How Much Food We Preserved as New Homesteaders | 2023 Homestead Pantry Tour

Hey there guys! Welcome to Calico Cow Acres. If you're new to our channel, I am Mikayla and today we're going to go through everything that I preserved this first year on our new homestead. We are in the corner of our dining room at our dining room table. I have all of the stuff on the table that I don't have canning shelves for yet and it's just going to be on display here for you guys. So I know a lot of people either have designated canning storage locations or pantries but our house as you can tell by the look of the drywall in the background is in full renovation mode and we plan to in the future have a nice big canning storage space down in our basement but for now this is what works. Our basement is currently very much not climate controlled. It's unfinished and it leaks a lot so we're not going to be finishing it for a while. I am keeping the canning storage up here for now because I try and keep it a very consistent temperature up here and downstairs fluctuates a lot more. That's why it's all right here in our dining room. I also just think that it looks really pretty and I like looking over here while I'm cooking or doing dishes and being able to see all this stuff that we preserved. I'm going to go through the actual amounts of everything that we canned so far this year. I am going to go briefly through the stuff that we preserved in the freezer because my freezer is packed full. I didn't want to unpack the entire freezer just to pull everything out, count it, and put it back in but the way that I'm doing this is I have these inventories which I will show you and as I pull things out I'm just going to be writing down what it is and I'll add tallies next to it. Next year I'm hoping to have these printed out ahead of time and be able to actually write things down as we're preserving them instead of trying to do it after the fact. Just so you know what we're working with here we have a pressure canner, we have a water bath canner, and I have a dehydrator. Those are the three things. I don't have a freeze dryer. I probably won't ever have a freeze dryer if we're being honest. They're very expensive. We have one small chest freezer in addition to our normal refrigerator slash freezer combo. I'm canning for just two people so if our canning stash sort of looks smaller than other people's that's probably why we don't have a huge family to feed. So smaller amounts of things work for us. We've been focused on a lot of other things but I still feel very very proud of everything that we managed to preserve this year in spite of being so ridiculously busy with all those other projects. A lot of the videos that you'll see on this subject most of it is homegrown. I will say we aren't to that point yet but I feel like it's just as important to show you guys this stuff. A lot of the stuff that we get in order to save money for other projects that we're working on and to be able to buy jars this first year is from our salvage grocery store or like the discount grocery store or whatever you want to call it. We get things for very very cheap. That's how we kind of budgeted to buy all of these jars this first year. But without further ado let's get into it. Okay so let's start with the most recent thing that we got canned and that is because it's right around Thanksgiving. So we canned a bunch of turkey broth and when I say a bunch I mean a total of 40 quarts. And that's not just from one turkey we used two turkeys. I just recently started eating meat again so I wanted to make a practice Thanksgiving turkey several weeks before Thanksgiving. So I got about half of that from that turkey and then half of it from the actual Thanksgiving turkey. So we have a lot of broth to get us through the year. Another thing we like to do is get the discount store whole chickens. They're two dollars and fifty cents usually sometimes three dollars. And I every time I take one of those out of the freezer I make something with it and then I make broth out of it in the instant pot. And every single time I do that I get anywhere from six to twelve quarts of broth depending on how many times I run it through the instant pot. I've done that a handful of times this year and so far we've gotten 31 quarts of broth this year from that. Another fun thing that isn't really technically canning but we got I think nine bushels of apples and they were all seconds apples for the most part from a local orchard. They were ten dollars a bushel and we built a cider press and pressed all the cider out of these apples. And with some of that cider we made apple pie chai moonshine. We have way more of this than we need so we've been gifting it to people but we got ten and a half quarts of apple pie chai moonshine with our leftover cider. Something else that we have been doing is making hard cider for the first time. We made eight gallons of different flavors and just experimented with the hard cider. We'll be talking about that in future videos at some point and showing you that process the next time we do it now that we're a little bit more confident. Next thing is applesauce. We also use those bulk bushels of apples to make a bunch of applesauce. We love applesauce. I will make applesauce bread. We put it in oatmeal. We just eat it straight up like I will eat applesauce every single week if possible and if Taylor and I both have applesauce one week we go through two quarts. So really we could get we could have made a lot more of this and go through it in one year. Then we did apple cider. We made a ton of apple cider this year. Like I said we made hard cider. We made apple pie moonshine. We put it in all sorts of stuff. I used some of it in our apple pie filling that I'll show you next but we also wanted to save some just for use and making like apple cider doughnuts and things like that throughout the year or mulled cider that kind of stuff. So we did seven quarts of that. I think next year I might do more and like I said the next thing is apple pie filling. We did 15 quarts of this. We don't just use it for apple pie though. The majority of the fruits that I'm going to tell you about we use in so many different ways. I don't can them with the thickened pie filling you can see in them. It's kind of liquidy and that's because I just do them in their juices. I don't thicken it with the gel stuff or cornstarch because cornstarch is technically not canning safe and I don't like to buy extra things for canning. I just do it in the liquid and then I thicken it when I go to actually make pie. Another thing that I made for the first time ever was apple butter. I don't know if I've even ever tried homemade apple butter but that is so delicious. I'm so glad we made some of that. Seven and a half pints of that. We got some pears from azure standard and they were seconds pears so we got 16 pints of pear sauce out of those. That's again similar to applesauce. We'll just use it for eating and probably muffins or things like that. Another thing that I like to do is when I'm canning any fruits I like to take the extras and the scraps and that kind of stuff and make syrups so I can flavor sweet tea, iced tea, or lemonades and stuff with the syrup. So I made a bunch of peach syrup. We got seven and a half half pints so jelly jelly jars out of that. The next thing we did was sweet corn. This is the thing we canned the most of I think this year. We did a total of 43 pints and I've talked about the corn, the whole corn situation in another video. We actually did 43 pints worth of corn this year for $12 because we got it at the discount store. So I'll link that video above and if you want to go check out the whole breakdown of costs on that it'll be up there. I did two types of plain tomato sauce so we can use them different ways because for certain things we like smooth tomato sauce and for certain things we like a chunky tomato sauce. We preserved seven quarts plus a half pint gotta count every little bit here of the smooth tomato sauce and then I did 15 quarts of the chunky tomato sauce. The seeds and the skins and leftovers of the smooth one we actually dehydrated those and made a tomato powder so we can add that to soups and stews for like flavoring and seasoning as well so nothing went to waste there and those were all homegrown tomatoes. We did four quarts and nine pints of cherries. The quarts we'll use for pies and like bigger all bigger overall bigger desserts and the cherries Taylor takes yogurt or oatmeal pretty much every single day of the week and he likes fruit in them. We did eight pints of blackberries and I think those were from the salvage store as well. Blueberries again I did some in quarts for pie got two quarts and seven pints of those. We did a lot of peaches we love peaches 14 quarts of peaches and 16 not 16 six pints of peaches cranberries in water or you could also call it cranberry juice. We did 11 quarts of those cranberry sauce I did six pints of that. Strawberries. Strawberries is another thing I don't think I made a video on it this year but we got 12 pints of strawberries in juice syrup I guess you would call it that we use the same as the berries for yogurt and oatmeal and desserts. As well as 12 half pints or jelly jars of strawberry jam and one pint of strawberry syrup all from three dollars worth of strawberries that we got at the salvage store. 25 jars worth of strawberry products for three dollars. This one's a weird one but we got one jar because I had leftovers of both so I just combined them and we did so it's a peach and blueberry pie filling I did just one quart of it because we had extras and I've actually made a peach and blueberry pie before and it was amazing so I was like this is gonna be so good when I'm craving that specific pie. We also did four pints and two half pints of peach salsa. We did three quarts of potatoes with some of the smaller potatoes that we grew that weren't gonna store very long we just decided to can them up because they're great for soups. We did the same thing with carrots because we have very very hard clay soil this year still since it's our first year and we got a lot of little baby carrots so I decided to chop those up small and can them so we can add them to soups. We got four quarts of those. I did a random three quarts of chicken noodle soup that we have left that was just leftovers and I didn't want to waste it. We did 10 pints of diced tomatoes and I think next year we're going to do more of those we've been going through them. Whenever I make black bean and corn salsa I will add those and then for chili and that kind of stuff. Pizza sauce. It's our goal to have pizza every single Sunday so that we can reset for the week and meal prep for the whole week and not have to worry about making dinner. We're gonna try and do our own frozen pizzas so that we don't even have to think about putting the pizzas together on Sunday we can just pull them out of the freezer. We did 11 pints and five half pints of our standard salsa recipe. That's what we use to put on nachos or just for snacking. This was my first year ever canning pickles of any kind so we wanted to do small amounts and experiment with them. So we did two pints of spicy dill pickles. We did seven pints of bread and butter pickles because I knew if I liked the bread and butter pickles I was going to be really sad that I didn't have more. I love bread and butter pickles more than anything on the planet. I could go through them so fast. We did three pints of dilly beans, seven and a half half pints of cherry syrup from the cherries. We did 12 half pints of strawberry jam like I mentioned earlier. We made way more hot sauce than we could ever possibly use so if anybody wants some peach hot sauce let me know. This one's a fun one. We did grape hyacinth syrup with some of the grape hyacinths we foraged around the property. We got four quarter pints out of those. Same with the black cherry syrup. We have a black cherry tree in front of our garden at like the garden entrance. The branches are trimmed really high up so I got on a ladder and I pulled those suckers down and I got like half a bowl full and we made some cherry syrup out of them. We made a bunch of dill relish. I also don't think we're going to go through all of this relish in a year. We did 10 half pints of it and we really don't go through it that much but maybe I just won't have to make it next year. About a year ago back in January I bought a bunch of bulk dried beans from azure standard and I wanted to try canning them for the first time. It was my reintroduction to canning after I hadn't done it for over a year. I canned a bunch of turtle beans, kidney beans, and chickpeas because we use all three of those a lot. So I think total this year I did 10 pints of turtle, 5 pints of kidney beans, and 15 pints of chickpeas. Chickpeas are something that is used a lot in like vegetarian substitute cooking so I use that a lot for when I'm making Taylor food for his lunches specifically. We made six half pints of our own homegrown foraged dewberry jam which is really really cool. I can't believe that we got so much off of our property this first year. We did three half pints of pickled garlic scapes just because we wanted to try them. We did a pint of fermented garlic honey which is in the fridge that's not canned. We did one and a half half pints of fermented chili garlic hot sauce. And lastly on this list, I already mentioned this one, we did a single pint of strawberry syrup which was just leftovers from canning our strawberries. Okay the next thing I am gonna go through is just our freezer items. I don't have counts on these because like I said I didn't want to undo my entire freezer just to count stuff especially since we've already used some of it. So I'm gonna give you the general rundown of what we preserved in the freezer this year. One of the main things we did was snap peas and that was the first thing that we preserved in the freezer. We did a bunch of green beans this summer, a ton of jalapenos, we did jalapeno poppers, we did whole jalapenos so we can use them later on for things. And I also managed to work up some system with our little vacuum sealer to freeze little snack pack sizes I guess. Or what it reminds me of is the toaster strudel icing packages but jalapenos that are already diced up so that I can just toss them in a meal and I know how many jalapenos worth it is. I don't have to worry about chopping them up and getting my fingers all spicy. That's been a lifesaver so far. I'm definitely gonna do that again next year. We have a bunch of peppers in general. We have banana peppers all sliced up, sliced and diced, bell peppers, Cuban owls, chili peppers, all those good things. We have corn on the cob. I did a bunch of corn on the cob so we can roast them in the oven, on the fire, or on the grill throughout the year. We don't just have to have that in the summer. Again, foraged dewberries, just a bunch of those in bags down there. We have some blueberries. We have garlic scapes that I have chopped up really tiny to toss into soups. We have garlic scape pesto, a whole gallon bag of that. And we also have the ends and the tips of those that I have in a gallon bag that I just toss a handful of them into the broth each time I make it. And then we have tomatillos and shishitos so that I can make tomatillo salsa, salsa verde, whatever at some point in the future when I have time. That was one of the things that I didn't get to actually making this year. We also have some meat in there. Like I said, we like to get the whole chickens from the salvage store. I have a whole grocery bag full of chicken that our neighbors gave us when I helped them butcher their chickens this year. I have a bunch of leftover turkey from both times that I made turkey this year. And yeah, I think I'm gonna be getting venison from a friend soon. I'm gonna need another freezer is what I'm saying. And to round this all out, just quickly a few things that we have preserved that I can remember off the top of my head that weren't in the freezer or in jars. So we have garlic. It's right around the corner right here. You can probably see some of it. We harvested 35 pounds and 3 ounces of garlic this year from our garden and it's all just cured and dried right now. Some of the smaller bulbs I'll probably eventually mince up and freeze soon so I can just pop those into meals as well. We have a bunch of green onions that are dehydrated that I just continuously add to that stash. We have so many lufas that I have no clue what we're gonna do with all them. I probably never need to grow lufas again but I'm going to because I love the plant. We have a bunch of dried basil. We have a bunch of dried thyme, oregano, and then lastly catnip because we have kitties and they love the catnip. So there you guys go. That is everything that at least I can remember we preserved this year. Some of you also might be wondering if we saved any money doing this this year and I just want to point out that we had to buy almost all of these jars. I'm gonna try and calculate it and if I can actually calculate how many jars we bought this year I will put the cost of that here and I'm going to try and also roughly calculate what it would have cost to buy all this food at the store and I'll also put that here and whatever the difference is I'm gonna put it here. I don't know if we saved any money. I kind of doubt that we did this first year but regardless here's what the number is. I think in future years it's definitely possible that we will save money because I won't have to buy all these jars. I also want to point out I'm not going to take into account any of the sugar or pectin or spices that kind of stuff that I had to buy for it because that's just more than my brain can handle right now. So just know that there are extra costs that come with it but I think once you have the general setup like your canning supplies, your jars, I do think that you can and we will save money in future years especially if we're growing a lot of the food. With that being said I have just a few questions from Instagram that I am gonna answer just to give you guys some insight into our experience with canning and preserving our own food this first year on our homestead. The first one is what got wasted or not preserved in time? That's a really interesting one because I feel like that's not something that anybody shows or talks about but when you're growing stuff in a garden no matter how hard you try some things are gonna go bad before you get to them. Whether that's on the plant at the end of the season or you forget about it in a basket on your table after weeks of it sitting there in front of you. Ask me how I know. For the most part we've really kept up on stuff but there were definitely some casualties around here. I would say we lost a good bit of tomatillos and a lot of jalapenos, chili peppers, that like the smaller peppers where I was waiting till we had an abundance of them to deal with them and I just didn't want to keep dealing with them so I just left them and forgot. I eventually forgot about them so there have been a lot of moldy peppers unfortunately on our table this year. Not proud of that but that's just the truth of it. Next year I'm gonna try and be better about at least just tossing them in the freezer so that I can deal with them later. How do you choose what gets frozen for preservation versus canned? The main priority for me as someone who deals with a lot of texture issues is to preserve things in a way that the texture is pleasant to me when I eat them so that's my main priority. For some reason I don't love frozen sweet corn that's already in kernels so I canned the corn. I like the texture of it canned. I know some people can feel the complete opposite and that's perfectly fine. Do what works best for you. Same with green beans. Same with green beans and peas. I prefer canned things. Taylor prefers frozen things. The second priority is freezer space. If we don't have freezer space for something I obviously just have to can it as long as it can be canned and if not I need to can something else in the freezer so that there's room to put that thing in the freezer. These two kind of go together so I'm gonna say them. One of them is you should do a brief how-to. I'm always paranoid about keeping everything sterile. Let that go. If you follow the instructions you're gonna be fine. I know a lot of people do rebel canning and they're also perfectly fine. I'm not really that brave. I'm not that kind of person. I just follow the instructions and it's good. I will say I have never once sterilized a jar. The reason for that is if you have that in the canner for 10 minutes or more it automatically is already sterilizing it. Like you don't have to sterilize your jars ahead of time. I'm all about minimizing the amount of steps and processes I have to take to do this. So yeah I highly suggest just following the instructions but know that you don't have to sterilize your jars as long as you process everything for 10 minutes or more. And someone's probably gonna get mad at me for saying that but you can look it up. That's actually the rules. So I personally am due to canning as well. I don't really feel comfortable doing canning tutorials or posting recipes and that kind of stuff yet. I just stick to the book. So me doing a tutorial would be the same as you watching another tutorial on someone who does it by the book and there are a lot of those. I just don't personally feel comfortable putting that out into the world yet. And along those lines the next question was what was your experience with getting started canning? Scary, daunting, or totally chill? I was really really nervous to use the pressure canner at first but I had committed to it and I had I was like there's no way I'm gonna be able to eat this many jars of corn before they go bad so I have to do it. So I was definitely nervous about pressure canning. The first time I did any sort of canning I did water bath canning peaches and I did pressure canning corn. I stuck to those two simple things that year in 2021. Didn't try to do anything else. And I will say the first time that I did attempt to can something I didn't know that you couldn't put cool or not hot jars into hot water and I did break like a handful of them which that happens it's fine it's a learning process but I've not done that since. And now it's probably gonna happen because I said it hasn't happened. But I would say for the most part it was my normal level of anxious. So I just double-checked the recipes a lot while I was doing it and watched the videos a handful times before doing it and made sure I was following each step to a tee. I just want to say I hope that this video can be an inspiration to you if you don't have one of those giant canning pantries. If you only have small places here and there to tuck your jars. If you don't have property yet but you want to learn how to homestead like Jess always says. If you want to turn your waiting room into a classroom and teach yourself canning I think that it's a really really great skill to learn. I learned this while we were living with a friend in Metro Detroit. We didn't even have a house we had a bedroom and I learned how to can. First time I canned anything and taught myself completely was 2021 and this year I canned this much food. Which is insane to me but it really really is easy. I would say once you get past the first few times and you're a little bit more comfortable with the process. So if you're a newbie to this or you want to learn how to do this and it scares you. I am completely self-taught. I use the ball blue book and watched YouTube videos to teach myself. Tell me below in a comment what you want to learn how to can next year or what your favorite thing that you did can this year was. I'm always open to new ideas even though I do try and stick to the basic stuff that we definitely know we eat and enjoy. Alright guys I hope that you enjoyed this video as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you and going over all of these accomplishments from this year. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one bye guys