to have the coolest summer ever. So we have only harvested a few tomatoes off the second batch, and who knows how many we will get before the frost. We used this squeeze/de-seed/de-skin contraption (It is a Back To Basics Food Strainer. It is AWESOME!) and put them in gallon bags, and then we stored them in our awesome friends' freezer. (Thanks Joy!)

We ended up with about 16 bags of tomato stuff, but it wasn't sauce yet. Because you have to boil the tomatoes and reduce them by 1/2 before canning it. It was a little disheartening to see half of our hard work just evaporating away . . . .

After boiling it down, we put it in quart jars and then put it in the pressure canner. We thought it would be complicated, but it really was easy to use. Each of us ended up with 6 jars. We may end up with a few more if the second batch of tomatoes ever turns red.

Some of our tomato sauce before we put it in the pressure canner

Then the green beans. We planted the beans early on, like back in the middle/end of May. Along with Peas. And they never really grew. So we tilled again, and tried the beans again. The second batch of green beans grew much better. I don't know how many green beans we've picked. We did a hot pack of the green beans, and then pressure canned them for 25 minutes. We have canned 14 jars (7 jars each) green and should have at least 6 more. So each of us will end up with 10 quarts.

Our green beans

It doesn't sound like we harvested much, and part of that is the boiling down that you have to do for tomato sauce, and part of it is that we are dividing the jars between our two families.

But the important thing about this year is not how much we are canning. It is that we are learning how to can.

How to get happiness - according to Laura

(Taken from "Favors the Small Farm Home" in Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Family Collection. This was Laura's first published article, originally written as an address to a local farmer's club meeting. On this occasion, though, she was too busy to give the speech herself, and so she sent the text along for someone else to read. The editor of the Missouri Ruralist was in the audience, and liked what he heard. He decided to publish the article, and got in touch with Laura. And so her life as a writer began.)

"There is a movement in the United States today, wide-spread, and very far reaching its consequences. People are seeking after a freer, healthier, happier life. They are tired of the noise and dirt, bad air and crowds of the cities and are turning longing eyes toward the green slopes, wooded hills, pure running water and health-giving breezes of the country.

A great many of those people are discouraged by the amount of capital required to buy a farm and hesitate at the thought of undertaking a new business. But there is no need to buy a large farm. A small farm will bring in a good living with less work and worry and the business is not hard to learn . . . I am an advocate of the small farm and I want to tell you how an ideal home can be made on, and a good living made from, five acres of land.

Whenever a woman's homemaking is spoken of, the man in the case is presupposed and the woman's home-making is expected to consist in keeping the house clean and serving good meals on time, etc. In short, that all her home-making should be inside the house. It takes more than the inside of the house to make a pleasant home and women are capable of making the whole home, outside and in, if necessary. She can do so to perfection on a five-acre farm by hiring some of the outside work done. However, our ideal home should be made by a man and woman together. First I want to say that a five-acre farm is large enough for the support of a family. [A] great part of the living can be made on that size farm from poultry or fruit or a combination of poultry, fruit and dairy.

It used to be that the woman on a farm was isolated and behind the times. Now rural delivery brings us our daily papers . . . The telephone gives us connection with the outside world at all times . . . Circulating libraries are scattered through the rural districts . . . The interurban trolley lines being built throughout the country will make it increasingly easy for us to run into town for an afternoon's shopping or any other pleasure.

Yes, indeed, things have changed in the country and we have the advantages of city life if we care to take them. Besides we have what it is impossible for the woman in the city to have. We have a whole five acres for our backyard and all outdoors for our conservatory, filled not only with beautiful flowers, but with grand old trees as well, with running water and beautiful birds, with sunshine and fresh air and all wild, free beautiful things.

The children, instead of playing with other children in some street or alley can go make friends with the birds, on their nests in the bushes, as my little girl used to do. This little farm home is a delightful place for friends to come for afternoon tea under the trees."

I would so love a little five-acre farm home. It is my goal. I'm hoping to have one in the next five years. I hope that all of my friends will come out and have some of the eggs, fruit, and milk from the Simple Farm and spend some afternoons under the trees. Until then, I'll try and find ways to be as self-reliant as we can, and get out in nature as often as we can, and be as happy as I can here in the city.

Provident Living - A Way Of Life

The wisdom of living providently has been recognized since ancient times. Joseph encouraged the Egyptians to store grain during the seven “fat” years against the lean years to come. From the ancient Greek storyteller, Aesop, comes a fable about the ant and the grasshopper, which illustrates in a very simple way the principle of provident living. In time of plenty, the grasshopper took no thought for what he might need when the winter came. But the ant worked busily, preparing and providing for a time when food would not be so plentiful. The ant could look to the future with confidence, while the grasshopper—if he thought about the future at all—could only hope for the best.

But living providently is more than just putting aside food for future need. It encompasses all areas of life. If we want to face the future with confidence and peace of mind, we must prepare ourselves in six areas: literacy and education, career development, financial and resource management, home production and storage, physical health, and social-emotional and spiritual strength. When we strive to prepare in each of these areas, we can enjoy peace of mind as we face the uncertainties of the future.

This quote is from an article that was published over 20 years ago. It was published when many people thought that it was "radical" to store food or at the very least silly, and a waste of time, space and money. Now it seems like storing food is the new "hip" thing to do.

But this quote says two important things - First, we need to store during times of plenty so that we aren't caught unprepared when things change. So hopefully, people have been storing food for the past few years, and aren't trying to start now during this time of high food prices and an uncertain economy. Second, provident living isn't just about storing food. It is a way of life. We need to focus our lives on building skills in many areas, not just food storage, so that we can live a more self-reliant life.

I meet with a small group of women every month. The name of the group is "Women Living Wisely" and we discuss/learn about different things from each of the six areas. We have talked about food storage, but we have also learned about yoga, stress management, ways to increase our creativity, quilt-tying, organization, adult education, and crocheting, just to name a few. I'm still a long way from being self-sufficient, but it has been helpful for me be able to meet with other women and learn from them and take small steps toward that big goal.

Trying to be frugal is sometimes so hard

I really want to be frugal and simple and move to the country and have a wood stove and a garden and a stream and build our own house and sit around and knit and tell stories and go on walks and chop wood and . . .

And then I remember - you know what, I don't even know how to knit (it's on my list, but I haven't gotten to it yet.)

I love the idea of self-sufficiency and simple living. I do. And the fact that we are far from rich makes the need to be frugal even greater.

But some days, I just want to buy something new just because it is pretty. Or most often, I want to buy some learning materials or something to help with our self-sufficiency (like a wheat grinder. Or that house in the country.) but we don't have the money to do it.

And I get frustrated. And annoyed. Especially when it doesn't seem fair (of course, like I tell the rest of the crew, life isn't fair very often).

But then I look around me and realize that my house is full of things. Some that I love and am glad that we used our hard earned money for, but many that I do not. Many of the things in our house I bought because I just thought I needed it, or worse, because I was bored and felt like I "deserved" to get something. I would usually try and justify my spending by saying "Well, it isn't like I was buying it for myself. It is for the kids/house/learning room, etc. And it was only X dollars." But if you took all of those X dollars over the years, I would have a lot more money now - money that could have been saved, and money that could have been used much more wisely.

Thoreau had a bed, a desk and a chair in his cabin. Now, I am sure that my family would revolt if I got THAT simple on them, but we could do so much better in terms of simplifying.

My goal for the month of September is to try and record all of our purchases. I'm hopeful that writing it down will help me be more intentional about my spending.

And I'm going to try and learn to knit this month too.