Friday, July 26, 2013

Let the harvest begin...

Calendula flowers from our friends, Anne and Dennis, from a farm about 25 minutes away. http://regenerativeroots.com/

Some of the last of this batch of sweet peas. We like them grilled with a Thai inspired peanut dipping sauce... Mmmm!

There is a lot more dill in the garden yet. Anyone have good dilly recipes to share with us?

This is our experiment with drying lamb's quarter leaves. We weeded it out of the garden and can hopefully save it to add to soups and such in the winter.

Neal and I picked 13 pints of blueberries at Jelli's market yesterday. We saved one pint for eating fresh, dehydrated 3 pints, froze 3 pints, canned 3 pints, and made 3 pints worth of fruit leather. I hope to go back to Jelli's with my friend Becky to pick raspberries later this week.

We gathered all the extra juices from the blueberries and cherries...

...for more popsicles! This time in ice cube trays. What a treat!

Neal has had a busy week: sewing,

making sourdough bread, 

and care taking of the bees and chickens. We have no idea what was happening with this egg.











Friday, July 19, 2013

Broody hens and new treats

Traveling post today while we head southwest in the car to Neal's family reunion. In recent days we have been debating which is worse: mosquito alley or heat extremes. I personally don't mind the heat compared to the swarms of Mosquitos on the farm. They even figure out how to sneak inside the lodge to bite us... So frustrating. I've been using plantain poultices to help with the itching and swelling.   Today was breezy so I only got 3 bites all day... Woohoo.

Neal found one of our white chickens sitting on almost three dozen eggs in the storage area of the hen house. We knew she had been sneaking out of the coop everyday but we weren't sure why. If she keeps being broody we may get some fertilized eggs for her to hatch.


Neal put all the eggs in water to see which ones floated. We tossed the floaters because they are likely rotten. 6 bad eggs and over 2 dozen good ones!


It's a bit hard to see our makeshift Popsicle here. We made it in a measuring cup with cherry juice that had pooled at the bottom of the bag of pitted cherries. Tart and delicious! Round two is already solidifying in the freezer in an ice cube tray. That batch was made from juice we strained from cooked cherries, currants(from the farm), and black raspberries (also from the farm). We added a touch of honey but they will still be pleasantly tart. The cooked fruit went into hand pies that we cooked on the grill. They fell apart a bit bit we will eat them as a fruit crumble for breakfast while camping. Yumm!

In other news, we finally got our own bike rack for the car today so we are done with both borrowing racks and with trying to cram two bikes into the trunk of the Honda. While at the bike shop. We also got a new bike for me. The old one was one Neal got as a graduation present for me off Craig's list. It has been just slightly wrong for me this whole time because the frame is too large for me.i was so excited about the new bike that I biked the six miles home from the shop while neal installed the rack on the car and drove home. Super excited to try out the bike at the campground this weekend. If anyone wants the old bike, let me know. I'd prefer to sell it to a friend over dealing with Craigslist. Neal and I put money into fixing it up last summer so it rides pretty well.


Saturday, July 13, 2013

When Alicia's Gone

We took the week off off blogging to celebrate the Independence Day holiday with the Crowe family in Eureka, Il.  Over the course of two weeks Alicia's siblings have come home to spend some time together.  I had to go back to work,  but did find some time to brew beer and pick cherries.  Wednesday on my way back to the farm I saw a sign for cherries along the road.  I was actually expecting a phone call from my mom but the thought of cherries intrigued me.  I pulled up to the farm and there was only a handful of cars parked in the grass.  The orchard http://www.steffenscherryorchard.com/ has been around since 1981 and they are continually expanding as adding more trees.  After the summer drought and frost after things blossomed last year this harvest was the best in a long time from what everyone was saying.  When you get there you are given a bucket a rope and a hook.  You can tie the rope around your waist and then hang the bucket while you climb the ladders to pick. I picked 5 buckets that were 6 quarts each. 

 If you want them pitted and washed you can take them to the barn where they have 2 stainless steel sinks to wash them.  Then they have a large scale commercial pitted that pits them excellently.  I took home about 5 or 6 gallons of cherries and juice. 
The 
I decide to dehydrate some to make"cherry raisins".  I used a regular dehydrator, the oven on low and our solar dehydrator.  Had I been around all day to have the solar dehydrator track the sun it would have worked great.    The time in the oven (overnight was just a bit much) and would in the future decrease the temp some and move them about more frequently so that both sides were evenly cooked.

The other thing I did the same night as dehydrating cherries was to make two batches of beer.  I made a Scottish Ale and a Stout.  I had tried before to make the ale on an outdoor cookstove but it was taking forever to boil so I brought it inside and in the process broke a glass thermometer.  Therefore that batch was ruined.  Luckily I had only started the process and lost a few pounds of grains.  I had to  search for the recipe online and made it.  By the next day it was actively fermenting and bubbling.
This time the thermometer is in tact.

Once the brewing time is finished it's time to cool the wort as quickly as possible so that its an appropriate temperature for the yeast.  It is important to do it because it causes the solids to break and fall out of the solution so that when I transfer it top the fermenting vessel they don't come with.  The rapid cooling also prevents other bacteria from taking a hold before the desired yeast strain can.  In addition it prevents the formation of "dimethyl sulfide (DMS) production. DMS is a volatile substance produced in some worts, mostly those made from lager malts. DMS smells like cooked corn and is usually considered a beer fault, although it is noticeable and intentional in some commercial beers (byo.com)."

In this picture the cold water is flowing through the hose on the left and goes through the sealed copper coil and comes out warm to hot on the right hose.  This was the first time I was able to do it inside.  It was very successful in bring down about 3 gallons of boiling wort to 70 degrees in about 20minutes.  After it was chilled I transferred it to a fermenting vessel and pitched in the yeast.  Then it was time to wait for the fermentation to begin.