Fall Harvest

While we have been harvesting some over the summer, things really pick up in the fall. 

To start with, we are trying something called a Tigger Melon (a plant Peter brought home, because Tiggar is a favorite of mine).  When its ripe, this melon is yellow an orange. 

 When you cut into it the flesh is white, and it smells a bit like honey due. The flavor is good, but very mild 

 We also did well with sweet peppers this year.  We have these purple ones, although they disappointingly lose color when cooked. 

 We also got quite a few green ones, and some good summer squash.

 Our tomatoes are coming in strong.  I expect we will get quite a few more rounds, but for now we can make some sauce for winter. 

One of our hives did quite well this year, although the other didn't.

We took 50 lbs for ourselves, and redistributed 25 lbs to the second hive. 

It's still early, but we are getting ready for winter. 

Making Sugar, To Show I Can

As many people know, growing and harvesting sugar cane is a difficult and costly process.  Because of this, most sugar in the US is actually made from sugar beets.  In fact, until quite recently a significant amount of the land around where I live was used to grow sugar beets.  Sugar beets are white, long and somewhat less tasty than the red beets. 

 

While you can eat them in the same manner as beets, they are jut not as good.  Additionally, I like knowing how to do things, even if actually doing them is not efficient.  Therefore, I am making my own sugar.

 

To start with, clean and cut the tops off the beets.  Then, put them in a food processer to cut into fine pieces.  Put them in a pot of water to boil for one hour.

 

Then poor the mixture through a cheese draining bag into another pot.  I let mine sit overnight to drain out a much liquid as possible. 

 

In the morning  I ran the liquid through a bag again, and started the several hour process of boiling it down.

Remember to watch this carefully, you are essentially boiling sugar water and it can expand suddenly.  This process is slow, so in theory you can work remotely while you do it, if you can get the remote login to work. 

This process will take quite a long time.  In the end the liquid should form a thick honey textured syrup.  This syrup can be boiled down to sugar, but I chose to leave it and just have molasses. 

 

Now that I have proven to myself that I can, I must admit that unless you have a burning desire (read crazy desire) to someday serve a full meal and dessert while telling your guest that the entity of your meal is from the yard (and you have some issues with honey) this is just not worth it.  But its nice to know how!

To-Morrow Day

Friday  was my Grandpa Morrow's birthday.  We took some time to remember and celebrate his life. 

To start with everyone should know that Grandpa Morrow is in the Maple Sugar Hall of Fame (which is in Vermont for those who don't believe such a thing exists).  He also has a sugar house in upstate New York named after him.  We have this carving of the sugar house above our mantel. 

Due to this history there is no fake maple syrup in our house.  On the other hand, we don't eat that many things that use maple syrup, mostly because breakfasts that take more time are not as common.  But on Friday we did. 

We has waffles (whole wheat) with maples syrup.  I should point out that this is grade B dark amber, which was not his favorite, but what we had opened.  The day started nicely with reminiscences of Grandpa opening the syrup he got for Mom every Christmas morning to test to make sure it was great A light amber.  This annoyed her a great deal as once it is opened it must be refrigerated, and we never got through a whole bottle in a year.  When I was a kid there were always multiple open gallons of maple syrup. 

My remembrances of Grandpa also led to one of my favorite Christmas stories.  My Dad and sister and I were looking at getting Grandpa an extra pie (he loved pie, with milk, all pie) and went into Marie Calendars to get one.  Who should we spy but Grandpa looking at pies.  After hiding in the bathrooms until he left we eagerly asked the people at the counter what pies he had gotten.  When we discovered he hadn't we determined to make another pie so there would be 4 for Christmas.  (The next year we made an additional 12 small pies, because we could).  Due to Grandpa's love of pie we went to  Marie Calendars for this great dessert. 

I am loving the newly formed hopeful tradition of remembering the amazing people in our families, and look forward to more remembrances as the years go by.  

Making Swiss Cheese!

Swiss Cheese is rather complicated, in part because it requires a particular humidity for aging and a good deal of patience. 

Like most cheeses Swiss starts with two gallons of raw milk.

Unlike Cheddar it takes thermohillic starter and Propionic Shermanii powder. 

To start this cheese heat the milk to 90 degrees and add the starter.  Then remove 1/4 cup of the milk and mix in 1/8 teaspoon of the powder.  The mix this back into the milk.  Let it set for10 minutes.  Then add 1/2 teaspoon liquid rennet in 1/4 cup of water and mix with an up and down motion for one minute.  Let this sit for 30 minutes.  The curd will be set, cut he curds into 1/4 inch cubes.  While still at 90 degrees stir the curds for 40 minutes to expel the whey from the curds.

Heat the curd b 1 degree every minute until it reaches 120 degrees.  Then cook it at 120 for 30 minutes to achieve the proper break.  This means that when you press the curds into a ball and then rub it gently between your hands the ball breaks apart.  If it is not one it won't form a  ball.  Then let the curds set for five minutes.  Poor off the whey. 

Then put the curds (still hot) into a cheese mold and press at 8 lbs for 15 minutes.  Turn the cheese over and press at 14 lbs for 30 minutes.  Turn again and press at the same pressure for 2 hours.  Turn again and press at 15 lbs for 12 hours.

Make a brine out of 1 gallon water and 2 lbs  cheese salt.  Put the cheese in the brine and sprinkle with more salt. Leave the cheese in the brine for 12 hours.

This is when it gets difficult.  You need to remove the cheese and pat it dry.  Keep the cheese at 50-55 degrees and 85% humidity.  This is very problematic in the deserts of Utah.  In order to do this we are keeping it in our wine refrigerator with an open Tupperware of water to increase the humidity. 

Turn the cheese once a day for a week, wipe it off with  clean cheesecloth dampened in salt water.  Then place it in a humid room at 68-74 degrees turning it daily and whipping it with the cheesecloth.  We are using our plant room.  Keep it in this room 2-3 weeks until the cheese swells somewhat. 

Age the cheese at 45 degrees and 80% humidity (again in the wine refrigerator) for at least three months. 

Our cheese turned out well, very flavorful.

Night Harvesting Deserves a Quiet Night

One problem that comes up when you and your spouse both work full time, and volunteer quite a lot, and have a huge garden is that some day you may get home late from work and realize that if you don't harvest the first round of beets and plant the next one this week you won't have time for the next round.  You then might realize that you both have to work this weekend.  So you grab a flash light and get started. 

To start with, I should confess that I planted the carrots too close together, so now we have baby carrots.

Really we should have given them more space, and we did for the next round.

We did manage to pull all the beets and sugar beets, so as soon as I can find the time I will freeze them and make sugar!  We got so many that they totally fill our sink. 

We also needed to find something to do with all the greens.  While they are good in a salad I am not a fan of either drying the or freezing them so most of them were given to the chickens. 

This may not look like a lot, but the greens were piled high for a nice surprise for the chickens.  Hopefully I will be able to turn the beets into sugar soon.

Newly Invented Cheese

Peter has invented a new cheese, named Manaster Rose. 

We start with a recipe for a Pressato and then he altered the starter, and aging process.  We have also added peppers and annatto seeds.  It ends up with a smooth creamy cheese where you can almost taste the cream. 

One of the best ways to impact a cheese flavor is to age it with a paste covering it.  Therefore Peter mixed coconut butter and dried roses. 

 

This creates a frosting like mixture.  After that you frost the cheese.  

 This process must be done carefully to make sure all of the cheese is covered.

 After that we sealed it in air tight plastic (vacuuming out all the air) and let it sit for 6 months in our cheese cave area.  We will see how it works!

First harvest of summer

In late June we got our first harvest. 

The weather around here was wet and cool until a few weeks ago when it suddenly became extremely hot.  This means that our plants were somewhat stunted, but our ground cover of peas and spinach went crazy.  When it suddenly got hot the peas died back, and it is time to harvest them all.

Peas are great because they produce early and well, but also replenishes the ground for the other plants.  We froze some of these peas for winter (they will be good in stir fry) because we could not eat them all.

We had no such problems with the first tomatoes of summer.

These are actually only half of the first tomatoes of summer as the first we eat in the garden.  Tomatoes are some of my favorite plants to grow, as the store bought ones are extremely different from homegrown ones.  Tomatoes were bread to grow faster, and withstand shipping.  Unfortunately this also means they have less sugar and flavor, and are tougher.  Ours are sweet and juicy, and were hot from the sun.  I am hopeful that this is the start of a great harvest which will allow us to make sauce, frozen tomatoes and soup for the winter. 

Mid June Update

I haven't posted in forever, mostly because we have been crazy busy.  Between my changing jobs, my husband's case load and the various boards we are on we are lucky that we even got things planted!  But get things planted we did, just barely.  We were also annoyed by the very difficult weather.  First it was extremely warm for the year, that shockingly cold.  This has left us with some stunted plants. 

None the less I am hopeful for the year to come. 

Our fruit trees are doing well, both the peaches and the plumbs are likely to produce more fruit than we are able to handle.  Additionally our cherry trees and bushes are growing like crazy and are finally producing a few of the cherries we have been so hoping for.

This is our tart cherry bush, or one of them.  If you only have a small amount of space I recommend these, the cherries are delicious and they are producing well.

Our tart cherry trees are producing as well, although they are not growing as fast as the bushes.  We have a large amount of tart cherries mostly because we love them fresh, dried, in things or as juice.   Eventually we may have enough!

The sweet cherries are newer to our yard, and are getting ripe more slowly. 

The tree is growing well, and we are hopeful for the future (behind the tree we have garlic growing, we may have enough for one year).

 

In addition, we have restarted our raspberry patch.  The ones that were here when we moved in produced only once and then were done.  Given that there are raspberries that produce throughout the season, and that we love the fruit so much, we have put in new bushes. 

 



They are producing well and we are enjoying raspberry breakfasts each morning (non will make it to winter)

Our last fruit is the grapes we have growing on the chicken area.  It is shocking how well these have grown.

It will only be a year or so before the whole fence is covered.  I'm also excited this year to see what grape flowers look like:

 

I'm pleased to say there should be a large number this year. 

 

Our vegetables are not doing as well.  Only a few of our asparagus came up, and they are not looking as strong as they should. 



 

I am forced to conclude that they do not get enough water and that this may not be the best plan.  Instead we have included additional melons and squashes in the area.

These include spaghetti squash

and water melon.

We have also increased the number of tomato plants we planted, and while they are not looking as good as they would have without the month of 60 degree weather, they are doing well.

We are also increasing the number and types of peppers we are growing this year (including several which are indoors and have already given us over 80 habaneros).

For our other vegetables we are changing strategy, instead of a large variety we chose to plant only our favorites. 

Beans, both the pole and bush variety

Corn, surrounded by more beans, squash, and cucumbers. 

Brussel sprouts (there are more in another section but they are harder to see as they are surrounded by the spinach ground cover) 

Beets and carrots 

And more corn.

 

For potatoes we have taken yet another tactic.  We have found that every year we seem to miss a few potatoes during the harvest, which then means more sprout up in that location the next year.  Instead of rotating potatoes from here on out we have decided to intentionally leave potatoes in, and create a perpetual potato patch.

 

Lastly our animals are doing well.  The bees have one of the "suppers" already full of honey, and the younger hive is growing remarkably.

 

The chickens always enjoy the warm months more, as there are weeds for them to eat (why throw them away) and sometimes bugs.  In an attempt to improve their lives even more, Peter has built an area for wheat grass, which they should not be able to pull up, but will allow them to eat it all year, as well as any bugs who should decide to make it their home.

 

All in all, despite a very busy, and cold, start, the garden is looking good for the year.