This Week in Harvesting & Homesteading

Billy grew a watermelon! Actually, he grew a few, which is no small feat in Western Washington. The one pictured here is a 4-pound Sugar Baby. We also planted some Yellow Dolls, but have yet to harvest one. Our thrown-together hoop house seems to be the thing that has made the difference. Summers normally just aren't long enough or hot enough around here for watermelon, and we'd all but given up on ever being able to grow them, when... booyah, the hoop house delivered.

NOM!

Or maybe this was just a good year for cucurbits in general? Our cukes have never really produced a meaningful harvest, but this year.... whoa nelly! I've gone off the deep end a little with my pickling this year, most but not all of which has been cucumber pickles. So far I have 2+ gallons done and cooling their heels in the fridge, and just started 1 1/2 more gallons of sour dills fermenting today. The house of Jackson shall have a tangy miasma about it this Winter! ;)

Garlicky sour pickles in progress Day 1

I also processed another 50ish pounds of apples into juice/cider/critter food this week. My cranky shoulder is in a bad way right now from all the chopping, grating and schlepping around of produce, but, you know, I wouldn't have it any other way. Farm Wife 4 Life, yo!

Harvest Time 2014, Part 1

We were very late to pick our apples this year, and so haven't got nearly as much to show for our efforts as we have in years past, but we can chalk up at least one small victory - homemade hard cider.

Nothing warms a homebrew nerd's heart quite like the steady bloop-blooping of the airlock on a carboy of fresh-juiced cider. Some of this is destined to become apple cider vinegar, but at least a few pints will be enjoyed in it's hard form.

I also just harvested some of my breadseed poppies for use in baked goods and as an added exfoliant to our homemade goats milk soaps. This year I grew Elka White Seeded Poppies from Adaptive Seeds in Sweet Home, Oregon. Provided that I'd managed my garden better and not left it to it's own devices this Spring & Summer, I have no doubt that I'd have had a much bigger harvest. Even still, homegrown poppy seeds in any amount is pretty rad in my book.

I still have a lot of a lot of other things to harvest and sock away by one means or another. I've been a lactofermenting fiend this Summer! I already have sour pickles, dilly beans, sauerkraut and fermented ginger carrots done and in the fridge, but the cukes keep rolling in and the 'maters and tomatillos... I've yet to deal with those at all so far.

Harvest Time parts 2, 3, 705, etc., will follow in due course. We're raising half a dozen Muscovy ducks for the freezer this year, with a tentative harvest date of October 1st. Apparently slaughtering ducks is a whole different ballgame from harvesting chickens and turkeys, so I have a lot of research and prep to do before ducky d-day. We also may be harvesting one of this past Spring's wethers for the freezer. It depends, in part on whether or not they sell when the doelings move on.

There is certainly no shortage of things to do in the coming weeks and months, and having been otherwise occupied during the Spring and Summer, I look forward to doing (most of) them.

It's good to be back! :)

Waste

I've always been a frugal creature; not one to waste unnecessarily, and a bit of a pack rat when it comes to anything I perceive as potentially having a little life left in it. It's a blessing and a curse, really, in terms of the oddments and "junk" that I stockpile save. It is a relatively small percentage of the time that I end up doing anything with those spare buttons that come with my husband's work shirts, as he usually manages to wear the shirts out well before the buttons can go missing, but, even still, I can't just throw them away. I just... can't.

So I'm the first to admit that there can be too much of a good thing in terms of saving stuff. The HUGE exception to that rule in my book is food. There is always a body - be it human, chicken, ruminant, insect or microbe - that could use up that food's energy to a productive end and, in many cases, also produce a useful by-product (eggs, milk, compost, penicillin) besides. Therefore it pains me when I see any food irretrievably wasted.

To clarify exactly what I mean by irretrievably wasted, I'd define it like this - Useful potential energy that is irresponsibly cast off in such a way that renders it permanently unavailable for use by another living thing. Humans are the only ones who make waste like this.

If your family doesn't finish their dinner, saving the leftovers, composting them or sharing the food with critters would all be viable non-waste alternatives for taking advantage of the potential energy that is the raison d'etre, the very definition of food, and therefore a reasonable use of the food's energetic potential. Really, just about anything besides entombing it in non-biodegradable packaging and burying it 50 feet deep under thousands of tons of other trash, making it totally impossible to ever degrade, would be a reasonable use of the food energy. It's actually pretty easy to do.

Even so, it isn't unheard of to read tales of gross mismanagement of perfectly edible produce, as detailed in this story about an "unauthorized" public garden that was needlessly destroyed days before being harvested. As if that weren't tragedy enough, the ruined crops were then taken to a landfill and disposed of. I mean... why?

Irretrievable waste is hands-down the most complete waste of food, but there are others, though much less egregious, that still get under my skin. 

A major frustration that I'm experiencing a lot lately has to do with unharvested fruit trees. Washington state is known the world over for it's amazing apples. They grow almost effortlessly here, which is no doubt part of the reason that they are nearly as ubiquitous in our neighborhoods, parks and woodlands as the Douglas Fir is. But maybe having affordable, world-class apples available at the supermarket year-round has caused us to overlook the miracle of free food growing in our own front yards?

In Autumn, you can't help but notice all of the beautiful apples, pears, walnuts and hazelnuts hanging heavy in the trees, begging to be picked. And yet a vast majority of the time, the fruit will be left to drop and rot, perfect fodder for squirrels, yellow jackets and hungry deer, but seen as somehow less than their shiny supermarket counterparts, and therefore unfit and unworthy of human consumption. Have we lost our minds?

Yet another article (I've been reading a lot...) discusses just how much food we Americans waste on account of our acquired snobbiness and our reckless there's always more where that came from attitude. To illustrate just how insanely, ridiculously picky we've become as food shoppers, the article offers this bit of advice to producers and retailers for taking better advantage of "imperfect" produce -

Companies should look for alternatives in their supply chain, such as making so-called baby carrots out of carrots too bent to be sold whole at the retail level.

*Shakes Head* This is for real. People are going without and we're splitting hairs over carrot presentability. Phase two of my emotional reaction to this article (after weeping interspersed with multiple face-palms) was anger. I'm pissed, and that makes me loud, especially when it comes to things I feel passionately about. Taking care of people is one of those things.

I am only one person, but I am 100% responsible for choosing the food eaten by 4 people, 2 dogs, 20 chickens, 9 goats, 2 bunnies, 2 parakeets and one sassy turtle, therefore, my resolve to use food responsibly and with thanks has an impact that should not be, and indeed, is not taken lightly. I can participate in the system that keeps these problems going, or I can refuse, and take care of my family and farm on terms that both my head and my heart can live with.

Therefore, I resolve to grow, buy and use food even more responsibly than I have. I will buy less, grow and forage more, preserve more and use the food we do buy, find and grow as fully as can be done, and with all the respect it deserves.

Please join me.

The Case for Foraging

Harvested on a 90-minute walk in the woods with my 9 year-old:

Organically grown* Bosc Pears - $5.98/pound (8 pounds, 8 ounces = $50.83)

Organically grown* crab apples - $1.00/pound (10 ounces = about 63cents)

Organically grown* mystery apples - $1.00/pound (4 pounds, 12 ounces = $4.75)
{In season, in Washington state, apples can get pretty cheap, but this would still be a very hard to find price for organics.}

Organically grown* rose hips - $3.00/4 ounces (4 ounces = $3.00)

Organically grown*/Wild rowan (ash) berries - $4.00/pound (8 ounces = $2.00)

Organically grown*/Wild hawthorn berries/haws - $5.50/pound (4 ounces = $1.38)

Market value of fruit harvested today** = $62.59

Washington state minimum wage as of 9/29/12 = $9.04/hour

Amount of hours (before taxes) needed to work at minimum wage to earn $62.59 = 6.9 hours

*This assumes that since these are in the middle of the woods, that they are organic/unsprayed. Unless, of course, Montsanto has Round-Up ninja lumberjacks on it's payroll, which is certainly possible.

**Prices per pound are based on the most conservative prices I was able to find per item per pound on the interwebs.

Pickin' & Grinnin'

Over the course of the past week or so, it has become increasingly clear to us that the apples and pears were ready to come down. In fact, Scarlet and I would go and gather the windfalls each evening to add to our goats' rations, and were noticing a definite increase in the amount of apples committing hara-kiri each day. Picking time was nigh.

But picking apples from our non-dwarf, very old apples trees is not a task to be undertaken lightly. This is no picturesque, Pinterest-photo op. This is a bark-chunks-to-the-eye, ladder-teetering, crinked-neck, farmer versus tree, battle royale.

Apple to the cheekbone - coming up!

Our tallest apple tree is in excess of 15 feet high. And in the torturous way of many fruit trees, seems to grow it's biggest, most perfects fruits in the unreachable branches located 15 feet up, dead center. Basically, they're completely inaccessible, which isn't to say that we ever learn to just leave those apples alone. Nope, our cider-greed blinds us to the futility of our pursuit.

This year, we judiciously decided to throw in the towel (for now) after managing to pick and knock down 140+ pounds of cider and sauce-worthy apples, leaving another frustratingly impossible to reach 30-50 pounds still in the trees.

We also managed to collect another 13 pounds of smooshed, bug chomped or otherwise "imperfect" apples to share with our goats.

The goaties' share of the goods.

Our share! :)

As if our epic apple haul weren't enough, we also finally had a pear crop. Granted, at just 20 pounds, it wasn't huge, but when measured against our previous best-ever crop of one lonely little pear, we counted ourselves exceedingly lucky to end up so flush with fruit.

Aren't they purty?!?

With the picking being done, we now enter phase two of the fruit-a-palooza; washing, peeling and juicing. Hooboy!

With 160+ pounds of apples and pears that will need dealing with, I predict a busy week, filled with intense paring knife, apple peeler and steam juicer usage. I'll have to keep my eye on the prize - that first pint of ice cold homemade cider.

Like last weekend's jam-o-rama, this fruit-a-palooza may require a little external motivation to get through. Cue the motivational montage!

:)

Fruit-a-palooza!

Our apples are a little early this year, but at the rate that they're falling and changing color, if I don't get my stuff in gear and pick them soon, the deer will end up getting more of them than we will.

Not that I mind sharing a few with the deer. Especially after the apples have begun to ferment a little. Last year Bill saw an apple-intoxicated buck doing a twirly, fancy-dance in the neighbor's field. Here in the Hollow, we take our yuks where we can find them. ;)

Scarlet and I made a weensy dent in the apple onslaught today. We picked 10 1/2 pounds for us, and gathered probably 3 or 4 pounds of windfalls for the goaties.

Today's haul :)

Our four apple trees and our single pear tree seem to be going slightly bonkers this year. We're planning on taking full advantage of that fact, and making a good deal of applesauce and hard cider (and eventually, apple cider vinegar) from our lone crop.

Since our pear tree has never given us more than one or two pears in a season, I'm totally inexperienced with regard to when exactly I should pick them, and how soon after picking they need to be used. Does anyone have any experience with growing and harvesting pears that they'd care to share? As of today, they still feel rock hard, so I don't think they're ready yet, but, I honestly don't know.

The apples, though, they need picking sooner rather than later. I guesstimate that the 10+ pounds that we got today might be an eighth of our crop, maybe less. Naturally, the biggest and most gorgeous fruits are those that are way the heck out of reach, a good 15 feet or so up. D'oh!

If we can't get them, eventually the wind will knock them down, but by then they'll be deer/goat food. As long as somebody gets to enjoy these beauties, it's all good to me.

A Plethora of Good Things

Life has been wacky for a while now, so I'm going to focus on nothing but the positives today. I've got a heck of a lot to be thankful for!

*I just found out that we've been accepted as doggy foster parents! We get our first foster pup next weekend.

*I got SO HOOKED UP with garden goodies by my sweet and generous friend, Lisa, that my kitchen runneth over with garlic and beans.

*Three of my four apple trees are loaded with fruit, as is my one and only pear tree. Pies & cider... nom.

*It's been 3 months since my accident, and I'd say I'm, 80% back to normal. My broken arm has healed, my scalp wound has finally closed, and my cognitive issues seem to be dogging me less. :)

*The girls go back to school in two weeks and three days. But who's counting?

*Fritzen & Oreo, two Lamancha does that we sold to a friend earlier this year, are here for a romantic getaway with our guy, Buckley. I get extra goat nuzzles this week!

*The vet got back to us re: Anabelle. It seems that she had something like cancer, which sucks, but the good news is that the rest of our flock is not at risk. Trying to see this as a good thing, even though I know her last days were hard.

*The heat wave seems to have passed, temporarily at least. The difference between 75 degrees and 95 degrees is too beautiful to describe.

*I have an awesome giveaway in the works! Stay tuned. :)

How to: Homemade Vinegar

Making homemade apple cider vinegar is as easy as…well, pie. Sure, it takes a little longer, but it also lasts a lot longer than that pie would have anyhow, and it doesn’t go to your hips. ;)


A jug if apple wine vinegar in process. The only difference between this and apple cider vinegar is the yeast that I used to initially ferment the apple juice into alcohol.

Although this process is easy-peasy, there is a term that you’ll see here that you might not be familiar with - “the mother” (or scoby, mushroom). This refers to the jellyfish-looking blob that resides in a “live” vinegar. It is in fact a cluster of cellulose and acetobacter bacteria, which love to eat the alcohol in your hard cider, and in return, produce acetic acid which gives vinegar its signature tang. The mother is your friend, and if you give her what she needs, you can keep a mother culture going indefinitely.
The quick and easy method for making your own Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV)-

You will need-
1 clean quart jar
3 cups hard apple cider
1 bottle of store-bought organic ACV with the “mother” (Bragg is the brand I use)
1 rubber band
8x8 piece of cheesecloth or muslin (folded in half and half again to be 4x4)
Patience

Clean and rinse your quart jar very thoroughly. Remember we’re setting up an environment for bacterial organisms to thrive in, but only the ones we want, so be sure to wash any lurking bad guys out of there first.

Pour your hard cider into the jar. Next, add ½ cup of the store bought ACV, including as much of the mother as possible.

Place your cheesecloth across the top of the jar and rubber band it into place, then store it in a dark, warm place. (Mine is in the back of the cupboard above my stove.)
Forget about it for at least 6 weeks.

I fish mine out of the cupboard and start “sniff” testing it after 6-8 weeks. The longer you let it go, the better, so long as your vinegar-in-progress doesn’t show any signs of being invaded by contaminants. If, upon checking in, you see no signs of the mother, re-inoculate your cider with still more of the store bought ACV and give it some more time. Usually, once the mother is well established, it is pretty easy to keep “her” happy with fresh infusions of alcohol. (On this method of placating mom, the mother and I are in hearty agreement.)

A taste test will let you know without a doubt whether or not your vinegar is done. For the seriously scientific, you can also purchase an acid testing kit (sold at wine & homebrew stores) to verify acidity. Most commercial food vinegars are diluted to about 5% acidity. My vinegar was closer to 6% and while still being totally safe to use, oh, what an eye-watering difference that 1% makes!

When your vinegar is done to your liking, strain the finished product (no more that ¾ of the jar’s worth) into yet another clean jar or bottle with a firm sealing lid. This is your finished product. Now, go back to your mother jar, and fill ‘er up again with your alcoholic spirit of choice, put the cheesecloth covering on and send her back to her dark and cozy hiding place for another couple of months. The rate of conversion from alcohol to vinegar is directly proportionate to the surface area of the mother, so age your cider-come-vinegar in the largest diameter vessel you can reasonably manage for a faster turnaround time.



A view of the mother in my rhubarb wine vinegar.

The taste of your homemade vinegar depends a lot on the taste and quality of the cider/wine/beer that you start with, so if you want to guarantee a great vinegar, splurge a little on a bottle of your favorite cider or wine. Or, if waste not, want not is more your speed, use the collected dregs from various bottles of wine or cider and give them a go with the mother. Why not?

We make our own wine, cider & beer here on our little farm, so we always have a ready supply for my vinegar experiments. I have made ACV and rhubarb wine vinegar with our homemade wine & cider. I’m looking forward to “vinegarizing” some dandelion and rosehip wines soon, and want also give malt vinegar a try with my husband’s home brewed stout, if I can ever manage to sneak a little away.

Additional tips –

*Use a glass or lead-free ceramic vessel for aging and storing your vinegar. Plastics can etch and harbor bacteria or leach funky flavors into your vinegar.

*I use a plastic screw-top lid on my finished vinegar, so as not to have corroded metal-flavored vinegar.

*A clean, folded kitchen towel or paper towel can be used in place of the muslin/cheesecloth, as long as air is able to pass back and forth through the cloth while your vinegar is converting. Mother needs to breathe!

Quick and Easy Chevre Cheesecake

Things are finally starting to wind down on ye olde farm for the season. Our does are nearly dried off - hallelujah! - but in the mean time, we're still getting a few quarts of milk each week. Between the milk, and eggs that we're getting from our hens (who are all in ultra-high gear and laying like maniacs), I've been desperate to find ways to use my abundance of dairy and eggs. What luck, then, that I should have stumbled upon a recipe for a Fresh Goat Cheese Cake that, in addition to using more than an half-pound of chèvre, also calls for a half-dozen eggs per cake. Bingo!

You can absolutely use store-bought goat cheese for this recipe, but in the event that you, too, are swimming in goat milk, and want to go full-on Martha Stewart about it and make your own goat cheese for your cake, it just so happens that I wrote up a homemade chèvre how-to for todayshandmade.com just last week. Crazy how these things come together... ;)

Either way - try this cake! It is so much simpler than any other cheesecake that I've ever made and would work equally well as a sweet or savory dish. I'm working on figuring out a spinach, artichoke, tomato version and will post it here if I ever get it hammered out to my liking.

Anyway - get cooking and enjoy!


Fresh Chèvre Cheesecake-
Adapted from Goat Cheese Cake with Mixed Berries by Emily Luchetti

•11 ounces chèvre (or other mild, fresh goat cheese), allowed to come to room temperature
•¾ cup granulated sugar
•1 ½ teaspoons fresh lemon juice
•1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
•1 teaspoon real vanilla extract (or as is my preference, vanilla infused bourbon)
•6 large eggs, separated*
•3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Butter a 9-inch cake pan, then dust with granulated sugar.

In a medium bowl, combine the goat cheese with the granulated sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla extract, and beat at medium speed until smooth. Add the egg yolks, 2 at a time, incorporating them completely before adding the next two. Lastly, add the flour, beating it into the cheese mixture at low speed.

In another bowl, and with clean beaters, whip the 6 egg whites until firm, but not dry (firm peaks that are smooth, not lumpy).

Fold 1/3 of the beaten whites into the cheese mixture at a time, taking time to incorporate the eggs well before adding additional whites.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan, and bake for about 40 minutes. (I began checking mine at 3-4 minute intervals after the 32nd minute, just to avoid overcooking.)

Remove after 40 minutes, or when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool, dress with a topping of your choosing and serve. Enjoy!

Instead of the berry topping suggested in the original recipe, I used what I had an abundance of on hand at the time – apples. I peeled, cored and sliced three apples into eighths and stewed them with brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice and still more of that lovely vanilla infused bourbon. The resulting topping was a little soggier than I’d aimed for, but the taste was pure Autumn apple goodness.



*If you are using homegrown eggs like I do, you may opt to measure your eggs by weight rather than by number. Since they are not cookie-cutter factory farm produced eggs that all look and weigh the same, there will be more variance in size and weight. You should aim for about 2 ounces (in-shell weight) per large egg called for in your recipe.

On Deck for this Week -

*Turning some beautiful but mealy apples into "Apple Pie" schnapps :)

*Making more Pumpkin Raviolis

*Finally trying this Chevre Cheesecake recipe with a caramel-apple topping.

*Giving Tetanus booster shots to the goats

*Re-homing the Thunder-bird :(

*Vaccinating our "big birds" for Fowl Pox

So, a lot of cooking and a lot of critter jabbing. Oof. I'm tired already...

The Perils of Fresh Fruit

Today, in spite of my wanky back and the drizzly weather, I decided to pop out to the yard and try to pick some of our apples for canning and juicing this weekend. It did not go great. Learn from my fail(s), friends-

#1 - Buy one of these. You'll be glad you did.



#2 - If your apple trees are very tall, you're going to have to "upgrade" your picker in a method we like to call "Jackson Style". i.e. - Using 9/10ths of a roll of duct tape to affix an addition old broom handle or random stick to the existing handle of your picker, thereby extending its reach. Can you appreciate the advantage gained by Jacksonizing our picker?



#3 - PROTECT YOURSELF. I wore only a hoodie and earphones. This was highly dumb on my part. What you need, my friends, is something more along the lines of a welding helmet, or Major League Baseball catcher's uniform. (I'll betcha the Yankees have one that's not being used right now. ZING!)

I took an 8-ounce apple, which fell from a height of 10 or 12 feet, to the "chest region". Annnd that's when I was done for the day. If there are any mathematically gifted among you who can calculate how hard/at what speed that apple slammed into my lady lumps, I'd love to hear the answer, if for no other reason, than to underscore the great dangers of urban farming on a very small scale.

Appliciousness

My apples are ripe! My apples are ripe! At least as far as I can tell, they are.

Besides hardness, how does one determine the ripeness of an apple? I figure that since they are essentially leaping off of one of my trees, that at least that tree must be ready to go. And so I picked a few today, 5 pounds worth, which didn't even make a dent in that side of that tree. I'm excited for this harvest. This quantity of apples is a wonderful gift for many reasons. They will become applesauce, fruit leather, snacks for the bunnies, and more. But I have to admit that the one apple incarnation that stands head and shoulders above the rest is Bill's hard cider. Some have described Bill's cider as strong. Some have gone so far as to call it hallucinogenic. It packs a punch.

So as soon as we acquire either a steam juicer or a fruit press, we'll have ourselves a little harvest-fest and crank through some apples. And a few months after that - hopefully by Christmas - we'll be knocking back some Boggy Hollow cider. :)

I like to prune it, prune it

The modest increase in daylight seems to have given rise to a mild case of Spring fever in yours truly. Unfortunately, my cranky arthritic joints aren't really on board with all of the gardening & cleaning chores that my panicked brain insists that I get cracking on. As a sort of mind-body compromise, I've been doing some of the lighter yard work, like pruning my zillions of trees.

In reviewing the layout of our yard and garden over the past year, we've had to make a few difficult decisions about which plants and trees will be staying, and which ones will not. It is honestly painful for me to cut down a healthy tree, but I've decided that sacrificing a few for the good of the many is the best course of action. They are just too crowded, and if left to grow to maturity, will completely blot out the sun in several parts of our yard. And so, seven or eight of my poor little trees have a date with destiny this coming weekend. I console myself by knowing that the harvested wood will be used well, and by promising to plant at least as many new trees (in more appropriate locations and of varieties better suited to our climate and our family's needs) as trees that will be taken down.

In fact, just today I picked up a 3-variety dwarf apple tree from Costco. It will bear us Gala, Chehalis and (my favorite) Honeycrisp apples, yet remain nice and compact, without throwing too much shade or crowding out other plants & trees. It is a little surprise gift for my darling husband, who makes a mean jug of hard cider and has been pining after (pun totally intended) his own fruit trees with which to make his potent potables. But before the reward comes the work, so angry knees & shoulders or not, I'll be outside quite a bit this week, pruning and chopping. Uhg.

Getting Sauced with my Mom

Believe it or not, Mom & I managed to use up our all of our apples in just one day of industrious peeling, simmering & canning. Approximately 35 pounds of apples yielded just over 25 pints of applesauce for us, and could have made more, had we opted to add sugar, which, in spite of my daughters persistent pro-sugar lobbying, we did not.

We were fortunate to have willing and energetic helpers in my girls, who had great fun using our apple peeler, then feeding the resulting yards-long, skinny apple peels to our chickens. I would love to have documented our three-generation applesauce making effort in pictures, but unfortunately, my darling husband hijacked our camera for a hunting trip and it has not been seen since. :(

Despite a few technical difficulties and a cranky, arthritic knee that makes such long days on my feet somewhat punishing, the process was relatively easy and the sauce turned out delicious. The best part of the day, of course, was the experience of making food the old-fashioned way with my Mom and my girls. Pictures or no pictures, I have a feeling that my girls will remember this day for a long time, and hopefully, will someday make applesauce with their grandchildren too.

The Apple Man Cometh...

...tomorrow! Mom & I ordered a 40-pound box of Fuji apples as part of a Lions Club fundraiser, and they're due to be delivered tomorrow. I'm thinking applesauce for sure, but does anyone have any other tried-and-true canning or freezer-friendly recipe suggestions for an abundance of apples?