Your place is gorgeous. Sure enjoyed the photos and congrats on finding love. It is a precious thing!<\/p>\nWe are on the grid here on our parcel of land, but would like to have a generator for back up. I have no idea how to go about choosing one. Can you recommend what to look for? Propane or gas? Brands\/features? I was thinking to buy a portable one, since the price is so much less and we won’t be using it as the primary power source.<\/p>\n
Erica
\nManor, Texas<\/em><\/p>\n
We love our house, too and feel so blessed to not only have the great house we’ve worked so hard on, but a wonderful relationship.<\/p>\n
For a backup generator that won’t break the budget, I’d get a large enough gas generator to run your well and necessary appliances: freezer, furnace blower, etc. Usually you can easily get by with a 5,000 watt model. I would strongly recommend one with a Honda engine, as I’ve had others (Briggs, Tecumseh) that didn’t hold up nearly as well and were only a little cheaper to buy. Be sure to have a switch to be able to switch off the main power line so you don’t kill workers trying to fix your power outage! — Jackie<\/p>\n
Food-grade storage buckets<\/strong><\/p>\nI have been searching online and various places about storage buckets and am confused with all the back and forth information I am finding. I have seen buckets at the Home Depot. (the orange ones) On the bottom of the buckets it has the number 2 with arrows going around it. I is my understanding this is food grade but when I search it online to see if it is I find information that says you can use them and then other sights that say steer clear. Do you know if they can be used for long term storage? They are more in my budget then most I have found. Also what about the tops that can be purchased with them?<\/p>\nElizabeth Welcher
\nIndianapolis, Indiana<\/em><\/p>\n
I talked to a man in the plastics industry and he said that the number 2 with the arrows is a recycling mark and indicates that the plastic in the bucket is HDPE, which is the same plastic they use in milk jugs. He also said there aren’t any larger (3 and 5-gallon buckets) that are not food grade plastic. Same with the tops. I buy my buckets at Wal-mart and Super One bakery departments for $1 each, with gasketed lids. It’s cheaper still than Home Depot buckets! And we KNOW they’re food grade, too. — Jackie<\/p>\n
Canning leftover soup<\/strong><\/p>\nMany years ago my Grandmother taught me to save all leftovers and freeze them in freezer bags to make soup out of at a later date. These bags of “leftovers” make the best soup ever.<\/p>\nDo you think I could can the “leftover bags” even tho’ the meat and veg’s have been cooked once and then frozen. I think the meat will turn out fine but will the veg’s turn to mush during the canning process?<\/p>\n
Joyce Shelby
\nNannygoat
\nRosiclare, Illinois
\n<\/em>
\nYour soup leftovers should can up pretty good. Potatoes are the worst as far as getting mushy from being twice cooked. The rest hold up pretty well. You’ll just have to make up a batch, heat it and can up a few jars to see just how your particular soup does and then do future batches taking that into consideration. — Jackie<\/p>\n
Pressure canner<\/strong><\/p>\nWe want to buy a pressure canner. Would you please give a recommendation. We have looked at several and think the All American is convenient because it does not have a gasket to go bad. Also the proper size would be appreciated.<\/p>\nC.R. & Jami Kirkpatrick
\nThree Rivers, Texas<\/em><\/p>\n
I like the All American; my new one is an All American. I’d advise you buying the largest one you can afford and handle. This lets you get more canning done quicker. I still have my huge old canner, which is also gasketless, but sometimes I just have several pints or a few quarts to can up and the smaller one gets the job done much faster, as it gets exhausted faster and up to pressure faster than the huge one. It is MUCH lighter, too! But when I have a lot of canning to get done, I pull out the old one and get her done fast. — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As spring progresses here in the Northwoods, Will made his last voyage over the snow-packed ice bridge, over the creek to the ash flats on the other side of the beaver pond. He brought back another huge load of that wonderful hard dead ash firewood with the dozer and our $75 firewood dray. But after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,9,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Will-ash.gif\" "\\"Will-ash\\"")
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