Homestead Fall Hustle: Homemade Apple Cider, Smoked Chili Powder, and Rebuilding Garden Beds

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Garden Plants:
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Garden Planning & Preserving Journal:

Seedtime garden planner: https://seedtime.us/jkmel4ukl4tonac09iap-5fs?ref=becky-porter82
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*This is the biggest and best paper garden and preserving planner out there! I am biased of course but take my word for it, you won’t be disappointed.

Canning and Preserving Supplies:

Electric water bath canner: https://rootsandharvest.com/products/electric-bath-canner.html?searchid=0&search_query=electric+canner
Juicer: I have this one: https://amzn.to/47l5taa but you can find a similar one for cheap here: https://amzn.to/486YXoR
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Chapters –
0:00 – Full-On Homestead Mode: Garden Prep & Harvest Hustle
1:59 – Smoking & Freeze-Drying Hatch Chilies 🌶️ (Part 1)
4:04 – Reshaping Beds & Fixing the BCS Tractor 🔧
6:00 – Smoking Hatch Chilies (Part 2)
6:29 – Pressing Homemade Apple Cider 🍎 & Canning it
9:15 – Soil Testing & Adding Amendments
13:19 – Planting the Overwinter Mix Cover Crop
16:18 – Sweet Potato Harvest & Garden Pests 🐇
20:46 – Freeze-Dried Hatch Chilis & Enchilada Sauce 🌮 (Part 3)
22:50 – Morning Harvest & Farm-Fresh Breakfast 🍳
26:51 – Making Powdered Hatch Chilis (Part 4)

Most links are affiliate links. Please know I will only recommend items I LOVE and use myself, at no extra cost to you, and it helps support the channel! You guys are the best! -Becky

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This week, we’ve been in full-on homestead mode. Reshaping garden beds, prepping the soil for winter, and an emergency sweet potato harvest. But amidst all the hustle and hands-on work, we still found time for the fun stuff. Freeze drying hatch chilies, making homemade cider, and turning our harvest into delicious meals. It’s chaotic, productive, and at the same time, so satisfying. I’m heading out to the garden right now because I need to do some reshaping of the garden beds. This is an exciting time for me. I really like to kind of like reset for the next year and clean things up. Some people like to clean their house. I like to clean up my garden. So, the first thing I need to do is put some rebar in the ground where these rows are going to be with a string line. I roughly know where the rows are, but I like to measure out every single time I uh reshape the beds just so everything is straight. coming. Oh, after that’s done, I’ll take the BCS tractor with the rotary plow attachment and I’ll just take it through the walking path and it just takes that soil that has settled throughout the year and it throws it up back on the garden bed. So, I’ll do that all the way across here. Then after that, we’ll change attachments for the tractor. And we’ll use a power harrow, which stirs the top two inches of the soil and just gets it all prepped and nice for seeds. And I’m planting some cover crop seeds in here. So, this whole process will probably just take a few days, but I need to get this done because I also need to do other areas of the garden, and I want to make sure I get everything covered as much as possible as we go into winter. Last week we harvested all our hedge chilies and now it’s time to preserve them for winter. So the thought is with these is to smoke them, freeze dry them, and then grind them up into a powder and add them to dry rubs and seasonings that we use, you know, when we cook stuff. Becky had the brilliant idea to smoke them instead of roast them. And I thought, let’s do that because usually 98% of the time when we smoke something, it makes it taste better. A little unconventional from the roasted hatch chilis, but should still taste pretty good. Boom. [Applause] [Music] That’s a lot. Mom’s not going to like having a spider in the kitchen. I grew three different kinds. I basic Oh, there’s my spider. Okay. And I’ve got a little friend. Okay. There. Go. Go in. Go in little guy. Okay. Stay in there. Okay. So, I basically I grew three different kinds of hatch chilies. I grew a mild, medium, and a hot. And they’re all mixed together here right now. The only discernable difference is mild ones are just long and straight, pretty simple. And then the hotter they get, generally they get a little curlier and kind of wrinkly and textured on the on the skin. So, they’re all going to be mixed together here. So, it’s going to end up making my guess is like a mildly hot seasoning, and that’s perfectly okay for us. So, we’ll see how that turns out. Okay. I’m going to sort them now kind of by size. So, I’m going to roast like the large ones all together. [Music] Hot. Okay. We’re going to pick up where we last left off with these garden rows here. I got a couple of them done and I need to finish the rest of these over here with the rotary plow. It always takes a little bit longer than I anticipate. Every time I do a row, I stop and mark things off. So, I turn off the BCS and we turned it off. I went to pull it and I broke it. So, luckily I have a nice handyman. She’s so strong. She broke it. That’s really what it was. He’s going to fix it. Just mounting bolts right here that Okay, these might actually be the size. Yep. Yay. Let’s see. Okay. [Applause] So, the BCS is all fixed now. And what I’m working on is these rows in front of the tunnel. We have four rows across here. And the tunnel is only 14 ft wide. So, these rows in front of the tunnel are a little bit smaller than the garden beds in the rest of the garden. So, I have to adjust my spacing for these rows. [Music] Okay, first batch done off the smoker. After looking at these, I think I am going to peel the skins as you’re traditionally supposed to do. The skins are just super thick and I I think they’re going to alter the taste even if I leave them on and grind them up in the freeze dryer. So, going to take them off. And I feel much better about that. We have a few more favorite things that we need to make with our apples. We pretty much used up all the apples that we had by eating them fresh and by making the cranberry applesauce. So, last week I had Cam go down and grab some more apples so that we could finish up making our favorite things for the pantry because it’s just not the same to get them from the store. It’s they’re so much better when we get them locally and are able to preserve these things ourselves. So, one of our favorite things to make is apple cider and that is what I’m going to be making today. I don’t have a cider press. I have a cold press juicer that I use and it is pretty much almost the same flavor-wise as using a cider press. [Music] I finished washing the apples and now I’m just cutting them into small enough pieces that they can fit inside the juicer. I have two different types of apples here. One is Fuji and the other is called lemonade. And the lemonade one is sort of like sweet tart. It’s kind of the same as Fuji. Usually I like to use Arkansas black apples when I make cider, but they’re not quite ready yet. So I’m just using what I have for right now. So I said before the juicer works just as well for making cider. The only downside is that it takes a really long time to make a large amount of cider. So, one of these years, we’re either going to make our own cider press or buy one. So, that this actually is quite a bit faster instead of taking all day when it could take just a couple of hours. We just finished pressing these apples. So, now I’m going to heat this up. The important thing with apple cider is not to bring it to a boil. You need to keep it at a simmer or a little bit less. And then you put it in the canning jars and can it from there. I’m also adding a little bit of bottled lemon juice to this apple cider because I am canning it. Usually with my current setup, it takes about 4 lbs of apples to yield one quart of apple cider. So, I had about 24 lbs of apples and I got about six quarts of cider. Those get processed in the caner for 10 minutes and then I let them cool and store them. Even though I love apple cider as it is just plain, most of these will probably end up being used as an ingredient in recipes. So, we just finished plowing or cutting the walking paths here. So, now that I’m done with the rotary plow, I’m going to take that off of the BCS and replace it with the power harrow. The power harrow is going to make these beds ready to plant seeds. Yes. So, we are planning on planting cover crops in here. But before I plant the cover crops, it is the perfect time to add amendments to the soil. And I know what my soil needs right now because I did several soil tests around the garden a couple of weeks ago. And I’ll show you how I did that right now. I am going around and collecting samples because I’m doing four soil tests today. I test every single year and the best time to do a soil test is in the fall because once we get the results back, we can add any amendments that are needed and make adjustments and then they actually have time to work before we plant in the soil once we get into spring. This next area that I’m testing is where our potatoes were planted this spring and they basically drown in the soil. So, I’m going to see if there’s any problems that are happening there and anything that I can do to alleviate that some. So, to get the soil sample, I’m taking the soil probe and I’m putting it in the ground about 6 in. And then I’m going all around that area where I’m testing and I’m getting like six to seven different um testing spots and I’m putting them all in one bucket. Then I’ll mix those together and we’ll have that be one test. A few years ago, I did an entire video about how I test my soil. At the time, I was using a different soil test kit. that company of the kits that I was using, they went out of business, unfortunately. So, I was able to find a new kit that I really like. This one is from Redmond. It has all the features that are important to me. It’s super easy, fast, accurate, and they make it easy to read the results and offer recommendations and application rates. Because I have a big garden and I’m testing multiple areas at once, it’s important to keep track of what soil goes to what area. I made a little note on the paper that I was keeping right next to the barcode. What area of the soil I tested and that barcode on that paper, that number, it matches the barcode on the actual soil test that you send in. I usually break up the garden into like 2500 square foot areas, which is pretty big still. This family garden right here, this entire thing is 10,000 square ft. And then we have even more over there. I could probably do 10 soil tests for all this area and it would still not be enough. So, this year I’m testing my problem areas. I’m testing some of the areas that did super well. And I’m also testing newer garden beds like where my corn was this year. Then I registered all the tests and shipped them off. And one week later, we got the results. Now that I have the results back, I know exactly what I need to do in here. I know that the the area is low in potassium. a little bit slow in sulfur and a couple of other things. So, I’m going to add some kelp meal in here. And I’m also going to add something called Mineralite by Redmond. I just did a little bit of math to find out how much of our amendments I needed to add to the beds. And I need to add this entire 25 lb bag across all of our garden beds here of the Mineralite. This is the Mineralite uh soil grow. It has added poultry manure. And I’m also going to use the rest of this 50 lb bag of kelp meal. It doesn’t have 50 lbs left. It has about 10 lbs left to make some adjustments in this area before we get planting. Testing your soil each year and then making adjustments based on that test makes such a huge impact in the garden. If you are in need of a soil test, check out Redmond. I have a link for them down in the video description and you can use my code seasonal homestead for 15% off your order. Cam got the power hero hooked up. Thank you. And I got the beds all prepped and ready. I have all the amendments on there now. So, we’re just going to take this over the garden beds. We got all of our beds prepped and ready. Now, we’re ready to seed across these our cover crop. So, I wanted to try out this company because they make mixes already ready to go. So, this one is called an overwintering mix because I want it to stay alive all winter long and hold that soil in place. So, since it’s already mixed, it’s a little bit harder to put through a cedar and get like even coverage. So, I’m going to try a little bit in the Earthway cedar. If that doesn’t work, then we’re just going to broadcast and break it in. I’m just going to do a little bit cuz we just need to like test. Okay. Yeah, this is going to jam a whole bunch. We just did a little test area with the Earthway cedar. It did not go well. One of the issues with the Earthway cedar. When you have mixed size seeds is that it gets jammed up really easily. So, that’s what happened when we did our little test run. It’s just going to be a big pain to have to unjam it every single time. We have all of these garden beds to do. On each garden bed, we were going to need to do six passes across, and we just don’t want to do that. So, we’re just going to broadcast that seed, rake it in, and hope for the best. Don’t fill it all the way. Fill it like go like a third. Yeah. It’s got a big crack on the side, too, that you know, across the top like that. Oh, I got something. [Music] So, we’re hooking up the overhead irrigation. Now, I like this a lot more than drip cuz one, it’s easy to set up, it’s easy to take down, and it’s very it’s very mobile. two weeks ago. This was set up in the corn where the chickens are now. And so we’re just going to repurpose it here. And then it’s working out really great. So I have the main line. So I’m going to roll this main line out in the walking aisles. Then the upright sprinklers I’ll post in the ground where I’ve pre drilled some holes where they’re going to attach into here. And then we can have this thing watering in 10 minutes. Flex. Oh yeah. You know, so we Yeah, that goes in nice and deep. Ready, manual. 10 minutes. Okay. Okay, Biggie, where where are we at and what’s going on? So, I was doing what was supposed to be a relaxing walk around my garden, just observing stuff in the evening, and I came across my sweet potatoes, and the leaves were looking really good, really lush and green. I’m like, maybe I should just like take a peek at these, and I was like, oh boy. There was this huge tunnel and my sweet potato looking like this. And I’m like, oh no. So, I reach over to the next plant and same thing. huge area just completely dug out. This potato halfeaten. So, we’re thinking it’s like some kind of a groundhog that is eating these just based on the size of the holes that were here. Yeah. Um probably mull too, like a combination of both. But this is pretty intense damage. And so now we’re doing emergency. Let’s harvest these cuz they’re big enough to be harvested at this point. I was kind of waiting it out just to get some bigger ones. Like these are some of my bigger sized ones. I have some smaller, too. So, I’m just going to hurry and get at least a good portion of these out tonight. I’m not going to do all of them cuz we have other stuff to do. But, we’ll get the rest tomorrow and some of them tonight. Okay. These ones look good. Yeah. Yeah. These ones look good cuz you can tell like right at the top there’s no holes here. Got to pull that out. Yeah, the because of something. Let’s just stop right there. Okay, that makes me feel a little bit better. At least we have some whole sweet potatoes. Just get them. Wow. Looks like some long ones in you. Yeah, the purple. They’re very cool looking. [Music] There we go. We got a good amount of the sweet potatoes harvested last night. Put them in the wagon in the shed. Now we’re going to wrap up. Mhm. Mhm. Wow. Wow. Hot. Dang. For us, these sweet potatoes can grow in this soil. It’s like just really they’re just really tough. They’re almost They’re not like sod busters, but So, after those first few that we picked that were rodent eaten that scared us, the next 20 that we’ve picked have like been rodent free. So, and untouched. So, I’m thinking that was a blessing in disguise that they ate those and we saw them. It kind of scared us into harvesting these cuz perhaps if we’ have waited two more weeks, they may have all been eaten. Anyway, that’s how I’m looking at it. I tried a few new varieties of sweet potatoes this year. One is a purple potato, which is so cool. We’ve already eaten some of these and they maintain their purple color really well. And this one is called purple majesty. The other new variety I tried is called Bayou Bell. And we also grew our favorite tried and trueue variety. It’s called Brower Guard. It always produces really well. We finished up the sweet potato harvest. We put them all in the wagon back here. There are some that have been eaten so much that we’re probably just going to put them in a bucket and feed them to the pigs. And then there’s some that are like half eaten where if we just chop off the eaten part, we could eat the rest. So those we’re going to take in the house and eat those in the next couple of weeks. And then there are whole sweet potatoes that are in good shape that we’re going to cure in the shed. And then we’ll bring those in later and we’ll have them all winter long. Okay, I’ve got seven trays ready for the freeze dryer for these hash chilies. And I still have some extra chilies. Becky and I are going to turn this into some enchilada sauce. Okay, it’s Cam late night edition. In the kitchen, we have the bulk of the Hatch chilis are in the freeze dry right now, but with the rest of them, as I mentioned before, I’m going to turn that into some Hatch chili enchilada sauce. It’ll be a welcome addition here at our house cuz we always have ample red tomato-based salsas and different things like that. So, having a green sauce is always a nice treat. And I love Hatch chilis. So, this is going to be good. I love this recipe for its simplicity. I start with a few smoked Hatch chilis. Grab some onions, some garlic from the pantry, and then of course some olive oil to start. I chop the onions faster than I’ve ever chopped onions before in my life. And then I get those in the pan to start cooking down. Okay, next is garlic. And my hands were a little bit tired from those onions, so I didn’t chop these quite as fast, but still got the job done. After that’s cooked down for a few minutes, I added some vegetable stock that I made the night before, brought that to a boil, and let that simmer for a few minutes. Then I took it immediately to the blender, poured it in there, and then added the rest of the ingredients. Hatch chilies, salt, pepper, cumin, juice from limes, blended that all together, and then poured it back into the saucepan to simmer for about 10 more minutes to let it thicken a little bit. By this time, everybody had gone to bed and I was getting a little hungry. The kitchen smelled so good. So, I warmed up a few tortillas, set this on the counter, and I had to try just to make sure it was good. And let me tell you, this is good. Anyways, I’m going to keep eating, but thanks for joining me on Cooking with Cam late night edition. We have had a couple of years where by October 10th or 11th we have already had a frost in the garden. Sometimes we even have a hard frost by this point. And so I am soaking up the fact that this year we have not had a frost yet. And according to the forecast for the next 14 days, there is not a frost in sight either. So, I have been feeling a sense of urgency lately to savor all the fresh vegetables and make a lot of meals while they last. I felt inspired this morning to make a nice big breakfast with all this food that we have in the garden. So, I need to harvest a bunch of stuff out here, bring it back inside, and then I’ll show you what we’re going to make with it. Celery. Yeah, we got to get some celery. There you go. There’s one for you. Peanut butter. Peanut butter and celery. [Music] [Music] Mango. When I was making the apple cider a couple days ago, I had an idea to make some juice. Juice generally isn’t super healthy because it takes the fiber out of the food and if you’re using a lot of fruit, it can spike your blood sugar. So, it’s definitely a treat we have in moderation. And this morning, I wanted to make a more healthconscious juice that contains some apples, but also vegetables and herbs from the garden. So, I planted turmeric 2 years ago and surprisingly I had a couple pieces that were left in the soil in our high tunnel and they overwintered and then grew again this year. So, I harvested those to put in the juice because it’s a superfood that has all kinds of possible benefits like being anti-inflammatory and also helpful for anxiety. And then I put some celery in there and cucumbers and a squeeze of lime juice. If you’ve never had a juice like this before, you might think it would taste weird, but it’s actually really delicious, especially if you get the ratios of fruits to vegetables balanced correctly. It has a sweet yet earthy flavor. The juice went into the fridge. And next up was making a breakfast sausage and chili omelette. Before I went outside and harvested everything, I roasted some onions. Then I cooked up a pound of mild sausage. I won’t use the whole pound for these omelets, but it’s one of those things that’s good to batch cook and then just have ready in the refrigerator for other meals throughout the week. I also made some fresh salsa and chopped up some of our fermented jalapenos. Next, I whipped up about three eggs. I’m just using three eggs per omelette. So, I made one omelette for me, one omelette for Cam. My kids, a bunch of them were not at home. One of them was sick. our littlest kids, they will just eat off ours. So, it was six eggs total, but I just did three eggs at a time in a hot 10-in skillet. And then I put some butter in the bottom before I put those eggs in. For the toppings, I put on a/4 cup of the roasted onions, 1/4 cup of cooked sausage, a tablespoon or so of the fermented jalapenos, some cheese, and then topped it off with avocados. Then I added the fresh salsa and some sour cream as sides and it was super yummy. And yeah, he just after we were done with breakfast, the freeze-dried chilies were finished. So Cam took those out and got those put away. What we decided to make with them is some freeze-dried Hatch chili powder. And in the past when we have made powders with freeze-dried stuff, some things they stay dried really well and other things if you are using them a lot, they will rehydrate really easily and clump up. And we don’t like to add any additives to our spices. So instead of adding something unnatural to the spice, what we add is a little bit of salt in there and that helps keep the spices from rehydrating. So we added about a/4 cup of salt to each of the jars of Hatch chilis and mix those up. And then after that, Cam put away the Hatch chili enchilada sauce that he made the other day. It needed to chill in the fridge before he could package that and put it away. And we got that in the freezer. That’s all for now. See you next week.