five acres in florida

there go two more hens. within the span of ONE WEEK.

i caught them chasing the rooster like mad through the yard yesterday and managed to intervene before he was either caught or exhausted to death, but just barely. we are now down to two hens, one of whom cannot escape the coop (so is probably safe), and the rooster. i guess i'll be buying some more chicks here shortly, unless my uncle has any spare hens.

oh and i got stung by a 4in scorpion on my kitchen floor last night--that shit hurt for like 10 minutes, but then the pain was gone. felt like a sustained cigarette burn with a little tingly numbness thrown in. very unpleasant! i'm not sure how he got in the house but i'm going to have to be more paranoid now that rowan is running around.

my sourdough starter molded, to my great sadness, and i am not sure why or how... but i've started a new one so i should be ok in a few days or so. the warm temp (81deg) in our house seems to speed the fermentation a bit. i'm itching to try sourdough pretzels...

and finally, our previous abode is to be auctioned on sept 2. the foreclosure is final. it's a weird feeling, we'll actually need to say goodbye soon. our first home, where rowan first lived... but we are a lot happier here. i don't miss the neverending interior construction, the musty old-house smell, or the non-functioning a/c! but i do miss the prairie and our nice neighbors with their little toddler rowan's age. and, on some days, the proximity to gainesville. bittersweet.

i think we may be "inheriting" butters the cow from my sister. apparently they are overwhelmed with their now 9-month old preemie, both working, renovating a home, and milking the cow twice a day... of course my response was YES we want her!! we'll see if matt agrees with me tonight.

i just added a new link on the right to "the chatelaine's keys" blog, where i found this helpful little post. while my brother-in-law will be giving us his homemade milking machine, i'm pretty interested in learning to do it by hand (less paraphernalia to sterilize and practice for when the lights go out).

i hope i can convince matt it's a good idea...!

update:
he said yes!! i didn't even have to fight for it :)

now i just need to find out if i will have to chase her to catch her for milking... might need to get the tractor out in that field, if so (the weeds are 4ft high).

i am loving this. the pancakes really do rock, and i've made:

1) blueberry muffins - fluffy, big, and yummy with fresh blueberries (though i will add more sugar next time!)
and a
2) chocolate cranberry bread - really interesting, almost reminiscent of pumpernickel without so much savory taste. it's not sweet at all despite extra sugar in my loaves, but it is good. filling. a tad bitter but still tasty. i had to add a LOT more flour than the recipe calls for to even work the dough, and i should've put in more cranberries, but it rose like a champ into two large loaves. one is in my deep freezer as part of the huge postpartum food stash i have been accumulating.

i'm looking forward to trying english muffins and possibly bagels.

today i canned some lime marmalade too, which is surprisingly yummy despite a biting aftertaste. it would be lovely with brie and crusty bread... mmm...

well, we got our first egg about a week and a half ago! check it out:


it's smaller than a "large" store-bought, but not a mini-egg like my mom's bantams lay. thank you big mama hen :). the others should start laying over the next month or so.

in other chicken-related news, the bloody bleeding dogs got another hen today!! they escaped their pasture (during the day, which is very rare) and managed to nab one of the barred rocks who refuses to be penned up. really crappy. i still don't know what to do about that... but we are down to 3 hens and a rooster. i guess i need to go ahead and let big mama roost, though i'm not sure the rooster is doing his job yet, if you know what i mean.

i just hope matt doesn't shoot the dogs. only half-kidding.

in other unrelated news, the court officially awarded judgment to the bank on the old house, so it will be up for auction on 9/2. it's oddly sickening to think about, even though 99% of the time i don't care at all. it's weird to feel a sense of comfort/relief in my suspicion that things--by which i mean everything--are going to start falling apart for everyone very soon... i've been noticing the sun doing very strange things, like staying in one spot for 4 hours at a time between about 1215-430pm. then speeding up to set on time. i'm just waiting for the day that venus and the other planet show up as big as the moon and make us all vomit our lunches.

but i'm rambling, so that's enough of that.

i am learning this! i realize now that my sourdough experiment last week had a few problems (due to my noobness, mostly):
1) it was too fresh a starter; not active enough
2) i used the wrong kind of flour - potato flour doesn't make good sourdough starter, though it theoretically would make good sourdough BREAD used in the actual recipe
3) not sure about milk.

the first bread was fishy-tasting, though the biscuits were ok, if dense. for the past several days i've been transitioning the original starter into a traditional flour/water deal with each feeding, and it's MUCH better! i mixed up this recipe yesterday morning, proofed the sponge all day, made the dough and proofed it over night, then shaped and proofed again all day today for baking this evening and yumyumyum it's awesome sourdough! goes superbly with my homemade yogurt cheese :)

note that the recipe says to proof 1-2 hours, while my bread took more like 12 to rise; which is not atypical for sourdough. longer is better from what i understand, as long as it doesn't expend all the gas bubbles and start to deflate.

second recipe was for sourdough pancakes... these are the best, fluffiest pancakes i have ever made. i fail miserably at pancakes unless they are boxed, so i am really excited to have an easy recipe on-hand to use up all this starter :)

something most of us never encounter except in kid's rhymes has entered my life for the long-term: whey. it's kinda stinky, gross greenish-yellow watery liquid, but somehow this stuff is also really great. i'm experimenting with the many uses for it and since i expect it to be a resident in my fridge as i continue to play with dairy, i decided to be its friend. as a result of a failed yogurt-making trial yesterday (i cooked it WAY too long b/c i left the crockpot on when it was supposed to be off...), i have a pint of cheese whey hanging around at the moment.

last night i dumped some in a bowl with steel cut oats and cranberries to soak for this morning's breakfast, and when i woke up i added more whey and some of the draining yogurt-cheese whey, a spoonful of sugar, and cooked it for about 10 minutes. that was the best oatmeal i've ever eaten; i am SO excited to have a fermented, homemade, uber-healthy breakfast that i actually want to eat again! can't wait until rowan is over her picky-about-new-things phase so i can feed it to her too. (right now she will only eat eggs, cooked apples, or date-coconut rolls for breakfast. sigh.) i did manage to sneak some into her eggs in place of milk for scrambling though; that made me happy. i swear it added nice flavor, too.


ever-growing list of uses for whey:
1) soaking grains
2) baking ANYTHING
3) cooking, in place of milk or water
4) smoothies - though i am skeptical on this one
5) gjetost/mysost - boiled down to a thick goo, it makes some kind of norwegian cheese...
6) caramelized w/ sugar into syrup
7) soapmaking, in place of water
8) ricotta
9) marinating meat, with seasonings - apparently the enzymes tenderize and help seal the flavors
10) fermenting veggies and/or pickling
11) (yogurt whey) making fizzy drinks - add some lemon juice, sugar, and soda water

update 8/29: how about yogurt whey? it's a bit more tart, and with the good bacteria arguably more healthy. i say go for it in any of the recipes above... it's worth a try! the problem i'm having with my whey is that it competes with buttermilk--which i also have in abundance--in too many cases and i never know which one i'd rather use. *sigh*

my uncle, who lives just down the road, was kind enough to give us a rooster and a laying hen recently. the rooster is a great little man; he finds bugs for the hens and thus far they all seem to really like him (though he hasn't tried to jump them yet). the new hen was friendly too--but she attacked the rooster all the time--and even started laying eggs for us after a few days of being here (the others don't lay yet as they are not old enough). then, after 4 eggs collected, our dogs got her. apparently they pulled her THROUGH the fence...???

that's the third chicken they've killed since march, and it's a bunch of bullshit. matt is ready to get rid of them, which of course is a terrible idea out here--we need dogs, nevermind we love them--and i'm in a bind as to what to do. chickens are stupid and will wander where they shouldn't be. dogs kill things (especially our wild pair). it's a bad combo but that's life, right?

the real problem is that we can't keep the chickens OR the dogs in their designated spaces. the chickens hop their fence at will, and the dogs keep finding ways to dig out of theirs... we can technically roof the chicken coop but that won't prevent the dogs from getting them when i do let them roam free. and as matt points out, we'll never be able to have goats in the pasture with the dogs because they will either run them to death or kill them outright. he's right.

we don't have money to fence a separate dog area (which was the original plan) and anyway i don't see how that would keep them from digging...

on the agricultural side of things, we're abounding in tomatoes, the okra is fruiting, we've got a gourd or two drying in the laundry room, and it looks like the corn will be ready soon. the squash is still going but may be slowing down slightly and i think matt gave up on the cucumbers after a nice big harvest. everything else is green and growing. we also have wild cherries ripening on several trees, the wild grapes are swelling, and we've got about 11lbs of wild blackberries in our freezer waiting to be preserved via wine or jam, plus another 50lbs in the yard waiting to be picked. i cannot wait until the passion vines start to fruit in the fall!

living out here is really, really fantastic.

*reposted from my pregnancy blog*

(i say "part 1" because i am positive this is not nearly over...)

so i'm not sure if i ever mentioned it, but my sister bought a cow about 2 years ago, which we have a share in. she has since had a baby, and the baby had a baby, and she's probably pregnant again. the point is, we are currently getting a massive jug of fresh milk at least once a week... glorious stuff with on average 1-3 cups of thick, fluffy cream on top! so i've been challenged to use it in interesting ways since there is no chance of us drinking as much milk as we get (and matt swears it is too "salty" for his cereal; whatever).

first project was just separating the cream to use it in my coffee--easy, and so freaking good.

project #2 - homemade fresh-cream ice cream. i actually had some fresh vanilla beans too, so i scored bigtime and decided to do a straight vanilla. 2c cream, 1c milk, 3/4c sugar (wish i'd had raw), 2 vanilla beans, and WOW that was some good sh*t. matt's mom ate half the container :)

project #3 - yogurt. i used half a container of "fage" greek yogurt to start it, because i didn't have any culture lying around, but it turned out really well. and i made it in the slow cooker which i was very excited to do, since yogurt instructions usually require a heating pad or something else i don't have. 1qt milk, cooked on low for 2.5hrs, unplugged for another 3h, then mix in the yogurt and leave it alone overnight or longer. it's not sweetened but that's easy enough to do with each serving.

project #4 - frozen yogurt. since we ate all the ice cream, i needed another sweet treat... and what was i going to do with so much yogurt, anyway?? i mixed about 3c yogurt with 2/3c sugar and a bit of vanilla extract in the ice cream maker, and added 2T dry milk as i was afraid of it being too tangy since i intended to make it pineapple *drool*... threw in the pineapple bits when it started to congeal, then popped it in the freezer to let it set. i daresay it's even tastier than the ice cream!

project #5 - yogurt bread pudding. 3 words: best breakfast ever. had a rock-hard loaf of artisan wheat bread that i couldn't bear to feed to the chickens, so i cut it up and soaked it overnight in 1c yogurt, 2/3c brown sugar, 2 eggs (homegrown), 2T melted butter, some raisins and walnuts plus vanilla, cardamom, and cinnamon... baked this morning for about 40min and it's so, so yummy.

project #6 - milk sourdough. yep. we had a jug of milk going a bit sour so i decided a good way to utilize that would be to make it work on some flour :). equal parts souring milk to flour and i had an active starter with like 5 hours (as opposed to 3 days with water). plus, theoretically it will have more probiotics thanks to the milk bacteria. right now i am proofing a sponge and we'll see how the bread turns out later. update: it was YUMMY! could've been fluffier but i think it's because i used a decent amount of potato flour, which is really dense; but the taste is great. for future feedings of the starter i will use potato flakes or just flour.

project #7 - simple curd cheese. again with the souring milk situation; duh, let's make cheese! i started this last night but it never separated for some reason, so i changed course and threw in some yogurt culture and let it sit, then this morning decided to run with it and added rennet. this is a totally improved dance, so i'm not sure how it will turn out, but worst case is i've got some more yogurt that may or may not solidify into cheesable curds. update: it smells fantastic but is really the consistency of thick yogurt... i think my rennet was too old. so i'm draining the whey off to see if i can at least get yogurt cheese out of it. it sat at room temp for about 32 hours with the yogurt culture and lemon juice.

and that's where i'm at now. as soon as my citric acid (previously ordered) arrives i will be trying my hand at mozarella, but for now i'm fine with what i've got going. all of these things could be done with store-bought milk (though i would hesitate a lot on the sourdough) but it's somehow just not as much fun. i plan to save a bunch for new batches of soap too... nothing like milk soap for soft skin...