Country Livin’ – Page 2

Cider Pressing!

I’ve been saying a lot lately that someone was thinking of us 20 years ago because they planted a lot of fruit on our property that we get to enjoy! Of course we are planning to think of the family that lives here in the future (like WAY into the future), and we’ll pass on the tradition, but for now, man are we enjoying what we have! Being that someone nice decided to plant lots of apples on our property, we were swimming in apples. I felt like Bubba Gump. Apple pie, apple crisp, baked apples, applesauce, etc. When we got tired of eating apples every other way, we picked every tree clean and took them over to my friends house. You see, she has a cider press and graciously allowed us to use it! We took about 30 gallons of apples and walked away with 10 gallons of apple cider. Some of it was fresh canned for Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings, but the rest is fermenting and bubbling away for our future enjoyment as hard cider.

The kids were a big help! Daphne helped collect (and drink) the freshly pressed cider.

She also helped oversee while Julie ground the apples before pressing.

And then while Matt did the work for grinding.

Oh.. and Cyprus managed to get in on the action too!

We had so much fun, this is definitely going to be a traditional fall thing!

Sunday June 19 and Monday June 20, 2011

Busy, busy lots to do. I’m trying to write every day, but it can be so hard because of all the projects I have going on. I was determined to get some projects done this “summer.” Well, the spring has really only started, and tomorrow is the first day of summer. Of course, it is also the solstice, which means that though it will be the longest day of the year, it also marks the six month decent into darkness and rain… and less light and ambition to get some work done around the farm. All in all, we haven’t even been at this property for a year, and the improvements are wonderful, so who am I to complain?

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I decided to tear apart the playroom and see what I could do for some restoration. Behind the horrible 1970’s paneling, I discovered some beautiful wood plank boards. The ceiling, the walls and the floor were all this beautiful wood. I know what I want to do with the room now, but it involves getting the ceiling done first. I had to remove 4 layers of wallpaper from the whole ceiling, which was a nightmare. It involved steaming and boiling water and scraping paper off the walls at 4 am while the kids were asleep. I was glad when that was done. Next came sanding, and that was just as bad. I like to sand, but not really up over my head. It took about 5 hours to sand the ceiling, But boy was it worth it. That ceiling looked amazing sanded down and loved.

Enter milk paint. I’ve known about milk paint for a while, but I’ve recently fallen in love with it. I have plenty of milk around, and plenty of lime. It is so easy to make. It is also non-toxic, so when the kids want to help paint and they all but roll in it, there is no harm. In fact, they could eat the stuff and be just fine. It is also the most durable paint in the history of man, yep, really. I hear that if you want to change the color of something painted with milk paint that you actually have to sand the top layer of the wood off. Luckily, I went to Europe and studied art and painting and pigments, so making my own colored paint wasn’t so hard on me. The first coat of the ceiling is red. Oh man, is it a beautiful red. I almost swoon every time I walk into the room. And though I am going to paint over the red with something less dramatic in the future, I am enjoying the red for now. In fact, I might just clean up the room and let it become a playroom for another few weeks while I admire the best paint job anyone has done anywhere. It is THAT good, I mean it.

I had made a gallon and a half of milk paint for the ceiling. I didn’t want to run out in the middle and have the color change on my slightly. Well, it was way too much paint. As I was contemplating what to do with it, i.e. where to dump it, it occurred to me that the red chicken coop in the barn could use another paint job. And so, off the kids and I went to work on yet another project. Painting the chicken coop was so far down my to do list that it hadn’t even made it on the list yet, but I must say that it makes our place look pretty darn spiffy. It is a nice, dark, deep, rich red. I like it. I do have to coat it with a sealant, but I won’t mind looking at that color for the next 40 years of my life.

Today, Monday, I headed over to Julie’s house to eat breakfast out, just for fun. MMMMMM, poached eggs and scones. We then headed to check out the nitty gritty details of another friend’s new house that she just moved into. it was built in 1920, and it is cute. I love looking at old houses.

We then went on a hunt for a place to pick strawberries that did not spray fungicide this year. The berries we picked first this season were sprayed. The berries are so porous that the chemical can’t be washed off, and the berries actually taste like chemicals to me. I picked another 30 pounds of berries for the freezer. I think I’ll be done in two more picks this year. Lots of work, but we will have lots of berries.

I was feeling overwhelmed with all that I had to do when I got home to make dinner tonight. I then checked my email and saw that we are well on our way to turn the farm’s lease into an actual purchase. In fact, a little bird says we may get to sign the paperwork this week. This put it in perspective for me. This truly is our little spot of Heaven, right here. I’m so happy and honored to live here that I could burst with wonderful joy.

Cheese Curds

With all the milk we have around here, making cheese is almost a daily activity. Way back when, I decided to perfect making cheddar. I kind of get on cheese “hobby horses” meaning that I make one kind of cheese intensively and then get bored and move on to another type of cheese. Cheddar was my hobby cheese for a number of months last year. I instantly learned that making cheddar has one amazing side benefit–the cheese curds! Just before you put the cheddar cheese into the press, the curds are sweet, salty, squeaky and savory all at the same time. Coming out of the 100 degree whey bath, they taste AMAZING. They quickly became a favorite snack around here, and every time I made cheddar, I purposely made more than would fit in the press so we would have leftovers to eat. Eventually, I decided I didn’t like making cheddar as much as some other cheeses, and I moved on to gouda, Parmesan, montasio, manchego, etc. You see, cheddar takes the longest to make, it has to age the longest, and I was having issues with the curds not knitting every time. I was also having issues with mold ONLY on the cheddars during aging, so I gave up and decided to come back to it another time.

That decision would have been fine except for the LOUD clamoring from my family that they need cheese curds! I started making batches of cheddar just for the curds. It is an easier undertaking because I know it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t matter that the curds get mixed exactly every 15 minutes, because we are going to eat them fresh, and if they are warm and squeaky in the end, we’ve achieved our aims. Well, last week, I made a five gallon batch of cheddar only for the curds. This overwhelmed everyone and of course we had tons of left overs after the initial squeak wore off at around the 36 hour mark. I thought I was doomed to feed all that hard work to the chickens. Then, a light turned on, and I started adding cheese curds to the things I was cooking. It started first with some scrambled eggs as I was desperate to not throw out the cheese. The curds got soft and melty and even took on some squeak again. After a full week of cooking with them (fried cheese, YUM), I dumped the remaining curds into a pot of risotto to get that final creaminess at the end. Low and behold, this completed my revelation. The cheese melted and was amazingly creamy and delicious. I know aged cheddar gets sharp and delicious, but fresh curds have a sweet, innocent savory wonderfulness that I am now in LOVE with.

I must admit that I was loathe to give up on making cheddar because I like it’s unique flavor in cooking, but I’ve now figured it all out. If I make cheddar and stop at the curd stage, we have an ideal situation. Most importantly, we can eat curds to our hearts content. I don’t have to worry about a failed knit or mold, which relieves the stress of making such a long, involved cheese. After the curds have lost their squeak, a few more days aging in the fridge and I have a delicious cheese that works well in any oven/casserole/melted cheese dish.

This works well for us. I’m excited to get a bit more cheddar flavor in my life without having to worry about failure and oh… the deliciousness.

When Enough is Enough

Let me just state that the very worst time or year to get seriously into farming is the dead of winter. We’ve been working toward having a working farm operation for the past several years. When all the things started to align for us to move and make it happen, we were excited. As the Farmer, I was intensely interested in many different projects, and I made the decision that I was going to start many projects off and see which ones we liked, which ones pay, etc.

It turns out that farming isn’t easy, and keeping livestock happy through winter is challenging, especially when I’m also trying to be a wife and a mother. I started to feel like all areas of my life were suffering. My small kids don’t like to be outside in uncomfortable weather, but that’s when the livestock need me the most. The end result is that I leave the kids inside while I rush out to do my chores. The chores ALWAYS takes longer than I plan because when I do make it out into the weather, I make absolutely sure that I do everything I need to do before returning back to the warm retreat of the house. This usually results in dinner being late, my husband being hungry and a very grumpy household. Everyone usually gets sorted out and sent off to bed while I head out to do yet more chores.

I immensely enjoy every part of my life. I love my kids, I love my husband and I love my livestock, but this past week when the sheep got sheared and they were naked and looking a little thin, I started to think that maybe it was time to cut back.

Today, I got to chat with my very helpful, very knowledgeable and very supportive sister. We talked about the tough questions, like what farming I like to do, what is too hard and what will pay the bills. I realized that I really do like all the projects we have going on. Milking cows and goats is my dream job. I love being a dairy maid providing milk to local families and having a wide range of dairy products in my own home (milk, cream, butter, cheese, etc.). The sheep, rabbits and the goats provide quality fiber to a known fiber junkie. The excess fiber can be sold, and each of these animals can be harvested at market weight for the freezer. That leaves me with the market animals we have going on, pigs and chickens. Both of these projects are challenging, but they are the most worthwhile.

It then dawned on me that it’s not what I have going now that is the problem, it’s the ideas I have coming up around the future. It takes TIME and ENERGY and MONEY to grow and expand. Having property is like taking care of another entity, it is a living entity that grows and needs care and attention. It is NOT something that can happen overnight or even over the course of a year.

It sounds like that to be successful I need to slow down, take a step back and enjoy what I’m working on now. Even though it would be fun to start 10 more bee hives this winter or milk 6 more cows, it is expensive, and it takes a lot of time, work and energy. Perhaps the smart thing would be to enjoy the projects we have going, get really good at them and then look at slowly expanding into new projects as the years roll on. After all, I plan to live and farm this bit of land for the rest of my life. If I work on and finish all the projects this year, what on earth am I going to work on for the rest of my time here?

I’m working on putting together a “master plan” for now and for the future so we know where we are going and how to get there. However, I think the most important thing is that I take one day at a time and enjoy the sweet beauty that comes from working with the land and animals to create our Cast Iron Farm.

Viewpoint

Things really are starting to fall into a routine around here. It is hard for me to believe that we’ve been living here for less than 6 months. It seems like a lifetime, a GOOD lifetime. It feels like we belong here, and believe me, we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. It would be a gross understatement to say that things have been a bit challenging at times. There has been a huge adjustment to all the different things about having a farm, having big chores to do and having animals that need us, every day of the year. I was no stranger to these things before, but we are now dealing with a MUCH larger scale.

This morning, I was out milking the cow, just like I do every other day, and I realized that your attitude and viewpoint really matter in any given situation. I was milking, and as usual, the cat was slowly sneaking up closer and closer so that he could get any of the milk that missed the milk bucket. On any other day, I find it a bit of an annoyance, and I shoo him off. Today, I let him sit next to me, and I really started to enjoy his company. As I was getting used to the idea of letting the cat stick around, a stray chicken strolled into the milking parlor and decided to hang out.

I went out to milk a week or so ago, and I found that this one chicken had decided she didn’t like the living quarters in the coop and that she much preferred sleeping in the straw in the milk parlor. In truth, from her viewpoint, we are in HER way. After all, she made up a nice little nest and here I come with a milk bucket and a 1000 pound animal standing in HER bed. Did it deter her, no, she just walked under the legs of the cow right up to the nest she had made by the head of the cow, and sat down to enjoy the show.

It made me get to thinking that the way I take these little things really say a lot about me as a person. Rather than fret that the chickens have discovered how to fly over the fence and that the cat is trying to steal my milk, I could admire the variety and the idiosyncracies that come with working with animals. They do each have their own little personality. It’s kind of like a farm version of stopping to smell the roses.

In fact, for a brief moment, I figured I was in heaven. What more is there to the simple farm life than sitting on an old milking stool milking the cow while the stray chicken and the anxious cat supervise? It is these individual personalities that make this farming thing so darn much fun.

Ode de Skunk

There are certain charms to living in the country but there are also certain nuisances. It’s really the small things. As was the case tonight.

We are working on the demolition of our once wash house so that it can be renovated into Jared’s office, AKA the headquarters of Expansion Computers. Jared has been busy lately, so I decided to start working on it to try to get it done for him by Valentines Day. Over the past week I’ve been working on it with Daphne’s help and we are starting to see the light at the end of the demolition tunnel. Tonight, I decided to burn the late night oil to get it done if possible. I got the kids in bed, the cows milked and the house in a decent order before I headed out with my James Herriot audio book to get some serious work done.

As I was getting ready to finish up for the night, I stood bolt upright to the serious scent of freshly sprayed skunk! Living in the city over the past several years, I’d really forgotten about skunk except for those freeway drive bys where an attempted road crossing failed–and lingered.

I searched my immediate area to see if the skunk had somehow entered the wash house, and it looked clear for that. I made a lot of noise (as if the demolition I was previously doing was at a butterfly whisper) and went into the house where, I invited our rat terrier out to do his job.

Unfortunately, he was more interested in eating the cat food in the barn than helping protect me from skunk, so I had to make a solo round through the farm at 10 at night to assure myself that we weren’t being invaded by an army of skunks.

Yep, I’m scared of skunks. It’s a good thing that I keep the company of three dogs who will protect me, right? Pugs can take on skunks, right?