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<\/a><\/p>\nReaders\u2019 Questions:<\/strong><\/p>\nHomesteader burnout<\/strong><\/p>\nWill you please write an article on how to prevent\/deal with homesteader\/ prepper burnout? We retired & bought a place in Montana with the goal of living the homesteader lifestyle. Our home needed MAJOR renovation (still working on it after 9 yrs), we’ve built outbuildings, put in a small orchard, a garden and this month 75 berry bushes. We hunt & butcher\/can\/freeze our own meat plus we (I) can extensively. On top of all this, there’s bills to pay, meals to cook, laundry to do, shopping (2 hrs away), pets to care for\/doctor, etc. We’ve been at this now 9 yrs. & it seems like all we do is work. In fact, I’m working harder now than I did when I worked full time with my career. We’ve not had a vacation since 2000 (too much work to do). We’re starting to feel our age and things, like gardening, are becoming ever harder on us physically. My husband has had 4 major surgeries in the last 4 years. We know hard times are coming and want to be prepared\u2026but gosh, we, especially me, feel overwhelmed. I’m sure other homesteaders have faced this. We sure would welcome some advice\/suggestions cause what started out as fun seems to be controlling our life and virtually all our time.<\/p>\nOverwhelmed
\nRexford Montana <\/em><\/p>\n
Yes, I will. This happens to a lot of homesteaders. Fortunately, there are things you can do to relieve that drowning feeling I know you have. I can’t do justice to it in the blog, but look forward to an article on this very soon. Hang in there. You can feel better! — Jackie<\/p>\n
Processing pumpkins<\/strong><\/p>\nHow do you process pumpkins for later use?<\/p>\nRalph Notch
\nEagle Bend, Minnesota<\/em><\/p>\n
To store your pumpkins, first let them lay outdoors until a threat of freezing weather. Covered, they’ll be okay in a frost, but when freezing threatens, bring them indoors. Pumpkins store best in normal household temperatures; homesteaders often stored them in the attic, which was quite warm. We recently gave our 54 pound pumpkin we raised last year to our grandson, Mason, for a jack ‘o lantern. I just kept it in our new addition all winter and summer as a decoration! And it was as solid as a rock, too.<\/p>\n
If you want to, you can remove the seeds from pumpkins, bake them until tender, then puree and freeze the puree. But if you wish to can it, you should can up chunks, as the puree is too dense to safely can. — Jackie<\/p>\n
Storing sweet potatoes<\/strong><\/p>\nWe just got a couple of bushels of sweet potatoes just out of the fields. What is the best way to cure them and store them?<\/p>\nJim Bennett
\nPelzer, South Carolina
\n<\/em>
\nYou cure your sweet potatoes by keeping them in a very warm area for about 10 days (80 degrees), if possible. After that time, continue storing them at about 55-60 degrees. After about eight weeks, the sweet potatoes will develop their sweetness and be ready to use. Before this time, they won’t be as sweet. — Jackie<\/p>\n
Salsa too juicy<\/strong><\/p>\nI am making salsa from your recipe. The first batch was very good. The second batch wasn’t – too tomatoe and juicy. I redid it and poured off a lot of juice and added some brown sugar and another hot pepper and it was much better. My question is what kind of tomatoes do you use or recommend to use in making salsa? I am making some more now and using romas to try as they aren’t so juicy. I don’t use a cup of hot peppers as it is too hot for us but only a couple per batch. I have used your canning book all summer and its great and I have written a lot of notes in it. You would think I had it for years – its dogeared already. Canned tomatoes, green peppers, corn, peaches, veg soup, cherries, squash, and some other things.<\/p>\nRuth Martin
\nKalamazoo, Michigan<\/em><\/p>\n
Romas and other meaty paste-type tomatoes, such as Rocky, Opalka, Polish Linguisa, and others make the best salsa, but I’ve sure used a ton of others. I thicken most of my salsa, even then, with tomato paste, which makes a bigger batch of thicker salsa. I’m tickled to hear you like my book and have already gotten lots of use out of it! (I’m working on another one, right now, full of recipes for all your storage pantry and homegrown foods!) — Jackie<\/p>\n
Canning Polish sausage<\/strong><\/p>\nI would love to can some pickled Polish Sausage. Do you have a recipe and\/or suggestions?<\/p>\nVickie Staples
\nSkowhegan, Maine<\/em><\/p>\n
Sorry, but I’ve never canned pickled Polish sausage. Are there any readers out there who have and can help Vickie? — Jackie<\/p>\n
Canning tomato juice<\/strong><\/p>\nI have been canning for years, but it’s been awhile. I am trying to can tomatoes into juice\/sauce and have been getting a good amount of acidy water on my jars. What would I be doing wrong? I have raw packed them and also hot packed them. I have cooked them down in a roaster oven. All of these methods still seem to give me the acid water.<\/p>\nI would love to be able to serve tomato juice to hubby without this acid water.<\/p>\n
Marla Borders
\nAttica, Indiana
\n<\/em>
\nI’m not sure what you mean by acid water on your jars. If you mean a white film on the jars and lids, that is from minerals in your water; just wash it off with soap and water after the jars have cooled and you remove the rings. If you mean the yellowish “water” that settles out in tomato product jars, that’s just tomato juice. Just mix it up with the rest of the tomatoes when you serve it or drain it off, should you want to. You get less of that when you hot pack your tomatoes\/juice, rather than pack them cold. You shouldn’t get any when you cook down your tomato sauce, as the end product is too thick to separate much. — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After months of searching, we finally found a new spotted Nubian buck out of good milking bloodlines. His daddy is a huge, gorgeous black and white spotted registered buck and his mother is a pretty doe with a lovely udder. Not only did we find a beautiful buck, but a new friend in the owner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,8,9,11,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980"}],"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=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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