Category: DIY-Projects

In this category you will find all the things that have to do with creating something, if it is cooking meals, sewing projects or building on our homestead

We have sold our Tiny House

As I have mentioned a few times, we are planning to travel and do not need it any more

We have sold our Tiny House. Despite the fact that it is ratter small emptying it out was more work than I had imagined, but finally we got it done.

Then the day came that a crane and low bed trailer where there, to lift and take away the Tiny House. Some how it was a strange feeling seeing the Tiny House lifted and driven of, of our property, but it is the start of the preparations for our travel over winter. It was quite impressive seeing the Tiny House up in the air. The Tiny House is too wide for normal transport, so it had to be moved at night with a police escort. As we heard late from the buyer all went well and the Tiny House sits on its new location perfectly.

There are a number of reasons for us to want to leave Germany, but work prohibits us from leaving permanent. Of course it would also be a shame for all of the work we have done on our property. We are escaping winter, travelling south. We are going to look for the region we would like to move to in the future. A place where we can build up a proper homestead, with vegetable gardens, fields for grains, pasture and different animals. We hope to build up a big enough homestead to be self sufficient some where in the future.

We have someone who will take care of our cats, but the dogs will go with us. My husband will drive our tractor with the caravan and I will drive our car with a trailer with all sorts of supplies, but more to that another time.

We have not travelled like this before and are very excited. The main problem I see is with the type of dogs we have. We have to avoid lots of people and try to find places where they have the change to run around freely now and then.

We still have some things to do, but as soon as they are done and the wetter will allow, we are leaving.

We also will document our travelling on our channel in YouTube: Straver Homestead

Pressure canning pumpkin soup

I have no adequate storage for my pumpkins, so I started pressure canning some

Our barn only has 2°C at the moment which is not ideal to store pumpkin. As I understand from searching in the internet they should be stored by room temperature. I have a lot of pumpkin from the garden and it would be a waste to let them go bad. I have already cooked some in the oven, pureed them and froze the puree portioned for pumpkin pie and pumpkin pancakes. I do not like just putting everything in the freezer. It uses power and if there would be a black out everything in the freezer could turn bad. And since we are going to travel for a longer period of time and I can not take the freezer with me, I am trying to can some of the pumpkin.

I am starting with using pumpkin for soup. This way I will have some convenience food and I can use some other vegetables from the garden. I cut up 2 pumpkins (selecting some seed for sowing next year), some onions, a bit of garlic (the garlic is very strong in taste), carrots and some root celery. This was topped of with freshly cooked bone broth from chicken carcases from chicken we had bought and took the meat of to pressure can. I filled 5 big jars and 5 small jars, to fill up the canner as much as it can take.

The pressure canner guide says to pre cook the pumpkin for 2 minutes. I did not do that and I do hope this will not get me into trouble. The pumpkin has the longest pressure canning time of all of the ingredients, so that is the time I went by.

Shortly after canning the soup we tried some. The taste is not quite as I wanted it, but to use up as much pumpkin as possible I left out the leek and turnip. These obviously change the taste. When I find the time I might do another round of soup and at the leek and turnip. I am going to pressure can the pumpkin by it self and do it by the book this time. This way I have pumpkin for puree to make pumpkin pie and pumpkin pancakes while we are travelling.

For the pumpkins which I do not manage to process before we leave, I will store these underneath the seating area in our caravan and hope they will stay good until I manage to use them up freshly.

Maybe you have noticed some toy’s in the background of my pictures. Well I do have our children around at all times and of course pay attention nothing happens while I am cooking/ pressure canning.