Living Free in Tennessee - Nicole Sauce

Several of our friends have passed away in the last week and it reminds me that you need to live for the now as much as you can, while laying the foundation for a good future for yourself -- or for your loved ones. While thinking about this, I found a nice tribute to our friend who passed away on Monday from Garth Brooks: https://www.facebook.com/GarthBrooks/videos/1078676248878474/

What we are eating and preserving this week:

• From that garden and local markets: beets, spinach, yellow squash, cabbage, potatoes, peppers and a surprise kale plant, wild raspberries and blackberries, peaches
• From the larder: sweet potatoes, frozen blueberries, venison, bacon
• Preserving: A do-over on pickled beets (when in doubt throw it out), It's time to make pickles but we will talk about that next week with our special guest...

Three time-saving ideas for the homesteader who also works a full time job

Listen to Remy's Reaction to the Florida Shooting: How to react to tragedy:

One of the best ways to eat well on a budget is to buy produce when it is in season and preserve it for the whole winter. Last week, I spent $20 on 1/2 bushel of beets, an additional $5-10 on other ingredients, and ended up with fourteen jars of pickled beets. Had I preserved all the beets, I would have had 21 jars, making the cost to me a little over $1 per jar. Go try to get such a premium product for that price at the grocer. You can get crummy ones in the $1.30 range, but premium ones are $3-6 per jar.

This episode of Living Free in Tennessee walks through the process of water bath canning and shares my personal pickled beet recipe along with the recipe I inherited from my Great Aunt Helen.

What we are eating this week

• Berries!
• Elderflower Fritters: a recipe - do not use olive oil
• Items from the root cellar: Spaghetti squash and sweet potatoes
• Still getting lettuce galore but that is about to change

What we are preserving this week - and how

• Peppermint
• Bee balm - finally about to bloom
• Sour Cherry Jam
• Blackberry leaves
• Pickled Beets - Recipe coming soon!

Garden/pest update

• The flea beetle
• Squash bugs
• Does the duct tape trick really work on squash bug eggs?
• Neem oil or Dawn

About the Root Cellar and Canned Food Storage

Final song: Every Way written by Nicole Sauce, performed by Sauce

What we are eating this week

• Coleslaw recipe & freshness strategy
  • 2 TBSP mayonnaise, 2 TBSP vinegar, 1/3 cup milk, 1 TBSP honey, 1 tsp freshly ground pepper, 1 tsp salt. Shake like mad! Pour over your cut up cabbage, carrots and onions.
• Chard, radishes, spinach, lettuces, canned corn (must. finish. last. year's. corn.), strawberries, sweet potatoes
• Poke weed w/ video on how to prepare it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3EnGpPUWhs
• Sassafras root - video on how to harvest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1scAAetl7EE

What we are preserving this week - and how

• Peppermint
• Bee balm
• Strawberries
• Blackberry leaves

Time to test your pressure canner gauge - a not from the entension office --https://extension.tennessee.edu/WebPacket/Pages/NYCU-2016-05-Canning.aspx

How the Holler Homestead started

An interview with Michelle Shelley of Full Circle Heritage Farms From Michelle: "You might want to change the title to "woman running a farm into the ground, into a wall, through a gate (farm truck with no brakes), or just a woman breaking stuff- that's what I'm really running!

The mineral feeder she made:

The manure spreader:

Holler Update

• The ducks got a pool!
• Tomatoes looking great and a shout out to Nick Ferguson of Homegrown Liberty
• The importance of relationships: Truck in the shop

Outro: Grandpa's Song, by Sauce

Nine years ago, we started on an adventure in the country. What began as a weekend getaway quickly changed into a small homestead with chickens, gardens, laughter, neighbors, and sometimes the opposite of laughter.

The Holler Homestead is known in our area for our home roasted coffee (it takes less time to roast your own than drive to the store), elephant garlic, stone ground flour and hand rolled oats. We also help people learn how to preserve food and are keenly interested in self sufficient living.

In this first episode we cover:

1) What we're eating this week from the land

2) The independence fund

3) Managing an overwhelming list of homestead duties

4) Tea

5) My new daily planner (read about that here: http://nicolesauce.com/2016/03/07/the-only-day-planner-that-has-ever-worked/)

Let me know what you want to hear about next...

~Nicole Sauce

While I was taking a shower, my phone rang three times:

1) Dad

2) Ex husband

3) Uncle Steve in New York

The last one was the first message I heard on September 11, 2001. Uncle Steve, unable to reach anyone locally decided to call me and let me know that he was OK, but that he'd appreciate it if I got the message out to everyone else in the family. What followed was a very long day for many Americans ending in some mourning lost family members.

At the time, I was in charge of training executives from Europe who ended up stranded in the states, was an ESL teacher for interns from Germany, and had family in both DC and New York. Many frantic calls were made that day to find housing for those stuck in the states, make sure everyone was OK in the family, and to cope with the feelings of anger that arise from terror attacks.

And it was quiet. SOOOO quiet. You don't realize how much sound comes to a city from the air until the planes are gone.

Kirk said at the next Sauce practice, "They awoke the hidden dragon."

I never could come up with words to communicate all the emotions of this time, but I did write a song - my only instrumental. I hope you enjoy it. 

A recording of Sauce - the best drama rock band from Portland, Oregon! Music and words my Nicole Sauce. Performed by Sauce the band.

I wrote it about our last days together with my grandfather after we found out he was terminally ill. It was a beautiful time where we were visited by family from all over, where Grandma told stories about the past we had never heard before, and when my grandfather taught me one last lesson: death is natural and beautiful, not scary. And he loved my grandma so much that the last word we heard from him was her name.

Grandpa's Song by Nicole Sauce Williams
(Copyright 2004)

Light Love Life Hope

Light in darkness -love eternal
Life you showed us - hope - it's hopeless

Look into your eyes, now there's nothing left to say
Feeling of your hand holding on to mine today

Inside Out Bound

In the final hours together
Longed to show you - you remember

Fire in your eyes looked across the room to her
Feeling in the air taking you forever

Showed us how to right through small deeds
Speak with silence, love in all things

Look into your eyes, now there's nothing left to say
Feeling of you hand holding on for one last day