Well, today our friend and neighbor, Jerry Yourczeck, drove his truck and trailer down to my son, Bill’s place with me, to pick up the Friesian filly I’ve been paying on all winter.  I was excited; it was the first time I’ve bought a horse in over 18 years.  And Ladyhawk was kind of "you’ve survived cancer" treat to myself.
 
Her breeder and her husband drove her up from Gays Mills, Wisconsin and we met at Bill and Kelly’s so neither of us had to drive overly far.
 
It was love at first sight.  Her pictures weren’t lying.  She’s gorgeous!  And on her lower legs were the start of the fine wavy feathering that is the trademark of the Friesian horse.
 
She was calm and cooperative, hauled well and we got her home in fine shape.  You should have seen our donkeys, Moose and Beauty!  They wondered what the heck I’d brought home.  They were afraid of her, even though she’s smaller than they are.  But in a few days they’ll all be buddies.
 
I even got to visit my newest grandson, Mason, while I was there.  He’s growing so fast and is oh too cute!  What a smile! I had a great day, even though it was over too fast.
 
Now I’ve got a new baby in our barn to play with.  Not as cute as Mason, but gorgeous nevertheless!!

Readers’ questions:

Finding  bush berries

You have mentioned in your writings about bush cherries. I am having a hard time finding a
source to buy them .Can you reccomend one?

Kendy Lucas
West Plains, Missouri

Several mail order nurseries carry Hansen’s bush cherries and Nanking cherries.  Jungs has the Hansen’s bush cherries.  These are very good for jams and jellies and not too bad to eat out of hand, but they are stretching it when they say "good for pies".  I’m sure not going to pit all those small cherries!!!!  The bushes are very beautiful in full bloom in the spring, so they also make a great edible landscaping shrub. — Jackie

Starting with food storage

I have been digging through the Emergency Preparedness and Survival Guide, and it is the
best, realistic book on this topic that I have found. The sections on food preparation are excellent, and it is apparent that as you are preparing for an emergency, you are also eating better, healthier food! Where is the best place to start with food storage? Should I try canning first, or food dehydrating? Any thoughts on the best place to start? I hope that within the next year I can do some of both!

Taylor Mack
Ruston, Louisiana

The best place to start is anywhere, anything.  The best time?  NOW!  Pick up foods that are good storage candidates, when they come on sale every time you grocery shop.  Just a few extras every time, and you’ll soon be on your way to a fat pantry.  Then, as you get the time, begin canning and dehydrating the "easy" foods, fruits, green beans, etc.  Once you find out how easy and fun it is….not to mention how good the foods are….you’ll get hooked.  It happens to most everyone who tries it!  I often can AND dehydrate the same foods I’m processing.  I’ll do up a big batch of green beans, for instance, canning what will fit into my canner, then dehydrate the rest.  That way I have lots of each.  I promise you’ll love it and the secure feeling it gives you! — Jackie

Dill pickles

I’ve spent several days looking through your blog and Canning 101. I love the articles you write for BHM! I’m excited about canning some of the dry beans I have from this past issue. The question I have is dill pickles. I love them, but mine are terrible! Mushy and yucky. All the canning books say that you have to boiling water bath them, that seems ridiculous since they sit in vinegar. Are yours processed this way? Any suggestions?

Harvard Rexburg
Idaho

Yes, I water bath my dill pickles.  BUT I do it for only 10 minutes, usually, and DO NOT boil them before I pack them into the jars.  The more you boil a cucumber, the softer it gets.  DUH!  With my sliced pickles, I only bring them TO a boil, then quickly pack them and water bath them for 10 minutes, working very quickly so they don’t sit in hot juice or a hot water bath for overly long.
 
And when you do your pickles, always use very fresh cucumbers and soak them in a very cold salt brine to crisp them up before you pickle them.
 
If you don’t water bath process pickles, you’ll end up with part of the pickle sticking up above the brine, which will then spoil and mold.  Yucky stuff! — Jackie

Canning spaghetti

My wife wants to pressure can spagetti meat sauce and pasta (together) for the kids to use on camping trips. Can this be done safely?One of your recent articles cautions against this. However store processed products exist so there must be a way. I am cautious about home canning as the potential for botulism is terrifying to me. Especially to think I could be lax or ignorant in food preparation and harm my children. Any info would be appreciated as my wife and I are divided over this issue.

Allen Brown
Ponce de Leon, Florida

You CAN add pasta to your spaghetti/meat sauce.  Just don’t over-do it so that the end product is very thick.  This can cause the very center of the food in the jar to remain too cool to process safely.  What I do is to make up my sauce, then add the spaghetti, and just barely get it limp enough to fit into the jars easily.  Remember that spaghetti, like all pasta, swells quite a bit during canning, so allow for that, not packing too much into the jar.  Simply process for the time required for the spaghetti with meat sauce.
 
Don’t worry so much about the botulism thing; it’s really quite rare, more of a "possibility", rather than a common occurrence. — Jackie

On Thursday, I’ll be getting my new Friesian filly, Ladyhawk.  The only trouble is that I didn’t have a place to put her.  I can’t turn her out with my other horses (older geldings); that can be dangerous to a new horse, especially a young weanling.  I will be putting her with our donkeys, but when I bring her home, it’ll be nearly dark and I want her to be able to get used to them and them her and not have her run into the fence or chased around the pen.
 
So I tore out the inside of the goat barn and re-did it so that I have a birthing stall for the goats (one of my does is getting pretty close to freshening), an inside pen for the other goats, a smallish stall for the new filly and the big donkey stall.  The donkeys will be next to the filly, but can’t reach her to bite or scare her.  She’ll be inside so she can get used to them a little at a time, as well as the goats, which she’s never seen before.
 
In order to do this, I had to make three gates, one for the birthing stall, dividing the 8′x12′ goat pen into one smaller stall and a bigger one.  Two gates divide the center aisle into a short indoor aisle, accessing the goats and donkeys, leaving the whole back part of the aisle a weanling stall.  This will work temporarily until the "youngsters" learn to get along and the weather gets better.  Then they’ll (hopefully!) all go together into a bigger outside pen, sharing the big inside stall when they want to come indoors.
 
The best place to work was the new 3 season porch, next to the greenhouse.  I have power there for the saw, a flat surface to work on and plenty of light.  (I just had to watch out that I didn’t break one of the windows that will go in soon!)  I found six short pieces of 2"x4", two longer ones that protected the new patio door on the porch, during shipping, one off the roof and another that was nailed to something in the past.  After removing a few nails, I measured and cut them up.  Tomorrow I’ve got to pick up a set of hinges; I couldn’t find more of the right size in the generator shed.  Then the stalls are all done and I’m ready to enjoy my new baby!
 

Readers’ questions:

Canning lemon juice

Can lemon juice be canned? I bought a gallon of lemon juice, at a good price. I would like to get more if there is a way to store it, because in the summer we like lemonade, plus I use it in canning.

Linda Fisher
Klamath, California

Yes, you can home can lemon juice, just like you can any other kind of juice.  Simply dump it into a stainless steel or enameled kettle (lemon juice is acid and reacts with aluminum and iron), heat it till it just simmers, then ladle it out into hot, sterilized jars.
 
Fill to within 1/2" of the top and process pints and quarts in a boiling water bath canner for
15 minutes (either pints or quarts). — Jackie

Chickens stopped laying

We are trying to raise chickens and this last year about August our chickens stopped laying. It is middle of March and they still aren’t laying. We feed lay pellets and scratch. We had geese in with the chickens we took them out to free range because I felt they were stressing the chickens out. This has been over a month and they still aren’t laying. We had heat lamp in the chicken house to help from such a hard winter this year. I would say that our oldest chickens are 3 years old we have 8 that are 1 year old as of March and they haven’t ever laid. We have tried many things but nothing seems to be working. Do you have any ideas of what else we can try to get these girls to get busy and lay eggs.

Kim Cates
Harrison, Arkansas

This is quite common in homestead chickens.  In the early fall, they go into a molt, changing their feathers for the coming winter.  This causes them to stop laying.  Then as the daylight hours get shorter and shorter, they remain egg-less until spring and the daylight hours once again get longer.  You’ll find you’ll soon get tons of eggs.  I promise.
 
If you want to keep them laying longer, or right through winter, keep a light on in the coop right after they molt in the fall.  This tricks their bodies into thinking that there is still "daylight" out there and to keep on laying eggs.  This is good and bad.  Good because you’ll get a steady supply of eggs.  Bad because your hens won’t usually last as long as they would if they get a break in the winter to build up their bodies for another egg season.  I kind of go inbetween.  In the fall, I leave a light on for several hours at night, but then after Christmas baking, I quit and let the girls take a break.  It isn’t long before the eggs stop. Two days ago I got my first spring egg; an Aracauna blue.  Cool! — Jackie

Some canning confusion

I would like to thank you for all of your articles over the years. I have been an avid reader of BHM and the Ask Jackie section. It’s the first thing I read when the book comes in the mail. After reading about all of the canning that you have done I finally decided to give it a try and bought an All American 925 pressure canner. My first batch was spaghetti sauce, the second batch was turkey. The supermarket had a sale that was just too good to pass up. Both batches worked out fine and the All American unit worked perfectly. However I’m running into what I can only describe as a logistical problem when I was canning the turkey and I was hoping that you could tell me if I am over complicating the process. I was doing the hot pack method so I had a big pot of roasted turkey meat in hot watter, a big pot of hot turkey stock that I made the previous day, a sauce pan for simmering the lids and on the forth burner was the canner with the bottom layer of jars heating up in the water. The instructions with the canner and in my canning books say to keep the empty jars partially filled with hot watter in the canner in 3 inches of water until you are ready to fill them, then once filled they go back into the canner. What gets a little tricky is what do you do with the second layer of jars? Can I just leave the filled jars on a towel on the counter so I can heat up  the "second layer of jars" in the bottom of the canner, and then  just pack them all into the canner when they are all filled? I cannot help feel that I am missing something really obvious.

Kevin Dixon
Toronto, Ontario.

You don’t have to be THAT picky about the hot jar thing.  If they are all good and hot when you begin packing, they’ll stay hot enough, sitting dry on a towel, waiting to be filled.  That’s provided, of course, that you work right along and don’t take a break right then and let the jars cool off completely.  Or if you’re uncomfortable with that solution, you could use a water bath canner to heat your jars and then leave the second layer in the water while you’re packing the first layer and putting them into your pressure canner.
 
I’m glad you’re having such good luck; keep up the good work!!!  I’m proud of you. — Jackie