Homestead Happenings — Thanksgiving On The Homestead

Homestead Thanksgiving prep

What goes on on the homestead in late November? Thanksgiving prep and celebration, of course!

This year was on the smaller side. Covid. As a pretty good-sized family, though, it’s never what one might call “small.”

Getting Ahead by Prepping Ahead

When you grow much, most, or all of what you eat, holidays like Thanksgiving can take a bit longer to prepare for than they might in a more conventional household. A lot of these foods have already seen some prep early on in the year during canning or preserving. Here on our homestead, I don’t pre-can things like pie fillings, and seldom are sauces (cranberry sauce, for instance) canned ahead.

I do grow pumpkins and squash and love to make homemade, completely from scratch pies with them (in fact, I’ve been years tweaking commercial recipes to get one “just right” for homegrown pumpkin pie—we will talk about that in another post). Pumpkins and winter squashes store so well that I don’t usually put the time and utilities into preserving them (it’s not really considered safe to can pumpkins and squash as a puree so if I do preserve them it’s in the freezer, which I find a little less preferable to freshly cooked or roasted–too watery).

The bottom line is that if it’s not coming out of a can or off a grocery store shelf, it’s going to take a little more time and effort to turn those homegrown goods into your holiday meal. The results, though, are oh, SO worth it!

Fresh Turkey for Thanksgiving

Some of our homesteading was sidelined a few years ago due to a catastrophic injury in the household. During that time we did not give up, but we did scale way back. I made pains to keep some semblance of backyard farming going in an effort to maintain a lifestyle that was recognizable to us, a lifestyle we’d always enjoyed, and also to maintain the mental health of the household. And so, we have not raised our own turkeys here on the homestead in at least three years.

We do, however, have excellent local farms for whom household members work part time, and so we were blessed with the gift of appreciation in the form of a farm-fresh turkey. This nearly 24-pounder was one of the first prepping projects when he went into the brine. And he was worth the extra time and effort.

As for the rest, the pictures can take over the talking. As always, though, comments and questions are quite welcome.

Hoping your Thanksgiving was a delicious and blessed as ours on our homestead, and that the remainder of the year and the upcoming holiday season is full of peace, joy, and tranquility!

Early November Homestead Happenings–Goodnight Garden and a Good Cup of (Elderberry) Tea

with Special Thanks to the next Veal

By November in New England, many of the outside tasks of homesteading are coming to an end. We’ve had some frosts and even some snows, though it seems Mother Nature cannot make up her mind, and here I sit inside trying to keep myself seated and not out playing in the mid-60 degree weather.

There is always something going on on a homestead or backyard farm. As the winter starts to settle in, those tasks and chores are sometimes less obvious. As a writer and homestead information publisher, this is the time of year that I “get down to business” a little more steadily. I try to refocus my time on writing, publishing, and information sharing, which is one of our means of support that carries us through the more active warm weather months. Still, some final gardening and harvesting tasks remained before the coldest temps set in.

Final Garden Harvest 2020

Walking in New England in November

I’m not going to lie. By the time September and October roll around, I’m looking forward to a frost. I don’t publicize that secret wish and it’s not something I say out loud in local circles with friends already whimpering over the snow and cold that lies ahead, but by that time I’m a little tired of weeding, harvesting and tending the garden.

There I said it. And the best way to get out of gardening? A good, hard, killing frost. It seems those frosts come later and later in my area these days, though.

Does this make me a bad backyard farmer? A hypocrite homesteader? An imposter gardener?

I think what it makes me is someone who appreciates the cycle of life and loves a good set of seasons, ready to move into the next season…which will eventually grow old, too, just in time for me to get the itch to garden and tend and grow again next spring.

So what HAS been happening on the homestead this week? Final garden harvesting, digging some herbs to grow inside this winter, working on an Elderberry Tea book, submitting my first article as a contributing blogger to Mother Earth News (waiting for a link to share!), and saying “Thanks” and goodbye to the veal–humanely raised, not in confinement, respected, well-treated, and appreciated. Today, though, it was time to see him off. Raising veal is one way to maximize the use of our homestead dairy cows and their milk and to affordably, healthfully, feed the family. (More on raising veal in another post.) Questions and respectful comments welcome, but abusive, rude comments will not be approved.

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Homestead Happenings – Cover Crops and Dairy Day!

This week has been a mix of late fall garden close-up and indoor preserving. Featuring prominently in that preserving? Home dairy day!

Fall Cover Crop for Springtime Weed suppression, Nitrogen Fixing, and No-Till Plantings

This week saw a little cover-cropping–I’m trialing cover cropping with a mix of white and red clover and planning to do some no-till gardening for selected plants through the clover in the spring. A recent Mother Earth News issue had a great spread on cover crops for the garden. In it, they talk a little about no-till gardening through the clover for some crops. I’m thinking this makes a lot of sense for tomatoes, because for many years now we’ve fought a lot of tomato blight here in New England gardens. Since blight initially starts with spore-infected soil splashing up from rain and watering and then spreads up the plant, controlling the splash is one of the best preventative methods to help control tomato blight.

clover fall cover crop
Tiny sprouts of white and red clover. These fast-germinating seeds were quick to pop with a little rain the day after spreading (under one week!)

Clover Cover Crop for Elderberries

I am also playing with using the same red and white clover mix under a small stand of elderberry bushes. Elderberries do not compete well with other weeds, especially large ones that can choke the plants out. Clover, however, is low-growing and is also a nitrogen-fixer. My theory is that the clover will remain low enough not to compete too much with these large, well-established bushes but will suppress other, more problematic weeds. The clover can be mowed, so even if some weeds come through they should be pretty easy to control with regular mowing. And along the way, the plants will get a nitrogen boost from the clover, something that older elderberry bushes tend to need.

Honey bees love a good stand of clover, too, so one other big benefit will be drawing more bees to the area of the blossoming elderflowers. Sounds like a win, win, win, but it is an experiment, and we’ll see!

Making the Most of That Dairy Cow

The other big project this week was taking a day to do dairy. We milk a lovely little jersey cow here for milk and dairy for the family. To be sure, her four to five grass-fed gallons a day are more than we need; and keeping a dairy cow is not really what you might call “cheap,” especially if you don’t have an abundance of hay land and pasture.

separating milk for butter
Separating cream-line milk for cream to make butter. Best to use milk between two and ten days old. The separation line is clear to see, and a simple siphon of a dedicated piece of tubing is a cheap and easy way to separate cow’s milk at home.

The best way to continue to justify keeping our backyard dairy cow is by maximizing the use of the milk. I’ll be the first to admit that life gets in the way and this is an area in which I could always do better, but between growing a humanely-raised rose veal, seven or more of us drinking fluid milk, and using the excess milk for cream, cheese, and butter, it starts to become a little more of a profit-leaning project. And so today’s pictures are heavily weighted in milk and dairy, with maybe a few others thrown in.

As always, I’m interested to see and hear about your #HomesteadHappenings, and eager to to hear what questions you have that I can answer in comments and/or future posts.

Homestead Happenings in Late October

Happenings on the Homestead

Just lately it’s occurred to me that while information-sharing is certainly at the heart of homestead blogging and publishing, we might perhaps be overlooking some of the smaller daily doings of the backyard farm and homestead.

A Look in the Homesteading Mirror

Home on the Homestead

This came to me while in the garden this late summer and early fall, looking around at the produce and projects in their various stages of completion. I think it came as more of an awareness in large part due to new membership in a number of online forums (mainly Facebook groups).

I think this was particularly true because this year with COVID and growing concerns over food security, with people with more time and inclination for reviving “Victory Gardens” and so many newcomers reaching out for help with first-time growing and gardening; many of us more seasoned homesteaders had a bit of a mirror shined upon ourselves and our daily lives.

Questions and answers that might have seemed obvious and unworthy of discussion are proving on these forums, more and more, to be very much a topic of interest to these “newbies” but also just in conversation amongst ourselves. This in turn led me to think that maybe there is a place for the more, dare I call it mundane, but more appropriately call it commonplace, chores, tasks, functions, and productions of the self-sufficient leaning homestead and small farm.

Let’s See Homesteading for What It Really Is

Maybe, just maybe, every single post doesn’t have to be so involved. Maybe not all posts have to teach or instruct. Maybe quick posts that give more of a glimpse into the everyday can do just as much to help people sort out their options and see what plans and projects might work for them on their farm. Maybe they’ll just be a bit of fun, but maybe they’ll help others actually see more of what life on a modern “homestead” looks like.

I’ll call these posts “Homestead Happenings.”

It’s pretty likely these will be, in large part, collections of pictures with not as many words (something I’m sure plenty of people might even appreciate!). Sort of Instagram for the website, archived and available.

Show and Tell #HomesteadHappenings

I invite you to scroll through, take from these posts what you will, and even send me links to your own version of Homestead Happenings, so we might all see what each other are doing and what great ideas (or even just good old-fashioned basic ones) are out there. Certainly, if you see a picture or subject that intrigues you, that you’d like to hear more about, leave me a comment or send me an email. Maybe some of your interests will grow into more in-depth posts on topics that prove to be of interest.
In this spirit, I leave you now with some of the most recent pictures from around the homestead and kitchen.

Late summer and fall are great times to be on a homestead in New England!


Can’t Buy it? Bake it!

Easy Homemade Bread & Baking Resources

Not surprisingly, during this time of stocking up (and let’s be honest, flat-out panic buying), many of the items we take for granted are just not available on store shelves. Chief among them, bread…and bread is an important staple for many, most especially when the kids are all home and looking for lunches!

If you can bake your own bread, though, that dearth is less of an issue for you. And this looks like a good time to revive or to learn a new old trick or two, to better situate yourself to deal with not only this crisis, but future impacts that might come along.

Baking and Bread Recipes Designed for Modern Life & Times

easy standmixer bread, KitchenAid bread recipe

The goal of my site and my published works has always been to bring self-sustaining knowledge, tips, tricks, and skills, back to the masses; to modify recipes that make it possible for people to make more of their own, cleaner, better, tastier foods from scratch.

I acknowledge that this isn’t always easy when we are in the throes of our “normal” busy day to day lives. So, I’ve always tried to develop helpful posts and books with that in mind, and find the recipes and methods that fit a little more easily into daily life. I’ve had excellent feedback from a number of readers and users saying that they have found these resources to be exactly that—helpful, easier, less-intimidating, and more manageable for today’s busy home cooks.

Judging from the scarcity of flour and basic baking supplies in the stores, people are doing exactly that—becoming a little more self-sufficient, depending more on themselves, and getting lined up to at least be able to bake their own bread and foods for a bit. It’s an excellent skill for the everyday, but one thing we are also learning is that learning and honing a few of these skills now during our time of need is proving an excellent, in fact at times imperative, skill to have in your repertoire. Knowledge can never be lost, and is always worth having, now and in the future—these crazy days prove you never know when you might need to be a little more prepared toward self-sufficiency.

Bake-Your-Own Resources for Beginners to Experienced Bread Bakers

Following is a compiled list of my books and other resources that can help you fill the needs of your pantry while the shelves are bare (and maybe for a long time after!):

*All books are available through Amazon in both Paperback and for instant download via Kindle/Kindle Reader Apps.

Daily Homemade Bread easier, faster homemade bread

your stand mixer (think, KitchenAid® mixer breads). It uses instant/rapid rise yeast to speed and streamline the process.

No pan? No problem! Choose the French or Italian breads that only require a simple baking sheet!

no-knead bread recipes, bake no-knead bread

—so if your yeast supply is getting low, take a look at these recipes! No-Knead bread recipes are also excellent time savers, as the “hands-on” time is virtually nil (and the science of it is kind of fun, too). You’ll find bagels, rolls, and sweet treats, too.

mason jar baking mixes, prep baking mixes

The measuring and proportioning involved in making these mixes is a great project to do with kids—and one that extends learning in a practical way, too!

Even if you don’t want to take the time to make a lot of mixes ahead, the batches themselves make good, easy baking recipes with normal, minimal ingredients.

  • Sourdough Starter Recipe (Levain): Yeast is one of those somewhat scarce ingredients on the grocery stores lately—probably because they don’t stock as much as they used to, anyway, so it can sell out quick with just a few shoppers. Sourdough bread doesn’t need yeast, though. And you don’t need yeast to make a sourdough starter! This is a traditional, healthy bread (actually better tolerated by a lot of people because of the breakdown of the process), often used by frugal mothers and grandmothers and by rural-dwellers who didn’t rely on frequent trips to the corner store—they simply kept a starter culture going in the kitchen instead.

    And yes, you will find some easy sourdough bread recipes in the Quick-Time Homemade Bread book above!  (*Note: Though you do not need yeast to make a sourdough starter or to make sourdough bread, if you have a pinch to spare you can throw it in to make the process go a little faster.)

  • Beer Bread Recipe (plus make-your-own self-rising flour link): Beer bread is technically a quick-bread, but easier and unlike any other you’ve ever eaten.
easy beer bread recipe, no yeast necessary

It’s a quick bread a bit more like regular sandwich bread that is great to have with butter, as a dinner side, or with cheese, and it works well for sandwiches, too.

This recipe could be a real life-saver for those of you who are out of bread and out of time!




Math, Science, Life Skills, Learning…Baking Has a Lot of Educational & Life Value to Offer!

Let’s not forget—baking is actually a very valuable learning exercise that includes a lot of hands-on math and science, reading, and more. For many of you battling the boredom and looking for meaningful, useful ways to muddle through these awkward pseudo-homeschooling times, wrapping in some bread-making and baking activities is truly double-duty!

I hope you find these resources very useful. All are available via Amazon in paperback and for immediate download for Kindle and Kindle e-reader apps; just follow the above links.

Stay safe, take heart, and BE WELL!!




*This post contains affiliate links to helpful books and products, at no additional cost to the reader/purchaser. This will take you to secure login and purchasing via your personal Amazon account. NO personal information is shared with this website from Amazon. Links such as these help to support and maintain this website. Thank you for clicking through to purchase these products!

Clean Bread for Busy People

No-Knead Bread is the Easy Solution for Preservative-Free Homemade Bread

I’m actually not sure why no-knead bread is just now becoming trendy in clean home-baking. It is the absolute simplest bread to make. It requires the most minimal of ingredients. It takes almost NONE of your precious, limited time. No-knead bread is clean and preservative-free, and a myriad of recipes means that you can easily choose one to fit your health, diet, or culinary goals.

no knead bread recipe

Really. There’s just no downside to no-knead bread.

For busy people today (and who isn’t!?), no-knead bread is THE solution to problem of being able to put home-made, quality, reliable, knowable goodness on the table, with a side of holy delicious and nostalgia!

No-Knead Bread: The Time It Takes

So, what is it that maybe scares people from making cleaner, better no-knead breads at home?

If one had to guess, you could suppose it’s that it takes a long time to make no-knead bread. Hours, in fact. OVERNIGHT, in fact. Or rather, at least 6 to 8 to 12 and maybe even 18 hours!

no knead bread rising

Who in the world has that time today!?

We all do. Because here’s the thing. The “time” it “takes” to bake no-knead bread is not hands-on time at all. It’s almost completely in rising—a slow, sourdough-like rise time (without the hassle of maintaining a sourdough starter) with a moist, soft sponge, that pretty much doesn’t even get your hands dirty. You’re literally only talking maybe—MAYBE—5 minutes of measuring and mixing (if you drag it out), and then covering the bowl, forgetting about until the next morning, or the next afternoon, or whenever you have the time, then a quick dump-and-shape-up with a little more rising while the oven heats up, and around 45 minutes of baking.

All told, you’re looking at a maximum of 15 minutes of hands-on “labor.” The rest of the time, you could be soaking in the bath, working, running your kids around endlessly, or reading a book for all the bread cares. You see where I’m going with this. No-knead bread doesn’t need us, either.

So,

How Long Does It Take to Bake No-Knead Bread?

Here’s a general overview of how long it takes to make no-knead bread (for the typical no-knead bread recipe; the process itself doesn’t vary that much between recipes for no-knead bread):

no knead bread with elderberry jelly
  • Dough preparation: 5 minutes (measuring, mixing)
  • Rising/proofing time: minimum 6 hours, 8-12 recommended, can go as long as 18-24 as life dictates
  • Baking prep (turning out dough, shaping loaf): 5 minutes (maybe?)
  • Final rising (mostly while oven and Dutch oven or baking vessel preheats): 45 minutes
  • Baking time: 45 minutes
  • Total Time: average 9 hours, 45 minutes
  • Total ACTIVE (read: busy, hands-on) time: 10-15 minutes

A Bare Minimum of Ingredients

The time-factor is one of the biggest reasons to bake no-knead bread.

The others? TASTE and homemade goodness, clean PRESERVATIVE-FREE bread, INGREDIENT CONTROL, and ease-of-use (you really don’t need to be a bread baker, or much of a cook at all, to make this bread; basic kitchen skills required—an excellent bread for beginners!).

So,

What Ingredients are in No-Knead Bread?

You’ll probably be floored when you see the list of ingredients for the typical no-knead bread. They include:

  • Flour
  • Water
  • Salt
  • Yeast (about ¼ teaspoon)

Seriously. That is all.

chocoalte chunk cherry almond no knead bread recipe

Now sure, there are no-knead bread recipes with more ingredients. If you’re looking for a more savory or flavored no-knead bread, that’s an option, too. You might find one like a Cherry, Nut, & Chocolate no-knead bread recipe; perhaps a Wheat no-knead bread recipe; you could make a multi-grain no-knead bread; or a Garlic and Herb no-knead bread recipe might be your choice. But even with no-knead breads as delicious- and complicated-sounding as these, the process, and therefore the time involved, remains largely unchanged. You’re talking about a little more preparation and a little more measuring. A few measly more minutes. The results, however, are anything but measly. They’re amazing, quite frankly.

Time-Saving, Clean, Preservative-Free No-Knead Bread Recipes

Now that you’re a little more comfortable with taking on these easy, clean, delicious (so delicious), crusty, chewy, European-style no-knead breads, all that’s left is to find some good recipes to get started.

In Quick-Time Homemade Bread and Pastries, you’ll find plenty. Ten, to be exact. From the basic Dutch oven no-knead bread recipe to the savories with herbs, cheeses, and garlic, to the sweet like the aforementioned Chunky Chocolate Cherry Almond no-knead bread recipe, you’ll find all the bases covered, with plenty to enjoy (and impress!).

easy no-knead bread recipes

So buy the book (you can get it for Kindle or in paperback), bake the bread, and be sure to come back here and share your experience (and your no-knead bread pictures, too!).

Happy Baking & Enjoy!

*This post contains affiliate links to helpful books and products, at no additional cost to the reader/purchaser. This will take you to secure login and purchasing via your personal Amazon account. NO personal information is shared with this website from Amazon. Links such as these help to support and maintain this website. Thank you for clicking through to purchase these products!

Elderflower Mead Wine Recipe: The One Wine Recipe I WISH I Had Included in My Book!

easy home winemaking

This is a recipe that you will not find in my book, Winemaking Made Easy: How to Make Easy Homemade Wine from Grapes, Fruit, & More. And that’s sad, because it’s become my new favorite.

I covet it. I share it only with those I like best, or those who I owe a sizable favor to. Selfish of me? Only for the time being—I didn’t know I would love this wine quite so much. No worries—I’m working on a new (bigger) batch, so that I can be a good human again.

If Elderflower Mead is So Great, then Why…?

This naturally begs the question, if this Elderflower Mead Wine Recipe is really that great, then why would I leave it out of my book?

Local Raw Honey - Homegrown Honey

Simple. I just hadn’t made it when I’d published the book.

I’d played with Elderflower Wine before, but not as a mead (technically a melomel, or perhaps a metheglin, depending on whether you consider elderflower an herb…I’ll leave the semantics to you).

After I finally completed the book and started playing with some new varieties of wine, with my now-adult son taking an interest (and he a beekeeper with a piqued interest in meads in particular), we decided to try an elderflower mead. It wasn’t something I’d done or had finished in time to include in the wine book, but it has since been completed and consumed, completely; with a second (larger) batch quickly fermenting on the heels of the first, very missed, elderflower mead.

How to Make Easy Elderflower Mead (Elderflower Honey Wine)

If you want to make this so, so simple homemade elderflower honey wine (and I really HIGHLY recommend that you do), you’ll first need my original Mead Recipe found in Wine Making Made Easy, which you can purchase securely at Amazon. It’s available for Kindle or in Paperback by clicking on the title.

From there, go to the recipe for Basic Mead. You will find it in one-, three-, and five-gallon recipes. Choose the quantity you want to make, and for each gallon add two cups of dried elderflower.

How to make Elderflower Mead

1. Get the Basic Mead Recipe (Honey Wine recipe) In Wine Making Made Easy.

2. To that recipe, add 2 cups dried elderflower for every gallon of elderflower mead you are making (or 4 cups fresh elderflower when available).

3. Complete the rest of the recipe as instructed, but be sure to strain out the solid elderflowers after about 7 days.

Where to Buy Dried Elderflower

You can buy dried elderflower easily in bulk on Amazon—click this link for the source I use, an economical, high quality dried elderflower that I use both for elderflower wine and for elderberry and elderflower tea recipes. When in season, you can also use fresh elderflowers (actually I recommend it, but it’s a bit of a limited season, can be difficult to find the flowers in great enough quantity, and it’s so hard to wait—I make some elderflower wine and elderflower mead from fresh flowers while in season and some from dried elderflower during winter and the rest of the year and in fact if my fresh supply is running a little short, I add a bit more dried elderflower to make up the difference).

What Does Elderflower Mead Taste Like?

If you’ve ever had one of the popular elderflower liqueurs (like St. Germain or St. Elder), or if you’ve been lucky enough to have made your own infused elderflower liqueur from some great elderflower liqueur recipe you’ve found, you’ll recognize Elderflower Mead as being quite a lot like that. It’s pleasantly sweet, but not too sweet, with a delightful nose of elderflowers, often described as having a “Muscat” taste similar to Moscato wine. I swear it’s worth making the wine just to breathe in its delicious scent!

elder flower, elderflower for mead or elderflower tea

Though I’ve thus far only enjoyed this as a wine, I’ve imagined many times that it would also make a delicious wine spritzer with a little plain seltzer water—something to look forward to this summer with a little ice and warm sunshine! In fact, I think it’s time to start another batch of my favorite Elderflower Mead now, so I’ll still have some left for summer spritzing!

If you make this elderflower mead, I’ll be eager to hear about your adventure—please come back to share how your wine turned out!

>> Don’t forget, you’ll need the Mead recipe first—click here to get it.

>> Here is my go-to source to buy dried elderflower.

>> Here’s a handy link to the yeast I use to make this elderflower wine.

*This post contains affiliate links to helpful books and products, at no additional cost to the reader/purchaser. This will take you to secure login and purchasing via your personal Amazon account. NO personal information is shared with this website from Amazon. Links such as these help to support and maintain this website. Thank you for clicking through to purchase these products!

Winter Winemaking for Easy, Enjoyable Homemade Wines

We usually think of home winemaking as a summer or early fall project, primarily because that is the time of year when grapes, berries, fruit, and other country winemaking crops are being harvested. But the warmer months are certainly not the only time of year right for making homemade wine. In fact, for many of us, winter is a far better time for making simple, delicious country wines at home.

–> Make wine in winter when you have the TIME!
–> Frozen fruits and berries are excellent, easy winter winemakers.
–> Meads, metheglins, and melomels can be made fresh at any time of the year.

Why is Winemaking in Winter Better?

To be sure, winemaking is a great hobby any time of the year, and in-season when the produce is fresh can turn out some outstanding wine. But making wine in the winter is better for one major reason: In winter, we have time.

There’s really nothing like a good homegrown or locally-sourced crop of fruit or berries. The ripeness, the freshness, the variety, the flavor…it just can’t be beat. Even when preserved, these are characteristics that come through in your product. The fact that local and homegrown produce goes from vine to freezer (or whatever your preservation method of choice may be), means that the produce experiences less stress and degradation in its “travel” to you.

The problem that many of us have is that time is a very in-demand commodity in the warm months. Vacations, activities, pressing preserving of fruits and crops, so many other landscape and maintenance issues that demand our attention…it all adds up to finding yourself with many great options, the best of intentions, but only so much a body can do. Sometimes, something has to give.

In winter, though, we slow down. Sure, time is still a precious resource, but we seem to have more of it. Frankly, at this time of year we are more apt to want to spend it inside on a project of interest. And so, winter can be the perfect time to take on something like making easy, simple wines we can enjoy in just a few months and throughout the coming year.

What Produce is Best for Making Wine in Winter?

What holds a lot of people back from making wine in winter is that we think wine must be made with fresh fruit and produce. This really is not at all true. Yes, there are tastes and nuances that can only result from making wine with a product that just came out of the patch or vineyard, but there are also benefits to making wine from fresh-frozen, preserved fruits and berries:

  • Frozen produce is often higher in quality if it has been quickly prepped and preserved, especially as opposed to summer produce that has had to sit and wait for us to have the time to deal with it, and perhaps experienced a loss of quality in the meantime.
  • Frozen fruit can be easier to handle, because the freezing and thawing process actually does a lot of the work of crushing and preparing the produce for you.
  • Frozen fruit and produce, whether your own fresh-frozen harvest or frozen purchased at a local grocer, is already prepped, peeled, cleaned, and ready to go, making short work of putting a batch of homemade wine together.
  • Good fruit is readily available in both fresh and frozen forms at local grocery stores throughout the winter months.
  • With the variety of produce available through good grocers, you can make wine out of all sorts of fruit and produce, including some that you might not otherwise be able to grow or access locally.

More Than Just Fruit Wine

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that winter winemaking is limited to only frozen fruits, though. Many things are excellent winter winemakers; top of the list is, in fact, one of the easiest possible things you can make wine from, straight from Mother Nature’s most ambitious of helpers:

Homegrown Honey for wine

Honey is PERFECT for Winter Winemaking!

• Honey! Mead is wine made from honey and is quite possibly the BEST ingredient to make real, natural wine in the winter, solely for the reason that there is no difference between fresh-harvested honey or honey you tap a month or two or three later. Mead (honey wine) can be made very sweet or just barely so, and so can easily be made to your own taste when you make your own.
• Flavored meads are also perfect for winter winemaking. Technically called melomels (mead flavored with fruit) or metheglins (herbed/spiced meads), nicely-balanced flavored meads can be made with ingredients such as dried elderberry or elderflower, citrus, spices, apples, berries, or other frozen or fresh fruits of virtually any imaginable variety.
• Frozen or preserved fruit juices you may have put up earlier in the year are also ideal for making wine in the winter. Maybe you put a little something aside to enjoy later? Or prepped some juice that you never had time to make into jelly? That juice is just the perfect thing to make a homemade wine with!

What Other Options are there for Winter Winemaking?

But wait, there’s more!

Yes, there are still other products and ingredients that you can use for winemaking in the off-season. These are ingredients you can find readily either at your local grocery store or through winemaking suppliers, online and off:

• Juice from concentrate. Yes, you can actually make some fun homemade wines with frozen juice concentrate from the freezer section of your grocery store.
• Vintners juice. Vintners’ juice is concentrated fruit juice designed for winemaking. It is sold in bulk sizes ideal for making wine at home, and is a perfect base for making wine in the winter. You can add fresh or dried fruits or berries to vintner’s juice to make a more robust and flavorful wine, or you can simply add ingredients to the juice to ferment it.
• Rehydrated dried fruit and juice. Similar to how you might rehydrate a dried fruit or berry for cooking or juice-making (such as for elderberry syrup from dehydrated fruit), you can make a juice from dried fruit or berries and then add the necessary ingredients to ferment that juice into wine. It’s a fair option that works best for smaller batches (around one gallon). The juice can benefit from further flavoring by adding more dried ingredient into the batch when preparing for the first fermentation.

Is Making Homemade Wine Hard?

In a word? No. But it’s easy to see why home winemaking has that reputation.

The reason?

Winemaking has entered into some very scientific fields, both commercially and for home winemakers. But the truth is that it does not need to be as complicated as it often is. It is very possible to take home winemaking back to the basics the way many generations did before us—before all the added sulfites, preservatives, and chemical profiling. You just need a good resource that steps back from the “rules” of today, and gets you back to good, basic home wine making.

easy home winemaking

There are many good resources online, and a few good books on the subject. In Wine Making Made Easy: How to Make Easy Homemade Wines from Grapes, Fruit & More, you will find instructions and recipes for cheap, easy home winemaking without over-investing in equipment, and without getting overwhelmed with the process (in fact, much or all of what you need you may already have at home!). It’s good, honest home winemaking, taken back to the basics for good, honest, cleaner, preservative-free wine.

Pick up a copy today, and enjoy your new winter winemaking hobby!

New Book! Easy Homemade Bread – No Stand Mixer Needed!

Quick-Time Homemade Bread Easy bread recipes
Now Available in Paperback and on Kindle – Easy, faster yeast bread recipes, no stand mixer needed, Excellent NO KNEAD BREAD RECIPES!

ORDER NOW in PAPERBACK or KINDLE

Now Available: Quick-Time Homemade Bread and Pastries: Real Homemade Yeast Breads, Rolls, and Doughs Made Simple, In Less Time

Another new release! This is the book that makes bread-making easy for those who do not have a stand mixer. The same great time-saving ingredients and technique as the Daily Bread series, without the need for costly large stand mixers (much as we love them, they are pricy!).

This is also a book for those looking for new instant-yeast bread recipes and for those looking for no-knead bread recipes–quite possibly the best and EASIEST bread you could ever bake!


Good bread isn’t especially hard to make, but it does take time. Time that is more and more precious these busy days. It’s a problem for those of us who really want that cleaner, better, nostalgia-inducing, wholesome goodness.

The Solution: A Quicker Way to Make Easy Homemade Bread

A little known fact to many home bakers is that we now have some excellent products available to us that make our bread-baking lives easier. When you know the right way to use them, they make homemade bread-baking time SHORTER, too! With a little adjustment to your shopping list and a solid list of reliable recipes, suddenly you can find the time to bake GREAT breads and treats once again. This book brings the know-how and the recipes. You bring the groceries.

Bakery-Quality Recipes for Homemade Bread and More

Here we cover all the bases for faster, easier homemade bread baking. Armed with this book, and with minimal time investment, you can make traditional white breads, wheat and whole-grain breads, fabulous artisan-style no-knead breads, quick croissants and crescent rolls, homemade yeast donuts, bagels, pretzels, pizza doughs, and more.

Use the “Look Inside” feature for a look at the Table of Contents and a full list of recipes included in this book. Some featured favorites include:

•Farm Hearth White Bread

•Cranberry-Apple Bread

•Old Fashioned Potato bread

•Homestead Honey Oat Bread

•Basically Baguette

•Dinner Rolls

•Rise and Shine Cinnamon Rolls

•Nutty Sticky Buns

•Fast & Easy Herb & Cheese Garlic Knots

•Donuts, Bagels, & Sweet Bread Treats

•No-Knead At All Rustic Loaf

•No-Knead Sourdough Bread

•No-Knead Chunky Chocolate Cherry Almond Bread

•Pita Pockets

•Soft Pretzels

•More and More!

All of these recipes, all of this homemade goodness…with this simplified method, and without tying up all your time! A little modern ingenuity, a little traditional wholesome goodness…a match made in heaven and the best way to eat cleaner, better, breads again!

https://amzn.to/2QysSRP

Many homemade bread recipes, easy sweet roll recipes, simple dinner roll recipes, and no-knead recipes, great for beginners through experienced bakers. An excellent arsenal of easier, simple, real bread recipes to have on hand.

ORDER NOW in PAPERBACK or KINDLE

New Release: Wine Making Made Easy

Here we go again, but a bit of a different path this time!

Once again, I’ve set off to share easier, more simplified, more doable ways to enjoy homemade goods and bring back some of that solid country homesteading knowledge. This time, it’s winemaking at home–easy country winemaking without all the modern chemistry and fuss.

ORDER Your Copy NOW! Paperback or Kindle

Wine Making Made Easy: How to Make Easy Homemade Wine from Grapes, Fruit, & More by Mary Ellen Ward

Winemaking is so complicated! …Or is it?

Home wine making used to be simple. And now it is again!

Our grandparents, and generations of grandparents before them, made excellent wines with minimal fuss, minimal equipment, and no added sulfites or additives. They made them not just from grapes but from all manner of available fruits, berries, honey, and other produce. They didn’t spend a lot of money. They didn’t overwhelm themselves with minuscule measurements and chemistry. They didn’t dwindle down the savings to buy pricey containers for fermenting or for storing. They made wine in tune with the rhythms of nature, with basic equipment.

They made Good. Simple. Cheap. Easy. Homemade Wine!

If you’ve always wanted to make wine but thought the process or investment was beyond you, this is the book for you. This is the book that takes winemaking back to its roots. The no-fuss, no-frills method of wine making that uses everyday equipment you can buy right downtown. This simplified and basic process uses no added preservatives, sulfites, or unrecognizable ingredients. Just good, clean, wine-making for good, clean, fun-making wine!

Amazon.com

Available Now in Paperback and Kindle Versions

Copies are now available at Amazon.com. This is the book for all of you who have thought about making fun, tasty wines at home, but were always a bit scared of the prospect. We’re taking it back to the basics here. We’re taking the fear out of it–and the EXPENSE, too! Order your copy today!

P.S. These are great books for holiday gift-giving!

P.P.S. This isn’t just a book for the summer growing season! Find out how to make wines in the off-season (when you have more time!?) with frozen fruits, honey, vintner’s juices, and more.

P.P.P.S. Enjoy, and Many Thanks!

Get your copy here: Paperback or Kindle.