When life gives you lemons...and oranges...and grapefruits

Hey there lovelies! I’m balancing my desire to share stories about my first year off grid, homesteading in Northern Canada...and sharing all the exciting things we are up to now. To ease back in, I’m going to share what I know how to best, which is all the homesteading fun we are up to on a daily basis.

In the coming weeks I will also weave in our #HomesteadJournal with the experiences and lessons we have to share.

Today was a beautiful smelling day.

Now...I have pigs, sheep, cattle, chickens, geese, ducks, dogs and cats...so often it just...doesn’t. But today we were blessed to receive 8 cases of citrus fruit and we took the afternoon to process it all.

We are blessed to be taking part in a program that redirects food from groceries that is no longer fit to sell but is perfectly edible. Slightly bruised bananas, dairy that’s about to expire, day old breads, meats...stuff like that. This program is intended to get feed for farm animals to small farms for free.

The thing about citrus is that few farm animals enjoy it. It’s not bad for any of them...they just don’t choose to eat it. With close to 30 lbs of mandarins, lemons and grapefruit to use up, my girls and I set to work to process the citrus and not leave a single part unused.

Here’s how we did just that...

First off...I’ve ALWAYS wanted to can mandarins. We try to eat very seasonally and locally. For us that means, if we don’t grow it, we don’t eat it. Or at least...rarely. To receive this many oranges is a blessing as we love them!

Today I gathered up my canning supplies and my little helpers peeled and segmented the oranges.

Such happy little helpers...

I made a simple syrup with water and sugar (I did a very light syrup as the oranges are already sweet and acidic). We washed up the jars and my youngest packed the segments into the jars.

We covered them with boiling syrup, leaving 1/2 inch head space and processed them in a hot water bath for 15 minutes (for pints).

Next, we washed the peels (to get some of that wax off) and ripped them up into little bits. We dehydrated these in the oven for using in teas and powdering in the vita mix for a flavouring for cookies, cakes, and scones.

You might be able to tell...this isn’t a wood burning cook stove (my only cooking option now that we are in the tiny hemp house)...and you caught me...I’m taking care of the neighbour’s acreage while they are in Mexico and we are processing the citrus in their kitchen as it’s much more suited to this much food at once.

Some of the orange peels (and the bits around the end) are being packed into large jars along with lemon and grapefruit skins, then covered with vinegar to make a spray for cleaning the bathroom, and disinfecting surfaces (it makes a decent glass cleaner too).

The grapefruit were juiced and the juice was combined with sugar and boiled to make a citrus concentrate that I am canning. I can pull this out, add water, and we will have a lemonade like drink later in the winter.

Again...the peels are added to the cleaning solution jars.

The lemons were washed of the wax in warm water with some soap.

They were then zested, cut and juiced.

The zest was dried in the oven just like the peels.

The rest of the skins were packed into the vinegar jars.

The lemon juice was canned, for 10 minutes in a hot water bath, as lemon juice concentrate.

In the end, we have 24 jars of mandarins, 3 bottles of lemon juice concentrate, 2 jar of grapefruit/lemonade concentrate for juice, a jar of lemon zest, and many jars of dried orange peel (still in the oven drying).

When we are given such a blessing, we want to make sure we do it justice and I think by preserving and using every last bit, we have done just that.

When life gives you citrus...can it!

Until next time, from my home fire to yours, hai hai.