Flat Surface Stovetop

Many friends told me that you can't 'can' with a flat surface stovetop:  they are wrong.  There are some that are designed to handle such a task and if you shop, you can find them.  No, not every flat surface stove top can handle that task, but mine can and does.  In fact, I have had two pressure canners going at once on my stove top with no problem.  I just put up 21 quarts of cucumbers this past week and it was a snap. 

While I was canning, I did have some water boil over which does create a bit of a mess and I am faithful about using the polisher to keep my stove top clean; however, this time around, my bottle of polisher was EMPTY!  So I decided to try some thing different and it worked!  Yep, plain ole baking soda cleaned my stovetop without scratching and with no problem!  I was so excited!  Do you know how much money I can save now by using baking soda on my stovetop instead of the 'special' polisher?  Yep, that means more money for animal feed or garden seed:  either way, I WIN!

The Joy of Radishes

Radishes are usually the first vegetable crop ready in the garden. They are forgiving and quick to mature, and are a crisp spicy addition to salads and sandwiches. Most radish types being round and red, they are a little deceiving to children who are expecting a sweet flavor when they bite into their first one!

At the end of the radish season when the last few go to seed...leave them! The pods that develop after the flowers fall are delicious when new and crisp. They taste like...radishes!

Radishes sprout quickly, and that quality is useful if their seeds are sowed with notoriously slow-to-sprout carrot seeds. A few radishes will mark your rows nicely while waiting for the carrots to germinate.

When I was a child, radishes never were the center star at the dinner table though we did enjoy them. More importantly, they were the first victory in the garden after a long winter...eagerly planted, eagerly watched, and joyfully harvested.

Sheep Shearing

It's that time of year again when we must shear our sheep.  It is a long job for us as homesteaders because we are not professionals nor do we have those thousand dollar shears!  This is our fifth year shearing our sheep.  We started off with three sheep; now we have over thiry. 

Our sheep have been bred for their fiber.  We have Gulf Coast Sheep which is also known as Gulf Coast Native, LA Native and FL Native.  It is a surviver...like the Cracker cow, Cracker horse, or Mustang.  It is naturally foot rot resistant and parasite resistant.  In fact, even though we live in the south, we don't have these problems with our sheep!  We honest only worm them once a year. 

Our sheep come from the Perkin's line which has been bred for many years specifically for fleece quality.  In fact, our first two sheep came straight from Dempsey's farm.  Spinners love to get their hands on our fleece because it is so nice...and rare. 

We have only sheared three sheep so far, but tomorrow we will be getting three more done as they are sold and will be leaving the farm this week.  I will take pictures and show you more in depth how we shear and talk about the different shears that homesteaders can purchase...the pros and the cons.