ED: This article is about our experiences with reusable canning lids. Of all of the items we had in our Mother Earth News Fair booth last June, they were the most talked about. Hundreds of questions were asked and many people just wanted to look them over and touch them to see what they were made of. Most buyers only wanted a minimum of one dozen to try out. These lids have been around for a long time but still seem to be relatively unknown to the pressure canning world.

Laurie and I don’t mind admitting we were inexperienced in our canning knowledge and at the same time striving to become more self sustainable in any way we could so we hope this blog will be informative to all of you out there just like us – learning to be more sustainable and trying to provide our families with homegrown safe and quality food items for years to come.

LAURIE: My experience with canning was non-existent until we decided that we were going to be moving from our condo to the wilds of Eastern Washington and the Okanogan Highlands. Our nearest neighbors are about 3 miles away and the closest town is 20 miles, and being as self sufficient as possible is the name of the game out here. My Mother-In-Law was my biggest and best help getting me started with learning how to can. She grew up growing and raising all their own food and continued right up until a few years ago. I had read several books and watched some videos, but until you actually get in there and do it you really have no idea what is involved.

So, I started learning to can while we were still living in the condo. That was a great time to start to learn. If things failed and didn’t work out like they were supposed to I could still walk 2 blocks to the grocery store and get what I needed for dinners. That’s not the case here. We’re lucky if we get off the mountain once a week now.

Even doing the small amount of canning we were doing while still living in town I hated throwing away the lids. So I got on line to look up what other people were doing with their used lids. You can only make so many Christmas decorations and shiny scary things to hang in trees to scare off the birds (although they didn’t seem to work for my birds). Ed had seen an ad in the MEN for the reusable lids and we went ahead and got some to try.  My first batch of canned green beans with the reusable lids did fine, but I had 3 or 4 jars that didn’t seal properly, so I went back and read the instructions, followed the instructions closely on my second batch of beans and haven’t had any trouble with the lids since. The method you use to can is essentially the same as with the metal lids, with just a little tweak. It has to do with allowing the jars to vent while they are being cooked and then tightening the lid while they cool down.  It’s nothing more than that.  They come in widemouth and regular sizes and you can purchase the rubber rings separately if you should lose or damage them. So far we have not needed to replace the rubber rings. The ones we are using have held up for 3 seasons of canning, and a lot of those lids and rings have been used 2 and 3 times in the season.

With all the news these days about additives and unnecessary chemicals used in growing and processing foods, (not to mention all the GMO foods that are the norm for foods in the grocery stores) canning and freezing food we have grown ourselves is what we can do to make our lives a little safer and healthier.  The reusable lids are food grade and BPA free and can be used with the hot water bath or pressure canning methods.

We can a lot of fish we get from the lakes nearby, much of our garden produce, and we buy fruit from the local organic orchards and can that. We raised a batch of broiler chickens and canned most of the meat. We did freeze some of them, but freezer space is limited and canning is a great way to process your meat. Canned meat will store longer than frozen meat. This next season I think we will tackle canning more meat so that our freezer doesn’t get so full.

ED: Over all we have found these lids to be as advertised and anytime you can reuse something over and over again, it just has to be a good idea.

Ed and Laurie Essex live off grid in the Okanogan Highlands of Washington State where they operate their website goodideasforlife.com  and offgridworks.com.

I wrote an article in January (More Winter Fresh Veggie Choices) about winter gardening. Specifically our insulated cold frame attached to the south side of the house, our EasyGreen Automatic Sprouter, our hydroponic experiment called EzGro Garden, and our free range chickens.

Many people have written us asking how the EzGro experiment turned out and also for more detail. We are pleased to say it has been a success. I’m not sure the creator of this hydroponic unit ever intended it to be used the way we have but I know he would be happy with the results.

EzGro Garden – This is a brand new experiment for us and it is going very well. It is a vertical hydroponic garden. It doesn’t take up very much space (14” x 14”), it uses less than 1 Amp of power for 18 minutes per day and is easy to use and takes very little time to operate.

It comes with everything you need including stackable pots for anywhere from 20 – 80 different plants depending on what type they are.
Once you set it up you fill the pots with the media (made from ground coconut husk) provided.
Next you mix the nutrition supplements provided with water and pour them into the base (reservoir). Add the pump to the water and program your timer. We’ve set our timer to pump the nutritionally supplemented water every hour for two minutes from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Your timer programming may be different depending on what you plant.
The last step is to plant your seeds in the pots. We would recommend just one plant per pot to start out with.
We add water to the reservoir every two weeks and the nutrients every four weeks. You can grow plants even faster by cutting those times in half and a few other tricks users have come up with this past year. Use the Contact form from one of our websites for more information.

Ours plants didn’t start out too well but we aren’t using grow lights. We just set it in front of a window during the coldest and darkest time of the year – December and January. During that time period we went almost two months without sun. Once the sun started showing itself again these plants just took off. As long as you have good light you don’t need growing lights!
You plant a seed for whatever you want and they usually come up in just one or two days! We are still in the process of experimentation but what we have done so far has worked very well. Right now we are growing lettuce, cucumbers, and spinach. Why spinach – I don’t know. We have tons of it in the cold frame! We must have a lot of seed.  Anyway, as soon as we eat this crop we are going to plant something different.  Strawberries are popular with this product and so are flowers.

We have been posting our progress on our Facebook page. Several Facebook friends have been using these gardens for a while and they just love them. Some have them inside like us, some outside on the patio or deck and some on the covered back porch. They seem to be very versatile.

These units don’t fall into the “self sufficient” category. Only our garden and insulated cold frames do that. They require electricity and the routine purchase of special nutrients to be added to the water. That being said however, the amount of power required to run these is about the same amount as our laptop – for 18 minutes per day and the nutrients should last a full year.

The bottom line is that they allow you to grow your own fresh food, even during winter including the harsher and colder climates like we have. They allow you to grow food no matter how busy you are and no matter where you live, even a condo or apartment and those are all good reasons to share our success with you.

Ed and Laurie Essex live off grid in the Okanogan Highlands of Washington State where they operate their website goodideasforlife.com and offgridworks.com .

Its 13F degrees outside and there is over 3’ of snow on our garden. We have plenty of canned vegetables from last summer but what about fresh greens?

We are new at all of this but each year we experiment a little more and try to expand on our fresh vegetable options.

We live off grid in a cold climate. That limits our options somewhat. If we had an insulated greenhouse it would have to be heated. We don’t have the electrical surplus to go towards an electric heater and don’t want to spend the money for an alternative heat source such as propane or kerosene or heating oil so we have turned to other options.

Automatic Sprouter
Hands Free & Safe

Laurie had been using an EasyGreen Automatic Sprouter before we moved here. It is an electric appliance but it only takes about 22 watts of power to operate the mister for 15 minutes 8 times per day which is so minimal it just isn’t much of a factor even for us.
It comes with  multiple trays so you can grow a variety of fresh sprouts at the same time or you can stagger the trays by planting one tray on Monday, another on Tuesday etc so that you have a constant supply of a variety of sprouts. This is a great winter option for anyone but also for those of us producing our own power.

As some of you already know, when we built this house we added two experimental insulated cold frames to the south end of the house. We never got around to trying them out the first year but we had some success last spring when it was still cold – as low as 18F degrees.
This year we transplanted some cold weather plants from the garden in October and they are still thriving. The coldest it has been is 12F degrees. The picture shows spinach and swiss chard. There are even a few volunteer mushrooms in there!

The cold frames are attached to the house. That gives them one side that is always heated. The top is made of 8 mm (2 layers) poly-carbonate panels. This is the same material many greenhouses are made of. It seems to work pretty well. The idea is that during the day the sun will heat the plants and earth. There is enough heat there from the sun and at night the house, that it doesn’t freeze. We haven’t had much sun and the soil did freeze in one of the planters this winter but the plants are okay. You just need to make sure you plant “cold weather friendly” plants like spinach, chard, beets and beet greens, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower. Last late winter we did broccoli and cauliflower. They grew just fine but got too tall for these enclosures.

Juwel Biostar 1500
Grow Food Year ‘Round

We sell a portable version of the insulated cold frame on our website Good ideas For Life for those of you who live in condos and apartments. If nothing else these units can extend a growing season two months earlier and two months later than usual.

Our latest experiment involves a hydroponic garden. It is made in the USA. We have always avoided hydroponics because of the expense and the large amount of floor space required to keep them. Most hydroponics also require growing lights and that just isn’t conducive to solar generated power. This system is different in that it is a vertical space saver and it doesn’t require growing lights although they can be used of desired. This system has a pump but like the EasyGreen it takes almost no real power. It runs for two minutes at a time eight times per day and draws less than one amp.
Ours is currently located in a south window in the bedroom but that is the coldest part of the house this time of year. Still it is growing. Not as fast as we would like but I’m sure that is due to temperature which is 65F degrees and the shortest growing days of the year in Dec/Jan.
If it works we will sell these on our website Good Ideas for Life. We only sell products we use ourselves so that we know they will work.

We also have our chickens. Eggs are not plentiful in this cold weather but we are still getting a few eggs and they are mentioned here because most people can have a few hens even in the city with a small coop or chicken tractor.

We take the time to share these things with you because Laurie and I firmly believe in growing as much of your own food as possible while at the same time realizing how busy everyone is with day to day living.
It is kind of fun and we are excited about all of the new things  coming out that can help us grow our own food no matter where you live.

Ed and Laurie Essex live off grid in the Okanogan Highlands of Washington State where they operate their website goodideasforlife.com  and offgridworks.com.

One of the things we miss the most after moving into the mountains is the saltwater and all of its bounty. Laurie and I fished for salmon and bottom fish, dug fresh clams, and caught Dungeness crab in Laurie’s crab pot. That’s right, Laurie’s crab pot. She got it for her birthday!

We both grew up in Bellingham, WA in the northwest corner of the state. When I was a teenager I water skied in the saltwater almost every day. Laurie’s family sailed the San Juan Islands and camped on many of them growing up.

My dad was a commercial fisherman and as a teen I reef netted and gillnetted with my Dad. Laurie put herself through college gillnetting with her brother. Needless to say we miss the salt water.

Moving calls for adaption to our surroundings. We bought a little crawdad trap for the lake a few miles from us. We haven’t caught anything yet but we will. We just need to leave it there for a few days, something we haven’t had time to do yet.

We’ve also learned to catch one variety of fish in the same lake called Kokanee or Silver Trout. These fish are planted by the State. They are raised in a hatchery where we both come from on Lake Whatcom. My company did the last remodel and expansion for the hatchery in the 90’s so I got a firsthand account of how it is done.

Kokanee trout are actually land locked sockeye salmon. Every fall they go up the creek next to the hatchery in Lake Whatcom where they are caught and processed just like salmon at hatcheries all over the state. The result is fish that are large enough to transplant in lakes for sport fishing.

These fish vary in size from lake to lake. In Lake Whatcom where they are hatched they are only 10” to 12” long. In some lakes they can get up to 14” in length. Ours are 12” to 14”. I’ve caught them in four different lakes over the years.

We start catching them in the spring when the ice thaws, take a break midsummer, and start back up during the fall months. We pressure can them and eat them all year long, mostly in sandwiches in lieu of tuna fish. I use them for salad in place of tuna as well. The taste is slightly different than canned salmon but not by much. It is my favorite fresh water fish to eat – fried, baked, or canned.

When they get into the 14” range they are so fat I can skin and fillet and basically debone them just like we do with salmon. That is what I did with the fish in the picture above before we canned them. No skin or bones for this size. If we catch smaller ones we just cut them up after cleaning and put them into the jars; skin, bones and all. There is no difference in flavor; I just like the clean look of the larger processed canned fish.

While it’s not the same as catching salmon n the saltwater, it is a lot of fun and you can’t beat the pureness of fish grown in a mountain lake. No worries about lead or other contaminants found in tuna. We need to figure out the crawdads next and who knows, maybe there is a freshwater clam or two around here.

Ed and Laurie Essex live off grid in the Okanogan Highlands of Washington State where they operate their website goodideasforlife.com  and offgridworks.com.

Not only are we new at living off grid but we are also new at gardening. This is only our second year but our garden is doing well. Laurie is the prime planter, caretaker, and waterer. We have twice as many types of vegetables as we did last year and almost all of them are thriving.

Starting January 01, 2012 I started keeping a weekly journal of everything from daily temperatures and weather to how much wood we were burning, when the snow started to melt, and other things that matter to us living where we do. This spring and summer I have included the garden topics so we would have a better idea ahead of time next year on when we could do our seedlings and starts inside the house prior to transplanting them into the garden.

We live at an elevation of 4200’. The snow left this year by April 25 but the ground was still frozen. I finally rototilled the garden May 18. By that time people down in the valley were already mowing their lawns and seeing their first vegetables popping out of the ground.

We were eating fresh vegetables out of our insulated cold frames – spinach, broccoli, and cauliflower. Once those were all done we replaced them with cherry tomato plants and more spinach in late May.

On June 10, I made an entry into the journal that the beans had come up and died. The temperatures were still in the 30’s. That is cold even for here. The other veggies – peas, spinach, garlic, zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower and broccoli were all okay. Now that we have all this recorded, next year we will adjust our planting times accordingly. By June 25, everything had been planted including the corn.

By July 20, only five weeks later I recorded the following – “Garden – is growing like crazy. Corn is 3’ tall. Beans ½ up the pole. Tomatoes just starting to show, eating lettuce, spinach, and peas. Potatoes are waist high”. We were later than the valley gardens but coming on strong. Mother Nature just seems to know how to get it done.

Our corn is only 6’ tall but the ears are already 2/3 filled out. We even have ears of corn on stalks that are only 4’ tall.

August 19 – “Garden – corn husks are showing. Beans are blossomed. Tomatoes are green. Potatoes are almost done, dying off now. Peas are done. Broccoli and cauliflower are coming on strong. Cucumbers are starting to develop. Carrots just starting to show green tops. Zucchini – lots and lots right now. Lettuce – too many – dying. Beets did not come up – again.”

This journal is going to be so helpful for future garden planning.

We water our garden from our two cisterns which receive water off our house roof when it rains. It hasn’t rained here in six weeks and we are finally having to pump water out of the well for the garden. When we installed the cisterns we put an extra pipe and valve into the cisterns from our pressurized water system. All I have to do is turn a valve and the cisterns will fill up from our pressure water system. One item of interest concerning water is that we know the prior property owners hauled water for their garden from a spring over a mile away, all by hand. They used the same well we do. Cisterns work and because of them our slow producing well has not been over used and is still producing enough for all of our needs. We have never run out of water.
Laurie waters everything by hand which saves a lot of water as opposed to using some other means like a sprinkler that waters every square inch of garden including those areas that don’t have plants. This time of year it doesn’t take much water, just a little more time to do it by hand.

We have been eating out of the garden or insulated cold frames since April when it was 18 degrees F. This next year we are going to try to grow vegetables in the cold frames the year ‘round. We are eating, canning and freezing everything we grow. We have given away plenty of produce as well.

We live in the heart of apple orchard country. I have been told by everyone that we can’t grow apples this high. We’ll see about that next year. One thing at a time. I do know there are crab apple trees two miles from us on an old homestead. I wouldn’t bet against us.

Ed and Laurie Essex live off grid in the Okanogan Highlands of Washington State where they operate their websites goodideasforlife.com  and offgridworks.com.

I think we have established in past blogs that sustainability is a good thing and anything you can do in that regard is good. One of the ways we have attempted to become more sustainable is to grow our own food. The advantages are obvious but it’s okay if we state the obvious over and over until all of us get it. Food safety and independence are two good reasons to grow your own food.

We had a pretty good size garden the first year we moved here and we canned food from the garden for the winter. This year I am going to build a storage bin in our garage to store root vegetables like potatoes and carrots. This past year we just put them in a box in the garage.
One whole wall of our garage is built out of concrete and is basically underground, much like a basement wall. The two ends of the garage are insulated and the other long wall is the living space from the house and therefore heated. The end result is that even though our temperatures can go below zero degrees Fahrenheit, the garage never freezes. It’s just like a root cellar.

I’m going to build triangular corner shelving out of plywood and wood framing and put a fairly large lip on the outside edge of the shelves to form a box to put sawdust and vegetables in. Even without sawdust, our potatoes at this time are just like they were coming out of the ground. Very few sprouts!

Between the new storage bins and canning, I think food storage is adequate for the year. Our garden produces June through September and we can easily grow enough vegetables to last us all year, but what about winter fresh veggies?

I had read an article in one of our garden magazines years ago about a guy in Wisconsin who claimed that if you attached a raised bed or planter to the side of the house, you could plant vegetables in the winter and they would not freeze so we just had to give it a try and the picture to the left is what we ended up with – insulated raised bed/cold frames.

They are attached to the south end of the house. The panels are insulated with double wall polycarbonate and the beds are completely filled with dirt. Neither of the beds is heated.

This was our first test this winter. It seems we had a lot of reasons why we didn’t get them planted until March but that’s what happened. Keep in mind that in March our temperatures were still in the low 20’s every day and several times even in the upper teens. I did check the dirt several times during the coldest months and it was never frozen.

The simple idea is that one side of the beds is the house which never freezes and in fact is heated. As long as you have the insulated panels on top amplifying the sun’s heat (when it shines) and are planting cold weather plants like broccoli, cauliflower, spinach and other greens, you can grow vegetables in the winter.

Worst case scenario is that we can extend our short growing season by four months. Instead of June thru September, we know we can go from March to end of October and I’m pretty sure that with a few tricks like these water filled black painted plastic jugs to help hold heat at night, we can do even better than eight months.

Sometimes the simplest ideas work and this is one of those. I know some of you have been doing this for many years but we haven’t and I can’t tell you how excited we are to be cold weather educated at this point. This next year we are going to have the garden, root cellar quality food storage, and cold weather growing ability to have fresh home grown vegetables almost all year long. That’s sustainability!

Ed and Laurie Essex live off grid in the Okanogan Highlands of Washington State where they operate their website goodideasforlife.com  and offgridworks.com.