Homesteading Skills Workshops: Wine, Cheese, Soap, Candles, and Food Canning
From $55.00
Description
, Wine, Cheese, Soap, Candles, Canning, Workshops
These hands-on workshops will cover all the essential things you need to know so you can make the products of daily life that were a part of your great grandparent’s lives. Take the entire sequence or just pick the one or two topics you want to learn. These workshops will teach you what your grandparents knew but never passed down. Now YOU can resurrect some family traditions that can involve the entire family.
Imagine giving away a basket of YOUR homemade wine, cheese and candles as next years Christmas gifts to your friends
Next Class: March 9 & 10, 2024 and March 16, 2024
Candles Making: Saturday March 9, 2024 – (9 AM – Noon) / Fall Class – Nov 9, 2024
Canning : Saturday March 9, 2024 – (1 PM – 5 PM) / Fall Class – Nov 9, 2024 ONLY ONE SPOT LEFT
Wine Making: Sunday March 10, 2024 – (9 AM – Noon) / Fall Class – Nov 10, 2024
Cheese Making: Sunday March 10, 2024 (1 PM – 5 PM) / Fall Class – Nov 10, 2024
Soap Making: Saturday March 16, 2024 (9 AM – 4 PM) / Fall Class – Nov 16, 2024
Note: All classes limited to 5 or 6 people or less (first come first serve)
Class Length: 4 hours or 8 hours, dependant on the class
Cost: Classes are individually priced below
Prerequisites: None
Location-Seven Hills, Ohio (10 miles south of Cleveland, Ohio)
Candle Making
When: Saturday morning March 9, 2024: 9 AM – Noon
Price: $55 (includes a metal pillar candle mold)
We will give a complete rundown of the basic candle making equipment and supplies used in the class. Also covered are dyes, fragrances, wicks and the different type of waxes available. After taking this workshop you will have the confidence to go home and create your own candles.
During the afternoon you will learn the basics to make professional looking candles from both bees wax or paraffin based waxes. We will be covering the specifics of wick sizing, wax mixtures, wax additives, pour temperature mechanics and the correct process to use either metal and silicon molds. Are you familiar with terms like “cave-in” or “covering”….you will be after this 3 1/2 hour workshop. You will leave the class with the knowledge to start a new hobby or cottage business as well as taking home both hand-dipped taper candles and a metal mold with a candle
Canning Food (Hot Bath & Pressure Cooker Methods)
When: Saturday afternoon March 9, 2024: 1 PM – 5:30 PM
Price: $75 (includes a $25 supply/food fee) – Yes, you WILL be taking food home with you! ONLY ONE SPOT LEFT!
Canning food is an excellent way to preserve food without having to worry about freezer space and the possibility of “losing it” during a power
outage. It’s also a good way to save “grocery money” by buying meat, vegetables or fruit when its on sales and then canning it. During the class you will be going through the hands-on step by step process of using both a pressure cooker to can meat (which you will be taking home) and the “hot bath” method of canning when you will be canning fruits and vegetables (to take home too!). You will be making your own applesauce and canning it, putting together a vegetable medley and canning it, and finally learning the process to safely can meat (venison, rabbit, or store bought beef, chicken or fish).
One added benefit of learning how to can this way is that the food is already cooked in the jar saving you time when you use it for stews, stir fry, or just as a fast “heat up and eat” meal.
Introductory Wine Making Class
When: Sunday morning November 12, 2023: 9 AM – Noon
Price: $75 (includes a Wine Making Kit , Recipe Book and 1 gallon of wine to take home)
Our Introductory Wine Making Class is for the beginner wishing to learn the fundamental basics of making wine at home from grocery bought frozen juice, concentrate kits and fresh juices at only a fraction of the cost of commercial wines. In this introductory class students will learn the following:
- The basic equipment necessary for home wine making.
- How to properly use sanitize and store equipment.
- Learn the “winemakers” terminology like “lees”, primary fermenter, secondary fermenters, air locks, and racking
- The procedures involved in making wine from a frozen juice, concentrate kits or fresh fruit
- How to make a dry, semi-sweet or sweet wine
- How to adjust the alcohol content of your wine
- How to make wines with alcohol content in excess of 18%
- The difference between making wine from a concentrate kit vs. fresh fruit
- Selecting the proper yeast for making wine
- How to properly preserve and stabilize wines
- Selecting corks and bottles and bottling procedures
- Question and answer session
After this workshop you will know how to make Home-Made Wine for those intimate dinners, cold winter nights or as a valuable trade/barter item. You will be able to tailor the wine you make to your tastes…specifying the sweetness (or lack of), the alcohol content, and what preservatives (if any) you put in your wine. Picture yourself going to a friends for dinner and you bringing the evenings wine…YOUR wine…and having people rave about its taste. Your “private wine stock” also makes a great Christmas present for a co-worker, friend or that person that I hard to buy for.
We will also be covering the process of making fresh fruit wines as well as the old favorite Dandelion Wine.
You will leave with a complete Wine Making Kit as well as a recipe booklet that contains over 30 recipes for homemade wines.
Hard Cheese Making
When: Sunday afternoon March 10, 2024: 1 PM to 6 PM
Price: $65 (includes a $10 supply fee)
Learn how to make Cheddar, Colby, Mozzarella and even Parmesan Cheese at home! (makes a GREAT gift for the holidays!)
In this 5 hour class you will begin with whole milk that you can buy at any grocery store and go through the process to make Mozzarella Cheese in less than an hour. After that you’ll learn the process to make Cheddar Cheese right in your own kitchen. During the times in the process that the cheese needs to “rest” you’ll learn all about the history of cheese, the science behind it and how modern cheese manufacturers like Kraft make their cheese today. All of the equipment will be supplied to each pair of students so that each will have a through “hand-on” experience in the cheese making process.
Learn about the different cheese cultures, what rennet is and when to add it, how to separate the “curds” from the “whey” and why “cheese cloth” originally got its name.
Cheese Making Kits will be available for purchase at the class.
Soap Making (Saturday March 16, 2024: 9 AM – 5 PM)
Learning to Make Soap Workshop Price: $105 (includes a $15 supply fee)
Whether you were first introduced to soap making by watching your grandmother or from seeing “Granny” on The Beverly Hillbillies stirring her black soap kettle by the “cee-ment pond“, making soap has been a tradition as well as a necessity for hundreds of years. Like most things, you can easily go buy soap at a store but, in doing so, you eliminate the pleasure and satisfaction of knowing that you made it yourself. On the practical side, learning how to make soap opens up a whole new aspect of cleaning and skin care since you control the ingredients that will become the soap you and your family use.
If you have dry skin, make a moisturizing soap by adding Glycerin and Coconut oil to the mix. If your kids are going camping, make them a “Bug Repellent” soap by adding Citronella and Tea Tree Oil to the soap. For the guest bath room, you may want to try the translucent “Glass Soap”. And think about the great Christmas gifts your “homemade soap” will make. The possibilities are endless.
The class starts from the bare-bones beginning, giving you all of the basics you need to understand how the soap making process works. In the morning you will learn the traditional “fat and lye” methods and discover how to “render suet” to make “tallow”, find out why the lye does not burn the skin after it is made into soap, and how to get your soap to “trace” during the soap making process
In the afternoon you will learn how to make vegetable oil based soaps (including Castile soap that will lather in salt water) before we end with teaching you the process for making “specialty soaps” for your family’s specialty needs or as gifts for the holidays.
This year make soaps that are helpful to your skin and your family will love by making custom blends that soften, exfoliate or just plain clean.
Erica Mascio (verified owner) –
I took the fall 2021 Canning Course with 2 of my coworkers and had an amazing time!! I left feeling like I could can on my own, or if I had any questions, I could contact Cheryl and she’d be happy to help. Tom and Cheryl are both very knowledgeable and helpful – I will definitely try to take more courses in the future.
CHLOE PARISE –
Two of my coworkers and myself took the canning course. In this course not only did you learn HOW to can but WHY you do the process. Cheryl and Tom were so kind, and opened their home to six strangers. Upon entering you felt as if you were simply visiting a family member. They were so thoughtful and caring and really made you feel like their house was your house. They offered snacks, drinks, and anything else you could have needed during the class. Cheryl was so knowledgeable about the entire canning process and always looked up an answer to a question that she didn’t know. I feel after taking this class I now have all the resources I need to can on my own and knowing that Cheryl is only a phone call away if I have any questions is a true comfort. Thank you for Cheryl and Tom for the wonderful time!