I hope the kids look back on these days and think fondly of them! :).

I agree, seasonal eating is the big thing, making use of things avail in gluts and then dispersing it through the rest of the year, I desperately want my gardens back though, this year has been horrible, if I could grow my green leafy's again and tomatoes, that would just make it all better! lol.

I keep on telling myself Progress not Perfection! One day, maybe when all the kids are gone lol, things will be a bit 'prettier'! :D

No Nyssa, it will come soon. I can see your vision. It is a good one. Soon more people will come. You are a phenomenal cook and teacher. I have learned so much since I have been here. We are all going through changes in this world. Just keep cooking. I always say I can cook my way through anything and everything. Thanks for opening your home and vision

Those tinned apples are really great simmered with some ground cinnamon and raw honey...I love freezing leftovers for when I don't feel like cooking ...got a question: can u tell me about ghee? My daughter has been placed on gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, and soy-free after being terribly ill for almost a year...is ghee still considered dairy after the milk is removed from the butter and only fats are left? There is nothing wrong with your kitchen, it's filled with love and happiness and room for the kids to live and learn and grow...u are a blessing to others....

Yes, I'm of the same mind, as much as we keep things hygenic in the sense of food/raw meat kept cold and clean etc etc, the bit of dirt and dust, meh, we've all got very good constitutions hehe

They're inverter style fridge/freezers, so the power draw isn't 'huge' but we have a decent sized battery bank, its 12 x 2v cells at 1080ah each, So we use about 20% of that overnight running the fridges/freezers a couple of lights/fans and the tech items until the kids go to bed etc. It's not superb, but we haven't figured out a better way yet! The place where the fire is/where we sleep, that has 4 walls. It's the only part that does, The rest of it we just deal with, meals are earlier in the evening in Winter, we shower earlier and come inside earlier etc, our winter outside days are quite short because we stay inside a lot as the temps drop :) Hampers are a discounted/free thing, like a charity/community thing, there's a place out here that does them monthly, they get a big truck and you pay a nominal fee and can go and pick up what they have for that fee once a month. Sometimes they're really good value, sometimes not so much, for our family that doesn't eat much processed food it can be really hit and miss. When veggies/fruit are in season you quite often get big boxes of fresh goods, but other times you get 40 odd jars of this dip thing that we won't eat, we also got 6 cartons of hair dye in the most recent one...

Can you donate what you won’t use or eat (that isn’t in canning/storage type jars or bottles) to another food pantry? In your spare time? lol. Do you ever buy the canned chicken from Costco? It’s not bad as a Put away long term item? Subbed even tho I’m green with envy about your Therma Mix & Smoker.

@@ShellL I generally off load it to friends/family in Brisbane! Most of it is out of date/short dated, so places won't accept it (even though they give it to us in hampers) and because its delivered out here everyone out here has the same sort of surplus! I try and be creative with what we get and try and find ways to use things that are within our diet requirements :). I haven't tried it actually! I have seen it, but I've been fairly lucky with still keeping us in fresh chicken and canning our surplus each month so far.

Nyssa, it is a joy to get a tour of your pantry and storage areas. I think you have everything organized perfectly, it works for you and your family and that is what matters. You have given me some ideas. When my son married and had their own house just down a path from us, I turned his bedroom into a pantry. My husband put up shelves around half the room high enough that we could still fit a daybed for sleep overs, also a large chest freezer fits under the shelves. I store things under the bed. Also, we have a refrigerator and a stand up freezer on the other walls. I have a computer, storage bins with some of my sewing materials, can set up the ironing board when needed. The top shelves and tops of the fridge and freezer hold my canners, large pots, dehydrator, ice cream maker, large bowls, etc. Then we have a large refrigerator freezer in the kitchen. The all come in handy. Our house sets high off the ground so we can have a basement, although it still has the dirt floor. I used to store all my canned goods on shelves under the house where it stays warm in the winter from the hot water heater and cool in the summer from the air conditioner ducts. But since all our kids are on their own I don't keep as much storage under there, just in the pantry and kitchen. It's easier to get to. If something happens where we have to it could all be used again. I even have an antique wood cookstove in the barn that could be put into use. We have always kept alternatives for hard times as my parents did. I apologize for chewing your ear, just went on a rant. I am very impressed with your brilliance. Everyone actually needs to be as self-sufficient as they can.you do wonderfully. Janice from Arkansas USA

I definitely try and keep notes for everything I make and I have a few notebooks that Darryl and the kids reference from when I'm not here, but I think the biggest issue is that I don't follow the same recipes much, I work with what I have and I make it work, its a skill more than a recipe, and hopefully some of the kids learn that skill as well!

I was having the same issue and then i remembered growing up we used either butter or margarine and full fat milk, and sugar there was no artificial sweetners. I can get close to what i remember food tasting but there are things i just won't use like margarine.

As we get things how we want them throughout time, I will definitely share the property, we've got so much work going on atm! and we get a lot done over winter because its too hot in summer hehe. There is a brief FAQ video up already :). But as I get more questions I'll keep on doing more :D. Thanks for watching! :D

Welcome! :D. Hehe, yes, so many bugs and dust and urgh... but you get acclimated to it and just deal. The Fowlers Vacola jars are Australian, super easy to come by here! :D

I got some gorgeous ex supermarket shelves which will be superb for my jars! I just need to build the pantry first lol, but what a good idea :D

Groceries next week! Radiator blew in the car, so we're a week late on doing them! :)

Forward is the only way to go! :D. Good mindset is important :D

@@OurSmallFootprint Amen Hallelujah Glory to God

If it's not practical, its not worth having! :D

I think the best part about doing youtube will be the fact that I can watch my own progress better, while you are in it it never feels like you are moving forward! The kids too! Seeing them grow up on video will be lovely!

Thankyou for watching :D

Thankyou Lisa :) and I imagine it will just get worse as they get older lol

Lots of trial and error to make it work for us, but we do what we can :D

It's an ongoing battle! :D

Thankyou, its been challenging working out what is best, but we're getting there! :D

We have definitely acclimated over the 4 years we've been here, the first year it was so cold in winter and so hot in summer we really struggled and as each year has gone on we felt like maybe it wasn't as hot/cold this year, but when I go back to my weather logging, its the same it is just us tolerating it better! :D

@@OurSmallFootprint you enjoy data it seems!

@@ANNtique definitely. I keep lots of notes and records and I think that’s why I get a bit frustrated with gardening, no two seasons are the same and I can have some points that are reliable but I can’t say definitively how my plants will go because there’s too many uncontrollable variables lol

Always a work in progress! But we are getting closer to it being 'perfect' (is a homesteaders kitchen/pantry every perfect!) each year :D

The dust was so hard to get used to initially, but it just is now! :D

So much dust lol, but everything is safe in the jars, just gotta wipe em down! We are too, we'd love to have the pantry built etc, but we're grateful we arent trying to rent or anything in this current climate and that we're secure!

I have a bit of an faq video answering some common questions but I’ll definitely make sure to detail plans as we go ahead! We are currently relocating the chook pen etc to extend our orchard! :)

Thanks for watching :D. A hamper here is something you pay a set amount of money for and get 'whatever they have' its short dated generally, or its surplus (like the many jars of the dip!) fruit/veg that is irregular/close to going off, bread and milk that is close to out of date etc etc. So the local place is a $40 hamper and is theoretically worth three times that, but you just have no say in what you get, sometimes they're great, sometimes they're a bit meh, but they help bump the food up at the ends of the month before shopping, and the kids get some treats out of them that I would never normally buy otherwise :)

We regularly end up using the hose a scourer and the garden hose lol... but we do what we have to!

@@OurSmallFootprint yes the hose is my go to also 😀

Thankyou :)

I'm Glad! Thankyou!

Hehe, I can't help but pre emptively apologise for things that people may comment on, I know the people who do comment aren't worth my time, but its still an ongoing thing hehe :) Canning just becomes part and parcel of the processes when you do it often enough, but when you stop, its hard sometimes to get back into it hehe

Thankyou for watching :D

The tubs work wonderfully, until a child uses one as a step stool and breaks a lid lol :D

Yes, we are solar only, we have a decent sized battery bank, and lots of panels, the fridges and freezers run basically off the power on the panels all day and at night we use the battery bank to run them, it's not ideal, but its what we need to do atm to maintain food for the month :). The main thing is having the roof covered in panels and trying to use your power during the day as much as you can! Cowboy candy is sweet pickled/candied jalapeños! :). It is super delish! well worth a try! A4 Community Care does the hampers out this way :D

@@OurSmallFootprint thankyou for the reply!

It needs some tweaking, but its getting there! :D

Pros and cons to outdoor kitchens! lol

I try and keep the cardboard flats and stack them above the cans too! My biggest issue is the kids lol, I might stack them one way and come out the next day and they’ve rearranged things on me! I am so looking forward to a proper enclosed pantry eventually lol. But yes, upside down would totally help on those lift top cans, thank you :)

Hehe, I don't think I've had anything said, but I like to put disclaimers in JIC :). and try to keep some of the lids of my flour jars etc out of site lol.

I cleared space for more tomatoes lol, it looks more bare than it did! Looking forward to keeping on filling it up, but it gets eaten pretty quick too! I'm really happy with the pizza sauce I made, I was discussing though, with D, about how many of things I need for a years worth and it is a little confronting, we probably have pizza once a week, that's 52 jars of pizza sauce needed :O

@@OurSmallFootprint i know. So much food. Lol. I have actually added up exactly what we'll need and its mind blowing. I'm really glad I live up here , it'd be even harder in cold climates to grow, preserve and store what we need. 🤩

NutsaboutLife is where I bought my last lot, they've been really good, I do need to vacuum seal the excess up or something, I've been a bit slack. But the shipping was passably cost efficient and the spices were a good price! I go through a lot when I do things like my sausages and stuff, and whilst I grow a lot, I need to probably quadruple that to keep up with the way I use it! and I tried growing paprika, but for the minimal I get from each plant once dried, it was never going to do me lol.

Lol, it’s awesome, though we haven’t tested how long it lasts yet! Will be interesting to see.

Always rotating on and off the shelves! look forward to eventually getting the enclosed patio so that I can fill shelves up more! :D

It would be awfully hard to access I think, which is the biggest issue :S. we have sand too, so the ground shifts a lot I'm not sure of the ability for a freezer to deal with that kind of lack of structure of soil/pressure.

I can’t even fathom the time when the kids leave and we don’t need all this, I’ll prob keep it stocked for them to raid lok

@@OurSmallFootprint Believe me it was a habit hard to break. Lol

We chose the lifestyle, we choose to live like this :). We have fans in summer and we stay inside in the hottest parts of the day and we have a wood fire inside for in winter, but our daytime temps even in winter are still quite high, we don't get snow :). My husband and I both work from home, we don't earn much but we don't need much :). We also get a little bit from the government due to our low income and kids etc. Mum comes a couple of times a year, but I see her every six weeks when I do the groceries :)

KZfaq was a great help when I first started learning, there are a whole lotta facebook groups as well! I bought a few books to get ideas, and learned the science behind it so I was comfortable adapting things for my kitchen :D

Thank you Jilly!

www.foodpreserving.org/2012/10/baked-beans-in-tomato-sauce.html.

@@OurSmallFootprint Cheers!

Thank you! :D

There is a Tip about 40 mins away, but I don't know if they have access to any of the extras, like I know in the city they have part of the tip you can access stuff people donate that are good quality. I mostly keep an eye out for freebies on marketplace and stuff, but I don't get away from the property all that often, so we fetch what we can! :D

I definitely would like to, but space is a bit of an issue atm. We're looking to extend my kitchen space to have a built in large pantry space, we got some shelving from a grocery store cheap etc, I just haven't had the funds for the structure, once I do that it will be easier to expand. I'd like to have at least two shopping cycles worth of food, but some things I'd like more, I'd love a grain mill so I can buy wheat berries for longer term storage for grinding and things like that as well. But it's all an ongoing long term project! :)

@@OurSmallFootprint That's sound logic. It's just me now, and I keep some flour (about 50 lbs) and about 75 lbs of wheat berries.

It is still advised, dark cool, dry place, but unfortunately, most places in Australia don't have root cellars or anything like that so we do what we can! Eventually we hope to build in a pantry, we have quotes etc for the structure but just don't have the funds at the moment and when we do they'll be stored more adequately. Because they are exposed, some of the products lose their colour but the taste is still fine, and I regularly rotate and check seals because of the huge fluctuation in temps, we do lose the occasional jar, but we haven't found it to be toooooo much of an issue! :D

@@OurSmallFootprint thank ypu, Nyssa.

Let me hunt for the recipe! It was so good I want to share the one I used!

@@OurSmallFootprint thankyou so much we have a lot of green tomatoes to use up

I'd be interested in green tomato marmalade too. Great set up! Thank you!

Very humid here a lot of the time, we have wide swathes of temps, down to -8celcius in winter, up to 45-48 Celsius in summer, but humidity is nearly always high, so it makes it feel so much worse. But we have acclimatised well, we have nothing but fans, the first year was hard, but now we kinda just deal, we alter our lifestyle to suit, have a bit of a siesta in the middle of the day when needed :D Each month there is an organisation in our area that does food hampers, these are a mix of random food that is short dated or slightly bruised, or imperfect/donated etc to someone, who then splits it all up and boxes it into 'sets' you pay a set fee for it and get whatever happens to be in it that month. Sometimes its great, sometimes its a bit meh. But it is always worth far more than you pay for it :)

I actually have footage of making it completely, I will have to edit it up to share! It is a sweet pickled jalapeno/chilli mix! it is awesome, we use it in a myriad of ways, I'll try and get that out in the next couple of days :D. Thankyou for the reminder :D

@@OurSmallFootprint Thank you!

Cowboy candy is yummy to the max. I sub on a Chanel whose host became addicted when pregnant. Not sure it’s on any recommended foods list & but she has a Cast Iron gut because she had no issues eating it. I Hot,Spicy & Sweet. Contradictory.

@@ShellL Its such a great flavour, so much depth to it!

Yeah, even in nice clean metro houses there are spiders not necessarily in the house but all over the yards/exteriors/trees, its a pretty normal thing around here. I remember as a child, my sisters father used to relocate big huntsmans off the side of our house out to the banana trees, in his hands lol. Nah, the majority of the spiders (that we let be) are not really poisonous, they'd hurt if they bit of course, but most of them are fine, we kill Red Backs, they're only small but they are bad to be bitten by, the Huntsman we just let be so long as they aren't in bedrooms etc, they eat a lot of the bugs, the patio roof is too high to reach and the willy wagtails and parrots come in and clean the spiders off there quite often too. The children are taught to be aware, always move away from a snake and call an adult, don't go near it, and squish a spider if its on something they need to pick up, check under handles of plastics, especially anything black plastic, before putting your hands on it etc. Just becomes the norm.

Partly because it gets really hot here, so having the ability for airflow is important when you are bulk canning etc, but also because walls are expensive lol. We don't have much living space, so taking up that room with a small kitchen seemed counterproductive, it made more sense to have it out on the patio where we could spread it out, we have looked at insect netting or something maybe, I'd like to put a small fence around the deck to keep the dogs out as well, but for the moment its just an ongoing project! :D

They are 36s which are 1200ml :)

@@OurSmallFootprint never heard of that size where can I find some

@@barbarapruitt3978 they’re a Fowlers vacola branded jar, they’re a fairly common size, I have a lot of them, they’re great for soup! :)

I have a devanti 9 tray, the trays are stainless steel and I believe I bought it from catch of the day :)

@@OurSmallFootprint thanks, amazon have that brand also.

@@katrinaluxford6400 it works well and I like the stainless trays. Excaliburs are the prime dehydrators but they were a little out of my budget :)

@@OurSmallFootprint im glad that it works well.

Hehe, yeah, we end up using the hose in the yard or the bathtub :D but the bathtub water goes to our grey water system for the orchard, so I don't like to put too much grease or anything through there!

Thank you Deanna :D