My large freezer gave up the ghost - lots of canning and preserving ahead

Well now. Over the course of the last three years or so my family and I have been learning ways to be more self sufficient. All by books and by helpful posts on the Internet by other bloggers and farms.Thank goodness for that and for the people who share their knowledge of how to do this stuff. We have learned how to slaughter and butcher your own goat, how to butcher and prepare certain rabbit dishes. How to milk goats and care for them on youtube, how to make cheese, how to can various different goods, be it animals or plant, the list goes on.

I'm so very thankful for all of these kind folks who take the time out of their busy lifestyles to share this with the world. Especially today.

Why today over any other day? Because my large freezer gave up the ghost. The large one. The one with 2 goats, several rabbits and gallons and gallons of milk are stored. As well as other fruits and vegetable that we have put away.

I'm going to be relying heavily on several more of these websites over the coming couple of days, mostly in canning up goats milk and preserving more in cheese. I've got the cheese part down pretty well, but only the farmers style soft cheese. No hard cheese's yet. I found this wonderful blog on canning milk at home from Razor family farms. There is a very fun read down toward the bottom of the post that I found especially intriguing, from 1918. Here is this neat article.

Well, when the ship hits the sand it's always good to know what the heck to do next. I have a full couple of days ahead of me. Canning and other wise preserving through drying and smoking and other "old style" preservation methods. I'm so glad I just got this book "Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation" by "The Gardeners and Farmers of Centre Terre Vivante" -- absolutely excellent resource.

At any rate, I'll try to take the time to document what I've done and perhaps even share how it was done if I have the time. It may take me a few days to a month but I will try to do it. It's the least I can do after relying quite heavily on other's who have taken the time to share.