Food Preservation Archives · The Farhner Homestead

29Mar 2018 by Arielle Farhner 1 Comment

Bone Broth: A Homesteader’s Liquid Gold

Bone broth has made a resurgence in recent years for its numerous health benefits, to the extent of being termed "liquid gold", but to me, it's mostly just an amazing base for the perfect soup... and we eat a lot of soup, hence the need for lots of amazing broth! I haven't gotten to the point of drinking a glass straight, but I'm sure this stuff would be as good of any to start with! We posted this week on our Instagram that we had suddenly run out of the first batch of broth we did following the butchering of our first pig in December. So our roughly 30 quarts of broth lasted us nearly 4 months! I know lots of people who aren't huge fans of soup, but for…

02Feb 2018 by Arielle Farhner No Comments

Fermented Garlic

Food Preservation, Recipes

Until that day that we can source all our food straight from our garden, we are huge Costco addicts. Buying in bulk is more economical, and we are blessed in our region to have many organic and non-gmo options for produce! The problem with buying in bulk is that often the food goes bad before you have a chance to use it all! This has been the case with buying the whole bulbs of garlic. We do our best to eat what we have and not waste anything, so when I needed more garlic this week, I decided to peel and ferment half the bag of garlic rather than wait until they're mushy and unusable. It's probably a lot more work to peel each clove, and I'm aware that Costco…

12Jan 2018 by Ben Farhner No Comments

2018: Year of the Homestead

Beer, Food Preservation, Garden

It's been too long since we last posted. The last 3 years were very long and hard, but in the summer of 2017 we purchased our first home, a 1922 farmhouse on a third of an acre, and after some remodeling, we're moved in and ready to work on all our long dreamed-of self-sufficiency plans. In 2018, we have several goals we want to accomplish: The Garden We were blessed to find a home that already had a substantial garden space. We've spent some time cleaning it up and laying down wood chips to prep it for the spring, and our long term goal is to expand the garden even more and grow as much of our own food as we can. This year we'll be growing some vegetables, herbs,…

17Oct 2013 by Ben Farhner No Comments

Cider Pressing

Food Preservation

My parents' neighbors press cider every year. They bring over a huge crate of apples from across the mountains and host a big pressing party with food and fire where everyone takes turns chopping, grinding, pressing, and pouring. They sell the cider for $3 a gallon and it tastes absolutely delicious fresh. [caption id="attachment_91" align="aligncenter" width="625"] Picking apples with a human ladder[/caption] This year, though, we had the opportunity to pick as many apples as we wanted from a friend's house, where they had a dozen or so neglected apple trees, for free. The apples were weighing the trees down and littering the ground, there were so many of them! So we loaded up several buckets, bins, and boxes, and took them home to press. [caption id="attachment_93" align="aligncenter" width="625"] Grinding…