We’ve had a break from the summer heat this week.  I’m hoping it isn’t going to get as hot as it was.  The humidity and the heat and me being pregnant weren’t very enjoyable.  I found myself walking right back inside to the air conditioning and being very thankful for the cool air.  I have no desire to live without air conditioning!

I wish I was in a condition to be working on a Fall garden.  However, I’ve given up on the idea and turned my focus to getting my house organized and prepared for the birth.  I’ll think about gardening and flowers and all the wonderful outdoors work that I love later. 

Our boys, however, have spent a considerable amount of time in the summer heat working on the farm.  They’ve been running fence wire to contain animal in new grassy paddocks.  Hopefully soon, we will decrease our cow and pig population soon as we take a bunch of them to the butcher this Fall. 

The younger ones have enjoyed swimming in the little plastic swimming pool in the back yard.  We had an interesting incident the other day when the girls were swimming one afternoon.  I heard them screaming and yelling and found them very upset at our friendly milk cow, May.  She had found her way to the back yard and noticed the nice cool water the girls were playing in.  She proceeded to drink the swimming pool water and didn’t mind a bit that the girls were very upset about the situation.

We had 4 hens hatch out chicks this summer.  The boys noticed the hens go broody and were able to separate them and place them in their own small chicken tractor so predators didn’t bother them.  Within a few weeks each hen hatched out a batch of chicks.  I think we have about 24 new chicks running around here.  We have several more broody bantam chickens so we are awaiting to see if they are successful.  It’s always exciting to see the farm replicate itself and provide new animals instead of us buying them

I’m in the last part of my pregnancy.  It’s been a brutal hot summer although we are thankful it hasn’t been hot with a drought.  At least we have been getting rain even if we do have high humidity levels…at least everything is still green and growing!  It’s always a challenging time for me when I am carrying around about 30 extra pounds, can hardly breathe and can’t see my feet….oh yeah, and with 8 other children running around.  However, we’re off to a good start with the month of August and hope to see lots of progress in preparing for the baby to arrive in September. 

The kids are very excited about the new baby.  My rambunctious 2 year old takes special time out of his busy day to come sit by me and pat my belly gently…occasionally offering the baby a kiss.  My 9 year old made an unsolicited, loving comment to me the other day on how I must be getting close to having the baby because I “look just like the sheep do right before they give birth.”   That was nice to know

We are hoping to get some new blog posts up soon about some of the happening things here on the farm. 

The boys finished up castrating the rams and pigs today.  It really amazes me how young men can work and produce when given the challenge to do so.  We are looking forward to all the beef, lamb and pork later on in the fall…and yes, we will be selling a lot of our farm raised meat.  We’ve really been able to see significant growth in the lambs, cows and pigs this summer.  Though it has been very hot lately, we have had some rain to keep the fields green and brush growing. 

This year we have maxed out our pasture land and have been making efforts to clear some wooded areas to make new pasture land to expand our grazing areas with the increase in our animals.  It’s a very slow process.  We are looking forward to the fall and winter to give us the opportunity to work in the cleared wooded areas and hopefully get some fencing, gates up and watering infrastructure figured out. 

There is lots of firewood to be gathered, which we plan on starting soon.  If only more hours in the day….

If you have a farm, you might someday have a pig.  If you have a pig, you might someday have more pigs?  If you have a herd of pigs, chances are you might need to know how to castrate your own pig?  or at least know someone who knows how to do that!

We started with just having one pig at a time, until last year when we decided to try out 3 pigs.  Those pigs multiplied and this year we will be offering farm raised pork later this fall. 

Pigs are super cute when they are born, but escapee piglets quickly become quite the farm pest.  In my opinion, they rank up there with ornery goats.  Maybe I’m tainted in my opinion of pigs because of my own experience with them recently, but once one or more pigs invade your garden and eat your plants and garden produce and steal your chicken eggs, it’s hard to really like them.  At least with the pigs, I know I’ll get paid back in sausage and ham one day. 

We had a momma pig have 5 piglets a little while ago and if we were good farmers, we would have castrated the boars when they were just days old.  However, we neglected to take care of that early on but decided that the two boars we have needed to be castrated before they grew any bigger. 

With my husband in town working, our two older boys, who are 12 and 14 years old, had several “taking care of business” farm chores to do this week.  One of those items on the list was castrating the rams and boars.  After our morning meeting, I sent them out to take care of the animals, along with their two younger brothers for backup support. 

Sorry, no pictures of the actual process…I wasn’t about to go document the process.   They had helped their dad on the cows, sheep and another pig, so I hoped they could figure it out by themselves.  My husband assured me they could do it.  An hour later, they came back in the house looking like they had just butchered the pig by the look of their clothing, however, they assured me the pig was fine and their backup support almost fainted so they didn’t need their “help” with the after lunch lineup of sheep. 

Later on that day, I was in the kitchen preparing supper and opened up the refrigerator drawer to find a nice reminder that I’m a mom of farm boys:

I’m serious when I say that as a mom of 5 boys, I still don’t get it.  Whether it’s spitting on the clothes iron to see if it’s hot enough, consistently trying the laws of gravity or putting pig testicles inside my refrigerator, boys continue to challenge and confuse me. 

I ran across this blog post that I thought would be of interest to our readers:

A Tale of Two Calves.  One calf was fed raw milk and the other calf was fed conventional pasteurized milk.  Check it out here!

The differences in these two calves is really amazing. 

We’ve seen a similar pattern here on our farm with calves raised on raw milk either from a nurse cow or us milking and giving the cow raw milk in a bottle as opposed to the calves raised on formula.  The raw milk raised calves thrived…the formula fed calves we struggled to keep alive. 

Contrary to what many people believe, all milk is not created equal!   After using conventional milk, pasteurized organic milk, pasteurized non-homogenized milk and raw milk and visiting a wide variety of dairy operations from conventional to grass-based as well as running our own small dairy operation, I can definitely say there is a huge difference.  Now that we have our own raw milk resource, I’m fully a raw milk convert.   Now realizing that raw milk is difficult to find, I’m very sympathetic to those who would rather have real milk choices but are stuck with conventional milk for the time being.  It’s a difficult switch to make for a lot of people just because of the ridiculous restrictions put on family farmers producing raw milk which make raw milk a rare find in many parts of the country.  There aren’t many raw milk dairy farmers around!

One question I get asked alot from people who know that I’m a farm wife, is if I drink my own raw milk when I am pregnant!?!  At first the question seems a little obvious, but then maybe not with all the raw milk scare tactics from the media and mega-factory farming corporations. 

Yes, I do drink my own raw milk when I am pregnant.  Shocking, I know to some…but once you read and educate yourself on the facts about real milk, it’s not so shocking drinking raw milk while pregnant.  In fact, while I am pregnant and breastfeeding, I take extra special care to make sure that I get more milk, eat more raw butter and use more raw cream.  I can feel the difference that the real food makes when I consume it.  As a pregnant mother, I have no reservations about consuming raw milk and giving it to my children to drink.  Yes, even my little ones regularly have fresh milk.  My older boys love to guzzle down cup fulls of raw cream and make raw milk whipped cream for toppings on a variety of foods. 

The milk we currently drink is from our 3 year old Guernsey cow named May.  We milk her once a day.  The rest of the day she is eating grass, licking up free-choice minerals, drinking the spring water and resting in the shade of the trees living the life of a cow on a small family farm.  She occasionally escapes and gets into the garden where she likes to eat all sorts of garden plants. 

After milking, my boys bring the milk inside and strain the milk through a filter into glass half gallon jars.  We use half gallon glass jars because we’ve found that they are easier to pour from and easier to cool down.  We mark the glass jars with the day of the week the milk is from and quickly get it cooled off in the refrigerator.  She produces superior golden milk with lots of cream.

We go through great lengths to ensure our animals are healthy and we are very careful to follow good milking practices, but it doesn’t come without a cost.  Our milk isn’t cheap…but it also isn’t the same milk as the $2 milk in the store.  Two completely different products!

 I feel very blessed to be able to have such a resource and thank God that He has blessed our little farm with land flowing with milk…and hopefully one day we’ll get around to the honey part! 

We would love to help others get back to the agrarian life where real milk is considered a great blessing and whole foods off the land are prized provision from God, not to be taken lightly.  We have a long road to travel to turn our food system around, but we believe that the mega factory based industrial food system is doomed for failure.

Get to know your farmer!  All milk is not the same and you should do your research to ensure you are receiving good healthy milk! 

If your skeptical about raw milk, here are a few resources where you can find many articles about the subject:

• Farm to Consumer Legal Defense:  Lots of informative articles on raw milk, local food, factory farms and different food safety issues. 
• Real Milk:  raw milk safety, health and economic issues. 

Gardening is hard work.  Or at least it is for us!  It’s frustrating when you work so hard planting your garden only to look out the window one morning to see the goat eating up all your hard work and the chickens scratching up all your newly planted bean rows.  We’re trying to keep at it because we enjoy the rewards of working for our own food, but with being very pregnant and the extreme heat and humidity lately, the weeds are winning out. 

Earlier this summer, there was much excitement when we picked the cabbage we planted earlier this spring.  Beautiful, non-perfect, organic cabbage heads.  I cut up one head of cabbage and sauteed it with garlic, onion and some of the pak choi chinese cabbage left in the garden.  It was better than delicious.  We all enjoyed it not only because it tasted great, but it was all our hard work paying off in the form of good food from our own garden.  I also used the cabbage to make homemade cole slaw.  Delicious! 

Now our only garden rewards are the tomatoes.  Though not as abundant as last year, they are very prized and welcomed. 

It seems silly that something so simple could bring so much satisfaction….but it does. 

As a family, we are far from recapturing the lost art of gardening.  We’ve had many set backs this year and low garden production.  I’ve ended up buying more produce this year.  However, I know it is just a season and am thankful that we are learning from this hard gardening year that will hopefully make us more productive in future years!

We have lots going on around the farm.  The flood put a damper on our  progress and we have been having to deal with cleaning up piles and piles of river rock.  We did get the rock off our main pasture fence and stood it up straight again.  The rock is still all around us..but at least the fence is functional again.   We are still trying to come up with creative solutions for the tons and tons of river rock on our property. 

The cows are quickly growing and gaining, the sheep are expanding and growing too.  Several of our hens hatched out baby chicks and our baby pigs are also growing and causing all kinds of problems!   

We are also expanding our pasture area by clear cutting some of our wooded areas.  We currently only have a small amount of pasture land and are needing more pasture to rotate the cows and sheep.  We are also wanting to plant a sizable orchard once we get a section of the land prepared, so we are utilizing the land we have by changing it up a bit.   I am sure we will share more on this at a later date. 

Our garden has been slow this year.  We have had several invasions by the cows and piglets.  I’ve also had plants mysteriously die and my cucumbers have been very bitter this year?  I read that it could be caused from too much heat and irregular watering?  So far, the okra and tomatoes are doing great.  The peppers are just now starting to take off.  I’ve learned that I don’t make a good gardener at 8 months pregnant!

I’ve been working on putting up food in my pantry and freezer.  I bought a ton of food from the local produce auction and have been working on getting all of it frozen and canned up!  I also have lots of peaches that I am canning.

Here’s the links for following my food preserving efforts this week here on the farm:

1. Buying Local Bulk Produce
2. Freezing Corn on Day 1
3. Shredding Zucchini and Freezing more Corn on Day 2
4. Canning Peaches on Day 2

I’m hosting a giveaway over on my other blog, Penny Pantry.  Go check it out….There is a good probability of winning since there are not many who have entered and since I am selecting the winner on Friday, June 18th…

We grew up on okra.  For a long time, I actually didn’t know that there were people in the world who didn’t eat okra, much less there were those to didn’t even know what okra was.  Okra is a favorite southern vegetable to grow in the garden around here.  And, OHHH Boy, does it grow and grow!  Okra is like a super weed….it grows and grows and rarely has any pest or disease problems.  In fact, last year, without trying,  we grew okra trees that towered above our garden and produced amazing amounts of okra. 

This year I had a baggie full of okra seeds that were my grandmothers that I intended on using in our garden this season.  The baggie of seeds ended up getting soaked after being left outside on the back porch.  In a few days the seeds began to sprout and so I asked my boys to go plant some of the sprouted okra seeds in the garden..  Last week we counted 28 okra plants popping up out of the ground.  This week the number went up to 60 okra plants but then the chickens got in the garden and ate a good portion of the tiny plants and messed up the rows so I’m not sure where we will stand when all is said and done. 

I’m not sure how many okra seeds they planted…but evidently I should have specified an exact number.  If all goes well, I guess all the excess is perfect food to give to our growing little piglets. 

In addition, we have some starter trays up on the porch that we have been starting plants in.  I noticed one tray was popping forth in great abundance…looking as if a younger child just dumped a whole lot of seeds in the empty dirt 6-packs.  It had a “Zinnia” tag stuck in it….so I was thrilled that we had so many zinnias coming up to plant or that was my assumption.  When I asked the kids who planted that tray of great looking zinnias plants sprouting up out on the back porch.  I heard, “Ohh, those aren’t zinnias….those are more okra plants for the garden.” 

More okra!!!  Just what we need!

We’ve never had any success with growing peas in our garden, but this year, we actually have a row of peas growing in our garden and producing sweet peas!  We planted the peas from seed…the .20 cent seed packages that I bought at the Dollar Store. 

We’ve been picking a handful of  pea pods almost on a daily basis, but we haven’t made anything out of them yet as they are eaten up raw before we can collect enough to make a pot of peas with.  We should have planted several rows of peas and then maybe I could have started canning peas…but I wasn’t sure how they would do.  I’m more confident now that I want to plant more peas in the fall and next spring.  I’d love to add peas to my canning shelf! 

I’m not sure how long they will keep producing once the weather starts warming up more? It’s getting hot fast!

With the warm weather that has arrived and with the great rains we have had, our little farm is bursting forth with all sorts of greenery……which also includes lots of weeds and biting insects.  The garden is taking off and it is very exciting to watch.  We have a small garden plot for our size family, but currently it is the only garden spot we have and so we make the best use of it.  It gets to be quite the jungle in the summer because we pack it with plants. 

My Pak Choi (Bok Choy) is bolting or starting to flower.  I’m a bit sad about that as I so enjoyed having the abundance of the chinese cabbage this spring.  We ate a whole lot of it!  I’m looking forward to growing it again once the weather cools off in the fall. 

Here’s our baby lettuce back in the spring……  which turned into this……

My lettuce is also starting to bolt now so we are using it up as much as we can before it goes to seed and turns bitter on us.  We’ve also greatly enjoyed the endless supply of fresh lettuce. 

With all the goodness, the weeds in the garden are still abundant.  It’s depressing.  I hate weeds.  I am using hay mulch to keep the weeds down, however I haven’t had enough hay to make it work just right yet.  Hopefully, I will be able to find a good source for hay and save my sanity.  Or I could just deal with the fact that weeds are part of gardening, especially when you don’t have an abundance of mulch to keep them down. 

For several years our family has been raising our own meat. We’ve found that not only is it a healthier alternative but it is much cheaper than buying meat from the store.

Pro’s of Raising Your Own Meat:

1. Home grown meat is a healthier alternative than buying prepackaged feed-lot meat at the store. If you want to avoid the antibiotics, fillers, colors and solutions, raising your own meat is a sure fire way to know what’s in your meat and where it comes from. We’ve also raised pastured pork and found huge differences in the quality and taste as well as the assurance of knowing what goes into our pork.
2. It’s cheaper! We were shocked at how cheap it is to raise meat. If you have an initial purchase of around $300 for a calf and raise him for 18 months on grass, he could yield you around 500 to 600 lbs of meat (at around 1,000 pounds live weight). Depending on where you live, you will have the costs of feeding hay through the winter and you will have the butchering costs. Raising pork will have additional costs of buying corn, however you should be able to pick up a feeder pig from around $25 to $50.  We’ve been raising all natural, grass fed meat on our own land for much cheaper than what we could ever regular store bought and the high quality, all natural grass fed meat for. Even if you buy a whole, 1/2 or 1/4 cow from a farmer who raises beef, you will do much better than buying those individual cuts in the store. Before we could raise our own, we bought beef from a local farmer. Even paying around $4.50 a pound for 1/2 a cow ended up being an incredible savings considering that you are getting everything from hamburger to steaks and roasts!
3. It’s rewarding!  Raising your own meat is incredibly rewarding.  The time invested into raising your own meat is an experience your family won’t forget! 

Other Considerations When Raising Your Own Meat

1. You will have to invest your daily time into raising your own meat. That means you will need to monitor them, making sure they have enough water and grass:  a great chore for your children to keep up with!  Our cows and sheep are easy to care for.  For pork, you will have to invest more of your time in oversight. From our experience, pigs are more high needs than cows or sheep, although they yield a high amount of meat in a shorter amount of time. 
2. You will need to have the fencing and land space to raise your own meat. OR you could work out a deal with someone who has land to graze your animal on their land for a fee.
3. It takes time. Raising a cow for beef could take a good 18 months. We usually take our pigs to the butcher in 6 to 8 months. We haven’t figure out the lambs yet… we’re still experimenting on the age and weight of when to take them in.

On Saturday, we loaded up a few of our field stock and took them in to the butcher. While I was at the butcher shop, I bought some sausage ($2.49 lb) and hamburger ($2.89) to hold us over the next few weeks while our meat was being prepared. I don’t have our costs for raising the meat and butchering it yet..but I hope to post those when I get the final totals from the butcher shop.

This isn’t supposed to be a lake…it was our neighbor’s cow pasture and hay field. 

We have been just a bit occupied with trying to get our life back up and running.  Last week we didn’t have power or running water…some of the week we didn’t have phone or cell phone coverage either. 

This week, I am working on getting the house back in order so when I have time, I will blog about some of the lessons we have learned during this flood disaster.  There are many to be sure! 

We are doing well, our house and family are safe.  However, there are many families around us who have lost everything…their houses and businesses and people have even lost loved ones to the flood waters.  Although the flood waters have receded, the aftermath is still very much alive and well.  Keep this area in your prayers. 

As most of you know, here in Tennessee we’ve just experienced the worst flood in a thousand years…or at least that is what they are saying.  The 1,000 year flood has wreaked havoc on the great state of Tennessee and we have been in a “survival” mode for the last week just keeping up with the basics of food and water. 

We had our power turned on last night after not having it since Sunday!  Our water situation is still not back to normal and we have much work to do around the farm to get our land repaired.  We are thankful our family and friends are safe and are grateful for the lessons we have learned this week…and are still learning from this event as things are still far from normal here in Middle Tennessee.   

Soon, I will be posting a flood journal with some of the things we did during the week and things we were learning and pondering as well as some pictures we took over the week.  For now, I’m trying to get the house back up and running. 

 I remember I have this thing called a washing machine…..  

I know I talk a lot about the Katahdin sheep we have.  We really do love the Katahdin hair sheep!  Someone asked us not too long ago why we have sheep on the farm.  The reason we chose the Katahdin breed was because of several reasons:  they do well in the South, they have hair and not wool so you do not shear them, they are excellent mothers and give birth easily (in most cases), they are resistant to many parasites and are relatively care free.  Right now, we are keeping all of our ewes and are selling the rams or raising the rams for meat.

Sheep are amazingly different compared to goats!  They are much easier and less hassle!   They also are easier to raise for meat compared to a cow.  A cow is much more time intensive and during the winter requires more care and food than the sheep do.  The sheep have been very hearty in feast or famine, flood or drought, bitter cold and extreme heat.

No..the baby isn’t dead…he was just born and is resting.

This morning, one of the ewe’s had twins.  She had one baby ewe and one ram.  We are thankful that the momma ewe and her babies are thriving and bounding across the field on this fine spring day.

Louisiana is one of the original ewes we bought.  She had twins last year too.

For several weeks, we’ve been eating lettuce and Bok Choi or Pak Choi Chinese cabbage out of our garden.  It has been very nice to not have to buy lettuce and cabbage at the grocery store and we are enjoying the incredible freshness it provides as well.  I’m also enjoying the savings the lettuce and cabbage is providing!  It’s making me very anxious about gathering other garden goods!

We’ve been using the lettuce on our lunch sandwiches as well as usually preparing a large salad in the evenings to go along with supper.  In addition, the family loves the Pak Choi cabbage.  This Chinese cabbage has a very mild flavor and is so nutrient dense it practically bleeds chlorophyll when it is cut.

I’ve been preparing the chinese cabbage by washing it really well and then chopping it up and then putting it into a  stir fry that the kids even ask for seconds and thirds on.

I’ve varied the stir-fry by adding different vegetables to it each time.  Last night, I added sliced purple onions, minced garlic and cut broccoli along with chopped Pak choi.  I added salt and pepper and just a bit of Braggs (or you could add a bit of soy sauce).

We have been snapping the leaves off the plants, and allowing the plants to continue to produce.  I’m looking forward to creating a bunch of side dishes out of this Chinese cabbage now that it is taking off!  I would have never bought bokchoy or pak choi from the grocery store, but now that I have it growing in the garden, I’m learning to use it and have found that we love it!

It isn’t a understatement that we have been swamped with activity here on the farm. This year has brought us many changes….many good changes for our family and we are starting to feel like we are gaining traction once again.

This spring, we are enjoying all the babies being born. We’ve had several different sets of sheep twins born recently. Baby lambs are so adorable!

We also had baby goldfish born which was is something we didn’t expect!

We are now getting lots of eggs from the chickens and even some from the ducks.

The boys have been working on repairing their “Indian Fort”. It’s served them well over the years and they have put a lot of hard work into getting it back in shape. So they have been measuring, drilling, cutting, sawing and nailing wood for days.

We are still having some cool nights but on the warmer spring like nights, we all love hearing the loud frogs.  During the day, the little ones are having a great time making frog homes for all their pet frogs. 

We also found the first snake of the season yesterday and it brought back really bad memories. I know warmer weather brings the ticks, chiggers and snakes, I just like to forget about it and hope they might just go away one year.

Also with warmer spring like weather comes the beautiful greenery in the leaves and grass. Which means the grass is going to need to be mowed soon. We’re taking a proactive approach on keeping the grass down this year. It’s an old fashioned lawnmower and natural fertilizer all-in-one!

Warning:  The FDA has banned the use of Sassafras because it has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory rats.  As such, sassafras is considered a controlled substance and can not be sold in processed food products such as bottled root beer for the retail market. 

Here on Vaughnshire, our woods contain a old fashioned ingredient that old timers used to use to make a delicious carbonated beverage know as root beer.  That ingredient is the Sassafras root bark from the Sassafras tree. 

This wholesome drink, which was made every spring in the households of our American forebears, is a delicious as well as healthful, and it is a pity that the use of genuine root beer is dying out.  The sarsaparilla, yellow dock, dandelion, burdock, and hops used for its making were all products of the nearby woods and fields.  Bark of the wild cherry was sometimes put in, birch bark also, and elecampane, and the aromatic spikenard.  In springtime children went out with a trowel and basket, and their intimate knowledge of the growths about them helped to their brewing. (Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop)

Last week we made trip into town and went to Trader Joe’s to pick up a few grocery items.  I bought some all-natural root beer and ginger beer which spurred on the kids interest in making our own homemade soda and pop.  I had bought the book Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop over a year ago.  The kids eagerly picked it up and started reading…and soon started asking anxiously if we could make the homemade root beer.  

Little did I know that we already had the ingredients available to start a batch of root beer. 

My 12 year old read the directions on how to make homemade root beer with great interest and then exclaimed…”We have Sassafras!” before he ran out the door.  A little while later, he came in the house dragging cut branches and dirty roots from the Sassafras trees located in our woods.  A few of the older children started to cut and clean the roots, while another one read the directions outloud. 

They started with cutting the roots off the Sassafras sapling trees. 

We were all amazed at the smell of the sassafras roots.  They smelled like root beer!

We were not exactly sure how many roots to use for one batch (about a gallon).  The recipe we were using said use about 20 inches of sassafras root, the thickness of a pencil. 

Here’s the recipe we used: 

20 inches sassafras root
1 piece vanilla bean, 3 inches long
3 to 4 quarts of water
1 3/4 cup of brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon ale yeast (also 1/4 cup lukewarm water)

1.)  Place the root and vanilla in 2 quarts of water and simmer, uncovered for about 25 minutes, adding the sugar near the end.  The water should take on a pronounced red or dark orange color and the room should be filled with a strong sassafras aroma.  If color and aroma are weak, add more root.  Remove from heat and let cool for 30 minutes. 

2.)  Put 1 quart of cool water into the jug.  After the sassafras mixture has cooled for 30 minutes, pour slowly into a jug.  Add water to the jug, leaving a headspace of about 2 inches and aiming for lukewarm overall temperature.  Allow to cool if it is above lukewarm.  Cap the jug and agitate vigorously. 

3.)  In a teacup, combine the yeast and 1/4 cup of lukewarm water, and let sit about 5 minutes.  Add the yeast liquid to the jug, agitate, and then bottle the beverage.  After about 48 hours (check sooner in warmer weather) check the carbonation;  when sufficient, refrigerate. 

The next day, we checked our brew….the fermentation process was definitely working.  The jug was bulging and there were bubbles around the top of the liquid. 

We released some of the pressure and checked for carbonation.  It was very weak carbonation, so we capped it and left it to do its work the rest of the day. 

After about 36 hours, we had a pretty carbonated root beer beverage!  It was very exciting for all of us!  We enjoyed our homemade root beer for lunch with our ham sandwiches!

We were pretty impressed with the carbonation.  It is truly an amazing thing that you can ferment something with yeast and end up with something carbonated!

We made another batch of root beer with some alterations, this time steeping the roots overnight like you would an herbal infusion.  The first batch tasted good, but we wanted a stronger root beer taste.  We also added a bit of licorice root and a bit of cinnamon.  We also bruised up the roots before simmering to release a bit more of the sassafras aroma and taste. 

Our next batch is fermenting now so I’ll post the results when it is finished. 

If you are interested in making your own homemade root beer or ginger ale, I would highly suggested getting a how to book on the subject.  There is a lot that goes into the process besides just reading a recipe. 

This is the book that we have been using.  It has been very informative and educational:  Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop