Spring on the homestead

The snow has melted, the grass is growing, and everything is blooming! Here are a few pictures from around the homestead ...

More goats are due to kid soon, and we put turkey eggs in the incubator on Saturday, which means we'll have poults in about four weeks!

Apples!

This poor tree was planted in 2008, and this is the first year that it has produced more than three or four fruit. Most of our fruit trees are producing a decent harvest by three years of age. Our pears trees produced an average of 27 pounds each in their third year.

I do have to give the apple tree credit for merely surviving, as it is the young fruit tree closest to the barn, which means that whenever the goats accidentally get out, it is the first one to be attacked. You can see that the bark was recently stripped off on the left side of the trunk. Unfortunately, this type of thing happens at least annually.

You may have also noticed the lack of mulch, which doesn't help, as the tree has to compete with the grass and weeds for water and nutrients. As soon as the apples are harvested, I will add compost and mulch. I normally do that twice a year -- in spring and in fall -- but because of my injuries and illnesses the first six months, it was one of the many things that slipped through the cracks. So, I am especially grateful that this little tree pulled through with such a nice harvest!

Canning catastrophe

With all the excitement around here lately, you may have noticed that I haven't been blogging much. And when I do blog, it's been about the meningeal worm issues we were dealing with. But, of course, life goes on, even in the midst of medical issues with the animals, so I'm going to work on catching up with some of the things that have been happening around here.

In early November our intern Jane was working on canning the apple harvest when disaster suddenly struck. She had already done quite a bit of canning, so I wasn't really paying close attention to what she was doing because she seemed to have mastered the techniques pretty well.

One day she was canning apples and called me into the kitchen when she lifted the lid off the canner and saw this! The lids had blown off some of the jars.

As she lifted the exploded jars out of the canner, the other jars began to float also.

And there were cooked apples stuck to the back of the stove! Obviously they had shot out at a pretty high pressure.

She asked me what went wrong, and I really had no idea. We went over everything she'd done ... filling the jars, leaving head space, tightening the lids, and so on. She had done everything exactly the same as always, and this had never happened before.

When she took the jars out of the canner and sat them on the counter, the apples began to ooze out and run down the sides of the jars. It was also obvious that the apples were floating in the jars, and we could see lots of air bubbles between the apples that had not been there when the jars had been put into the canner. I wonder if the apples were too ripe and some sort of fermentation thing had started to happen, even though the apples didn't seem fermented?

We finally decided that it must have something to do with the fact that these were quartered apples rather than something that had already been cooked, such as preserves or applesauce, which she had made with no problem. Jane decided to make applesauce with the next batch. Unfortunately, the same thing happened again. I searched online and couldn't find anything. I even asked friends who canned, and no one had any ideas. So, if you have any ideas, do share! We'll be canning apples again next year!

Applesauce leaking out of jars after canning

Additional info -- in response to questions asked by a few readers -- (1) Both of these batches were hot pack. (2) No jars broke; only lids blew off. (3) There was one thing different between these two batches and the other canning we had done. These were Granny Smith apples, and it was November, so they were "older" than the Yellow Delicious we had been canning in October. I know canning recipes always say to use fruit at the peak of ripeness, so maybe they were too ripe? Also, our Granny Smith apples are not the type that stand up to cooking. When we make an apple crisp, in only 25 minutes baking, the apples go from slices to the consistency of applesauce.

Peaches!

No, we don't have any peaches ready right now. We harvested them about a month ago, but somehow the pictures slipped between the cyber-cracks, and I just noticed them on my computer desktop. They're so beautiful I still had to share. No, I'm not bragging about my photography skills; I'm talking about how gorgeous those peaches are! Makes me want to go grab a jar out of the freezer!

In the past we've always made peach jam, but I wanted to do something different this year. After looking through my canning books, we decided to make peach pie filling from them this time. It was my job to drop them in boiling water and then slip off the skins, and then Mike sliced them and put them into the pot.

The only snafu in the process came after quite a bit of boiling when we realized that the peaches were falling apart, and the whole thing was getting more liquid rather than thicker. I called my good friend and canning queen extraordinaire, Cathy Lafrenz in Iowa, to ask her what was up with the Ball Blue Book recipe. I was guessing that we'd have to add corn starch or something before actually using this as a pie filling, and yep, she said that I was correct. One thing I have noticed about the Ball Blue book in the past is that it doesn't always give you all of the directions for things. It only tells you how to preserve something but not what to do with it after it's canned or frozen.

Of course, the peaches did not fill up an exact number of jars, so we used the left-overs to top our cheese blintzes that we had for breakfast the next morning, and that was delicious! Now that the weather is cooling off some, I'll probably make a pie soon. But if we don't really like this as a pie fillin, I know we can certainly use it as a topping for cheese blintzes.

Berry harvest

Yesterday was a very productive day! We are not usually harvesting berries this early, but spring came early this year, and the warm weather and rain just keep coming, which means everything is happening early. Last year, Jonathan made raspberry-cherry jam on July 1, but cherries are already starting to rot on the bushes, so they will probably only be good for another few days.

We've picked more than 14 pounds of black raspberries, mulberries, and cherries in the last couple days. We've frozen some and made berry tea, mulberries muffins, a raspberry pudding cake, and cherry pancakes. We also canned seven half-pints of what Mike has dubbed "very berry-cherry jam" because it has two types of berries and cherries. I want to call it triple berry jam, because I think cherries are a berry. What do you think?

Sorry the picture didn't turn out better. I can't find my camera, so it was taken with Mike's cell phone. The cherries are a much brighter pink than the photo shows.

Coming attraction -- blackberry harvest is usually about a month behind the raspberries!

Bad apples?

I'm always surprised when people with their own apple trees don't use the apples. They usually assume the apples are bad because they're not pretty on the outside. In other words, their apples don't look like the apples in the store. Well, that's kind of like comparing yourself to the supermodel that's been Photoshopped on the cover of the fashion magazines. Those apples look like that because they've been sprayed with pesticides and fungicides while on the tree. After they're picked, they're waxed so they're shiny and last longer. Organic apples are picked through, and only the prettiest make it to the stores, because produce managers know that people are prejudiced against ugly apples. The above photo shows you what a few of our Granny Smith apples look like this year. Although they're not perfect on the outside, most of them are delicious on the inside. Sometimes, part of the apple might be bad, but the rest of it is still perfectly edible, and once it's cut up and put into something like a pie or apple crisp, no one knows that it once had an Ugly Duckling past. Although you might think that organic apples are too expensive to buy, are you overlooking free apples in your own yard?

Plum harvest

No, this is not representative of our plums. This is our entire plum harvest. But, keep in mind that we only planted the trees two years ago, so I was happily surprised to find three tiny plums on one of the trees last week. Yesterday I decided to pick them since there were a few Japanese beetles on the tree, and the plums are flawless. I was afraid that I'd come back in a couple days to find them full of holes.

Our garden is yielding lots of tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, green beans, and onions. How are your gardens doing? Finding anything exciting at the farmer's markets?

Did you say you were busy?

Before I beat myself up too much about not posting, I looked at previous years to see how consistent I was in June. Not good. In fact, I actually posted twice as many times this year in June. It's a sad catch 22 -- I'm so busy in June (and July) that I don't have time to write about all the things I'm doing!

Saturday and Sunday, Katherine and I did soap making and spinning demonstrations at the Pontiac Heritage Days festival. She spun up seven balls of Latte's fiber, which I will be using for my afghan when I get back to knitting in the cooler months. (Don't you just love her 1840s work dress?) I made three batches of soap, including lavender-ylang ylang, lemongrass, and orange essential oils.

Monday, we sheared the rams. Other than Margaret getting whacked in the kneecaps by Rambrandt, it actually went pretty well. Then we moved the sheep from the east pasture to the west pasture. That did not go as planned, but we did eventually get all the sheep over there. The frustrating part was when White Feather decided to take her lambs back to the east pasture. She just won't leave, even though there are no sheep left over there. The two old llamas are staying with her, so hopefully they'll be okay.

We've been busy making cheese and picking mulberries, cherries, and black raspberries. We've made raspberry pound cake, raspberry crisp, mulberry muffins, and raspberry-cherry jam. It was Jonathan's first foray into jam making, and it turned out quite well. Today I also made yogurt and buttermilk, and I made two loaves of multi-grain bread. We'll use one of those loaves to make French toast for tomorrow's breakfast.

The herb garden was in desperate need of weeding, as well as the vegetable garden and the flower gardens, which we worked on yesterday. Thank heavens for this nice cool weather we've been having lately! But we still need to get some more transplants into the vegetable garden. And being one to never quit, I've bought my annual supply of lavender plants to kill. Seriously, every year I buy lavender plants, put them in the herb garden, and watch them die. If anyone out there knows how to get lavender to not die, please let me know. My dill, parsley, sage, rosemary, and lemon thyme transplants are all thriving nicely.

The person who contacted me about becoming a homesteading apprentice disappeared -- never emailed to let me know that she was no longer interested. That was disappointing, mostly because it delayed me from posting an ad on Local Harvest, which I have now done. Hopefully, someone will contact me about that. In case it isn't really obvious, we could use a couple extra hands around here.

Berry-picking time has begun

I ate my first fresh mulberries a few days ago and had my first mulberry muffins on Wednesday. I love mulberry muffins. I just use a blueberry muffin recipe and substitute mulberries. Now, we're talking about making mulberry smoothies made with our homemade yogurt.

Cherries are also starting to ripen, and at the end of this month, we will be drowning in raspberries that grow wild in the woods. At the end of July, it will be time for blackberries.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads who read my blog!

Ready or not?

Our pear trees our producing their first fruit, but we are having trouble figuring out when to pick the pears. They are rock hard, but they sure are pretty. Anyone know when pears are ripe?

(I'm really sorry about this ridiculous picture! Blogger flipped it on me!)

Peaches anyone?

Today I decided to walk around the yard with a camera. I've been meaning to do it, but there are always more important things to do, other than take pictures. However, since the rest of my family has declared today a holiday, I thought I would have some fun too!

At midnight, the seventh and final Harry Potter book was released. My three children were at Barnes and Noble to buy three copies. My eldest stayed up all night reading, and my other two children, and my husband are currently reading it. That means, it's a bit like a graveyard around here. The husband and two youngest are entranced by the book, whilst my oldest is walking around like a zombie since she hasn't slept in about 30 hours. She's trying to stay awake at least long enough that she doesn't go to bed and wake up at 9 p.m. bright eyed and bushy tailed. She has to go to work tomorrow morning at 9.

This leaves me feeling like I'm essentially home alone. I went outside and cut lemon balm, dusted it off, and put it onto a cookie sheet in the oven. I taped a piece of paper on the "bake" switch, so hopefully no one will accidentally turn on the oven without looking in there first! I don't want my lemon balm to be ruined for two years in a row. Last year, I got the bright idea to put it in one of our cars to dry. I went to check on it two days later and the leaves were indistinguishable from those leaves that fall from the trees in fall. They were completely brown and had not a single scent of anything beyond dried leaves. Silly me, I thought that would speed up the process, but some things just take time!

While cutting my lemon balm, I noticed a beautiful butterfly on the echinacea (purple coneflower), so I ran inside to grab the camera. It was nice enough to stick around until I returned, so I was able to get a few pictures. I love the "zoom" feature on my camera, because I was able to get this picture from across the driveway! That's when I remembered that I had been wanting to take some pictures of all the daylilies in bloom and the peaches. There are about 20 different daylilies in bloom at the moment, so these pictures are just a sample.










Last night's dinner from the farm: goat cheese, chicken, patty pan squash, and green beans.