From the Homestead Journal
Food preservation is key to so much. Saving money (who doesn’t love that?), controlling microbes (gotta be done) and extending shelf life. The whole shebang at Steampunks Homestead started with throwing away bags and bags of frozen squash from our freezer. All that soil! All that water! And worst of all, all that back-breaking weeding! We decided never again, and our food preservation journey was born. Ken pulled out his grandmother’s hefty-duty, indestructable pressure canner, and we were off to the races!
Written By Linda Derrick
Our philosophy is eat what we can and can what we can’t.
We always have plenty to eat from our pantry, plenty to take to a party, and plenty to share with our friends. We used to cry over wasting food, and now we’re a far cry from it.
We preserve food 4 ways: pickling, water canning, pressure canning and dehydrating. All methods are good methods.
Pressure canning is by far the most engaging and time- consuming but also lasts the longest and produces magic results: Food Ready to Eat.
We can open a jar of Let’s Meat for Stew and a jar of Steampunk’s Coleslaw and have a feast, hot or cold.
We buy what we can for cheap, like 40 lbs of pork butt for 79 cents a pound and can all weekend. We have canning emergencies, like the time we came into 90 lbs of catfish. It took a few weeks to get through it even though we raw packed it. We had to store some in our neighbor’s freezer, and gave her 5 lbs of bounty. In a canning emergency, we always name the product accordingly. Hence “Catfish Emergency” and “Aporkalyptic Stew”. Fun times with a positive outcome!
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HEY THERE, FRIEND!
We’re Ken & Linda
This is where we share what’s working, what flopped, and what we’re learning along the way. From backyard duck drama to solar wiring mishaps, it’s all part of the story. We believe in figuring things out as you go—with dirt under your nails and coffee in hand. Pull up a chair and dig in.
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