Fighting flu season

This is the part where I say that I am not a doctor or medical physician of any kind, I am just a mother informing herself and passing along the information I find for you to process and make your own informed decisions with.
Don't replace good quality health care with my recipe just because I said that I read it has health benefits. Inform yourself, discuss it with your healthcare practitioner (whoever that may be) and make YOUR OWN decisions based on that, like a responsible adult. I accept no responsibility for what you do with the below recipe. 

Last winter while heavily pregnant, I spent 3 months caring for a sick family.
Mr HomesteadingHippy works in an environment where he travels and is exposed to other fluey virus cell shedding people on a daily basis. So last year he brought home a new flu EVERY ROTATION.
With winter once again on it's way and flu season inevitably around the corner, I wanted to be prepared.

I've read about elderberry benefits before, planned for a shrub or two, fantasised about making syrup one day, but never really made much of an effort of doing much more than that just yet.
Until now.

Last week, I excitedly opened a package of dried organic elderberries, grabbed some honey and spices from the cupboard and prepared to make my first batch of syrup.

Here's my adjuted recipe based on a variety of diferent recipes across the internet. They're all pretty similar, so you could google around yourself and come up with a slight twist of your own if you're daring.

Homesteading Elderberry Syrup.
1/2 cup dried elderberries or 1 cup fresh RIPE elderberries (no stems though, they're poisonous. ONLY RIPE BERRIES should be used)
3 cups water
1/2 cup honey
1 cinnamon stick
15 cloves (this is very clovey, just the way I like it but you can use as little as 5 instead if you like)

Place all in a pot, except for the honey and bring to the boil.
Reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes.
Remove from heat, strain through muslin and squeeze all the wonderful flavour
Cool slightly and stir in honey while still very warm.
Bottle and label.
This recipe made around 250ml give or take when reduced.

We use this at the dosage of:
1 teaspoon daily for prevention and 1 tspn every waking hour for treatment of the kids (not suitable for under 1's due to the honey) and
1 Tablespoon daily for prevention and 1 tablespoon every waking hour for treatment for the adults.

This syrup isn't overly sweet, nor is it unpleasant. The kids quite happily take theirs with no complaint.
I even tried adding a little extra oomph to our adult bottle of elderberry syrup, with a few drops of Four Thieves Oil.
I might only use two drops next time, maybe even one.

Milk confessions and DIY organic yoghurt

I have an admission to make. One most people gawk at upon hearing, when my hubby puffs his chest cockily and dobs me in to our peers... or anyone who will listen really.

I budget and spend $5 on each 2 litre bottle of milk we consume.

That's right, $2.50 PER LITRE of milk consumed. We go through 20 bottles a month. $100 on milk.
"But why, when you can buy milk for $1/litre?!" says hubby.

I know people who pay $7 for 2 litres of raw milk, for bathing in of course.
No, ours isn't raw milk. We can't find a reliable source of raw milk in our area, our cow is dry and the goats are now dry too. This is the next best option and it just happens to cost $5 for 2 litres.

$1 milk comes from cows fed multiple antibiotics and GM canola feed to improve their milking qualities. We know this, hubby used to work in an animal feed plant and physically made dairy cattle feed himself!
Our milk is organic, it CAN'T contain those antibiotics and GM feed we want to avoid and it just happens to be $5 for 2 litres.
The farmers of these $1 milk cows are given attrociously poor wages for their milk. They can't afford to treat their animals better even if they wanted to! They can barely feed their own families.
The big supermarkets are crapping all over the dairy industry AND I WILL NOT SUPPORT THAT!

I get migraines from conventional milk, Miss 6 reacts behaviourally to conventional homogenised milk and dairy products.
Our milk is the only organic, unhomogenised, farmer friendly, antibiotic and GM free milk that we can get in our town.
THAT is why I budget and pay $5 for 2 litres of milk... and I believe it's worth it.

Of course, our expensive milk doesn't come without sacrafices. We buy half the yoghurt we could eat if allowed to. We also sacrafice other areas of our food shopping, just to gain the best health benefits from our food we can at any given time.
We certainly can't afford to buy organic fruit and veg and I personally think supermarket 'fresh' 'organic' ranges are a crock of male cow manure once you know what they're allowed to do to it once it's off the farm. I prefer to grow my own where possible, thankyou.
We have to sacrafice a lot to afford the good stuff, but with the good stuff one can MAKE those things they sacraficed.

This means FRUGALITY. Take the time to make your own bread, yoghurt, kefirs, cheese, crackers, biscuits, cake and pudding treats.
You can save money, increase your food intake and even your food vitality and nutrients if you dare to grow a few things for yourself.

Today, I am frugalising yoghurt. Let's turn that $5 milk into a $6 saving!
2 litres of milk makes 2 litres/kgs of yoghurt.
$5 for the milk, about 10 minutes actual work and 24 hours time and you have 2 kg's of yoghurt.
2 kg's of organic yoghurt at the local large supermarket is $11. That's your $6 saving for every two tubs of yoghurt. You've essentially doubled your yoghurt for free. All you need to do is save a starter from your last store bought tub of REAL yoghurt, organic or at least plain natural full of cultures and maybe a few of your old sauce jars and lids, enough to hold up to 2 litres of liquid.

So next time you're about to finish that tub of organic or natural yoghurt full of live cultures, grab a bottle of milk instead and save yourself some money.
The health benefits in homemade yoghurt are heaps higher and stronger too.
Have I mentioned you can make cheese from your yoghurt?

I have shared the slow cooker yoghurt recipe on the old page before, but not sure about here on The Homesteading Hippies.
So here is a link with both the slow cooker method and the stovetop method for those who would like to take a hand at the traditional method.

Martin Farm Update

My new upcycled apron

Boy have we been busy busy, it's just that time of year!
Building, fencing, gardening, paving, sewing, fixing and preparing.
And then add in those few extra stresses that life just loves to throw in everybody's way, along their journies.

Autumn's here and winter's on it's way. I can feel it in my toes on the cold mornings, while I watch the sun rise over our bush from the verandah, sipping my hot morning cuppa.
I'm preparing by organising winter clothes and what I need to buy or sew to fill our wardrobes with warm things to wear. Including aprons to go over simple under layers, like thegood ol' days.

We discovered our rain tank liner is leaking, so we're currently going through twice as much water as normal until the repair man can get out to fix the tank at the same time there is a truck of water here to refill the liner once fixed.

This adds strain to the gardening and livestock side of things, let alone the everyday use which has that little voice in the back of my head as I reach for the tap: "What if it runs out this time? How long have we got until we can have more water delivered? Can we last that long without water?"

My oven blew.When I turn the oven function on, all is good... turn on the heat dial and **poof** oven electrics freak out and the whole thing switches off. So no oven, grill, living area heater/winter clothes dryer and towel warmer. Luckily I still have the gas stove top, slow cooker and grilling appliance for backup.
Not exactly the most convenient thing to happen on a homestead, an oven breaking. All the baking, bread, dehydrating and preserving potential just got halved in this house.
Does anyone happen to know if bread can be baked in the slow cooker at all?
I've read of it being risen overnight in the slowcooker, but baked? and sourdough?

Purple King Bean
(the day before an escapee chicken gobbled it up)

I've been building onto my frog pond, building up the garden bed and soil health around it, adding in a few herbs and planting some quick harvest seeds to use the soil until I have more herbs to plant out. Plus a wall of purple beans, simply because I love them.

Last month we celebrated Miss 2 becoming Miss 3.
Is it just me, or do 'threenagers' suddenly enter a phase of meltdown mode at every little thing, when they didn't before? What the??... Though, I do suspect some of this is more triggered by her sore belly sometimes, poor kid.
I'm sure it can't be easy to be 3, so hats off to her for her efforts so far.

We've been spending these past months experimenting with our diet and how to make it work into our food budget without feeling hungry.
We've found that all but one of us are sensitive to gluten to some extent and the youngest and I are battling candida yet again. So we experimented with cutting out grains altogether and trialling coconut flour. Never. Going. There. Again. Ever!

I'll be switching us back to sourdough, as we didn't seem to have any of the same problems on a controlled ammount of sourdough and it's something I can work with and see potential for baking with (when I get my oven fixed). We also love our sourdough pancakes and crepes as fillers. Bonus being that sourdough doesn't feed candida so it's an acceptable meal filler to have with all the meat, fruit and veg we're eating.

Tumeric Tri colour Quinoa
with Chicken

We've been trialling Quinoa (Keeeeeen-wah) recently as one of our fillers in place of rice or potatoes. The kids love it, but something just isn't sitting right with me about it. I don't know what it is, but I think I'll give it a litte more research before we get into it too much more.

We sold twin baby goats and have kept the single baby to fatten up for the spit. Yup, we're going to eat her if she looks to give some decent meat. It's what we're here for, it's what we're MEANT to be doing here. It's about time we finally got on with living our dream, not just dreaming it.

We're also looking to sell our cow. She's just too big for me to be able spend time with, with 3 small children aswell as the goats that we have.With her gone, I can focus more where I need to.

I am happy for the older kids to walk around and help with most of the goats, they are something we can achieve together and still obtain meat, milk and hide from. Goats are also better suited to our climate than cows who ideally need green grass all year round.
The savings of the cow being gone, in food and water alone is going to be a huge relief for the budget. We can start to focus on improving and developing other areas of the property.

We're getting excited about plans for new chicks, about to come to fruition.
Some are destined for the freezer. Some are destined to be our egg laying and meat making pets. Some are straight out pets for the kids.
Some of our hens are now so old, they don't lay anymore. Some of the other hens are good as broodies, after just a handful of eggs from them. So we're updating and improving the flock. We're also attempting to cut our food bill by buying meat birds.

This year we're 'officially' homeschooling Miss almost 6 in a free schooling manner. That is to say, this is the year that we have to register as homeschoolers, or send her to an educational institution (ugh!).
So, these new chicks have been a source of inspiration and much delightful learning we can use to show how life is learning.

Miss 6 with her rooster I call "FarQuad"
due to his little rooster syndrome.

I printed out some fake money and little chicks for Miss almost 6. 
The idea is for her to learn counting by 10's ($10 notes), monetary  value, multiplication (6 x $10 notes = $60 and 6 chicks @ $10 each = $60) and social interaction/behaviours through play, among a few other lessons that can be had as we ask more questions. Of course, she'll use them to learn from as she sees fit.


And the most important piece of news of all...
This year, I have decided that instead of missing out anymore, we ARE going to celebrate easter. That nasty gross commercial easter I've avoided for 6 years...
We are going to be celebrating the Cacao plant and it's many beautiful and luxuriously wonderful products.
Now, to be able to make the kids some choc body balm and find chocolate that complies with 'kids can eat it' standards to hide around the yard. Aaaahhh, that should get me an hour to myself next weekend.

All hail the reverred cacao products.

So tell me, what do you get up to during late summer and autumn?