Beer Bottling Night!

 We bottled the beer tonight! It was a long 2 weeks of dark fermentation in our "Wine Cellar" (the closet under our stairs), but tonight we added a bit of sugar and filled 8 one liter bottles with a yummy pale ale. The bummer is we have to wait another 3 weeks for carbonation and conditioning. My husband and I tasted the flat fermented brew and it had a very strong alcohol smell but tasted good. We have high hopes!

Out with the Old...In with the New!

Yesterday we cleared out the tomato plants. It was hard to do. I brought them up from wee-little transplants barely 10 inches tall. They were just too out of control. I didn't prune them and they overtook the entire garden! As you can see here...

Before

The cucumbers were starting to wander through the tomatoes and the damn squirrel was having a heyday eating all my ripe fruit. So my husband braved the garden and clear cut the tomato plants.

After

I have all this empty space now! I might try a couple more watermelon plants. Or maybe I should wait until we stop hitting 100 degrees and try some cool weather crops....hmmmm.

How to Make Butter! (and Buttermilk)

Howdy from the homestead! We made butter this evening. With just a bit of heavy cream and a few common household items, we shook...and shook...and shook...until all of a sudden we had butter! It is sweet and creamy — by far the best butter I have ever tasted. And as an extra bonus the dairy gods gave us a bit of buttermilk too!

It is super-simple — and with a bit of arm strength and 20 minutes, you can do it too! Here's what you need:

• Heavy Cream
• Clean Empty Jar (with a tight fitting lid)
• 1-2 Clean Glass Marbles
• Plastic Wrap
• 2 Small Mixing Bowls
• Spatula (needs to be able fit into the jar)
• 2 containers: 1 for Butter, 1 for Buttermilk
• Pinch of salt (optional)

Here's how you do it:

1. Fill the jar a little more than half way with heavy cream.
2. Place a marble or 2 into the jar.
3. Cover the jar opening with some plastic wrap and then screw on lid tightly. This prevents lingering scents in the lid from making the butter smell/taste strange.
4. Shake the heck out of the jar for about 15-25 minutes. It will be easy at first, then it will be harder to move the marbles around. Sometime after the 10 minute mark you will see a definite separation of butter and milk and the cream will no longer coat the inside of the jar. Shake for 2 more minutes.
5. Use the spatula to help strain the buttermilk out of the jar into one of the containers.
6. Fill the two mixing bowls half way with cold ice water.
7. When you have all of the buttermilk separated, place the butter into the first mixing bowl to rinse. You can use the spatula to knead the butter a little and get the buttermilk out of any pockets in the butter.
8. Transfer the butter into the second bowl for a second rinse.
9. Place the butter into the second container, strain any water remaining, and mix in salt to taste if desired.

The salsa jar I show in the first photo gave me 1/2 cup of butter (shown in the photo above) and about 1/4 cup of buttermilk.

The photo above shows the two butter containers (on the right) I have filled so far, and the container of buttermilk (left). I have used about 1/4 gallon of heavy cream so far and it gave me 2 1/4 cups of butter and about  1 1/2 cups of buttermilk. I am really happy that this process creates two products I can actually use. There is no waste (unless you are on a diet). Tomorrow I will make some buttermilk biscuits with the fresh buttermilk. Wahoo! I can smother them in homemade butter!

Today's Harvest: PEPPERS

Today I grabbed a small bell pepper and 4 Anaheim chiles from the garden. My husband is making his famous salsa tonight and these are my little (very little) contribution. It is such a cool feeling to eat the food I have grown from the garden.

In other exciting news...

We have a watermelon growing! It is a little larger than a golf ball.

And here is the first cucumber from my 3 wild plants.

I think I have some assassin bugs that have set up shop on my cucumber plants. They are quick so I couldn't get a photo, but they are yellowish-translucent color. They have long, thin legs and a sway-back abdomen. They almost look like a praying mantis but not quite. I have read that while they bite humans, they are beneficial in the garden just like ladybugs and praying mantis. I will update this post if I can capture the little yeti assassins on film.

Somethin's brewin in the kitchen...

Home brewed beer is (finally) coming to the homestead!

I purchased a Mr. Beer kit for my husband's birthday last week. Apparently it was the perfect gift because he has been camped out in front of the computer looking at all the types of beer he can make ever since. And I think this is the first time I have ever seen him actually READ instructions. I may have created a monster.

It really couldn't have been easier. They break it down into easy-to-read steps. I think it took 30 minutes to clean the equipment, boil the wort, and find a cool spot to let it sit for a couple weeks. Meanwhile, we are saving all the glass amber bottles we can get our hands on. The kit comes with 8 plastic liter bottles — which will work fine — but we'll use glass. It feels more substantial in your hand and beer just tastes better out of a glass bottle.

Next time you hear from me on this subject, we will be bottling our first batch!

Peat Pots: My Experiment

You know the pots I am talking about — those little brown, paper-like pots that boast their eco-friendly benefits. In spring they are readily available at your local home improvement store next to all the seed displays. I was in love with idea of using them and bought a couple packages to try them out. What could be easier than starting seeds in a pot that can be placed directly into the ground?

The photo above shows 3 watermelon plants I started from seed a few weeks ago. As you can see, there is a big difference in the size of their leaves. I tried this little experiment because I noticed that some of the seedlings I have started were growing too slowly. I have great soil and have been carefully watering, the only other problem could be the peat pots.

Top Left: Seed was started in peat pot. The whole peat pot was planted.
Middle Right: Seed started in peat pot. The peat pot was planted but I tore out the bottom to expose the roots before planting.
Bottom Left: Seed was directly planted into soil with no peat pot.

The results are obvious to me. The biggest disappointment is the top plant. It is definitely the runt of the litter. The middle plant already has two flowers, but its leaves are compact and small. The bottom seed that was directly sown has large, full leaves and the sturdiest limbs of the three plants.

At first, I really liked the idea of using a biodegradable container for seed starting, but as I plant more seeds I see that transplanting or sowing them directly into the ground are better options. Plastic seed starting trays are not as environmentally friendly, but they will last forever, I can re-use them every season, and I only have to buy them one time.