Friday, July 15, 2011

Fast forward to July...

Life got awfully complicated this summer, with my parents having some significant health problems that required everybody to drop everything and help out. Neither the garden nor the blog has been well attended-to, but we're starting to develop some sort of equilibrium now, so there will be pictures on here again soon!

State of the garden: Most of my plantings have perished in the weeds/rabbits/woodchucks/deer/neglect. What has made it? The sweet corn, the tomatoes, the broomcorn, the popcorn, the pumpkins, the long island cheese squash, either the potimarron or the sunshine squash (I'm not sure at the moment - I'll tell you in a few months!), the hops, and the flax. In fact, the flax is thriving, and will be ready to harvest in a few short weeks.

In preparation for the flax harvest, we've built a flax break - I'll post pictures soon. Actually, I'll post pics of a lot of things.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Best website ever?

Ok, I know I'm late to the party here, but I just found ana-white.com, and it might be the best website ever. My husband and I are already planning lots of furniture for when we someday move into the farmhouse... these are projects I can totally tackle!

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Planting

The hops are up! All 6 have leaves poking out of the ground, which is about the most exciting thing ever. Now it's a race for the sky!

The garden's all planted, as of this weekend. I thought for a little bit about taking pictures, but at this stage it's just a large rectangle of dirt - not much to see there. The planting took two Saturdays, and ended up being more of a "put everything in the ground" than a well-planned planting session. Next year, there will be a plan of attack. And twine.

So, today we planted:
"Titan" sunflowers
"Elegance" mixed greens
"Jade" mache
"Spargo" spinach
"Deertongue" lettuce
"Focea" lettuce
"Bright Lights" swiss chard
"Red Ace" beets
"Nabechan" bunching onions
"Vermont Cranberry" beans
"Kenearly Yellow Eye" beans
"Lemon" cucumbers
"Genuine" cucumbers
"Caveman's Club" gourds (These have really neat-looking seeds! They're still obvious cucurbit seeds, but all angular and weird - I'd never seen them before.)
"Spaghetti Squash" squash
"Potimarron" squash
"Honey Orange" melon
"Long Island Cheese" pumpkins/squash
"Sunshine" squash
"Tom Fox" pumpkins
"Diablo" brussel sprouts (replaced some that were eaten)

Last week (5/7) we planted:
"Hermes" flax
"Miniature Colored Popcorn" corn
"Red broomcorn" broomcorn
"Cream of Saskatchewan" watermelon
zucchini (a nondescript transplant from Lowe's, and they've ALREADY been eaten)
"Vision" sweet corn
brussel sprouts (a nondescript transplant from Lowe's)
"Walla Walla" onions
tomatoes (a mix of transplants - "Black from Tula", which I grew, and which have been eaten; one "Early Girl" from Lowe's, which has suffered heavily from frost; and two "Black Krim" from Lowe's that are faring better.)

I may yet replant some Black from Tula - perhaps next week? I know there's an ice cube's chance they'll make it by frost, but somewhere in my heart I'm still hoping for a "Black from Tula" this year. I've also got some really late-season crops and some "replant every 2 weeks" crops waiting in the wings (parsnips, more beets)... but at this point, it's really: cross my fingers, pray for just-enough rain, and hope for the best. Next Saturday maybe it will be photo-ready.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Bike, Scarecrow, Hops... oh my!

A weekend of firsts:

A sixth (!!) birthday meant a first bike, and first bike-riding lessons, on a gloriously sunny Saturday over at the farm. He was so excited, and he had a phenomenally good time.

Pre-flight systems check

"Mommy, I did it all by myself and Daddy!!"

What are you looking at??
He and I also made our first scarecrow together, which ended up being a fierce viking to overlook the garden plot. The scarecrow's made of old clothing, an old pillow, yarn for hair, an old plastic viking hat, and a patriotic pinwheel to add motion and reflective light-play. I sewed in a hanger when I put him together, so  hanging him up was easy - we put a nail in a big stick, put the big stick in the ground, and then hung him off the nail. A length of yarn through his belt loops runs around the stick to keep him from flying away in a strong wind. We doused him with some stinky perfume and put a bar of Irish Spring in his back pocket to make him smell more "human", since deer are my main problem.
Admiring a job well done.
(For reference, the real one here is a solid 4' tall!)

Wheee! 

Grrr... What are you looking at?
We also got our very first "farm" crop ever into the ground! We've gotten a late start with the snowing and the raining and the flooding, but we put 6 "Cascade" rhizomes into the ground (from Thyme Garden, cost about $35 with shipping and handling). Later - next week? - we'll put up a PVC tepee trellis system to support the hops as they grow.

Hop rhizomes, after soaking
Rhizome in prepared hole
The circle of  planted hops, marked with flagging tape
Clarification of where the hops are: 7' radius circle, with rhizomes equally spaced at 6 locations around it.
Later, in the center, we'll place a 15-20' pole, with twine secured to the top.
Hop bines will later run up the twine, and it will be awesome.

Assuming that we didn't plant the hops way too late - I don't think we did - I believe we can hope for a hop harvest in October. It probably won't be a super-impressive harvest, as in the first year hops are mostly establishing their root systems and don't produce as much as they would otherwise. I'm very eager to see how much I get from these, though, as this is something of a feasibility study for further hop growth. I'm absurdly excited to be growing these, though, and I hope they do well. I'm already wondering if the guys are interested in Fuggle or Nugget for more variety next year. :-)

Saturday, April 23, 2011

The Second Day

Tomorrow is Easter, the most joy-filled and holy day in the Christian calendar; yesterday was Good Friday, the most sorrowful day in the Christian calendar... today is Holy Saturday, or  Liminal Saturday, and it's an odd time. I'm thinking about it a great deal, as I dye eggs with my son. It feels like I've been living a lot in Liminal Saturday, with its awareness of everything that has been lost, and everything that has not yet been gained. It's a time of waiting, and worrying, grieving, and trying to keep faith. I feel a great kinship this year with apostles in their locked room, not daring to go out, and with the Marys in the garden, mourning their hopes and trying to understand. From my post 2000 years in the future, though, I can clearly see something the Marys couldn't -  in the morning, hope will dawn brighter and clearer than ever before. This dark, uncertain time always leads to the joy and victory of Easter.

I wish you and yours a wonderful Easter. May the hope, peace, and joy of the season fill your house tomorrow, and all year long!

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Butter!

Totally on a whim, I made my own butter this week; and I seriously may never eat any store-bought butter ever again in my life. This stuff is phenomenal.

I started Tuesday with 2 quarts of delicious cream from the Evans Farm Creamery in Norwich. It's the first place I found that had low-temperature pasteurized, nothing-added cream - and this stuff was phenomenally rich and delicious. I don't know what the Evanses are doing, but their cows clearly are liking it.

.....never mind, let's just make whipped cream!

For culture, I put in about 1/3 cup of active culture, whole milk yogurt - again no additives.


I stirred these together, warmed the mixture up slightly on the stove (low heat, stirring frequently) to make sure the culture took, and then covered it with tin foil and let it sit almost 24 hours. It thickened up pretty nicely, and smelled just the faintest bit tangy.

Mixing in yogurt culture

Clabbered and ready to churn!

Lacking a churn, I decided my mixer would do just fine. I wasn't sure about splatter, so I only put about half the thickened cream in the mixer at a time (in retrospect, I probably could have fit it all ok). I put the mixer on the second slowest speed, and let it do its thing. In a few minutes it had thickened noticeably. About that point, I turned the mixer to the slowest speed.  The cream became yellow (why yellow?) and granular, and a little buttermilk became visible. Then - all of a sudden - the mixer was sloshing large grains of butter in a sea of buttermilk. It was really pretty neat.


Beginning to churn the clabbered cream.


Thickening


Grains of butter start to appear...

Things happen pretty fast at this point.

BUTTER!!

Butter/buttermilk break closeup
I strained the buttermilk out and transferred the butter to a bowl, then started washing the butter. To wash the butter, you add water to the butter bowl, and work the glob of butter in the water for a bit, then drain it. I repeated it a second time, and seemed to get all the buttermilk out (buttermilk left in is supposed to turn the butter rancid faster). After I drained the wash water, I worked the glob a bit more to press out water that was still mixed it. Then I added salt, at the terribly scientific rate of 1/8 teaspoon per perceived "1/4 lb stick volume equivalent". The salt was my standard iodized table salt. I worked it all through the butter, then portioned it out, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and put most of it in the freezer.


Unwashed butter


Washed butter, working in the salt
I don't have a scale handy, but it ended up to be a fair bit of butter. I do know that I ended up with 3 cups of the most delicious buttermilk, which my husband turned into delicious buttermilk pancakes this weekend. And, while super-fresh, the butter was practically world-changing. In preparation for this we splurged on two "fancy" loaves of bread from Wegman's, and the cultured butter on a slice of sourdough is practically a meal unto itself -I've never craved bread and butter before.
A diet of bread and butter never looked so good! (Even wrapped in plastic)
I did put most of the butter in the freezer for storage, though, and apparently that was a mistake. The cultured flavor intensified somewhat, which I like less well (still good, just a little bit too cheesy to be called "world-changing" butter). Next time, I'll make less and plan to keep it in the fridge and use it all within probably a month or so. I may also try a more "formal" culture next time - I found that Nancy's was a little sharp for my taste (as yogurt), and a more controlled inoculant might be the way to go. Also, next time I might do some sweet cream butter at the same time, because I'm not yet prepared for cultured butter with my maple syrup on my pancakes... on sourdough, though, this stuff still rocks.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Chicken Math

One of the things my husband and I have been looking forward to when we move up to the farmhouse is having a small flock of chickens for our own use. We may also sell some eggs to friends and family, but this isn't intended as a money-making venture so much as a cost-reducing venture. Also, I have to admit I prefer the taste of a really fresh egg, and I like knowing what went into my food - these are all reasons that I'd like to farm, in general, so a small flock makes sense and helps diversify our "portfolio".

A note here - I firmly believe, after all my research, that the ability to diversify and add value is what will make this farm work. Too many farms in this neck of the woods are dairy, period, and so they're all tied to the ever-falling profit from dairy, and they can't easily regear. I plan to sell cashmere, wool, possibly angora (both handspun and ready-to-spin), but I also plan to sell breeding stock and freezer meat. A few highland cattle will help protect my smaller animals, cut down on parasites in the pasture, yield some tasty and potentially valuable beef, and possibly even give me an unusual yarn to market. I'm hoping to have linen to sell, which should make me stand out more in the market, but if I'm trying hops and brooms this year as well to see what production would look like there. Once I'm up at the farm I'm planning on adding two beehives to see about small-scale honey production, but the threat of bears means I'm waiting until the place reeks of humans. I also fondly remember raising geese as a child, and as an adult have realized they command an impressive per unit price - based largely on rarity and tastiness. Altogether, this somewhat schizophrenic homestead should be light on its feet and able to navigate constantly-changing economic paradigms without too much damage. Or, at least that's the plan.

At any rate, the chickens-
Between my husband and I, we seem to have settled on three breeds that catch our fancy: Wyandottes, Marans, and Welsumers.

Wyandottes are the all-purpose chicken of 1880s New York - really, quite appropriate to our historic farmstead! They're cold-hardy; generally considered winter layers; good layers of larger, tinted eggs; good meat birds; broody hens are excellent mothers; not particularly aggressive. They come in a number of attractive colorations, and have a beautifully proportional look to them - curvy and balanced.

Marans are a early 20th century French breed, very "au courant" at the moment, and known far and wide for their dark "chocolate-colored" eggs. They come in a couple colorations - I like Black Copper. They should be moderately hardy, respectable layers of large, dark eggs; but by all accounts they've suffered somewhat from their popularity, and the selection for hardiness, productivity, egg color/size, etc., have fallen off in favor of producing more birds faster. Hatchery Marans in particular seem to be suspect, with some owners talking about having hens that are indistinguishable from, say, a Barred Rock. They seem a bit risky to me, and very... fashionable, in a bad way (for instance, Martha Stewart has Marans), but the eggs do have a definite wow-factor and I'm willing to give them a shot. My husband's already decided the putative Marans rooster will be "Cadbury", and I can't argue with that. ;)

Welsumers (or Welsummers - I'm still not sure which spelling is "right") are a 20th century dual-purpose Dutch breed that lays large, dark brown eggs (not quite as dark as Marans eggs, but close!). Being dual-purpose, they're also good tasty meat chickens. They're quite hardy, but not winter layers like the Wyandottes. In general they're supposed to be reasonably docile but able to fend for themselves. They seem to only come in one color - known to chicken people as Red Partridge - but I find it appealing.

(Henderson's Chicken Chart has pretty much everything you might want to know about the not-bizarrely-rare breeds of chickens in a convenient comparative format. Bookmark it - it's nearly perfect.)

One of the difficulties, though, is where to get these future chickens from... They're not your run-of-the mill hatchery sex-link hybrids, or your standard egg productions breeds, or (heaven forbid!) the ubiquitous Cornish Cross that is so ill-suited to a homestead-type operation. I could maybe get them from breeders, but the thought of $7-9/chick, with a minimum order of 12 or 15 chicks, and $30 shipping on top of that (so, $120-$160 for 12-15 chicks, assuming I can get all three breeds from the same breeder... yow. Plus, they're sold straight run, so no assurances on sex ratios.) I could try and buy started pairs, but they're harder to come by and not cheap, either (I just saw a started pair of Black Copper Marans go for $80 at auction). Hatcheries are easy to come by and order from, but generally have a 25 chick minimum order, and are apparently kind of unreliable with the "specialty" breeds. Sand Hill Preservation Center gets some pretty good reviews from chicken people, and seems to be in it for the preservation of the breeds - there are maximum orders on the chickens, as well as minimums. There's a 25-chick minimum, and the breeds I want are $4 or $5, shipping is $35.... so $143 for 25 chicks?

This article suggest the way to house chickens is in deep litter on an earthen floor, which appeals to me greatly. I think they make some fantastic points - very convincing! (You should also read their article on bringing back the broody. Awesome.) The most salient point is, for the deep litter to work I'm going to need 5 sqft/chicken. If I'm ordering 25 chickens, straight run, I need to plan on 13 cockerels (possibly more, possibly less, but a reasonable estimate). I'll probably want to keep one rooster per breed, so that means I need to plan on putting 10 cockerels in the freezer and housing 15 adult chickens (requiring 75 sqft). It would be prudent to design a coop that allows for expansion - if I make the coop 1/3 bigger, it would be 100sqft (conveniently 10ft*10ft), and hold up to 20 chickens.

Obviously, if I do the deep litter/earthen floor idea, I can't do one of my favorite coop plans, the miniature gypsy caravan. But I think I can still do a charming and functional coop, perhaps one more in line with the rest of the farm buildings.

Expect plans here in the coming months.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Nondescript.

Not much going on around here this week. I'm still knitting the afghan and painting the tiles. I didn't get to spin my yak (what an odd turn of phrase that is!) at all this week. I did manage to get some of my seeds started - tomatoes and the like - so that's something. Other than that, a quiet week with not a lot to show for it.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Making pictures

I have been busy lately, though perhaps not terribly productive. The beginning farmer class is taking up actually a fair bit of my time; and there's always the 9-to-5 job, as well. It's been hard to do anything that feels like concrete progress toward the farm. Maybe it's the late-winter blahs (and our recent snowstorms) talking, but it feels like everything for the farmhouse is too big, too expensive, too up-in-the-air for me to actually do anything about right now, I can feel the inertia and helplessness setting in.

Well. We can't have that.

Obviously the cure for this is pick something - anything - preferably easy and smallish and fun, and just do it. I chose a kitchen work table that needs making for the farmhouse. I've looked for one that would fit my needs, taste, and budget, but there doesn't seem to be such a thing out there. It actually will be cheaper and easier to make it this time, even with my hackneyed carpentry skills! I decided I wanted delft-style tiles to top my table, and that I'd need about 90 4" tiles (it will actually probably be less than this, because of grout line spacing, I guess?). You can get decent reproduction delft-style tiles for around $12/tile, or so the internet claims, which puts my tabletop at ..... $1080. Yeah, I don't think so.

I bought a box of 100 plain white field tiles at Lowe's for $16 (they also sell them individually for $0.16, but the box of 100 is more convenient than 90 loose tiles, and gives me 10 spare to play with), and a pot of Porcelaine 150 ceramic paint in Lapis from Michael's for about $5. I also splurged and got a new set of paintbrushes to go with it (another $9). So, for $30, I'm set for tiles for my tabletop - maybe $35 if I need a second pot of Porcelaine 150. Does that mean I saved $1050??

Painting these has been incredibly fun and relaxing, for the most part. Mostly they're turning out beautifully, though I freely admit the dog looks more than a little cartoony (the cat too, come to think of it). Even the questionable ones, though, work in the greater scheme of blue-and-white order. I love it.


I'm about 1/5 of the way through. In theory, when I'm done I'll have 5 spare "picture" tiles and 5 spare "just corners" tiles, so I'll be able to pick and choose a bit if some motifs are outstandingly bad. I could also always turn a "just corners" into a "picture" if I had to, so that expands my do-over factor. I'm not too worried, though, because they're beautiful.

In tangentially-related news, I've been working on my "Epic" afghan again! Those of you who know me on ravelry.com (as "melanogaster") have seen this before, but it's a massive, double-knit, masterwork of an afghan. I worked out the chart myself, based on Schon Neues Modelbuch.

A portion of the chart, turned 90 degrees from what you'd usually expect.

Currently I'm on row 28 of... 348, not counting the 2-row setup and finish (i.e., I'm on the row [column, in the  chart] just to the right of the green line) . But I'm absurdly proud of the silly thing, and I'd be happy to pass the charts on to anybody who wanted them, as long as I got credit - I'll probably make it available on ravelry once mine is done. There will be pics in maybe 10 - 15 more rows, when it looks more obvious to other people. To me it looks fantastic, though.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Pre-ordered hops

Inspired, largely, by this manual *, and by my co-workers' continuing homebrewing successes, I've pre-ordered 6 rhizomes of "cascade" hops. My plan is to include small-scale hop production on the farm, producing more-or-less specifically for my coworkers' brewing needs. I'm convinced it will fit smoothly with the planned farm operations, adding another diversified income source. If production ultimately exceeds my coworkers' demand - which I expect will take several years - I hope to take my excess to local homebrew suppliers. I'm also generally  supportive of the whole concept of hop pillows, both for my own use and for sale. Maybe with lavender? Mugwort?

Hops made NY,  and NY can still grow hops. I can't see a market for buckwheat, which historically was grown in some quantity on this farm, but hops should do just fine and will certainly sell. While I don't brew, I'm certainly eager to try growing some of the older and less-common varieties of hops in the coming years, if my market base is amenable.

(I'm really trying not to look at how easy it would be to make small batches of malt to order. Almost absurdly so. Just.... not this year, guys. Ok??)

So, yeah. The upshot is that there will be organic (because, really: why not?) hops produced on the farm starting this summer. I've heard the first year's harvest is usually pretty small, but that suits me just fine - I've got my plate kinda full this year. I need to refine my trellis design a little, but I'm excited.

This coming week marks the start of Cornell's Northeast Beginning Farmer class, "What Do I Need to Do to Start a Farm Business?" (BF103). I imagine in a week or two I'll have something interesting to say about it. Also, the yak is spinning up nicely, but slowly. Pics will take awhile.


*Oh, who am I kidding? Really I'm being heavily influenced - in this as in all things - by Fred Gee's In a Place Called Chenango. I've never forgotten his song about Coy's hop farm in Smyrna. Actually, I don't think I've ever forgotten any of his songs - I've been his biggest fan since he came to sing at Oxford Academy & Central Schools for our local history unit in 4th grade, and again for Oxford's bicentennial (uhm... 6th grade?). Mr. Gee, if you're still out there, you're probably why I'm an archaeologist.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Spring is coming...

No, really, I'm certain spring is on its way. We had two days in the 60s, and even though it's back down into the 20s here, it just looks like early spring. See?

From my back window
The Vine Maple is done! Here it is as singles on my lazy kate:


And then as a plied and set yarn, hanging to dry:


Somehow I managed to not take any pictures of the intervening process! (Possibly this is because I was watching Ghost Hunters to pass the time plying and setting, and totally forgot that I had wanted pics...). Essentially, once the yarn is plied I wind it off the bobbin into skeins on a niddy-noddy, then use some waste yarn (white crochet cotton in this case) to tie it loosely. The skeins go into a warm bath with a little dish detergent, sit for 20 minutes or so, then I pull them out and change the water. In this case the water was bright orange with excess dye so I did another bath with soap. After 20 minutes the water was again orange, but less so. The next bath used a good solid glug of vinegar instead of soap, and the water was very lightly tinted orange after about half an hour. Finally, I let the the yarn sit in a bath with a few drops of Eucalan for about half an hour - I would have gone longer if I could have spared the sink that long - and there was no noticeable tint to the water. After each bath, I squeezed out the excess water and gave the skein a few snaps to help keep the strands in order. When it was all done, I hung them to dry from some over-the-door coat hooks in my hallway, with a towel underneath for the inevitable dripping.

All told, there's almost exactly 500yds here: my conservative counts on the skeins are 272yds and 228yds, respectively. It's just about exactly the right wpi, and it's soft and sturdy. I'm very pleased with how it turned out!

I've already moved on to my next spinning project: yak down! I managed to score 8oz of light brown yak down from Paradise Fibers' bargain bin for $24 back in September (if that seems like a lot, consider that purchasing 1oz of yak down from Bijou Basin will set you back $24 all by its lonesome, so this is like getting 7oz free, or saving $168). I'm spinning it up at what will, I hope, be a 2-ply fingering weight, for some as-yet-undecided decadent knitting project in the future. With 8oz I could probably even make a sweater if so inclined, so I'm keeping my options open. Whatever it is, it will be lacy, because yak down is warm and soft.

I couldn't capture the color to save my life - it's actually brown, sort of cafe-au-lait color.
Yak down is a little intense to spin. I already favor the short-draw draft, which is good, because this flat out requires it. Rule-of-thumb for drafting is that you don't let the drafting triangle get longer than half the fiber length. Well, here's a pic of a bit of this yak fluff - there's really not much there to work with!

Stretched out, though, that fluff's well over an inch long - it's really quite elastic.
Drafting triangle? What drafting triangle??
Fresh out of the bag, a formless mass of yakky goodness.
It comes as a sort of soft, airy mass - no direction or anything, just handfuls of softness. It's a little frustrating to spin at times, when it suddenly stops drafting smoothly, or it breaks in the spun yarn (it's done that several times to me), or you're trying to figure out how to hold this tribble without felting it... and the cat wants to attack it or sleep on it, I can't tell which.

"Actually, I haven't decided myself..."

But all in all, I'm actually having a good time. Did I mention it's soft??

Monday, February 7, 2011

What's on the wheel

Mixed wool "Potluck Roving", color "Vine Maple", purchased at Paradise Fibers.

Flash notwithstanding, this is actually pretty close to the real color.
I'm spinning it semi-worsted, not taking too much care about the drafting since I want it to have a kind of rustic texture when I'm done. I'm hoping for a mildly thick-and-thin worsted weight two-ply; so far it's spinning up at 22wpi, give or take, so I'm right on track.

Shiny penny for scale (and color reference)
I've got approximately 8oz of this, which I'm currently estimating will get me 500yds or so, once it's plied. Though right now it looks like it may go farther!

Would you believe me if I said this was an afternoon's spinning?? I'm flying through this!
I am, of course, spinning it on my beloved Kromski Prelude. HD was kind enough to take some action shots, so you can appreciate the beauty of a good spinning wheel in motion.


Good shot looking down on the bobbin and (blurry haze of) the flyer.

Here we bring in the treadle and my drafting technique. I tend to favor a short draw, which is what you see me using here.
The spiky thing back by the wheel is a lazy kate, currently empty.
The dangly bit of dark red in front of the wheel is a yarn loop on my orifice hook.


All the motion together! My right foot works the treadle, which moves the footman, which spins the wheel, which (by way of the drive band) turns the flyer and the bobbin, only the brake on the bobbin means it turns slower, so yarn winds up nicely on it as it spins around. Got it?


Tuesday, February 1, 2011

In the works

I've ordered seeds for this year's garden - my typically grandiose, even gleefully excessive, hopes for the garden's bounty, printed out in black and white and given a (hefty) price tag. It's a little more intimidating this way, than when it's merely my perpetually hopeful imaginings of bumper crops and fresh sweet corn... I've never in my life managed to actually -grow- sweet corn, though obviously many people do so sucessfully here and sell it at road side stands up and down this valley. Just not me. Yet still I buy it (this year, it's "Vision", from Johnny's Seeds, with 75 days to maturity and the most appropriate name I've ever seen).

In fact, this year I've purchased 37 varieties of seed for my vegetable garden, possibly a new record for me. I'm feeling very positive in general about planting in the new plot (even if we don't move this year, we're still going to plant the garden up at the farmhouse), with more room, better soil - and more sun.


I've also been working on designing a shawl pattern. It's the most frustrating thing I've ever done for fun, other than gardening. The shawl itself is a simple triangle, knit from the center of the neck down, with a lovely lace stitch called "elfin lace" covering the upper third. The problem happens when I try to switch to a thistle-pattern lace I've been designing, which doesn't want to play nice. Just when I think I'm getting the hang of it, it decides to go and do something totally contrary to what I thought was going to happen! I've been swatching and working on it in the off hours, so hopefully I'll have something to show you in a week or two.


The house progresses slowly. I had really hoped to be further along by now - since it's the end of January - but considering how sick we've all been, we're still making good progress. Even today, I've mostly been lying on the couch with the cat, sneezing and drinking tea and trying to ignore a fever. Working the problem from both ends (preparing the farm and getting this house ready to sell) is exhausting and stressful, and (with the winter weather) takes its toll on a body. However, I suspect that next weekend, we'll be ready to tackle some issues with paint and trim, which will feel like real progress!


I filed the taxes! That's progress I can make even with a nasty headcold.


I've been ignoring the spinning wheel, and I should stop. I miss it. I have a lovely bunch of orangey-red mixed wools (not my dye job, they came that way) that would brighten up the winter blahs and be a fantastic gift for one of my knitting friends.... And then I can practice my dye skills on some of the undyed wools in my "to spin" box.


I'll leave you, then, with some pictures of the Mocha Latte soap. At this stage (just barely three days in), the ammonia smell is gone, becoming instead a mild coffee/cocoa smell. The color darkened dramatically after I cut it, and it looks (to my eyes) almost exactly like fudge. It's sitting in an out-of-the-way place, separated for better air circulation, where it will cure for the next several weeks (I guess).



Sunday, January 30, 2011

Experimental Soap

Today I made soap for the first time - there are no pictures, because I was too busy trying not to mess it up or blind myself with lye or something like that, but hopefully there will be finished-soap pictures later. I'd love to say I made a flawless first batch, but there were some fascinating problems and some frantic mid-project internet searching and still the soap had to be rebatched. No permanent disfigurement, though, so that's good.

Not being one to do things by halves, I chose to start out with a goat-milk soap. I couldn't find a recipe I liked (I wanted to use my tallow, and no other fats), so I came up with my own with a lye calculator. I added some honey for moisturizing, but figured I'd leave it at that - no scents or colors or froofroo nonsense. Basic, I thought. Simple. Ha.

I added my lye to my milk (which immediately turned oompaloompa orange, but no biggie, I'm not picky), and started melting the frozen tallow while the lye/milk solution cooled down. When the tallow was melted, I turned back to lye/milk.... which was, now, soap. No, really. It was a block of spongy, putrid-smelling, orange soap, that leaked orange/brown vile lye-heavy liquid when I broke it up with the spoon. It gave off ammonia fumes like nothing I've ever seen - never mind goggles, I need a respirator! I ventilated the kitchen as best I can, grabbed the cat, and strategically retreated to the living room (closing the kitchen door behind me).

Woe is me! My first soap, ruined before I've even started! The internet, however, assured me that all is well. This sometimes happens with lye/milk solutions, I gather. The milk fats saponify too early, and goat-milk soap often reeks of ammonia. It's ok, it's nothing a stick blender can't fix.

Well, alright then. I'm game.

Back to the (slightly dizzying) kitchen, stick blender in hand. I added the gloppy, foul solution to my glorious, untarnished tallow, cringing slightly and thinking of donuts that could have been. I did my level best with the stick blender to break up bits of lye-heavy milkfat-soap, sclurching it into the rest of the bottle-tan mess. It's a lot of stickblending, and I was getting nervous: goat milk is sugary, and supposedly brings soap to trace quickly - I was also adding honey, which does the same. The mix looked thick - like the pictures I'd seen of "light trace" - so... I'm done? I added the honey, mixed it in thoroughly, and carefully poured the pumpkin-mousse concoction into a loaf pan.

My thoughts, as I putter around the kitchen and living room for the next hour or so:
I hope it sets.
It looks like it's setting!  
I did it! I made soap!
Huh. That was easier than I thought.
It turned white? Why did it turn white?
Maybe the goat milk didn't get as hot as I thought. Maybe the white is the milk... decarmelizing?
No, that's stupid. Hopeful, but stupid.
Well, the only thing -white- in the soap is... the tallow.
Ah, criminy.

It separated. The liquid tallow came to the top and made a lovely white layer, leaving a layer of pumpkin-colored, ammonia-scented, lye-heavy, lose-your-fingerprints-ask-me-how-i-know caustic soap underneath. We had a brief conference about whether this was likely to correct itself overnight, in which HD allowed me to use him as a sounding board to work out my own knowledge of, and unwillingness to accept, the correct answer. No - this will not fix itself by resting over night, or even over many nights. The fats needed to balance the lye are no longer in emulsion, saponification will not occur.

This calls for rebatching.

I scooped the still-soft failed batch out of the loaf pan and into a new, smaller pot (I felt part of the problem had been using too large a pot for such a small batch, and right-sizing the pot would help). I put it all on low heat and let it melt, adding just a smidge of cow milk to help it along (also, in case a lack of fluid in general was part of the problem, given how much got tied up in the earlier premature saponification problem). I took the stick blender back to it, and brought it all the way to a heavy trace - a texture like very thick brownie batter. It was on heat the whole time, which seems to have helped the ammonia problem. I also added cocoa powder and ground coffee (dry) for scent and color, and preliminary evidence suggests this will be a beautiful darker soap with a pleasant coffee scent. I should know in a few days, I guess. In the meantime, I'm thinking of it as "Mocha Latte" soap, until a catchier name or contrary evidence appears.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Tallow

Several friends and I are going in together on a side of beef – “cowpooling” - with the meat in question expected to arrive late February. Having only a small freezer, and expecting approximately 30lbs of beef, I’ve started clearing out freezer space.
One of the things taking up space in my freezer has been nearly 4lbs of beef suet, which I’ve been waiting to render into tallow. It’s been waiting for some time – I think I originally planned to do this before Thanksgiving, and then ran into holiday craziness. This weekend seemed like a good time to finally tackle it!
First, it helps to cut the suet up as small as possible. Last time, I used my food processor, but I will NEVER, EVER do that again – it makes a phenomenal mess! This time, I took a serrated knife and hacked it up by hand, taking care to discard stray bits of connective tissue and so forth. Easy enough, and much less cleanup!
When it’s all cut up, 4lbs (well, 3.8lbs) of frozen suet looks about like this:



I then added about 4 cups of water, with several tablespoons of salt already dissolved into it. The water keeps the suet from burning before the tallow renders out, and gives the solids somewhere to settle into. Salt, I’ve been told, helps “purify” the tallow… magic? Actually, it’s a lot more straightforward than that. It raises the boiling temperature of the water, thus helping render out more tallow, faster. More importantly, it makes the water denser, so you don’t have any wishy-washy semi-separating tallow bubbles.
Get the heat going:


A solid boil, and rendering is well underway:

I swear it's boiling, you just can't tell in this pic for some reason.
I found that, having been more careful with the preparation – tossing out connective tissue and less desirable bits – there wasn’t any of the unpleasant smell I’ve encountered with rendering. Honestly, it didn’t smell like much of anything – it was just steamy. You do have to take care that you don’t manage to boil all the water out from under your liquid beef fat, with all that steam.
Straining the gooey bits out of the good stuff:

I did toss the dregs from the strainer back into the pot to render a little further, though I didn’t get all that much more from them.  When they were all tapped out, we mixed them with peanut butter and some bread crumbs to put out for the birds.  We put the mix in hollowed-out apple halves and hung the result in the maple tree:

Letting the fat cool, without disturbing it:

Hardened tallow:


The plates of tallow need a good wipe down and a rinse under cool water. If they look nice – uniform, creamy white, nothing untoward hanging on, not oily or slimy or grainy but like a cross between butter and white chocolate – then they get dried off and packed carefully in the freezer for later baking or soap making. If they smell like cheap burgers or don’t look rights, then they go back into the pot with some fresh water, I re-melt it, and we try again. I’ve had goosefat hold out for a third boil, where it just wouldn’t separate from the solids and it wouldn’t clarify or solidify until then, but beef suet tallow seems to fix itself the second time around.   This tallow needed a re-melt – it was grainy, with some beefy bits still trapped on the underside, and a faint but distinct burger odor. You can see some of the yuck on the upside-down piece in the picture.  I put a brand new pot of salt water on the stove, broke the tallow up into it, brought the whole thing to a vicious boil, took it off the heat, and then put it straight into the fridge when it stopped bubbling.
All told, I got maybe 2.5lbs of tallow. Perhaps I could have chopped the suet up more for a higher yield to my rendering, but I’m pretty happy with it. It takes up a lot less room in the freezer, and soon I’ll be using it for soap making and maybe some cooking (ooh… doughnuts…. )

yum.