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aly - gardening, homesteading, & preserving

@ourmidwestroots

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homesteading and homeschooling in the woods of amish country | prepping + building a homestead | canning and preserving our garden | quilting + diy

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Any more advice for someone wanting to start? 🫶 by @ourmidwestroots

The secret is…..

Making meat stock! Here is how I do mine:

Preheat oven to 425°F. In a Dutch oven add a whole raw chicken seasoned to your liking, I used @azurestandard’s veggie dip mix and @redmondrealsalt salt here! Add four to five cups of water - covering it half way. Place in the oven for around two hours with the lid on. The chicken will be super tender when you remove it - fall apart tender! Once the pan has cooled a bit transfer the broth to jars and once cooled to room temperature into the fridge. Then you’ll get some jiggly “broth,” which is really meat stock but we aren’t purists on the lingo. Perfect for sipping and gut health - full of natural collagen and gelatin! 🫶🏻

We also pick the meat clean to eat in other recipes and put the carcass and scrap veggie bags into the crock pot covered in water with a splash of acv, on low, for 24 - 48 hours for more broth! Then just cook with this during the week! by @ourmidwestroots

I used to make dough for a living, no pun intended, I really did. Hundreds of pounds of dough a day. I learned to read the temperature by how it felt on my hands, I measured with my eyes, understood the texture of dough that was ready, learned when it was fully proofed. I got it down to a science where I no longer needed to measure. Now I make our bread at home doing the same.

I love making my family’s bread. It’s become a weekly staple in our house, usually on Monday’s. I bake two loaves for the week and they usually are gone before the next Monday. Best part, it’s so easy to make and we can use real ingredients from our farm - like homemade maple syrup from our trees and someday butter from our goats and cows.

Wanna know how?

First get your mixing bowl warm! If I learned anything making all that dough it’s that a cold bowl can ruin your rise! Heat your mixing bowl by filling it with warm to hot tap water and letting it set. While your bowl is warming heat 1 cup milk + 1 cup water to 110°. Empty your warm bowl and add your milk/water mixture, 1/4 cup real maple syrup or raw honey, and 1.5 TBSP dry active yeast and stir. Cover and leave for around five minutes until she’s foamy! Add in 1/4 cup melted butter and 1 tsp real salt. Add one cup bread flour and mix with the dough hook attachment. Slowly add in one more cup at a time until you’ve reached 4.5-5.5 cups total. Slowly add flour after the fourth cup and let it mix well. It will feel like an ear lobe when it has enough flour, if it’s sticky add a little at a time, until it’s the ear lobe texture. Let the mixer knead for roughly eight minutes. Place dough ball into a greased bowl and let rise until doubled. Punch down. Shape dough into two loaves, brush on melted butter, and let rise again in their pans until flowing over the sides of the pan or until they are taller than pans. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes! After the bread is baked you can brush with more butter or milk, but you don’t have to! Let cool a bit before slicing - I know that part is the hardest! ❤️ by @ourmidwestroots

I have been sharing preparedness content for years and warning specifically about a grid down situation as well! These are my top five easiest, and DUMBEST prep tasks:

1 & 2: Keep up on your dishes and laundry. This is a non negotiable for me. It seems like a normal daily task but a lot of people don’t do this. When we lost power for ten days I had a few days worth of laundry I hadn’t done and dishes in the sink. We only had so much water to do new dishes as is, so having all of the previous extras too? No thanks! I learned my lesson, keep up on dishes and laundry so if the power does go out you’re not already behind.

3. Always fill up at half a tank. This one isn’t fun. I started treating my gas tank as if half tank was empty. In an emergency you don’t want to be the one scrambling around to get gas - so always refill at half a tank!

4. Keep a stroller or wagon in your car at all times. Mine personally is a cheap utility wagon, I think it was $30. We got it for going to the beach and antique fleas markets but I actually keep it in my car after reading One Second After and DRY. Reading about the parents having kids in wheelbarrows and them being unable to walk the long distances home broke me, so I’ve always kept it in my car!

5. Filling up ANY jug you have. Vinegar, water jugs, juice containers, glass jars. Anything! I personally wash mine really well and do the EPA emergency water purification guidelines of 1/8 - 1/4 tsp of bleach. The bleach dissipates in 30 minutes and is perfect for washing dishes, hands, laundry, flushing, watering plants, and really anything else! Rotate often! These have saved our booties multiple times over! by @ourmidwestroots

Ground beef or venison jerky!

- 8 pounds ground meat
- 1/2 cup maple sugar
- 1/4 cup real salt
- 1/4 cup garlic powder
- 1/4 cup onion powder
- 1/8 cup black pepper
- 2 tbsp liquid smoke (optional)
- (any other seasoning, red pepper flakes, smoked paprika, whatever you want!)

Mix well, put into a jerky gun or roll between two pieces of parchment paper then slice with a pizza cutter, make sure it is thin and consistent. Place onto dehydrator trays and set to 165°. If you don’t have a dehydrator place onto lined baking sheets with wire racks and set the oven to 170°F with the DOOR PROPPED OPEN. This is important because you need airflow, we are not baking this!

The jerky is dry when it is pliable and cooked fully through, not pink inside. If this freaks you out, cooked beef should be 160°F, both temps I mentioned are above that 😉

You can store this in the fridge in plastic bags OR in mason jars with a desiccant packet and vacuum sealed if you have these. I love this manual vacuum sealer and lids from @forjarsusa code MIDWEST10 saves ya.

Store on your shelves for a few months if it lasts that long 😬 by @ourmidwestroots

Canning ham and bean soup!

Adding in, ham has not been tested so if are someone who only uses tested recipes, omit the ham! Just throwing it out there for those who are only comfortable with tested ❤️

I did 1 1/2 cups SOAKED great northern beans, I did NOT boil mine as well, only soaked. Then I divided one onion, probably eight stalks of celery, and six large carrots between the jars. I also divided my cubed ham. You can add salt, pepper, and whatever other seasonings or herbs you like. Top with broth to the 1” headspace line. I did chicken broth.

Wipe rims with a clean cloth, add a lid and ring to fingertip tight. Process in a pressure canner for 90 minutes for quarts, 75 minutes for pints (if doing pints use half of the bean measurements). Adjusting for altitude.

After canning, remove the jars to a towel to let cool for 24 hours. Remove the ring and wash your jars. Label & store!

Stainless steel canning funnel, lids, and rings are from @forjars code MIDWEST10 saves ya 🫶 by @ourmidwestroots

Racking my brain but I have no idea. Miss you, Kroger 💔 by @ourmidwestroots

A moms duty is apple slices 🫡

Our favorite apple variety to freeze dry has been golden delicious! Which is great because that’s two of our trees!

Harvest Right’s Black Friday sale is LIVE! We have a medium freeze dryer and the smaller and quieter countertop model from @harvest_right!

The counter top model is the cheapest on the market and best for most customers.

Medium, to me, is the best value, it’s an extra tray for $200 more. I use my medium all garden season to process a ton of our produce and also when I find grocery markdowns.

Grab one discounted through the 🔗 🔗 🔗 in my bio by @ourmidwestroots

My true thoughts on everything lately 🙂 by @ourmidwestroots

This may be a unique experience 😂

Grab your canning supplies from @forjars
The BEST LIDS with a 100% seal rate

How to can ground beef in a zillion other videos 😉 by @ourmidwestroots

Hallie got her first deer this year so we canned it up!

I can venison similar to all of my meat, cube it into 1” pieces and stuff into a jar to the 1” headspace line. To venison I add 1 tbsp of bacon grease and 1 tsp of beef bouillon. No liquid. Then I wipe my rims, add a lid and ring, and process in a pressure canner for 75 minutes pints, 90 minutes for quarts.

I have many other meat canning videos showing the whole process. Canning venison makes it SO tender.

Grab some of my fav canning products from @forjars! Code MIDWEST10 saves on lids, rings, and canning supplies ❤️ by @ourmidwestroots

Apple pie filling (water bath canning recipe)

Makes 7 quarts
- 5 cups organic cane sugar
- 1 1/2 cups non-GMO ClearGel
- 2 tbsp ground Ceylon cinnamon
- 2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 7 1/2 cups water
- 3/4 cup organic bottled lemon juice
- apples (golden delicious, Granny Smith, other firm varieties - peeled and sliced into 1/4” slices)

I used 1/2 bushel so I DOUBLED the recipe, this is for 1/4 bushel of apples.

In a large pot mix sugar and ClearGel together, slowly mix in room temperature water, stirring consistently so no lumps form. This will look like a liquid syrup, add in cinnamon and nutmeg, and lemon juice, then heat over medium, stir consistently until the syrup thickens. This can take a bit. Add in your peeled and sliced apples to coat them evenly.

Ladle into jars leave 1 1/2” - 2” headspace, apples WILL siphon and can make the lids pop, so leave extra headspace, they WILL fill the full jar. You can also find recipes where you cook the apples separately by blanching to help with this.

Wipe rims, add a new lid and ring, process in a water bath canner for 25 minutes (quarts) adjusting for altitude.

I only use @forjarsusa lids for my canning and have had the best seal rate over my years of canning. They are thicker overall and have held up for us for years. Use my code MIDWEST10 to save on all canning supplies ❤️ by @ourmidwestroots