You would think that during this past week I would have been working in the garden, but to tell you the truth, I have been busy doing other things around the farm. One of the things that we did this past week was clean the pantry/garden room in the house. Our trailer has two bedrooms and the second one was dedicated to the pantry and grow lights set up for starting plants for the garden. This spring it proved valuable for the garden. Right now we have a lot of tomatoes and peppers (both hot and sweet) coming on again since our drought ended earlier in the month.
Besides cleaning, we also had to repair the floor because of some water damage that we had last winter when we used the room for growing. I brought home some plans for a cattle panel greenhouse that I hope my husband uses to build hoop houses for us to use this winter and early next spring.
We have been using some canned goods from the pantry that I canned back in 2019 and the plan is to use it up and replace it with jars of the same items we are canning this year. We’ll be making Jeff’s Hamburger Soup soon and we have 3 jars left from 2019 that we’ll be eating soon. It tastes as good as the day I canned it. Here’s the recipe that I put on Hubpages a few years back.
With the weather starting to look more like fall than summer, I have been making more comfort food using canned foods. I mentioned before that I canned enchilada sauce and we decided to try some of it this week to see how well we liked it. I had estimated that we would need half a cup per batch, but I discovered upon using it that we needed a full cup per batch so I needed two half-cup enchilada sauces for each batch. That means that instead of having enough sauce for ten meals, I have only enough for five. That indicates that I need to make much more.
I canned more tomato juice this week so I have as many tomato juices as I have canned tomatoes. I have some more ripe tomatoes on the counter ready to put up. More tomatoes and peppers are in the garden so making more enchilada sauce should not be a problem. That’s the good thing about using some of my canned foods now, especially with new items that I canned this year. I can make more because we like it and we’ll use it.
Other Homestead Projects
In addition, I have started baking bread again. I have sold some at the farmers’ market and we’ve been enjoying it ourselves. I also made my husband some pecan sweet rolls.
I have also started cleaning out various parts of the house and throwing out or giving away items that no longer serve us. Sometimes it’s better just to get rid of things than to keep them “just in case”. We have several places where we can pick up almost any used item that we might need so, why store them?
Now it’s your turn. What are you doing right now to prepare for this winter? I would love to hear what you have to say down in the comments below.
The Perpetual Homesteader 