Fermentation of our home produce, kitchen equipment & indigo dyeing

My husband and I were watching a YouTube video a few days ago, discussing the fermentation of garden produce.  Here's a link to the video. Fermentation for Dummies with Doug & Stacy

In this video, Stacy discussed the system she uses for preserving her home produce.  She mentioned a fermentation starter kit, which really interested me.  So, I got on Amazon & looked for it.  We received our started kit yesterday.  Here's the link for the started kit.  Masontop's complete mason jar fermention kit

The kits comes complete with:

Pipes, pebbles & pounder

Fermentation guide

I'll be reading the guide & posting my experiments here in this blog.

When we moved here, back in 2006, I invested in some "kitchen" equipment from Lehman's.  We got a Big Berkey water filtering system, Big-berkey-with-black-berkey-elements

a grain mill, Lehmans-own-hand-cranked-grain-mill

and a sauerkraut crock.  European-style-fermenting-crocks-3-gallon/fermenting-pickling

I haven't used the sauerkraut crock yet.  The water filter is in daily use.  The grain mill has been used, but not very often.

I've also invested in a butter churn this past Christmas, which I look forward to using.  (I need a new local source for raw milk). I bought one for my friend Gena Stout for her birthday, and one for myself.

Kilner-butter-churn

On Tuesday, April 25th,  Gena Stout & Karna McFadden came over for a dye day.  We had a great time.  I dyed handspun fingering weight Cheviot wool and some commercial DK weight wool I had used for knitting kilthose in the past.  I used the "turkey roaster" to hold the skeins.  I sprinkled the dye powder directly onto the skeins.  I used Turkey Red, Pansy & Sapphire from the Woolery. The Woolery.com

They have a great starter kit.  Country-classics-starter-kit.html

Here's how my skeins came out.

Gena & Karna focused on the indigo vat, with dyes we got from Dharma Trading Company.  They have been studying shibori, the Japanese art of dyeing.
Indigo-dye-kit.html

Shibori is a fascinating technique.  The "original" tie dye, in fact.  The fabric to be dyed is sewn, tied and/or folded to produce the finished design.  The more complicated designs take HOURS of preparation.  A great deal of information on this technique can be found on Pinterest. Or you can choose from a great number of books.  I was initially introduced to Shibori while I was stationed in Japan (1985 - 1988).  Here's some of Gena's experiments...

Darn, more water woes!

Monday afternoon (September 16th), I was taking a walk around the house with the dogs when I noticed that the bottom of the pump house looked muddy.  So, I walked over and investigated.  Crap!  A big mud puddle!

So, first thing yesterday morning John and Josh went out to start the next round of repairs.  This of course meant we had no water all day.  Not really a problem for us, because we keep about 40 gallons of distilled water on hand at all times.  And I can always flush a toilet with water from our "pond" water tank.  We also have a Big Berky water filter that's full at all times.  I've written about water storage in a previous post.

A big muddy mess.

So, Josh started digging.  First, they had to completely remove the pump house.  Then Josh started digging.  Yucky work, for sure!

Starting to dig.

Digging on hands & knees is no fun!

See the exposed pipe?  That had to be reattached.

After he finally dug down to the pipes, he had to find what the problem was.  And it looks like the "patch" done last time the pipes were leaking had failed.  Crap!
 
So, we made a trip to the hardware store in Highland.   B & B Supply.  They had what we needed.  Some clamps, some pipe and some Rain or Shine pipe cement.  Josh used to work at Lowes in Ellijay, GA so he knew exactly what to look for. 

After another hour or so, he got the pipe connected back together.  The water works!  Hurray!

Of course, you know they had to have puppy dog supervision for this dirty task.

Peanut and Cricket

Doggy supervisors

Thankfully, it was only 85 yesterday and not 100! 

John set out a live trap last night and there was that armadillo in there this morning.  He won't be digging under our pump house any more!  Peanut was excited about t varmit removal.  Cricket didn't want anything to do with that stinky weird looking thing.  She decided the front porch dog house was a safe place to be.

Water storage

Living out here in the country as we do, storing water is vital.

We have several different types of water storage.  First, we have a gutter up on one of the outbuildings and put a large tank up for rainwater storage.  We call it our "pond"...

Polliwogs in our pond

We have a thriving environment there.  Birds come to drink... and snakes.  The tree frogs come and lay their eggs.  So we get to enjoy the tadpoles.  I love polliwogs!

Our granddaughter just LOVES the pond.  She is always trying to catch things in the water.  We don't have any running water up here on our dry ridge.  So this "pond" is what we have.

Playing in the pond

Here's Tammy and Ariel playing in the pond.  We now have a brim in there... and we didn't get many tadpoles last year.  I guess that's to be expected.  There are still snails in there.  There are water lilies, cat tails, a really vibrant peppermint.  It's a great space!







We also have a water barrel set up on the patio, again to store rainwater for watering plants and chickens.

Rain barrel on patio

Storing rain water is great, but this water would have to be filtered in order to use it in the kitchen.  And so, here's how we solve that problem.


The Big Berkey water filter.

It's a great filter.  We got our's at Lehmans.  Lehman's Nonelectric catalog 

Big Berkey water filter

This system will take your pond water and make it potable.  No electricity required.  And that's why we purchased it.  To filter rainwater or river water when we need it.  I keep it full with well water, and use it every day all day long.


For more longterm potable water in case of emergency, we also have an electric distiller.

I distill water to use when I can food.  I also use it to make pickles.  Or when someone from out of town is here to visit.  They may not LIKE the taste of our well water, since it's very "hard".


Now, those systems all work.  But our biggest water issue is how to get water from the well.  As I mentioned in my article about bad weather here, we have a large generator we got after the ice storm on 2009.  Our well pump is 400 feet down, and we haven't found a hand-powered well pump up to the task yet.  We could invest in a windmill, but we don't have sustained winds here sufficient to operate one...  So the generator is what we must use.

We've talked about investing in a very large storage tank & having it buried.  Maybe 400 - 500 gallons or so.  But we haven't done so yet.

Last summer we have 7 people living here.  2012 was the hottest year on record in this part of Arkansas.  We also were very short on rainwater.  And yet, our family had no water issues.  Everything worked well.  Clothes got washed, dishes got washed and people got washed.  We didn't water the garden as often as we'd have liked.  But that was more because of the temperature than concerns about the well.  There's no sense watering plants, just to have them fried by the sun.  Other than okra and plants in the nightshade family, I don't know of much that LIKES 111 degree temperatures.  Or even 100 degrees for weeks on end.

Anyway, in case of emergency, we also have a Waterbob.  This is a 110 gallon plastic bladder that you fill in your bathtub in anticipation of power outages/bad weather.  It comes self-contained with it's own hand pump.  We got it in 2009, and have never needed to use it.  But we do have it, just in case.

We feel confident that we're prepared for an emergency.  And we have our water needs met for our every day use.  Many people living in urban areas don't, and aren't even aware of it.  I hope someone living in town reads this article and thinks about their water needs in an emergency.