Makeing Cheddar Cheese

On weekends when I don't have much in the way of weeding or planting to do I like to bake, sew, or as we will be discussing today, make cheese.

Cheddar, like most cheeses takes raw milk, a starter, water and rennet.  One gallon of milk will create approximately a pound of cheese.  In most states getting the milk will require some effort.  If the milk has been pasteurized it will not form the required curds.  In Salt Lake there is only one store which reliably has raw milk, and in order to purchase it you must sign a waver. 

Also, while you may not know it from the store, most dairy products are approximately the same color as milk, so basically off white.    Historically cheese was made from milk form pasture fed cows.  Pasture fed cows will produce an oranger milk, and therefore an oranger cheese.  In winter cows would produce whiter milk, making a white cheese (as they were fed from hey while the pastures were covered in snow).  Due to the difficulty in getting raw milk at all, we are not able to get pasture fed cow raw milk, so instead I used annatto seeds as a die (I have never used them in cheese before, so we will see how it works).  Boil the seeds then remove them and add the water to the milk, making it an orange is color. 

Heat the milk to 86 degrees.  Add the mesophilic starter and set aside for 45 minutes.  Make sure your milk is still at 86 degrees. Add a half teaspoon rennet diluted in 1/4 cup un-chlorinated water.  Stir using an up and down motion for 1 minute.  Set aside for 45 minutes.  The milk will now have separated into a large curd, and way.  Cut the curds into 1/4 inch cubes and allow to set for 5 minutes.

Heat the curds to 100 degrees stirring gently raising the temperature no more than 2 degrees every 5 minutes.  Continue stirring for 30 minutes at 100 degrees.  Allow to set for 20 minutes.  Pour curds through colander, setting aside whey to make Ricotta, the curds will be in a blob at this point, not strips.  Put the colander in the pot and let it sit for 15 minutes.  Put curds on cutting board and slice into 3 inch slices.

Put in pot and place the pot in another pot with 100 degree water.  Turn curds every 15 minutes for 2 hours.  The curds should now have the texture of chicken meat.  Break slices into 1/2 inch cubes and put them in the covered pot again.

Stir with your fingers ever 10 minutes for 30 minutes.  Do not squeeze them.  Remove the pot from the pot of water.  Add salt and stir.  Line the 2 lb cheese press with cheese cloth, then put the curds in and cover with cloth.  (I usually use 2, because it doesn't quite hold 2 lbs of cheese prior to pressing).  Press using 10 lbs of weight for 15 minutes. 

Turn the cheese, recover with cloth and press with 40 lbs for 12 hours.  Turn again and press at 50 lbs for 24 hours.  Remove the cloth and let it dry for 2-5 days.  Cover with cheese wax and age at 50 to 55 degrees for 3-12 months (the longer you age it the sharper the flavor).  I will not be able to tell you how this turned out for months (though the last one was great), but for now it looks good!

Making Ricotta

Ricotta cheese is made from the left overs of hard or soft cheese. 
To make ricotta take the left over whey from your other cheese and heat it to 200 degrees.

Add 1/4 cup cider vinegar while stirring.  This will form curds.  Put the curds into butter muslin in a colander. 

Hang the muslin over a sink for several hours. 

Place your cheese in a bowl and enjoy.  It can be refrigerated for up to a week.

Making Honey Candy

Now that we have so much honey we need to find things to do with it.  Our first use is hard candy. 

Combine 2 cups of honey, 1 cup of cream and 1 cup of sugar

Bring to a boil, remember when you start that it will take up much more room in your pot than you think it will.

Cook until it forms a hard ball when you drop it into ice water.

Pour the mixture onto a buttered cooking sheet.

When cooled, pull with buttered hands. Stretch, twist and pull until firm and then form into long ropes and place on waxed paper.

Cut into bite size pieces. If you want, you can roll them in powdered sugar and wrap them in wax paper

Spring Planting Completed

We have finally finished with the spring planting.  Which is not to say we are done planting, there will be a summer round, and a fall round.  In fact we have already planted our second round of radishes, having pulled 2.5 pounds this week.

Not all of our plants are coming up but so far it is looking good.



 The tomato plants are coming in well.

The egg plants and sweet peppers have some transplant shock, but I expect they will do well.

Radishes, beets, turnips and broccoli are coming up, although the carrots (in the middle) are sluggish.

The garlic and onions are growing well.  The garlic over wintered and is much stronger, we will have to try overwintering onions, garlic and broccoli next year so all of them will be stronger and produce earlier.

Some of our potato plants are coming up strongly, although others have not done so yet.  (We will see how many we end up with).

The sugar snap peas are finally big enough to start climbing the fence (you can see the tendrils reaching toward the fence in the upper left corner). 

We have 2 pie pumpkins coming in, which I hope will produce lots of pumpkins for pies, and Harry Potter based recipes.

We also have a spaghetti squash and jalapeno plants.  Peter only likes the squash as a side dish, but I enjoy it as a pasta replacement (it is a bit al dente, with a good flavor that is not like pasta, but I'm a fan of using it for spaghetti and meatballs). 

Peter has several hot peppers planted in pots (for better control of their water and temperature).  He plans to make hot sauce as well as eating them.

The asparagus is coming up, although not all of them have. 

The grapes around the coop are growing well, and I expect a good harvest.  Additionally, our trees are starting to produce their fruit.

Peaches.

And tart cherries.

There are still more plants to come up, including additional squash, lefty greens, cabbage, corn and okra. 

Chicken update

We have a new chicken arrival. 

She is a black star chicken who we have named Ray Ray.  She is very friendly and will produce 6-7 eggs per week as soon as she settles in.

 When you bring a new chicken into your coop the other chickens will pick on her until she becomes part of the flock.  In our case Cinnabon is the top of the pecking order, and it has taken some time for her to allow Ray Ray in. 

In order to get the chickens used to one another you place the new chicken in the same area as the flock but in a separate cage.  You also place the new chicken in a cage in the coop during the night (so the chicken will learn that the coop is home).  Over the past 2 weeks Ray Ray has become an accepted part of the flock.

We have also put our smaller chickens (who we have been raising since they were chicks) in an adjoining cage so that they will all become used to each other as the little ones grow large enough to join the flock.

(Winny is in front Arya is behind).

Spring Honey

Since Peter's hive split he decided it was time to check and see what spring honey we might have left.
Obviously, as we just put the swarm in to our new (smaller with a feeder) hive Peter only opened the older hive.

To extract honey you only take the top box (the super).  This is half the size of the other boxes because the others are too heavy, and the frames will not fit into the centrifuge. 

After removing the frames from the super you cut the caps of wax off of each frame (setting the wax aside for candles, lotions or lip balm).   Place six frames at a time into the centrifuge.  As you spin the frames the honey will come out and drip to the bottom, in order to get all of the honey out you must turn the frames around and spin them again. 

From there open the bottom of the centrifuge an allow the honey to poor out into the next 5 gallon bucket through a filter to remove the wax (you can close the centrifuge again if you happen to be getting more honey than can fit). 

See the filter on top and the opening on the bottom, it is very important to have both of these features to your bucket.

From there, open the bottom of the bucket and poor honey into jars.

This spring we got 12 lbs of honey out of only 6 frames (each supper has 12, but ours were not all full).  Without the swarm we would probably have gotten significantly more.  Additionally we expect to get more this fall.

Up next, things you can do with honey!

SWARM!

Last night we looked out the window and saw that Peter's bees had swarmed.

Bees swarm for a variety of reasons, from not liking their hive, to being so successful that there is no longer room for all the bees.  I am confident that in our case (particularly because the hive is still full) there are too many bees. 

When bees swarm they lay queen cells (so they leave behind a queen) and then half of the workers and the original queen take off and land in a ball on a branch. 

As you can see there are thousands of bees sitting on this branch.  They hold onto one another and protect the queen.  A swarm will stay on the branch for between a few hours and a few days.  Ours was not on there very long before we noticed (we had been working in the yard a few hours before).  Swarms can be as small as a grapefruit or as large as a watermelon, ours was larger than most watermelons.  This means that it is likely that this swarm has over 50,000 bees. 

I cut this branch down and Peter shook the bees into our extra hive box.  After putting them in we made the sugar syrup and feed them.  He now needs to go get an extra top and bottom as well as a new queen extruder.  This should allow us to keep 2 hives.  Unfortunately our new hive might not last.  There is an old bee keepings saying:

A swarm in May is worth a load of hay

A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon

A swarm in July ain't worth a fly

 

This is because in May the drones may not be fully developed when they fertilize the queen the eggs may not be able to survive the next winter.  If the hive swarms too late they will not have time to build up enough honey for the winter.  So we will have to wait and see if our new queen can make the hive work. 

 

Unfortunately this makes it unlikely we will get a spring honey harvest, as the honey is now needed for two different hives.