five acres in florida

i've been debating consolidating this little farm blog with my 'mama' blog - yes, it has been 100% about pregnancy and birth from the start, but since (with all likelihood) my childbearing days are about to end, i think it is time to combine them. the "farm" is no less part of my life than parenting, and vice versa. so posts here are basically over, i think, and i am shifting over to http://september-mama.blogspot.com.

i'll migrate all the links too, but they will still be here as well. thanks for reading!

is OBVIOUSLY cheesecake! made with yogurt cheese and yogurt! i'm already drooling...

i just got a springform pan from my great grandmother's kitchen the other day and i am so ready to use it. plus all these eggs we've got from my chicken, my mom's chickens, and my uncle's chickens leave me plenty to work with.

i am going to get cracking on this right now :)

score! we have chantrelles growing quite happily under the oak right next to the house. i found a little patch of 5 or 6 golden lovelies which i brought in to identify, and my suspicions were correct :). i have never eaten chantrelles and i will need a recipe to know what to do with them, but anything i get wild makes me happy (especially in my own yard).

yesterday i picked a whole bag full of wild grapes from the neighbor's front fence, and today i mixed them with some of our june harvest of blackberries to make wine. only about 3/4 gallon, but with a few more episodes of picking i could theoretically make a decent-sized batch of the stuff. last time we made blackberry wine we used a "fancy" recipe, complete with special yeast and clarifiers and plenty of high-tech equipment, but it turned out not unlike mouthwash in terms of alcohol content--though tasty enough, if you could stand the burn--so this time i'm doing the hillbilly sugar+yeast version. it's also ready a lot quicker that way; 6 weeks instead of 6-12 months. i'll be ready for this one just about when the little mister is arriving... maybe we can have it as our celebration wine on his birth day :)

i used the weed-eater for the first time today, and i must admit it wasn't really very fun. the vibration was intensely unpleasant, it was heavy, and apparently the freaking string was busted b/c i wasn't really making a lot of progress... but matt cleaned up after my attempt and at least i can say i tried. i also discovered a flower on my morning glory vine (planted to grow up the hand rails to the front door), which delights me! i have recently been training them up the sides, as they are now long enough to really get up there and make a show. matt has done a great job cleaning up the back yard from all the leftover debris of the old trailer... he was actually shoveling little handfuls of broken glass and crap into a trash can today.

(train of thought interrupted, blog over. but i'm sure i'll pick it up later!)

matt spent all last weekend mowing and clearing out the extremely overgrown sections of the yard that could be better utilized in the future; it looks great! no more piles of dead branches and 5ft high weeds near the chicken coop or within 100ft of the house. i did my part by weeding my "flower beds" around the front door, and now i just have to hit it with the weed-whacker to get the tall grass down.

i realized he's nesting, in his own way. we had a long brainstorm about the barn yesterday morning, which i guess he wants to get started on so that we can acquire a few sheep (i think he's decided against the goat plan). he had the amusing thought that a cow/horse stall only needed to be 4ft across... ?!?! thank the gods one of us has experience with large any animals! but i think we got the basic plan down, and he's been compiling materials slowly, so it might get started relatively soon.

he also mowed down the garden, which disturbed me more than a little. he does these impulsive things sometimes that just make me go "huh?!" ...from my view at the house, it looked like there were tomatoes on those plants. he says everything was rotten and dead. whatever. i guess it's time to prep for the fall garden and he just couldn't wait.

our rooster is a great one but damn, his crowing all morning is really annoying! he does it non-stop from about 6am-7am, and then intermittently until about 9am. i don't know what he's yelling about, but it really drives me nuts sometimes. i'm just glad we only have ONE of them! i did catch him... fertilizing... the australorp hen the other day, which i hope means she'll start laying any day now. as soon as she starts i'm going to let big mama barred rock hatch some chicks. time to increase the flock.

last night i got my first injury in a long time, thanks to butters. i knew it would happen eventually, i just wasn't sure what it would be or how bad. she didn't mean to do it, but i was sitting practically underneath her (i'm small and i can't reach--or sustain the position--from afar) and she got restless because she ran out of food, so she tried to walk a bit and her foot bumped the milk bucket, then continued to seek a place to step but the bucket and i were in her way, and i think she sort of lost her balance and got nervous... it all happened very fast but in trying to get the hell out of the way (and save the milk from tipping over) i scored a massive hoof scrape on my right hip, a sliced middle fingertip on my right hand, and a nasty cut on the back of my left hand. i'm not exactly sure how my hands got involved but they did. (oh and she kicked a bunch of dirt into the milk anyway, on top of spilling 1/3 of it, so my injuries were for nothing.) my hip looks like i have about 10 inches of bruised, deep road burn that someone applied with a flourish from a paintbrush... and it burns like hell with an undertone of bruised ouch, even today. my hand hurts quite a lot, too. it was really scary though, because she was literally an inch or so away from catching my belly with that hoof... i was terrified she had, actually, but baby gave me some resounding kicks after we both calmed down a bit, so i know he was unfazed.

anyway, it's been a long time since i was stepped on, kicked at, thrown off, or otherwise hurt by a quadruped. the feeling is always the same though; a sense of OH CRAP THAT COULD HAVE BEEN BAAAAD and relief that it wasn't. breathe, assess your hurts, and move on--and watch out next time. horses and cows are so big, even when they're not, and it's easy to get complacent around them and forget they can hurt you without meaning to. humans are fragile little things, and i'm not so agile in my burdened state...

today our dogs returned to their original owner. matt and i are both broken up about it even though it needed to happen.

it sucks! :(

wow, we've had a weird couple of days around here. it started great, with my cousin unexpectedly bringing over a pair of cute young hens to add to our dwindling flock--the other chickens took to them immediately and everybody was happy...the rooster danced for them something fierce, which was hilarious! they're sweet little things too, one even let me pet her.

then i started to get stressed over the dog situation because literally no one has expressed interest in taking them, and every rescue i called either told me they are "full" already or they only rescue dogs from kill shelters... one guy even went into detail regarding why now was the worst time for adult dog adoptions, as apparently we're in "puppy season" and they can save about 10 puppies for every adult dog they take in. with matt ready to drive over to animal services every night, i have been freaking out and getting depressed that they would be euthanized in a few days...

then butters managed to open the gate to her pasture--which wasn't quite latched properly--such that i found her browsing the yard when i went out to milk her. of course matt wasn't home, so i was on my own dealing with coaxing her back into the pasture before she decided the driveway looked like a nice path to walk down... it was a major pain in the ass. she was stressed because the dogs had been going nuts, she was covered in flies (like she never is in the field), and she had no intention of going back into the pasture. she would happily follow me right to the gate, but refused to cross over into it... it took a lot of effort and patience in the drizzling rain and intense heat to get her back in, but i finally did it. i set her up in the milking stand right away and went back into the house to get the rest of the equipment (at least, the pieces i hadn't dropped in the yard while frantically rushing to grab a bucket of feed when i saw her loose), and by the time i came back out she had somehow magically turned around in the tiny space and was proceeding to attempt to crawl UNDER the 2ft-high chain at the back of the milking stand. in the process, she was (naturally) yanking the 4x4s out of their post-holes until i thought the whole thing was going to collapse on her. so i freak, again, and run like hell out there--which is neither easy nor comfortable at 8 months pregnant--to calm her down enough to get her to stop what she's doing so i can let her out. i was rather pissed at her by this point. after i caught my breath and gathered all the milking equipment, again, i put her back in to the stand, again, and was able to milk her... though the brat shunned hay that night and demanded bucket after bucket of feed instead. as if she deserved it.

last night one of her udders was alarmingly swollen and tight, but it didn't feel hot so i figured she was just engorged for some reason... after milking her with the machine for a good 15-20 minutes with no noticeable change in that quarter, we gave up and i went to hand milking... and there was some nasty stringy shit hanging out of her nipple! at least it explained why the udder wasn't draining. so i started to try to clear it out and the nipple felt like it was full of lumpy, rubbery cheese. really, really gross stuff came out. i milked it until it was dry, and she was still swollen and tight. we assumed mastitis, because what else could it be? matt did some research and concluded that milk from mastitis is totally not safe to drink, while my research indicated no problem at all. so i still don't really know.* we didn't keep the milk, in any case, because she stuck her filthy hoof right into the bucket while i was finishing the good udders. almost a gallon wasted! so this morning i rushed out to the feed store at 8am to get some antibiotics just in case--though my intention was to milk, milk, milk, and massage her to clear it up naturally if possible, as one would do in a human. when i came home and went out to tackle the chore, the udder was totally normal. i felt a tiny clot of yuck in there, but it came right out and after that it was normal milk and her quarter wasn't swollen or anything. i hand-milked a bit from each teat just to check her out and to empty that one somewhat (i probably should have really milked it, but there didn't seem to be infection anymore). i didn't expect it to clear up so fast, but i'm glad! and now we have the antibiotics on-hand for future use, if needed.

so tonight we'll see what happens; we're milking early because we actually have a party to go to :). matt is paranoid that the milk is still not ok, and that it wasn't ok a few days ago either, but he really has no idea what he's talking about. you can't predict ahead of time when a boob is going to get mastitis, so you NEVER know if it's "safe" by his reasoning. as a lactating mammal myself, i give my own sensibilities much more clout on this matter. if there isn't lumpy crap in it and the udder feels/looks right, the milk is fine. period.


*i DO know that in humans, babies are supposed to nurse on moms with mastitis as a cure for it, and it doesn't hurt the baby one bit! it seems weird to me that there would be anything wrong with drinking it, despite bacteria, but whatever. pasteurization could fix that if it was really a concern. if i wasn't pregnant i would not be half so cautious.

oh it's going so well. matt devoured my last loaf with no comments about it tasting "fishy" (the weirdo)... in fact, this was the sourest loaf yet and he clearly enjoyed it. i'm making another to take to a birthday party--along with some brown sugar & cider pulled pork--tomorrow.

i really want to try these sourdough pretzels! the recipe makes so many i will definitely get some freezer stash out of it, too, which is always nice. not today though; too many other kitchen things to do.

like making rowan's freeze-ahead yogurt cups. i made a new batch of yogurt with added powdered milk for thickening, and it worked wonderfully. it's a tiny bit lumpy but yogurt usually is, so i don't care. stonyfield uses pectin, i noticed, which i might try later... but for now the extra protein in the powdered milk is good for her. going to try turning it into a "vanilla" batch and then blending in various fruits.

we're getting just shy of a gallon a day from ms. milkteats, and she's very cooperative about the whole thing. it's nice.

her milk is so thick with cream, though, that i have to skim about half of it off or it's nearly undrinkable! tasty, but fatty. every three days or so i find myself with about a quart of cream that i am happily making into fresh cultured butter, which then yields fresh cultured buttermilk, which i put into my sourdough pancakes and biscuits. Y U M. seriously. it's amazing, with a cow and a few chickens, how much less i have to buy at the grocery store: milk, butter, eggs, cream, yogurt, ice cream (and eventually cream cheese and sour cream and regular cheese)... all i need is some bees for honey to replace sugar and a wheat field for flour and we'll be set :).

last night after milking--we do use the machine, and it turns out to be great, but i finish by hand to fully drain her--matt and i were watching a movie and i kept getting this itchy spot on my belly, so i finally lifted my dress to inspect and i found one of these on it:


AHHHHHHHH it was horrifying. and huge. like the size of my pinky nail. so matt freaked and told me i better go to the doctor today and blah blah (he's very paranoid about lyme disease having known a few people who had it--one is on crutches just a few weeks post-infection)... but this sort of tick doesn't carry lyme disease so i'm not going to lose my sh*t just yet. i did slather the tiny bite mark with neem oil, however, just in case. i think i got him about 5 minutes after he started biting me, because i was definitely aware of the itch as soon as it started. needless to say, i kept the nasty bug on a piece of tape just in case i DO get sick and need to prove what bit me. being pregnant (and thus somewhat immuno-compromised), i'm a little more worried than i would normally be, but it's just a freaking bug bite after all.

i had to have gotten it sitting in the field underneath the cow while i milked her. there's no other way a bug like that would've made its way onto my large and protruding belly, of all random places. *shudder* it definitely gave us both the heebie jeebies though. first tick bite ever, for me.

it just occurred to me that one might freeze yogurt for later eating. duh!

we have so much milk piling up that i need ways to use it--i make yogurt with it, and from that yogurt cheese (which is SO SO UNBELIEVABLY GOOD), but one can only eat so much yogurt before it goes bad. plus i need to be able to blend in fruits and honey for rowan or she's not into it... so, frugal idea:

- reuse those blasted plastic baby food containers i saved from all the WIC baby food by filling them with small batches of blended fruity homemade raw milk yogurt
- freeze them! apparently the cultures go dormant in the freezer but are reinvigorated upon thawing/eating when heated to decent temperatures.

voila, no more buying $$ yobaby whole milk yogurt cups. and no wasted packaging.

i have had a series of alarming dreams over the last several months, which on the surface seem unrelated but my feeling is that they are definitely connected.

dream #1 (multiple variations of this one occurred)
i'm either watching floodwaters rise in our yard or preparing a trailer for a massive tidal wave. in the first type i'm standing in the yard holding a baby and the water just slowly seeps up, rising steadily up the fence and i'm not suprised but i'm sort of annoyed/confused that it's happening now, and i know we can't get away. in the other type i'm trying to find a good spot to put a small trailer and anchor it down so the water that is coming won't wash it away, but my sense is that it's hopeless.

dream #2
i'm laying in a field at night, watching fireworks in the sky, but they are like acid-trip neon fractals instead of normal fireworks--someone is with me--and a few seconds after everything stops there is this intense non-sound, like a BOOM but you can't hear it, and directly above me, out of nowhere, manifests a massive alien spacecraft. the sense of total earth-shattering shock and bewilderment is overwhelming, though i am not necessarily afraid. it just totally changes everything in a split second and i feel like my brain is overloaded. i woke up immediately.

dream #3
i had this dream just a few days or a week ago, but the details have faded other than the key point. i'm looking up into a dusk-like sky at a huge moon, and next to it is another equally huge astronomical body, like a second moon. one is reddish pink and the other is tinged yellow. it's literally like looking at two moons in one sky, only they are much bigger than they should be. my feeling is of shock and wild alarm because i know what it means--we're around the corner from massive earth changes, maybe within a few weeks if not less (in the dream).

i'm wondering what the next one will be like... there have been others, only vaguely remembered or questionably related, mostly involving me consulting with or being on ships of alien-types. really weird stuff...

our dear, sweet, playful dogs have officially bought their ticket out of our lives. i'm sad about this, but we really have no choice.

aside from the 5 hens they've massacred, they attacked butters... 5 minutes into being out in the pasture with her. they bit her legs--trying to hamstring her--and caused her to gash her belly with a kicking hoof. matt managed to stop it before they really hurt her, but it was bad enough. so they have been locked in their cages (outside of the pasture, as butters was charging them) for the past several days, and we both feel bad about it but they just can't be trusted.

the problems are:
- they escape any/all fence with impunity
- they kill chickens (though matt raised the walls on the chicken coop and only the rooster can now escape)
- they are bold enough to try to take down a COW
- we can't get goats or sheep with them
- they could hurt the children and i'm not convinced they wouldn't, accidentally or not

it sucks. fencing them in another part of the yard is not an option because 1) we have no money for fencing and 2) they escape anyway. kids and animals will always be at risk while they are around. we're lucky they haven't caught neki, our outside cat yet.

blah. i am going to miss them, and i really don't want to be without a dog... both for the kids as a pet and for myself as i am home alone most of the time. we just can't take the kind of chance it has come down to with them. we cannot afford to have injured animals and if anything happened to the little ones...

...came home yesterday! she's a little jersey, so not too intimidating, and she's clever enough, for a cow. getting her into the pasture was a little bit of a fiasco, thanks to my dad, but in the end it was all fine.

matt and i even managed to milk her without a holding pen, just by tying her head to the fence and bribing her with munchies. yes, i milked a cow last night! by hand! i am very proud of myself about it. she didn't seem to mind at all, and i think she even likes me already (she mooed pleasantly at me this morning when i walked outside!), though she was kind of nervous about matt. i didn't empty her by any stretch of the imagination, i just wanted to ease her obvious engorgement and get her used to me doing it right away... so we ended up with about a 1/2 gallon, half of which she knocked over into the grass. but it was a successful venture overall.

it's really not hard to do, though i definitely learned something about what supplies i need to have on hand before i sit down next to her. namely:
- the bucket of water/soap/bleach with nipple rinser
- another bucket of wash water with a sponge or rag
- a small towel for drying hands and udders
- udder balm
- paper towels
- two gallon-size jars, pre-sterilized

since last night was a trial run, i will be more prepared this time. plus i expect matt to finish the milking stand today so we won't have to worry about her spinning around or knocking the jar over. my brother in law gave us a homemade milking machine which he always used, but honestly the thing seems not to be worth the trouble and fiddling it requires. i know it would drain her more efficiently, but it certainly won't save any time (considering setup and breakdown) and then i'll have a big machine to clean, sterilize, and haul into the house when i'm done every night. eh. and that's assuming i can even carry it...

we haven't yet let the dogs interact with her, though, and i am going to wait for matt to get home this morning before i try. they are going to be shitheads, i know it. i just don't want them to bite her udders or something like that and really hurt her. my hope is that she will charge at them right away to stop any nonsense before it starts--they aren't stupid--but if she runs they'll never leave her alone.

i'll post some pics of her later today.

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...

so after a lot of ridiculous delays of no major importance, we moved into our new home in mid-march. it's perfect.

in the few months we've been here we have somehow managed to get matt's workshop up (18'x36' steel building), get the garden producing regularly, acquire some hens, and move in comfortably. it's been awesome!

chicken update: we actually got two little hen chicks back in january before we moved and kept them in our then-office (which got interesting once they learned to jump out of their box). about a week after we moved, one of the hens found her way into the dogs' pasture and met her sad little end. shortly after that, i bought another couple of chicks, so now we have 1 barred rock about 6 mos old, 2 barred rocks about 3 months old, and 2 australorps about 3 months old. no eggs yet, but it should be soon.

rabbit update: we haven't bred them yet this year, though i keep pestering matt that he needs to--that is why he bought them, after all. right now they just sit in their cages... but sadly, we lost the big buck last night. i had given them water and checked up on them around 7pm and i could tell they were all really hot (it was VERY hot yesterday and rabbits are super-sensitive) but we didn't have any frozen water bottles ready just then, and it was getting dark anyway... but around 9 or so matt went outside to lock the dogs up and he came back to say the buck was dead. it had to have been heat stroke, which makes me so sad. it's our fault he died! so today i am ready with the ice first thing and will make sure they each get a bottle in their cages. the rabbit had only been dead a little while and so matt went ahead and dressed him for the freezer :(

about 2 or 3 of our 6ish acres are solid blackberry bushes in full fruit. i've been collecting them here and there as they ripen with the intention of making wine and jam again this year. nothing beats homemade wild berry wine! and rowan LOVES the berries, she calls them "nomnoms" of course.

the garden has been giving us a few squash a day, some cucumbers, and so far one zucchini. the tomatoes are fruiting but not ripe, and it looks like for the first time ever matt might be able to grow corn, hehe (last crop was utterly demolished by caterpillars). there is a bunch of other stuff that isn't ready yet, but i'm not sure exactly what he planted. he's also got some really nice-looking gourds out there, though i don't know what we will do with them when they're dried.

i planted a flower bed FULL of seeds i ordered last year, and not a damn one sprouted. i have no clue why. i managed to be successful with store-bought morning glories and hand-harvested cosmos from my mom, and that's it... it's pretty disappointing; i was so ready to have a gorgeous flower garden in my yard just as birth is approaching. oh well.

other than that, i've been knitting a lot and i think i am gearing up to sell my creations online. more on that later. in-laws will be here soon...