Independence Days Update

Weekly updates, it seems, are more than I can do in this busy, busy season. Besides, if I did hold myself to that standard, chances are I wouldn't blog about anything else! We have another rainy week ahead, so expect a spate of posts over the next few days as I run through my backlog of topics.

Plant:

Direct seeded: 4 varieties of bush beans (provider, rocdor, royal purple, contender) and 2 rows of red core chantenay carrots down in the market garden.

Transplanted: ~ 300 tomato plants to the market garden (green zebra, Cherokee purple, striped German, Brandywine, sungold, sweet olive and gold nugget); Egyptian walking onions, shallots, thyme, citrus thyme, rhubarb, horseradish, and black raspberries to the front garden. Set in plants from Edible Landscaping—4 hops vines, 3 filbert trees, and 20 asparagus crowns.


Seeded in flats: calendula, evening primrose, pennyroyal, saltwort, fennel, lovage, peppermint, hyssop, arnica, marshmallow, paprika chili, Thai chili, and chamomile.


Harvest:

Spinach, lamb's quarters, kale, broccoli raab, lettuces, carrots, radishes, thyme, citrus thyme, oregano, tarragon, chives, rosemary, sorrel, horseradish, cilantro, parsley, eggs, milk.


Preserve:

Still eating down reserves. Made and froze butter.


Manage:

With some volunteer help, we got one of the high tunnels cleaned out and ready for cover cropping, which I'll hopefully get done this weekend. Meanwhile I'm trying to stay on top of the weeds in the market garden with all this rain and dealing with flea beetles. Grrrrrr.

Continuing managed intensive grazing—this is primarily Jim's thing, and he gets total credit for staying on top of the frequent moves.


Prep:

Our silver fox rabbit doe, Jewel, gave birth to 7 kits the other day. While she did all the work, it does bode well for the beginnings of our breeding program. Silver Fox are meat rabbits listed on Slow Food's Ark of Taste list. They will be both human and pet food, letting us reduce our dependence on commercial pet food even further, which should be healthier for both the dogs and the cats and lighter on the earth besides. I know some people will have a problem with that, but I can guarantee that these rabbits will have a better, healthier life than anything that goes into the commercial foods.

Set up three bee hives in the hopes of maintaining at least two hives on our property.

Continued working on our "insectary" around the gardens to encourage beneficial insects. ATTRA has a great pdf publication on "farmscaping" for beneficial insects for those who'd like to read more about this idea.

Our cookstove arrived this week, so we'll be working on the install over the next few months to have it up and running for fall burning season.


Store:

Added more bread flour, as we really blow through it quickly here. I still have my hi-gluten bulk flour, but it's twice as much as the King Arthur brand I use on a regular basis, so I try to stock up on K.A. whenever it's on sale.


Add:

CSA delivery to four families: eggs, mixed baby greens, lamb's quarters, head lettuce, broccoli raab, radishes, carrots, spring garlic, horseradish greens, oregano, sage, parsley, cilantro, rosemary.


Cook:

I found a bag of roasted red peppers in the bottom of the freezer, so I made some roasted red pepper cous-cous to go with an herb roasted chicken and sauteed lamb's quarters seasoned with sea salt and spring garlic. Quite tasty.



Learn:

Julia and I learned more about rabbits and "kindling" (what it's called when rabbits give birth). Did you know that baby rabbits only nurse about 5 minutes a day and that mama doesn't sit on them or near them for warmth? Neither did I, but we do now.

I'm hopeful that our first time mama knows what she's doing. She's pulled off some fur for the nest, but not a ton. The babies seem to have nice, rounded bellies from what I can see, so that's a good sign. I'll continue to monitor them over the next couple of weeks.

Independence Days Update

Sharon over at Casaubon's Book is starting a new Independence Days Challenge for anyone who would like to sign up, though it's run pretty informally. I'm not going to keep count, personally, since it's really an ongoing thing and the counting just adds pressure.

It's been two weeks since I last posted an update, and we've gotten lots accomplished. And many more things have been left undone due to rain, illness, and just lack of time! We had a quick cold, which knocked me out of commission for a couple of days, not to mention a week of 90° + days. Though I gave it a valiant effort, working in 90° weather with a fever of 102° just didn't cut it. I gave up and sat on the couch watching Battlestar Galactica, my new favorite netflix get.

I also managed to travel up to Lebanon, New Jersey, to give a talk at an unschooling conference, which was loads of fun. I got to talk farming with folks from New York state and a woman from Trinidad y Tobago. Very cool. Hopefully we'll have lots of farm visitors over the next few months. I learned about qigong and even had a brief healing massage. Yet again I discovered the truth of the notion that we are always exactly where we need to be. I got home in time to harvest for my CSA and transplant some more herbs to my new front garden before the rain set in. Whew! It's been a full two weeks!

Plant:
Transplanted: chives, sage, thyme, salad burnet, yarrow, heartsease, echinacea, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries to the front garden. Set in roses that arrived and some rhubarb that I bought on the spur of the moment at the feed store. Divided and dispersed wormwood, bee balm, lemon balm, horehound, feverfew, and mullein in the front from last year's plantings. I had more stuff planted, but unfortunately Jim, in his overzealous desire to try out his new tiller, tilled it under in the kids' garden where I'd healed them in last year. *sigh*

Seeded in flats: Amish paste tomatoes, basil, dill, parsley, borage (both white and blue), calendula, lemon grass, nasturtium, asclepius, winter savory.


Harvest:
Asparagus, lettuce, swiss chard, spinach, kale, carrots, radishes, turnips, endive, tarragon, sage, cilantro, thyme, sorrel, chives, eggs, milk.


Preserve:
Still using down stores. Kids found some frozen strawberries, which were a great treat as we impatiently watch the blossoms turn to tiny green berries. Made butter.


Prep:
Continued to work on front herb/ edible garden, spreading ~5 yards of topsoil/ compost mix to ammend the soil and mixing peat moss where the blueberries and cranberries will grow. Ordered 2 varieties of cranberries, 3 varieties of filbert, 20 asparagus crowns, weeping mulberry, and 4 hops vines from Edible Landscaping in Afton, Virginia. My patio peach was out of stock, unfortunately. They're a great little company that I've been ordering from for about 6 or 7 years now, and they've always made good on their plants.


Manage:
Potted up about 150-200 tomato plants and have about 100 more to go, but I ran out of yogurt cups.

Found the market garden again, which is being taken over by chenopodium seedlings. Guess what CSA will be getting this week? Also sprayed and covered crops to combat those damn flea beetles.

Cook:
The first of our asparagus has come in, and we've been loving every bit of it! In fact, I loved it so much that I added 20 crowns to my order for the front garden. The ferns are so pretty, and one can never have too much asparagus!

We had chicken, asparagus, chevre sandwiches on homemade bread—all zero mile. The chips are store bought, as we've run out of our storage potatoes and the store bought potatoes just don't fry up well for chips. Or anything much for that matter. Yuk. I'm always reminded how easy it is to eat seasonally when you're used to fresh food.


Add:
CSA delivery to four families: mixed greens, spinach, chard, head lettuce, radishes, carrots, turnips, spring garlic, chives, thyme, tarragon, cilantro.

Shared bedding plants and berries with neighbors.


Learn:
Learned about qigong, an Eastern meditation through movement practice that focuses on energy flow in the body.

Independence Days Update

The older and wiser(?) I get, the more my mantra becomes "everything in its own time."

Homesteading means a never-ending list of tasks that need doing. My to-do list never gets shorter—the moment I cross off one item, at least two more are added. Some things, like getting to the post office to mail out several packages that I owe folks, seems nigh on impossible because it means leaving the farm and all the things that need doing here. And, of course, why go when I still haven't finished that one thing that I need to mail out—might as well wait and mail everything at one time. I'm getting there, plugging away, and Madeline's pretty Easter apron has re-motivated me to finish the apron I'm making for her.

The rainy spring days are helping as well. Although I admit to secretly hating to sew. Well, not so much hating to sew as hating my machine that always bunches up because the tension isn't right or some such issue. The minutiae and the attention to detail drive me batty. But rest assured, I will be seated at the sewing machine over the next week, trying to complete all the projects I've been putting off because what else is one to do on rainy days while waiting for the plants (and weeds!) to grow?

Plant:

More direct seeding in the market garden: leeks (which I accidentally dug up and planted over because they didn't get written on my garden plan. grrrrrr.), batvian endive, red Russian kale, Swiss chard, rouge d'hiver lettuce, salad bowl lettuce, drunken woman lettuce.

Jim got ~ 75-100lbs of potatoes, Yukon golds and red nordlands, in the ground with some help from the kids.

I transplanted ~ 500 seedlings to the market garden: napa, savoy, early Jersey Wakefield and red acre cabbages; windsor and de cicco broccoli; radicchio; red giant mustard; black seeded simpson, winter density, red salad bowl, red lollo, and speckled bibb lettuces.


Harvest:

Red Russian and vates kale, lettuce, spinach, endive (batvian and frisee), escarole, swiss chard, cherry belle radishes, turnip greens, green onions, spring garlic, carrots, arugula, thyme, citrus thyme, tarragon, oregano, sage, cilantro, parsley, chives, early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, milk, eggs, last 2 geese.

Here I am during evening milking. We use a milk machine and milk twice a day, approximately 11-11.5 hours apart.



Preserve:

Mostly still working at using down our stores, but I preserved a couple pounds of butter.


Prep:

Not much on this front. Mostly, we're in the process of pulling together some orders for the farm, so I should have more to report on the next update.

We've been without our second fridge for a couple months now, and that's going surprisingly well. Our inside fridge is packed, and it can be annoying trying to find things, but the stuff outside in our big cooler is doing quite well. The frozen juice containers keep things nice and cool; the trick is remembering to swap them out. Of course, the garage still stays pretty cool because the nighttime temps are low. I'll let you know how things go in the summer.

Our first round of turkey poults will arrive later this week, so I'll be prepping the brooding equipment for them.

Manage:

As you know, I've sheared the sheep, and we've taken down the high tunnel plastic.

Big Boy and Maya, our tamworth pigs, are out on their first pasture paddock, which they'll till up over the next month or so. They're so good at rooting and plowing that we use them for tilling new garden beds and for rennovating our pasture. We put them in places that are overrun by weeds or generally not doing well. They till, and then we replant with a pasture mix.

Before pigs:


After pigs:


We've also moved Bella and the goaties out on pasture, though Bella is still splitting her time between there and the barnyard, depending how wet the pastures are and how quickly the paddocks recover. The sheep and chickens will go out this weekend, I hope.


Cook:

No good photos this update. I'll try to be better about it!


Add:

CSA delivery to four families: eggs, spring salad mix, escarole, spinach, kale, carrots, radishes, thyme, citrus thyme, tarragon, oregano, chives, green onions, spring garlic, baby cabbage, sorrel.


Learn:

Julia and I have been learning about breeding bunnies, and we put her Silver Fox rabbits together for the first time on Easter. With any luck we'll have our first litter in about a month.

Independence Days Update

Okay, it's been so long since I posted on my independence-oriented doings that I've forgotten the categories and what week we're on at this point. Maybe we could now call it the sporadic independence days, or SID for short? This covers the last month or so...

A quick confession: I haven't been posting as much in part because work has stepped up, but also because I lost my camera battery charger and am at a loss without photos. *sigh* I kept hoping it would turn up, but nothing. I guess I'll have to suck it up and buy a new charger. In the meantime, I'll try to get Jim to take some photos for me and upload them later.

Update: My honey's so sweet. He read my blog post at work and sent me some photos already!

Plant:

First sowing of radishes, beets, turnips and kale is already up and growing nicely in the high tunnels, which will be coming down in the next few weeks.

Seed trays have germinated and live in my mobile greenhouse, allowing me to roll them into the garage on cold nights to protect against frost. Don't worry, it's anchored to the truck this year and performing beautifully. I don't want to jinx myself, but I ought to actually know which tomato and pepper plants are which this year. Imagine that! I have two varieties of broccoli, several lettuces, cabbages, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and Julia's seedlings out there now, all doing well.

This past week, I began direct seeding the market garden, which Jim tilled for me with his new tiller, making for some lovely garden soil. While I hope someday to get away from tilling, breaking new garden out of weedy old pasture can be back-breaking work, and right now, I welcome the tiller. The kids and I laid the drip tape irrigation this past week, and yesterday I began laying some polymulch for designated working paths.

I've seeded 2 varieties of carrots, several varieties of onions, second sowing of turnips and radishes, 3 varieties of kale, spinach, peas, beets, lettuces, and 2 varieties broccoli raab. Jim and Julia got 4 rows of Russian banana fingerling potatoes in yesterday.


Harvest:

We've been harvesting all winter out of the high tunnels, which are just the most amazing things. Everyone should have a small one in their backyard. Really.

Right now, we have all of the following available for harvest: spinach, kale, swiss chard, carrots, arugula, lettuces, 2 varieties of endive, escarole, turnip greens, thyme, citrus thyme, sage, rosemary, chives, salad burnet, parsley, oregano, tarragon, rosemary, sorrel, cilantro. The bok choi and tasoi have long since bolted, and the beet leaves are just too tough now, but Bella and the chickens appreciate them. Outside the tunnel, the kales are coming back, as are some of the napa and savoy cabbages and green onions and volunteer spinach. We'll see on the overwintered beets and carrots.


Preserve:

Still working on that country ham cure from December; it should be finished this week and ready to hang and age. I also preserved several half gallons of Bella's colostrum in the freezer for emergencies. Other than that, I'm working on using up my stores to make room for a new year.


Prep:

Jim pulled a new fenceline at the top of our property, and he bought a pull behind tiller for the tractor, which will make life much easier for both of us. He also put a load of Delaware eggs in the incubator, so we'll see what comes of that. It's a home-made incubator, and so works questionably at best. We have a new heat regulator, so maybe that will make a difference. Last year we had no luck with the Ameraucana eggs we put in there, but they could have been sterile.

On the safe side, I placed my poultry orders, and I'll be adding Bourbon Reds to our heritage turkey line up. I also ordered more Ameraucanas because everyone loves the colored eggs and some Buff Cochins, who are supposed to be good broody hens, since I've had no luck getting any of my existing hens to go broody.

I also ordered three new packages of bees and picked up some new wooden ware that I need to start assembling. Unfortunately, both my hives were deadouts due to low numbers. They starved with plenty of honey just inches away. Very sad. If I'd combined the two hives at the end of the season, I think they would've made it through. My bee inspector came out to inspect the hives and declared them free of any disease or problems, so I'll be able to use all those frames of honey to help establish the new bees without artificial feeds, I hope.


Manage:

We're starting to get everyone off the barnyard and out onto pasture. This weekend, Jim divided the turkey shelter (which they never use, but roost on top of) into 3 parts, making a nesting space for each hen. At this point, they're still not laying, but they should start soon.

This week, I separated Maya from her two remaining piglets, who are more than thriving—they are fat little snausages. I'm working on reconditioning her, as three litters in a year took too much. She's in heat again and spending lots of time right next to the fence, but we're planning on keeping her separate from Big Boy until mid-summer for a fall litter. Two litters is plenty per year... if we could just get the pigs on board with that, we'd be good to go.

We've also had two out of three of our sheep give birth, and we have 4 little boy lambs. They're all just about ready to move back out on pasture in another week or so. Right now, they're up in the barn safe and snug. It'll soon be time to think about shearing.

And speaking of births, Bella's calf Daisy is doing beautifully, so we'll be looking for a home for her soon and trying to plan next year's calving. I've been watching Bella closely, trying to detect her heat cycles, made all the more difficult because she's a lone family cow. I'm planning to AI, but I still need to figure out all the logistics of that one. She's coming back into condition nicely, especially now that I have her salt levels worked out, and once the spring grass comes in, she'll be good to go. Of course, she's shedding that winter coat like crazy and looking kind of spotty, but still much sleeker than she was.


Cook:

While I'd really like to work on cooking new things, sometimes that's just beyond what I'm capable of in a week, especially busy weeks. Heck, I feel good just getting dinner on the table most nights! So, I'm turning this category into a zero mile meal challenge, and this week's props go to Jim who made a delicious chicken giambatto last night and actually got photos. It featured our chicken, sausage, onions, some of the last of our yukon gold potatoes, and garlic. I made some Southern-style turnip greens cooked in our salt pork to go with the meal and, of course, homemade artisan bread with Bella's butter. Yum!


Add:

CSA started back up the first week of March, and I've been pleased so far with what we've had to offer folks for so early in the season. This past week we distributed eggs, spinach/ kale mix, swiss chard, spring greens, arugula, carrots, tarragon, thyme, and oregano.

I'm still trying to find a food pantry that accepts fresh foods, and I'll be stepping up those efforts now that the season is picking up.


Learn:

Well, I'm still learning lots of things, but this week I'll be working on organic fruit management. I have everything in place, have pruned and cleaned the beds, and now need to figure out the spraying schedule for the Surround kaolin clay. So, that's what I'll be focused on for the next week or so.

Independence Days Update

Okay this is just a teaser since a new one is coming. From my drafts folder back in November....

Contrary to popular opinion, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I'm still here, plugging away, working just a little bit harder in the face of all this economic uncertainty to learn new skills and get the homestead in tip-top shape.

I have an OCD-like quality that emerges when life feels beyond my control, and I respond by controlling as much as I possibly can, which generally includes my immediate environment. This means my house is actually clean (yeah, that's where all that time not posting is going), I've been working like a dog to finally finish the basement family room that's been three years coming, and I've been reorganizing and reworking our pantry system as well as continuing to stock it with home-made canned goods, bulk grains, and even home-made cheese.

So, without further ado, here are some category updates:

Plant:

Transplanted all those seed trays into both the market and winter gardens for fall and winter harvesting. The gardens are going like gang busters, and I've already harvested a couple of lovely heads of napa cabbage and bok choy. The peas were tasty if not prolific, though the first frost took them out. Next year I need to make space for them in the high tunnel perhaps because the kids do love them so.

We had our first killing frost October 20th, and I lost a huge harvest of peppers because I wasn't on top of it. Thankfully I'd already put up lots of salsa and roasted peppers and had a big basket of hot peppers drying in the kitchen. Still, it was a disappointment, and I vowed to be more diligent come October about keeping the plants harvested.

Independence Days Weeks 16 & 17

Yea, I missed last week's post, so I figure I'll do a combined one today. Last week was kind of a holding pattern, so most of what's gotten accomplished has been this past week.

Four months of the Independence Days challenge, and I can finally remember all the categories in order without looking. What I still can't remember is whether I did something this week or last. Thank goodness for a blog record! Now if I were just more reliable about writing in my journal. A constant falling off the wagon for me... *sigh* I'm so undisciplined.


Plant:

A fill-in flat of swiss chard, 7 top turnip, and spinach that will help me fill gaps in the direct seeded beds. I also planted three varieties of endive and four lettuce varieties.


Harvest:

lettuce, onions, tomatoes, summer and winter squash, egg plant, peppers, beans, corn, basil, rosemary, thyme, chives, eggs, milk, pork.


Preserve:

24 lbs of grape tomatoes in the dehydrator, canned 1/2 bushel of peaches, made butter and two kinds of cheese.


Store:

raisins, garbanzo beans, tortilla chips, refried beans.



Prep:

Washed three Navajo-Churro sheep fleeces, and we're now learning how to card the wool. Also helped the girls learn to knit, which I can't do because of my wrists, but they seem to be enjoying it immensely. My guess is this winter will be filled with knitting and felting.



Manage:

After unsuccessfully trying to control the aphid/ thrip/ cricket damage in the high tunnel with sticky traps and insecticidal soap, I ended up spraying neem oil this week to try to get things under control in time for fall and winter crops in there. A couple weeks back I'd done a lot of cleaning out, which really helped reduce hiding places. I'd been allowing some things to go to seed in there, which has the down side of being a haven for pests.

At any rate, I was able to hand pick the remaining praying mantids before spraying, and I sprayed early in the morning before most pollinators would be out and about. The neem seems to have really helped a lot, and it looks like I'll be able to harvest some spinach for CSA this coming week. Yay!

I also finally finished laying my irrigation lines and got them up and running. All the rain we've gotten this season has spoiled me, and this is the first I've really needed to think about it. Of course, we're getting dry and crunchy now that it's August, but it's been a cool, wet year, especially compared to last. Not only are the established plants starting to need the water, but also my seeds and seedlings desperately need it to get established for fall. I'm loving the drip tape. The cool thing about it, too, is that I can use it to deliver fish emulsion directly to the plants.



Cook:

This was my first time canning peaches. I got 27 pints from a 1/2 bushel, packed in a light syrup. Hopefully the kids will like these and not complain that they're different from the store-bought.


Add:

CSA delivery to 11 families. Bought peaches from local orchard for canning.


Reduce:

Farming and self-sufficiency take a tremendous amount of resources, as I've discussed other places. Figuring out ways to produce our own while reducing the amount of resources we use to do so is an ongoing challenge for me. In particular, the home dairy takes quite a bit of water, from the water necessary to the cow to the water necessary to clean equipment to the water necessary to rinse butter. Lots of water. We're on a well here, so there's no good way for me to measure our water usage, and although there's no shortage of water, the principle behind conservation is a sound one. So I find myself constantly looking for ways to eliminate waste and streamline the efficiency of my routine towards reduction. I've been able to reduce much of my water usage by reusing rinse water, for instance, as well as finding ways for sanitizing rinses to be used multiple times.


Learn:

Learning all about natural deworming, as I've been deworming our piglets to ensure their health and weight gain. I've had them on a week of treatment where they receive 2 oz of garlic powder, 1/2 oz of cayenne pepper, and 1/2 oz of thyme mixed into their milk each morning. There have been some studies as well as anecdotal evidence on the efficacy of garlic as an anthelmintic, along with both cayenne and thyme. I have wormwood growing here, but it's a very powerful herb, which I'm hesitant to use. Caution, too, should be used with regard to tansy (listed in the first link below), which can be poisonous to livestock in large quantities.

I'm going to see if I can also get my sheep to eat the garlic powder. They're completely grass fed, so I'm not sure they'll go for it. The piggies, however, don't mind the flavored milk one little bit. Big surprise. Picky pigs they are not.

Alternative dewormers for ruminants

Dutch abstract on herbal swine dewormers

Garlic as sheep dewormer

Garlic as pig dewormer

Independence Days Week 15

Plant:

Lettuces, chard, carrots, kale, turnips. Transplanted the pea seedlings, which shot up like crazy, and covered with shade cloth to help keep them from burning up in the sun. They seem to be holding their own, and the recent spate of cool weather has been a boon.

While I direct sow many of my seeds, some I still start in seed trays either because they're too fussy or there's not enough room. With my succession planting, the idea is that the first round will be ready to come out of the ground in time to stick something else in its place, hopefully with the second planting getting ready to hit full production so I don't miss a beat in terms of harvest. This generally works out better on paper than in reality, though, as pests like squash bugs and borers often have something to say about when a planting is done.


Harvest:

Carrots, beets, beans, tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, eggplant, cucumbers, basil, thyme, rosemary, chives, fingerling potatoes, sweet corn, eggs, milk.


Preserve:


Butter, 23 lbs of grape tomatoes in dehydrator. I grow the sweet olive grape tomatoes almost exclusively for winter enjoyment, as I find they make the most succulent dehydrated tomatoes. I'll admit, too, to not dehydrating them completely or cutting them in half. Although this means that they need to go in the freezer rather than on the shelf, it leaves that little burst of tomato flavor that's released when biting into it—kinda like that gum that came out in the 80's or 90's. But better.


Store:

~60 lbs fingerling potatoes.


Prep:

Nothing this week.


Manage:


Weeded gardens, sprayed insecticidal soap for aphids/ crickets in high tunnel that are crushing my greens. Grrrrrr. The high tunnel has been a blessing in many ways, but it's also been a pest haven. I guess the critters like it as much as the plants. The upside is that the praying mantis population is exploding; the down side is that I'm considering resorting to spraying neem to help get a handle on the pest population.



Cook:

Made fresh mozzarella for the first time from our raw milk, and it turned out sooo tasty. The texture was fleeting, however, and it wasn't nearly as good the next day. It did do nicely in omelets though. I used the microwave method, and it really only took about 30 minutes at most. The ingredients were whole raw milk, citric acid and rennet, and voila! Delicious fresh raw mozzarella.

NOTE: Danielle from Savor Culture had this helpful hint in the comments section:

Regarding mozzarella, I also use Ricki Carroll's recipe, but not the 30-minute mozz recipe. I use raw milk in my mozz, which requires some adjustments as suggested by cheese consultant, Jim Wallace. With raw milk, lower the ripening temperature by a few degrees, and decrease the amount of rennet by 10-20%. This gave my mozzarella a more tender texture. Also, when you store the finished mozz in brine, use a solution of one part whey to four parts water. Add salt until a little remains undissolved to ensure proper salinity. The calcium in the brine prevents the calcium in the cheese from releasing the protein bonds, which would cause the exterior to become "goopy."

Check out her blog—it's loads of fun.

Add:

CSA delivery to 11 families, the following in some combination: beets, carrots, beans, summer squash, eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, hot peppers, onions, basil, rosemary, tarragon, chives.


Reduce:

Having trouble fitting all your laundry on your line? Go vertical. Depending on what kind of loads I'm doing, I can fit up to 3 laundry loads on our line at once by hanging clothes on other clothes. Of course my tendency toward OCD often gets the better of me, and I group things together like similar napkins, handtowels, etc. That way they hang off each other quite nicely. Of course, you'll find you need lots more clothespins for this method.


Learn:

Learned how to make mozzarella. Can the same thing count for two different categories?

Independence Days Week 14

Plant:

This was a big week. Told ya I'd get back on the wagon.

Vates, red Russian, and lacinato kale; red chard; purple and white kohlrabi; purplette and hardy evergreen onions; hakurei turnips; broccoli; Amish snap peas; lutz and chioggia beets; spigariello liscia and sessartina grossa raab; napoli and red chantenay carrots; bilko and minuet napa cabbage; early Jersey Wakefield cabbage; red cabbage; chieftan savoy cabbage; bok choi; brussels sprouts; chervil; cilantro; flat leaf and curly parsley; fennel. The row cover in the picture is covering the seed beds to help keep them moist and prevent them from baking out.

Seeds saved:

Endive, swiss chard, leek.


Harvest:

Lettuce, chard, purplette mini onions, green onions, mixed beans, sweet olive grape tomatoes, gold nugget and sungold cherry tomatoes, costata zuchini, yellow squash, slicing cukes, Asian cukes, purple dragon and chantenay carrots, dill, basil, thyme, chives, green peppers, Anaheim hot peppers.


Preserve:

Pressure canned 9 pints of black beans and 9 pints of chicken stock. 7 lbs butter.


Store:

Gallon water, citric acid, plastic storage lids for canning jars.


Prep:

Canning lids, pint canning jars, picked up 75 slow growing broilers.


Manage:

Pulled plants, weeded, tilled, added compost, fed plants.


Cook:

Chili rellenos: roasted Anaheim peppers we grew, stuffed with chevre from our cow and battered with eggs from our chickens.

Yummmm.

Now, if only I could get the cilantro to grow through the heat of the summer.


Add:

CSA delivery to 10 families: lettuce, chard, mixed beans, mixed tomatoes, mixed carrots, potatoes, summer squash, purplette onions, green onions, bell peppers, hot peppers, slicing cukes, Asian cukes, dill, basil.


Reduce:

Turned water heater down further. It's an iterative process. We're trying to get it cool enough to use only the hot water faucet for hot, but not so cool that the hot water heater incubates bacteria.

I'm hoping to convince Jim to put a timer on the hot water heater, but at this point, we need to decide what hours we want hot water access. Of course, having the outdoor shower would help considerably in terms of flexibility. Money enough and time.... And, apparently it's hard wired and, therefore, non-trivial to add a timer. He looked for me yesterday. Bummer.


Learn:

This week I learned to pressure can! Yay me. I'll do a follow up post about the pressure canning with more details later this week.

Let's just say that once I did it, it was easy peasy. Low stress, low energy, high output. Definitely worth learning.

Independence Days Week 13

Not much to report this week between the rain, birthday activities (happy birthday Em!), visitors and holding the farm together while Jim was out of town. I was, however, lucky enough to have a couple of visitors willing to work for their supper, such that it was, so we knocked out the tomato trellising that desperately needed to be done down in the market garden. A huge thank you to Cindy and Jim!

Plant:

Nothing this week, but I will be jumping on the fall planting this coming week for sure.

Harvest:

tomatoes, basil, peppers, lettuce, mini onions, green onions, carrots, beans, dill, borage, summer squash, cucumbers, eggs, milk.

Preserve:

I made chevre and butter. Cindy, bless her, tried her best to cajole me into pressure canning with her on Friday, but it was more than I could handle this week. We made a pact that we would both use our new pressure canners for the first time before a month is out, so hopefully she'll hold me to it. My readers, too, are invited to encourage, harass, harangue, whatever, if I don't post by August 25th about my successful foray into the pressure canning world. Black beans, here I come!

Store:

Canning lids.

Prep:

Nothing this week.

Manage:

Trellised tomatoes and beans. Cleaned out and organized my kitchen pantry cabinet, making use of my half gallon canning jars for storing bulk grains and nuts.

Cook:

Nothing new.

Add:

CSA delivery to 10 families: lettuce, beans, carrots, mini onions, green onions, summer squash, pickling cukes, Asian cukes, red new potatoes, dill, basil, borage, eggs.

Reduce:

This week's tip: drying plastic bags. My method of drying my reusable produce bags and ziploc bags takes advantage of the several glass vases I've acquired over the years. I keep these in the deep sill of my kitchen window behind the sink. They're pretty to look at (when not covered by plastic bags, that is) and convenient, but they also make perfect perches for drying bags of all sizes. They keep the air flowing inside the bag and also make use of the sunshine to help dry.

Learn:

All about my pressure canner, whose manual I'm reading cover to cover.

Independence Days Week 12

Wow! We've been doing this for three months now. Hard to believe.

Last week I did 5 days of work in 3 in preparation for a weekend at the beach. My in-laws have a house on the Jersey shore, which we don't get to enjoy nearly as often these days because it's so hard to get away from the farm. While the idea behind the independence days challenge is to become more self-sufficient, the reality is that it's all too easy to become a slave to one's homestead. I weeded and harvested like mad just to get on top of things and be able to sneak away for 3 full days. Of course, this week has been spent playing catch up because the garden waits for no woman.

Plant:

Nothing this week. I'm on hiatus for one, maybe two weeks before fall planting begins in earnest. Which means that I've been focusing on clearing out space for that to happen, pulling many of the plants I've allowed to go to seed and yanking all the others that are just past their prime.


Harvest:

Lots this week. The first tomato—a lovely little sweet olive grape tomato that was quite tasty. Hopefully this means more on the way! The peppers, too, are just about in, along with the sweet corn.

Also lettuce, beets, green onions, garlic, mini onions, dill, basil, chives, last of the garlic, carrots, summer squash, mixed beans, slicing cukes, Asian cukes, pickling cukes, 100+ lbs of potatoes, eggs, milk, 39 broilers.

We also harvested the 15' x 60' test plot of hulless oats yesterday. They now reside on three pallets in my garage to finish drying before threshing. We're taking bets on how many oats we'll get. Jim thinks just a tiny little container. I'm guessing about a 1/4 bushel. Wanna play?

Preserve:

Seeds saved this week: cilantro, spinach, and radish. Leeks and chard aren't quite ready yet. Neither is the endive. I'm leaving the broccoli to go to seed and hopefully act as a trap crop for the flea beetles now that I've uncovered the eggplants.

Store:

39 broilers, garden seeds, shallots and garlic, though the garlic is all going for seed stock. (pouty face here)

Prep:

Picked up 3 small oil lamps, needles and safety pins (thanks to Sharon's recent post), and bamboo knitting needles for the girls. I also ordered some tomato clips from Johnny's thanks to a post over at Nita's blog, and I now seem to have a lifetime supply of those. Luckily, they're small and light, and so fit my criteria for storing. ;)

Our 25 lbs of red clover seed arrived this week for cover cropping after the potatoes. I'm still searching for a good bulk source of beet seeds to reseed the grain plot, which will enable the piggies to self harvest during the winter.

Ordered 75 slow growing broiler crosses for our fall batch. These guys are double breasted, typical meat birds, but are very healthy and active, unlike the industry standard bird, which grows way too fast. The slow growers take about 12 weeks as opposed to the 6 weeks for their industry counterparts. Yikes!

Manage:

Everything! The gardens are going crazy, and we've hit the stage in the year when it feels like we have about 5 different balls up in the air. Like I said, I have about one more week before I need to get the fall gardens going in a big way, so I'm trying to figure out where all that's going.

There's also the mundane stuff like cleaning all the feeders and waterers, moving the animals onto fresh pasture, filling the water barrels from our rain catch, etc. I realized that I often don't mention that kind of stuff.

I finally got into my bee hives again this week after a 2 week hiatus. Hive #2 is doing so much better after stealing the frame from Hive #1, and you'd never even know the difference in #1. They both have lots of honey stores, much of it capped. I'm hopeful that they'll go into the winter strong.

Cook:

Nothing new this week. Too much pressure!

Add:

CSA delivery to 10 families: mixed baby greens, carrots, beets, green onions, mini onions, summer squash, mixed beans, slicing cukes, Asian cukes, basil, dill, potatoes, eggs.

Bartered some raw milk for new kombucha cultures.

Reduce:

This week's tip is about how to store food in the fridge without resorting to plastic.

Besides having some lovely glass refrigerator dishes, both vintage pyrex and some newer Anchor-Hocking, I also use this little trick for covering bowls: just put a plate on top. Simple, huh?

It not only keeps the air out, but makes for a nice, stackable surface that saran wrap can't beat. Of course, this is such a simple, obvious solution that most of you probably thought of it long ago, but I do think it's a good one. This is some garlic olive oil for dipping bread, but I also find it useful for large bowls of rice and pasta and such.

I still use plastic, but far less often, and I'm careful to wash out the bags for reuse. I just haven't yet found a good solution for bulky items like waffles and pancakes. Oh, and I do love the repurposed yogurt and sour cream containers for freezer storage. But now that I have my pressure canner, all that may change! Woohooo.

Learn:

Still learning all about seed saving and small grain production. So much of this is just one grand experiment.

Independence Days Week 11

Plant:

3rd round of summer squash, 3rd round of beans, two more batches of lettuce

Harvest:

Lettuces, carrots, mini bulbing onions, green onions, garlic scapes, dill, basil, beets, broccoli, kohlrabi, summer squash, pickling cukes, bush beans, eggs, milk.

Preserve:

7 lbs butter, sorrel seeds.

Store:

another gallon of drinking water

Prep:

Ordered pressure canner, butter crocks, cover crops,

Manage:

Weeded gardens, continue to eat down last year's stores.


Cook:

Made a double cream chevre.

Add:

CSA delivery to 10 families: lettuces, beets, end of kohlrabi, carrots, summer squash, beans, mini bulbing onions, green onions, garlic scapes, dill, eggs.

Reduce:

Besides the usual, I thought I'd try to share a tip or trick that has helped me in my reduction journey. These are ongoing and often things I've been doing for a while, and maybe folks have already thought of these long ago, but I thought I'd post about them anyway.

Tip: In order to help reduce our hot water usage, I put red electrical tape around the hot faucet handles to remind us to grab the cold instead of hot for small tasks. Obviously, this only works if you have separate handles for hot and cold water, but for us, it was a helpful visual reminder to break the habit of reaching for the hot.

Learn:

I continue to read and learn about cover crops and seed saving.

Independence Days Week 10

Plant:

Sunflowers and nasturtium.

Transplanted: yarrow, feverfew, motherwort, mullein, evening primrose, bergamot, wormwood, valerian, saltwort, salad burnet, joe pye, skullcap, arnica, woad, horehound, marshmallow.

Harvest:

Raspberries, black raspberries, lettuce, carrots, zucchini, squash, onions, garlic, shallots, broccoli, kohlrabi, beets, dill, oregano, basil, rosemary, chives, eggs, milk and our first potatoes—yay!

Preserve:

7 half pints black raspberry jam, 20 half pints raspberry jam, 7.5 lbs butter.

Store:

Nothing this week, unless you count the preserves.

Well, not really "storing" per se, but we did have two goatie babies born on the farm this week, and we lucked out with little girls, which means more dairy animals on the farm. They'll be keepers, so it's kinda like storing. Yeah, it's a stretch, but I got to include gratuitous baby farm animal photos.


Prep:

Jim made more bullets for hunting, built a more solid backboard for target shooting, and sighted in his deer rifle.

Manage:

Trellised the cucumbers with cattle panels, and they're much happier. Continue to monitor plants for insect pests: squash bugs, borers, japanese beetles, potato beetles, bean beetles.

Harvested garlic and put it up to cure before braiding. I'll likely replant most of it this fall, as I'm trying to build up my seed stock this year. Garlic is sooo expensive to buy.


Cook:

Raspberry jam. I made the black raspberry last year, but this was my first time making the red raspberry.

Add:

CSA delivery to 10 families: lettuces, kohlrabi, carrots, onions, beets, dill, chives, eggs.

Finally purchased hair care and toiletries from local, organic company Terressentials after using up all the various little bottles of stuff around the house.

Reduce:

Continue to compost, reuse plastic containers, reduce electricity usage, use reusable shopping bags, reduce driving, reduce reliance on grocery stores, harvest rainwater, etc.

Learn:

Researched more on grains, pressure canners, and local coffee roasters.

Independence Days Week 9

Things are slowing down a bit... well, not really slowing down, but I felt like I could relax this week without losing the gardens in a sea of weeds thanks to all the help I received last week. We've gotten some good rain this week, though, so there will be a whole new crop of weeds waiting for me in the coming days.

Plant:

Got all my winter squash and dry beans in this week: Cinderella pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut squash, Seminole pumpkins, sweet meat squash, winter luxury pie pumpkins, marina di chioggia pumpkins; sulfur baking bean, Taylor's dwarf horticultural bean, black valentine bean, and flagrano bean. Planted calendula, and replanted the gourdseed corn, which didn't germinate worth a darn. Hopefully all the rain we've gotten this week will give them a good start. The gourdseed corn and dry beans are already popping.



Harvest:

Lettuce, kale, chard, onions, kohlrabi, hakurei turnips, carrots, broccoli, citrus thyme, dill, oregano, rosemary, basil, raspberries, eggs, milk.


Preserve:

Almost 5 lbs butter, froze 24 oz blueberries.


Store:

Olive oil, snack crackers, pine nuts, 5 gallons drinking water.


Prep:

Saved seed from chives and green onions. Put up our pool, which also doubles as a 4,000 gallon cistern. The plan is to leave it up, covered, year round.


Manage:

Organized larder and pantry again, as I have a tendency to just dump bags and boxes in the room when they come in if I don't have time to unload and put away. I still need to get some kind of storage system going for the grains.

Weeded in the market garden: found the peppers again; tomatoes are an ongoing battle. Tied tomatoes into trellises. Pulled the remainder of the turnips to get ready for more mini onions, and pulled the peas where pole beans are already popping.

Checked on bees again. Hive #1 is so strong—plenty of honey, still mostly uncapped, both capped and uncapped brood, eggs. Hive #2 is still struggling to draw out the frames I moved into the center last week. Some eggs, some uncapped brood in center frame, but not much. I pulled one of the still mostly undrawn frames and switched it for a frame of brood in Hive #1. Hopefully that will give Hive #2 a bit of a boost.


Cook:

Nothing new this week.


Add:

CSA delivery to 10 families: lettuces, kale, chard, mini onions, kohlrabi, hakurei turnips, citrus thyme, rosemary, oregano, dill, raspberries.


Reduce:

I've used up all my yogurt containers for seedlings (they've now all been bleached and put away for use again for next year) and have just used up all my sour cream/ ricotta type containers for storing butter. So, I'm now soliciting containers from CSA members, family and friends, helping to keep their plastic out of the waste stream as well. Most of these containers are not recyclable where we live, so keeping them out of the trash is important.


Learn:

Still learning about grains in my test plot. The naked oats are doing well, but now I'm trying to figure out how the heck to harvest them, so if anyone has any experience with that, please share. In the plot here from left to right are naked oats, quinoa, gourdseed corn, burgandy amaranth, popcorn, huazontle, dry beans and winter squash.

Independence Days Week 8

Two whole months of the challenge, and I'm in the space where there are times when I feel more overwhelmed than independent. Still, things are coming together, and I'm staying on top of the weeding for the most part. I still have planting to get done, and I'm waiting, waiting, waiting for summer things to mature. The tomatoes have flowers but no fruit yet; the bush beans have flowers; some of the squash are just starting to flower.

I've been so lucky this week to have a farm "intern" here helping, plus I've also gotten 5 hours over the past two weeks of CSA work share hours. I'm not quite going to know what to do next week when it's just me again. Hmmmm, WWOOFers are looking more attractive every day. If only I could guarantee they'd all be as wonderful as Brenna....

Plant:

This week I transplanted several seedlings: rhubarb, sage, paprika and Thai chilis, pennyroyal, peppermint, lovage, flax, feverfew, and some others I can't quite remember off the top of my head.

Harvest:

Various lettuces, purplette onions, green onions, kohlrabi, carrots, turnips, beets, spinach, rosemary, dill, tarragon, chives, garlic scapes, raspberries, milk, eggs, pork.

Preserve:

Chicken stock.

Store:

Baking powder, peanut butter, pasta, canning lids.

Prep:

Began laying irrigation lines. Picked up Silver Fox rabbit breeding stock, which also meant touring another farm and seeing their set up. Made a contact for defunct freezer chests, which make good rodent-proof feed storage containers and root cellars.

Manage:

Managed one of my freezers this week completely unintentionally as it quit on me. Ugh. This was a Maytag chest freezer that we just purchased in November for our turkey and poultry sales; obviously, it was still under warranty. Thankfully, we're in that freezer often enough that I noticed pretty quickly. The ice cream was liquid, but the meats hadn't begun to thaw yet. We transferred most of them down to our basement chest freezer and lost just some soup bones, which will go to the dogs. I made beef stock from some of them in order to preserve them, only to realize after the fact that I had no freezer space to store it. Bummer. Yet another argument for learning to pressure can, I guess.

Checked on my bees again to see how they're doing with the second hive bodies. Hive #1 is doing fabulously—already some capped brood in center of second hive body, lots of uncapped brood, eggs, and honey stores. It's looking like I may need to add another hive body in the next couple of weeks. Hive #2 is not nearly as strong. Still working on drawing out the foundation in the upper hive body, so I shifted some of the outer frames toward the center to encourage continued drawing out. Some honey stores beginning in the upper body, very few eggs seen in the center frame. I didn't see the queen in either hive, but I know she's been there in the past 3 days because of the presence of eggs.

Clearly this is my most intensive category and where much of my time is spent each week. This week I also finished side dressing all my tomatoes with compost, which will serve as both fertilizer and mulch. Jim finished installing the rebar trellis system for me, which should work well, and it's almost time to start tying them into the wires. I also, as I said, had help weeding this week, so the beds are looking really nice. We opened the agribon rows to weed and lay drip tape, and man, that's some fabulous stuff! My eggplants look fabulous this year. Contrast that with last year when the flea beetles took them out completely. Definitely worth the purchase, and I'll probably get another roll next year just to have on hand. Jim tilled and hilled the potatoes and patrolled for potato beetles.

Cook:

Artichokes, which turned out to be incredibly woody, unfortunately, as I blogged about under my One Local Summer post below.

Add:

CSA deliveries to 10 families: lettuces, onions, beets, turnips, chives, rosemary, dill, garlic scapes.

Reduce:

Participated in a local kids' stuff yard sale where the proceeds benefit the children's hospital. Emily, Julia, and Sam went through all their toys and pulled out lots to sell. All together, we made about $200 and donated the rest to Good Will on the way out.

Learn:

Learned how to sex rabbits.

Independence Days Week 7

With the crazy heat last week, it was hard to get much of anything done. We lost three broilers to the heat, but everyone else seemed to fare okay. Lots of water all around. Latte still hasn't had her baby.

Plant:

Several lettuce varieties, carrots, bunching onions, chard, beets, watermelon, muskmelon, corn, amaranth, popcorn.

I practice succession planting, which means that I plant smaller amounts in staggered plantings so that we'll continue to have fresh plants coming into harvest. I also try to sneak lettuces in where ever I can get them, so last week's lettuce planting went alongside the tomatoes that are still growing. This week's went into the high tunnel where I pulled all the old head lettuces. Eventually, the tomatoes will provide some shade to the greens, and the greens will help prevent soil splash on the tomatoes.

Harvest:

milk, eggs, strawberries, mixed lettuces, spinach, kale, radishes, turnips, beets, green onions, thyme, citrus thyme, cilantro, dill, rosemary.

Preserve:

10 half pints strawberry jam, 3.5 lbs butter, 1/2 gallon milk into queso blanco.



Store:

6 gallons maple syrup

Prep:

Jim and Jules continue to work on the bunny hutch, which is very nearly done now. Ordered irrigation materials. Jim got a new rifle for father's day.

Manage:

Took up the soaker hoses that I laid down last week—yup, I have a tendency to do stuff like that. After some hemming and hawing over the price tag, I sucked it up this week and ordered the drip tape set up that I've been wanting for the market garden. After last year's drought and drastic loss of potato crop, not to mention the low yields on other crops as well, I really wanted to get some drip tape in place for emergency irrigation. We're also working on a large gravity fed rainwater irrigation system that will operate without power, but for efficiency, it's hard to beat drip tape. I went with a small company in the next state over, so somewhat local. Joe, the owner, was very patient and kind on the phone as he helped me navigate the different options and choose one that would work for our needs.

I also weeded the market garden, laid polymulch between the tomatoes and peppers, Jim and I got about half of the trellises up, and I cleaned out the older lettuces in the high tunnel and brought some hens in to help with critter control before replanting.

Cook:

I made queso blanco for the first time, and it came out pretty well, though I think I hung it for too long, as it was a bit dry. The cool thing about queso blanco is that it won't melt, so you can even deep fry it, which I did. Its properties are very similar to tofu, so it will work well in any recipe that calls for tofu in addition to Mexican cuisine. We had ours on homemade flour tortillas that I deep fried as well and made beef quesadillas. Not the healthiest of meals, but tasty and local.


Add:

CSA harvest for 10 families. Had my first work share person offer hours yesterday, so I put him to work in the new berry bed for about 2.5 hours, trying to find the berries.

Reduce:

Continued with all of our composting, reusable bags, etc. But something I thought of that I haven't talked about was my shift away from using the vacuum cleaner whenever possible. I do a lot more sweeping than I used to, and we're moving away from carpeted surfaces in the house that can't be swept or taken outside to clean. I don't know how much this saves electricity-wise, but considering that with 3 kids and 2 dogs in the house I'd reach for the vacuum at least 2-3 times a week, it must save a considerable bit. Now, I use a broom every day—well, erm... almost every day—and vacuum once every couple of weeks for a deep clean. Moving the dogs outside into the barn really helped to cut down on dust and dirt as well. Man, farm dogs are just plain filthy!

Learn:

I continue learning about cheesemaking, and yes folks, I'll post those recipes soon. But in the meantime, let me declare that I'm working exclusively out of Ricki Carroll's book Home Cheese Making for those interested in purchasing it. It's a really great resource with loads of info and tips. I also buy my cultures through Ricki's business The New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. Just a fabulous resource for the beginning cheesemaker.

Also this week, I've been delving back into seed saving info, trying to cement in my sieve of a brain which things cross pollinate with which. I ended up yanking the michihli that I'd been saving because both the tatsoi and the turnips in the high tunnel bolted quickly, and I wasn't able to stay on top of those flower heads. So, my michihli was likely compromised. My radishes, spinach and lettuces should be good though, so I left some of those in place. I'm hopeful for my sorrel as well.

Independence Days Week 6

This week I was flirting with overwhelm. Not necessarily because I got so much done, but because it's getting to the point in the season where it feels like there's so much still to be done and not enough time in the day to do it! It's been hard getting things in the ground because we've been pretty wet, and I have these panicky moments when I feel like the season's already almost over and it'll soon be time to get the winter stuff into the ground. Of course, it's barely June, and there's plenty of time for succession planting. But these 90° days we're having don't help the feeling that time just keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping....

Plant:

3.5 rows of lettuce, 50 lbs Yukon gold potatoes. I got the potatoes cut up this week, and Jim got them in the ground yesterday in the crazy heat we're having.

Harvest:

red salad bowl lettuce, romaine, d'avignon radishes, snap peas, swiss chard, spinach, cilantro, thyme, citrus thyme, oregano, tarragon, chives, strawberries, milk, eggs.

Preserve:

Made and froze 3.5 lbs butter. Jim made ground pork from the piglet he butchered using his grandma's Sunbeam with grinder attachments that we inherited.

Store:

Purchased several dairy cultures that now reside in my freezer for use in preserving some of the milk we're getting.




Prep:

Prepped a stall in the barn for our Nigerian Dwarf goat, Latte, who's due to kid any day now. She's the one with the brown markings; the white one is her little boy from last year, who will likely be in our freezer soon.

Set up milking stand and area for her in the barn, so my daughter Julia can milk her, starting 2 weeks after kidding.

Found a silver fox bunny doe for Julia's rabbit breeding, and she and Jim began building the hutch. Jules is definitely the one most into the farm, and the one most likely to actually take care of said bunnies. She wants to be a vet when she grows up, so she's very interested in learning all about animals. More power to her!

Manage:

Cleaned and organized the refrigerator to accommodate all of our new dairy products. Weeded the market garden and put up a row of agribon over the beans that were being crushed by bean beetles. Patrolled the potatoes for Colorado potato beetles, larva and eggs. Bees: installed foundation in 20 frames, 10 for each deep hive body, and added them to our two hives, which are filling out really nicely. Laid soaker hoses in the market garden. Sprayed Serenade to try to control botrytis in the strawberries, courtesy of the wet weather we've been having.

Cook:

Made neufchatel cream cheese for the first time, also chevre, which I've made before, and sour cream.


(Gratuitous barn cat photo.)




Add:

Seasonal CSA started last week, so I harvested produce shares for 10 families.

Reduce:

Compost, reusable bags, etc.

Learn:

I continue to learn all about cheese making.

Independence Days Week 5

Wow! It's already week five of the Independence Days challenge, and it's been both motivating and satisfying to look back on what we've managed to accomplish.

Plant:

I transplanted about 300 tomato plants and around 150 pepper plants. For those who don't know, we have a small CSA, which accounts for the crazy numbers. Though I admit to being nearly incapable of killing anything green. Deliberately anyway, though I sure did my best with these guys. We have a hodge-podge of plants in the market garden that only time will tell what they are. I tried to plant them based on similarity, so we may have some semblance of organization down there.

Harvest:

Harvested variety of lettuces, kale, chard, radishes, strawberries, green onions, snap peas, thyme, cilantro, sorrel, chives, milk and eggs.

Preserve:

Picked 6 quarts of strawberries and made jam out of 4 quarts to yield 16 half pints. Froze 2 quarts for use in smoothies and ice cream.

Skimmed 9 quarts of cream! This will go towards making butter and ice cream. Yummmmmm!


Store:

Put up 3 bottles of "cheap ass" vodka, according to Jim, for use in making tinctures; 3 bottles lamp oil; matches; organic lemon juice; 50# hard red winter wheat berries; 25# arborio rice; 25# brown basmati rice; 50# organic sugar; vanilla; Em's favorite graham sticks.

Prep:

Picked up 25 buckeye chicks to round out our breeding program. Purchased a book called Spinning in the Old Way, which talks about spinning obviously, but also about wool prep. Jim picked up 10 cattle panels.

Manage:

Weeded in the market garden, laid tarp to keep down weeds in the staging area, covered spinach with shade cloth, continued to slug-hunt, pulled out soaker hoses.

Cook:

I made ricotta cheese for the first time this week, and it was pretty tasty, though the curds were quite firm—almost mozzerella like. The first batch didn't come out at all, but the piggies and the chickens didn't mind one little bit; they thought it was just marvelous.

We also made our first ice cream, and boy was it just amazing! We made vanilla for everyone to fix up the way they like. Jules and Em had chocolate syrup, Jim and I had sugared strawberry topping I quickly whipped up from our garden, Sam had both! Em kept saying, "It's like heaven in cream form!"

Add:

CSA delivery to three local families. Natural foods co-op, volunteered for unloading and check in.

Reduce:

Used my chico bags again while shopping. I love having them right in my purse for those times I forget to grab my canvas market bags.

Learn:

Learning all about cheese making.