independence days - week 9

since i'm struggling to get the garden in again this year due to my rambunctious toddler, i thought taking the id challenge would be a good moral booster for me. i try to practice this idea anyway during the growing seasons so it's a great reminder of how much i really do even when it feels like i don't.

this has been a week of putting out fires. 4 gallons is a massive amount of cherries to pit by hand (note to self, look into buying a pitter AND a harvest basket that straps to body). clover is giving me a steady 1/2 gallon a day and increasing. harvesting honey was no easy task but a delicious one! i felt bad that we took the honey but the local beekeeper reassured us it wasn't bad since there was so much blooming right now, they would make it up quickly. and sheesh, they filled this super in 10 days plus started capping it off.

we lost 4 more broilers. we are down to 16 now. we started with 30 with all the free ones. i'm pretty disappointed. round two arrives next week. hopefully we'll do better with them. the turkeys are thriving though. they are so sweet with all their whistles and chirps. thanks to the advice of giving the turkeys raw eggs/yogurt. i happened to have a bunch of old (like 2 years - i can't throw anything out!) frozen eggs that i've been feeding the turkeys. at first, they didn't want it but now, they attack it. i also give them curdled milk. i need to handle them to get them friendly.

1. plant something:
^nothing, nada, zip!

2. harvest something:
^eggs, milk
^4 gallons cherries
^1 super of honey (we had to remove it because greg put together the frames wrong although all was well when we pulled it off)

3. preserve something:
^milk - yogurt, cheese
^5 quarts cherry pie filling
^2+ gallons honey

4. prep something:
^purchased 1 gallon of honey from local beekeeper
^pitting and prepping cherries for drying purposes (recipe recommends freezing before drying)
^write up shopping/wish list for auction we'll be attending on saturday
^contacted seed store to inquire about purchasing seed for hay/pasture

5. cook something:
^added lamb's quarters in with hamburger as spinach substitute

6. manage your reserves:
^weeded garden like crazy and mulched as much as possible
^kids and i cleaned out the basement to start organizing for food storage

7. work on local food systems:
^sold eggs and jellies at local farmer's market
^gave tour of garden to local garden club leaders
^set up date to give tour to another interested party (won't be until august)

8. reduce waste:
^use canvas bags at grocery store and farmer's market
^re-use egg cartons for our nest run eggs

9. Learned a skill:
^made yogurt w/o electricity (used an old styrofoam omaha steak cooler my parents had given me years ago that i unearthed in the basement)
^learning how to extract honey w/o an extractor

hand extraction

this is what i did to extract the honey. remember, i'm no expert, this is my first attempt at doing this and i most likely did it wrong but it worked. in the future, we hope to not butcher the comb. greg will be taking the foundations out of the frames to fix the errors so it didn't really matter this time around...

first, i took a knife and cut off the comb. you can see the honey pouring down the front of the comb. yum!


this is what it looked like in the pan. a pile of comb and lots of yummy honey.


before and after shot of the frames. the foundation has been scraped clean. i used a metal spatula to scrape them down gently after cutting off the comb.


next, i poured the honey into a funnel lined with a gerber baby diaper (they suck for diapering but are excellent in the kitchen!). the honey ran through and collected in the glass measuring bowl. the first frame i heated gently on the stove to melt the wax but the other 9, i did in this manner and it worked just as well.


i tried to not put the wax parts in the strainer. instead, i tossed those into a stock pot with a lid. it is now sitting outside in the sun. yesterday, we had no sun. hopefully it will cooperate more and melt the wax enough to separate the rest of the honey out.


in answer to the preserving question, since the combs weren't capped off, i'll be freezing the honey as a precaution. however, it won't last long because once the elderberries are ripe, i'll be making elderberry mead with it. yum!

so far, i've got about 2 gallons of honey, maybe a quart shy of that.

sweet rewards

greg had to pull the super off the hive he put on 10 days ago because he assembled the frames wrong. he did it yesterday morning and left the frames for me to take care of. in 10 days, the bees went from flat foundations to combs filled with honey and capped (in the beginning stages).



this is not bubbling from heating, it's bubbling from pouring and scraping. a giant sticky mess of goodness! when i'm done scraping the last 3 frames, i'll set the wax mixture in a stock pot with a lid on the sidewalk to extract it with the sun.

so far, i've yielded about 1 gallon and i expect when it's all done, i'll have 2 gallons. he put 3 supers on their hive and will add 2 more in the next week or two.

go bees!

between hand extracting honey and hand pitting 4 gallons of cherries, my week has been full!

independence days - week 8

since i'm struggling to get the garden in again this year due to my rambunctious toddler, i thought taking the id challenge would be a good moral booster for me. i try to practice this idea anyway during the growing seasons so it's a great reminder of how much i really do even when it feels like i don't.

sometimes, i feel like i'm just squeaking by. every little thing is done in spurts between chasing down toddlers and filling demanding preschooler requests. forget about spending any meaningful times with the older two...

this week found me planting much less, weeding and mulching more and harvesting a tiny bit more. today is started watering, a irst this year other than potted plants.

1. plant something:
^zinnias, radishes, cukes (round 2, only 7 came up in round 1), okra (round 3-nothing came up either time before
^transplanted joe pye weed, spilanthes, red rubin basil, lyre leaf sage, white sage

2. harvest something:
^eggs
^radishes, turnips, flowers, lemon balm, mint, lamb's quarters
^cherries - 2 gallons
^milk! from my new goat! (~1/2 gallon per day - not too shabby for a first time freshener who's never been milked and was being dried off when i got her!)

3. preserve something:
^more st. john's wort in alcohol
^cherries - 12 - 1/2 pints of cherry jam

4. prep something:
^cleaned out the garage that is to be converted into a wwoofer/guest cabin
^built 9 supers and 90 frames for the supers and painted the supers
^found s/s stock pot w/lid($3), more cloth napkins (.50 - .79 each), sheet set (for wwoof futon)($2), flannel sheet for one of the kids ($1), 2 wool twin sized/throw blankets ($4 for both), misc kitchen gadgets for guest cabin (.50 - .69 each), set of melamine plates, bowls, cups, saucers (19 pieces for $8), brita water filter ($1.29),3 ice cube trays (.69), 3 chairs ($18 total) for the table we already have (again for guest/wwoof cabin) at thrift store
^started a preserving recipe section in my household binder to keep track of all my favorite recipes...no more 'hmmm? where was that recipe from????' as i search frantically for my tried and true recipes!
^items purchased off craigslist for wwoof cabin: ceiling fan $20, door $20
^brought home 4 turkey poults and 3 does
^reviewd my options for a ram, narrowed it down to 3 (we're getting 1)
^made soap

5. cook something:
^salads from the garden using lots of flowers - pansies, dianthus, borage, nasturtium and herbs - lemon balm, peppermint, oregano, lamb's quarters and kohlrabi and lettuce/spinach from market
^turnips
^kohlrabi was a new veggie for me to try this week (yum!)

6. manage your reserves:
^used old applesauce to make apple bread
^confirmed the purchase of 4 more n-c ewes (that makes 6 plus we will be purchasing a ram too)
^weeded garden like crazy and mulched as much as possible

7. work on local food systems:
^sold eggs and jellies at local farmer's market
^bought some locally raised pork and beef from vendor at the market
^shared my cherries with a friend who helped pick and several herb plants
^picked up our 4 turkey poults! and 3 new goats
^taught a friend how to make soap

8. reduce waste:
^use canvas bags at grocery store
^re-use egg cartons for our nest run eggs
^bought used bicycle from thrift store for sage ($8)

9. Learned a skill
^talked to a friend who is giving us 2 pyrenees puppies about raw food diet for them
^discussed feeding turkey poults raw chicken livers to keep healthy (anyone heard about this?)
^learning more about navajo-churros

what's new around here?

cherries high to the heavens!

little girls love tart pie cherries and beg for more

the bees are happy with their new super and new set-up. we'll be adding more supers this weekend to both hives. we hurried up and got this one on so the bees would be happier.

cherry picking friends forever

clover - i'll be milking her starting tomorrow morning

chamomile - they thought she was a boy and didn't disbud her so we have one with horns, hooray!

calendula? - we are still working out a name for her. i felt so bad, when we took her and left her sister, they both bawled the entire time. i almost left chamomile so i could bring her sister home with her.

lions and tigers and sheep oh my!

we are adding to our sheep herd. a breeder in ohio led me to someone she sold 4 ewes to a few years back who is now wanting to sell them because he doesn't have time for them. he lives near cincinnati. so, we are planning a road trip (greg, jaden, sage and i) to treck from our new of the woods through indiana to ohio. we're going to consider this our vacation. ha

i've been trying to get the weeds under control in the garden. this am, when the kids get up, i'll be dragging us out to the shed to load carts full of old goat bedding to mulch as much as possible. i managed to wipe out 3 tomatoes with the scuffle hoe. i am so pissed at myself for that.

i planted okra for the 3rd time. i'm determined to grow it! we love our okra around here. i also replanted cukes...7 out of 36 came up.

i've made a few runs to local thrift shops trying to find things to outfit the wwoof cabin. i've found a lot...sheets, kitchen utensils, pots, pans, baskets, some cards and other games (checkers, yahtzee), chairs (we have a table), napkins, towels.

yesterday, we harvested about 2 or so gallons of cherries. and that was only the bottom 1/3 of the tree! we need a better ladder system so we can reach higher! for now, there is cherry jam and cherry pie in our future!

today we are picking up a nice exterior door and a ceiling fan w/light for 20 each. and also, going thrifting again. i'm trying to find a bike for sage.

earth be damned (or i won't give it up)!

tagged by two frog home, the question of what won't i give up to be green is the subject. this is a hard one because i use several things for convenience but when it comes down to it, they really aren't necessary in my life.

my vehicle, i'd give up in a second if i had a team of fjords (pjedro and pjaco). i dream of a world where vehicles don't exist and we go back to horse and buggy...have so since i was a kid. i should've become amish. heh. i need the vehicle only to go pick up my kids from their dad's but i could do that on horse back! most other trips are fairly frivolous including grocery shopping. i suppose transporting livestock isn't frivolous but that could be done with a wagon too.

my fridge, gone. i have trouble keeping it stocked unless we are backed up in milk and eggs. that's not a problem anymore since we got our license.

electricity, gone. if it weren't for my laptop (see below) i could care less for electricity. we have a wood burning stove, granted it has an electric blower, and no a/c so mostly, it's for the lights and the fridge. i'd love to live more simply. (note, this is not necessarily the view of any of the other family members).

ironing board and iron - oh, i'd so like to chuck that one already. i've been extremely lax with it this week and greg has had to iron all his work shirts. shame on me (hey, i'm giving it up to green the earth. that's my story and i'm sticking with it!)

however, here are a few things i thought of:

my laptop and wifi connection and printer - seriously, i use the heck out of my computer and internet. i've actually started researching a solar power adapter to run the computer on (anyone have any good recommendations?) my printer is used every day for my business

my kitchen aid mixer - it would probably be one of the first to go but i use it to knead my bread and to churn my butter. but, i have hands and i have a churn. both work just as well but are more time consuming.

anyone else care to play?