When one thinks of living off of the farm, images of homesteads from the early 1900s often come to mind. These images include those of the stereotypical farm wife churning butter, and the husband scalding pigs for later rendering of the lard. That's all well and good, but...

Were the fats in the good ole' days healthy?

One of the biggest changes we faced when making the switch to eating only what we grow and forage is a home source of cooking fat/oil.

Prior to this year, we cooked mostly with butter and olive oil, with a little canola oil thrown in for baking and coconut oil for flavor. None of these fats are viable options for us (more on that below).

In addition to rendering animal fat, we wanted to ensure we would have a steady source of healthier oils to cook with as well.

Fortunately, a friend had given us a Piteba Oil Extractor years ago. https://piteba.com/en/

The Piteba press is perfect for our needs! We have successfully pressed:

• Sunflower seeds
• Pecans
• Walnuts
• Spicebush berries

Check out our pressing process!:

The mechanical hand-crank press is finicky to use. Here are some tips and our experience with yields:

• Don't use lamp oil in the oil lamp, as it burns way too hot and blackens everything (see picture to the left - before we learned better). We find canola oil burns best. Keep the wick as low as possible.
• If it is warm outside, or the press is indoors near the woodstove, only light the lamp 3 minutes before use.
• If the seed cake quits coming out after a dozen turns, stop! If the seed cake gets compressed too much, it will become rock-hard and very difficult to remove. If this happens, boil the cap to loosen the seed cake. Alternatively, drill through the seed cake carefully so as not to damage the inside threads! From there, you can bash out the rest.
• Read the directions. Multiple times:)

THE LOW-DOWN ON OILS:

Sunflowers We grew black-oil sunflowers, which are the only variety with enough oil to mess with. You could practice with bird seed, but I don't know how they are grown, so you might not want to eat the oil.  The flowers are very easy to grow (good germination and drought tolerant), and have a good yield.  The only tricky part is keeping birds off while the seeds fully form.  You can easily lose half your seeds in one day.  Yes, we're speaking from experience.  Cover the ripening seeds with some sort of fabric, bag, etc.

Our yield is about 1 cup of oil from a quart of seed. The seeds are pressed in the shell. Don't use the adjustment bolt. The seed cake by-product makes great animal feed. These are simplest to press - the press doesn't get jammed. Oh, and the flavor is fantastic!!

Pecans (we foraged over 50 lbs. of pecans in the shell). Pecans yield about 1 cup of oil per quart of raw nuts (2 lbs. in the shell). Press only shelled nuts. Don't grind prior to pressing. Rather, break into halves and quarters (quarters work best). Do use a small wooden stick (narrow end of a chop-stick), to coax the nuts into the press continuously. We also pressed these without the adjustment bolt. The flavor of this oil is also exquisite. And, the pecan meal that comes out can be used! We bake with ours often!

Walnuts These are hell to crack and shell. What's more, the first time we pressed them, they hadn't dried well enough. Those thick shells keep the walnuts from drying out. Be sure to dry them some prior to pressing. Our experience was not ideal, but we did leave the adjustment bolt on for these. And again, the seed cake is edible. We toasted ours to improve the taste. The flavor of the oil is well, like black walnuts. Not my favorite, but better than corn oil!

Spicebush was just for fun because we noticed they were oily. The taste is intense. Johnny likes it. Karen is not a fan.

THE TAKEAWAY:

Sunflower and pecan oils are well worth the effort! The flavor is outstanding, the oils are very healthy, and the seed cakes can be used/eaten as well.

There are some improvements that could be made to the press:

• The location for the bottle to collect oil only allows for a tiny bottle, so these have to be swapped out while pressing the seeds. This is my biggest complaint.
• It would be nice if the hopper was built-in rather than having to fashion half of a liter plastic bottle.
• It seems the diameter of the auger could be a bit larger.

There are other presses on the market. You might do some research on which is the best for the seeds you will press. The Piteba costs < $200,

We've also seen where some folks attach an external motor. While I dream of this for our wheat grinder, I don't mind pressing oil at all! It's not difficult.

Still wondering why we won't have butter, olive oil, or canola oil?

• We don't have a milk cow. The cream that floats to the top of raw milk can be skimmed off and agitated to make butter. Goat's milk is naturally homogenized, meaning the cream doesn't separate.
  • We do have a friend with a milk cow who is agreeable to barter, but that's another story, and a source we will utilize as a special treat.
  • If you are patient, you can pour goat's milk into a wide mouth container and skim the little bit of cream that will separate after a few days of leaving it undisturbed in the refrigerator. This cream can be saved and added to, and over a considerable amount of time, one could get enough cream to churn into butter. Since we use much of our milk to make cheese, we opted not to do this.
  • There is a cream extractor that works with a centrifuge, but we chose not to spend the hundreds of dollars on one.
• Olives & coconuts don't grow here, and we don't have fields of canola and a combine, etc.

Even if you aren't living off the land, sunflower and pecan oil are delicious and well worth playing with.  It you're on the fence, try making pecan butter and see for yourself how delicious that is!  You might decide to take the next step.