Busy, busy, busy....

This time of year is so very busy!  I had forgotten how busy we were last year, scrambling to get everything harvested, preserved and put up for winter.  Blackberries, apples, potatoes, summer squash, cucumbers....seems like everything wants to ripen at the same time!  I'll start first with the cheese.  In the last 10 days, I have made 2 batches of Fromage Blanc and 1 batch of Chevre.  Both are super easy and both follow the same method -

1) Heat milk to 86 degrees F (cow's milk for Fromage Blanc and goat's milk for Chevre)

2) Add culture and allow to rehydrate for 2 minutes, then stir to mix in.

3) keep milk at 72 degrees for 12 hours (I poured mine into a 1 gallon jar and put it in the sink full of 72 degree water.  It's much easier to control the temp of the water in the sink than the ambient air...The water temp is on the left of the thermometer.  I know the picture shows 75 degrees - it just hadn't cooled yet.)

4) Line a colander with dampened cheesecloth.  Ladle milk into cheesecloth.  You can collect the whey that drains and use it for various things (like making pasta or protein shakes) or you can give it to your chickens like I do.  :)  Allow milk to drain for 4-8 hours, until desired consistency is achieved.  Store in airtight container for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator.  That's it!  Fromage Blanc tastes a lot like cream cheese and can be used in recipes that call for cream cheese.  The first batch came out with a weird consistency, almost grainy.  But then again, I started draining it at night and slept in a little late so it had dried a bit too much on the outer layer.  So I threw in some garlic, onion, and salt and made a dip.  (It's at this point that I pat myself on the back for not wasting a botched recipe AND for making something that my oldest really likes!)  I made the Chevre and froze it in 1-cup amounts, wrapped tightly in saran wrap and then vacuum sealed when frozen solid.  It freezes very well and my husband can enjoy fresh, homemade Chevre anytime he wants (I don't care for it).  Below is the batch of Chevre, which made 1 1/2 pounds of cheese from 1 gallon of milk.

Apparently, this year is a great year for cucumbers!  Last year, we were lucky to get the few that we got.  This year, I've already collected a few slicing cucumbers and over 15 pounds of pickling cucumbers!  I've been making pickles like crazy!  I've made two batches of bread & butter pickles (which turned out very good) and a batch of dill pickles (still waiting on the results of those).  This is a picture of the first set of pickling cucumbers that I got...

There were a couple of 1/2 pounds cucumbers in that bunch!!

And then there's the first harvest of both broccoli and summer squash.... This surprises me as broccoli is typically a cool weather crop and summer squash is a warm weather crop....guess we have the best of both worlds!  Our very late warm weather probably had a lot to do with it...

I just LOVE homegrown broccoli - it has such a wonderful flavor, almost nutty.  MMMMMM!  Our summer squash plants have gotten bigger than we thought they would.... much bigger than our zucchini did last year.

Our spaghetti squash is doing really well!  So far, at last count, we have 17 squash!  Here's a picture of the largest one...(sorry, I had to use my keys for comparison - they were the only thing I had with me)

The last couple of weeks, we also said goodbye to the first set of rabbits and hello to 2 more sets.  These ones are 2 1/2 weeks old - in the barn there's also some that are 1 week old and some that are 8 weeks old.

I love this age!  They're cute and look like miniature rabbits...these are 1/4 Champagne D'Argent and 3/4 Satin.  As they get older, their faces will get longer and they will actually look more like rodents...as bad as that sounds.  But this age...they're so cute and cuddly!  I just try not to think about what will happen in about 10 weeks.

The blackberries are starting to come in.  Last year, they took us by surprise as we didn't know they were there.  We picked every day for about 6 weeks...in the extreme heat (not that it's all that hot, but since I don't like to sweat - it was HOT).  Then there was blackberry syrup, blackberry jelly, and blackberry wine...not to mention the dozens of vacuum sealed packages of blackberries that we put into the freezer.  I was actually kind of dreading the blackberry's arrival this year...picking, sweating, cuts and scrapes, sweating, and cooking, oh, and sweating.  But one taste of my husband's blackberry jelly, mmmmm!  Yeah, I'd do it again!  And the size of the berries this year.... it's gonna be a great harvest!  Maybe we'll even be able to sell some....

We also harvested the last of the potatoes.... the russet variety.  Pretty cool - for our first time growing potatoes.  And since they were so easy, and we all love potatoes, we'll be doing them again next year.  For now, it's just a matter of storing them..... I dug them up all by myself while my husband was taking care of some much needed auto repairs.  I was careful and made a couple of observations about the garden....1)earthworms - excellent for the soil and the plants so I was careful to put them back into the dirt and gently cover them with soil so they wouldn't dry out in the heat (I resisted the urge to toss them to my chickens). 2)moles - the bad = they gnawed on a couple of my potatoes and one of my green tomatoes (grrr);  the good = they aerate the soil and allow for bigger potatoes.  So I figured a couple of lost potatoes was the cost for healthy soil and big taters.

There were a couple of odd ones in there....although perfectly good, they're just not something you'd see at the store. :)  And I kinda like that....

The early apples also ripened.  Unfortunately, the slight breeze that we had one day knocked the bulk of them down so we aren't gonna get as many as we would have liked... but there's still plenty on the tree.  And we still have a couple more trees yet to ripen.  We've offered the fallen apples to local farmers for their chickens and pigs...they love them!  And they don't care if there are bugs in them or if they have bruises....  But it's about this time that I'm wishing that we had our own pigs to feed them to... lesson learned - we're getting pigs again in April.

The picture below shows what we picked in about an hour - before the sun came out from behind the clouds and it warmed up too much.  It's not much, but it's more than enough to get me started on making some applesauce.

While picking apples, we stumbled upon this little guy....

We've also decided to make some changes around here.... but more on that later.  For now, I've got my hands full with fruits and veggies - with more coming in every day.  Later this week, I hope to be posting about a new addition to the farm... :D

Superwoman I am not

I have come to the realization that I am not superwoman.  No matter how hard I try or how many tasks I try to take on - I cannot do it all.

We have lived on our farm for almost 2 years now and we are starting to learn the groove of the seasons.  We now know that late summer/early fall is our BUSIEST time of year.  Mostly because of the garden and the orchard as the animals turn is in the spring.  Our apples are getting ready to "literally" fall off the trees -

This means that we'll be pressing apples and making applesauce and apple pie filling soon.  And since we have two varieties of apples - one early and one late - this means that we'll be doing all of that twice.  Everything that we can is coming into season - peaches, pears, tomatoes.  The blackberries (which there seem to be more of this year) will be ripe within the next couple of weeks - a task that I'm not really looking forward to as we picked blackberries everyday for a month last year, even when the temps were in the 90's!  But I'm willing to sacrifice a few beads of sweat to gather a few pounds of those delicious little berries!  Those berries eventually become blackberry jelly, blackberry syrup, and blackberry wine - all made by my husband.  YUM!

This was all made by one 25 pound box of tomatoes... that I bought from the local farmer's market.  I think I'll be in trouble once our tomatoes start ripening but I just couldn't help myself.  I plan on making lots of salsa - we found out that Tyler loves salsa.  He normally hates tomatoes but if he'll eat them in salsa, who am I to say no?

Here are the last of our red potatoes.  We pulled them all up a few days ago and were surprised at how many there were, especially since we've been pulling them up early and eating "new" potatoes.  Our guess, there's probably 50-75 pounds of potatoes there.  Not bad for a $5-10 investment in seed potatoes.  The "russet" variety should be ready to pull up in a couple of weeks.

I'm sure that all of this doesn't sound like very much, but it is time consuming.  Canning is an all day process that precludes me from doing the rest of my housework - laundry, cleaning, meals.  Normally, I would love an opportunity to avoid those chores but it all just seems to pile up around me.

Our field was cut, raked, and baled last week.  I just love the look of our pasture during this phase.  Something so peaceful about it.  But that also meant hauling bales of hay from the field into the barn.  This is when we learned that we are not as youthful as we were last year.  This time last year, we just tossed the bales from the back of the truck up into the loft.  Steve threw them up to me and I picked them up and put them into an organized stack.  There are not light - each bale is about 60 pounds which you pick up by squeezing the baling twine together to make a handle of sorts.  Quite the workout!  However this year, we have a different truck that is a little lower to the ground making the distance that he has to throw them up to the loft a little greater.  We resorted to just stacking them in the lower level of the barn until we get our hands on a bale elevator.

I just wanted to include this picture of some late season strawberries that I picked.  It always amazes me how we all love strawberries yet when there is a bowl just sitting on the counter full of them - they all end up in the compost pile.  These late season ones don't last long at all, one night in the refrigerator and the mold had already set in. Dang!  Didn't even have a chance to give them to the chickens....

Back to the topic...

In saying this, I'm trying to justify our decision to stop homeschooling, at least justify it to myself.  While ahead of other kids their age in some areas, such as biology, they are probably behind in other areas.  However, I am not enrolling them in the local elementary school - over my dead body!  I am fortunate enough to have a distance learning teacher that lives a few houses down.  And the boys LOVE going to their farm.  And they'll be able to interact with other kids ... hopefully their age.  And it will be small group interactions.  It's a lot like homeschool, as the bulk of their work will be done at home.  But the curriculum is set by the school district and guided by a teacher - a "certificated" teacher.  And, she has a LOT of experience working with special needs children.  I truly am - dare I say the word - blessed.