Rain, Risotto, and Raspberries

Greetings from a humid Sunday evening! Mick is practicing banjo in the next room (sounds GREAT!) and I wanted to post some pictures, which coincidentally all have to do with words beginning with R. Feels kind of like Sesame Street.

So, rain. We used to check the weather forecast on weather.com, but their exceptional lack of accuracy put a quick end to that. Instead we look at the radar maps, and Mick is getting very good at predicting from that when we should expect rain. This has proven to be much more reliable. So last week when we checked we saw a very dramatic thunderstorm warning for our area. A severe weather system had been spotted in Locke a half hour earlier (about twenty miles away) and was headed our direction at 40 mph. Sure enough, the sky soon turned gray and it began to POUR!



We put buckets and jugs out to collect as much of the rain as we could to bring up the hill for watering plants. It was very exciting for us! but not so exciting for Roscoe. We invited him to come outside with us, and he quickly found the driest spot on the porch.


After the mega-storm passed, we went up to the hill to work and were able to observe the weather from there. Mick got some incredible pictures of another storm moving through.



Next is risotto. Mick made a wonderful lunch this afternoon -- brown rice cooked in rabbit broth with spices and our very own chicken breast. It is amazing to be able to eat such delicious, hearty, nutritious food and know where all of the ingredients come from! Rice and spices from the Mennonites, rabbit from our garden, and chicken from our homestead.

And to finish up with raspberries... A while back, Heidi forwarded us an email that claimed to be the diary of a dog, and it went something like this: "Went for a walk. My favorite thing! Ate breakfast. My favorite thing! Took a nap. My favorite thing!" etc. Well, today on our way up to the hill I told Mick that of all the soft fruits I think my favorite is blackcaps. Only a few short minutes later, having spent those minutes picking raspberries, I decided that raspberries are my favorite thing (at least until something else comes in season). :)


So pick-your-own-raspberry season is officially open! You are welcome to come anytime, it doesn't seem likely that we will run out. They are quite delicious, and there is nothing like fresh fruit. Also, picking fruit on our own land is a beautiful piece of our dream, and one of the things that always particularly captured my imagination growing up, so that makes this harvest extra special. A little less imaginative is this week's grocery store circular...


So let's see if I got this right...
The grocery store offers 6 ounces of raspberries, perhaps seasoned with pesticides? no way to know, cost: $2.99.
The homestead offers as many ounces of raspberries as we can pick, grown organically, cost: a walk in the woods with my husband and dog on a lovely summer Sunday afternoon.
I love it!


The raspberries also make delicious smoothies when blended with homemade vanilla ice milk, whey protein powder, milk and a dash of sugar.

Bottoms up!

Bananas and Cats

No cheese post yet (although I will try to remember to take some pictures the next time we try a batch). But we are beginning to put up some food, which is pretty exciting! We visited DeWitt's, a local produce shop, to pick up some garlic and Mick spotted bunches of old bananas on the "buyer beware" discount table. So we brought them home, sliced them up, and dehydrated them. They are a delicious snack! I had dehydrated some last summer and they were good but pretty sticky to chew. I munched on them a little last year then kind of forgot about them until a few weeks ago. Mick thinks that maybe they rehydrated a little since last summer -- whatever the magic was, they were so good and had lost their taffy quality. Delicious!


And these pictures are just because I think they're cute. :) My brother's girlfriend Tia more or less adopted a stray cat that was hanging around her apartment. But when she moved to a new apartment (no pets allowed), she asked us to keep an eye on him up here until she has a place where he can live with her. So Louie moved from West Chester, PA to McGraw, and promptly discovered that our neighbors across the street have a lovely cat-friendly barn and field and put out food scraps (much more delicious than the dry cat food that we put out for him). So he spends most of his time over there and not with us, which I can't blame him for. :) But he was in our backyard this week, and Mick managed to give him some treats (part of our quest to lure him back to our side of Academy Street) and take some pictures.

He brought a friend along with him too.

He really loves his treats! Seafood flavors are his favorite, I have been told. Tia told me he was kind of a pig and now I see what she means. Gerard loves his food but Louie really goes at it quite enthusiastically! :)


He is really a sweet cat and we are hoping to see more of him! :)

Getting ready for the Fourth of July!

So Sarah and I are hoping that some folks might like to come to the McGraw area sometime the Fourth of July weekend, and though we know it's late to organize something we'd like to extend an invitation to all our family and friends, so please, let people who might be interested know. We live in a trailer so if you want to spend the night you can have our bed and we might be sleeping up by the pond anyhow, also there is plenty of room for tents and campers. So if you would like to come and you think something might work out, give us a call or an email or a comment and we'll set things up. And heck, it doesn't have to be the fourth of July, it can be practically any time! We do enjoy having company.

So Pa, I bought a chain with clevis grab hooks and began to clear away the brush and logs. I left two loads of pine in the trail that the kids have been using to get to the pond. Just another way of saying "you aren't welcome here" to trespassers. Even with the Kubota and chain, it was sweaty work! Sarah snapped this one in an unflattering moment:


But she also nabbed a video of the Kubota doing the hard work for me. For some reason Youtube destroyed the quality on this one.



With some more logs moved I should be able to dig the hole and start to set the flagpole sleeve. We should be ready to hoist the colors for the first time July 4, 2010.

Oh, and I forgot! We finally got one of our pests! She was sitting in the trail when we pulled up to the forest. They don't like to move unless they're quite sure you've made them, so she sat still while I braced myself against the car door with a Ruger MK I and put a .22 right beneath her left eye, and it exited forward of her right. A very clean kill, but it was probably at only 40 feet or so. Still, one pest gone, our shrubs, vegetables and trees are a little safer, a little flesh in the fridge, and Roscoe even ate the liver.



Hope to see you soon!

Pizza and Wine

Our Bavarian pizza has risen to a new level: several weeks ago Sarah made a cheese similar to cream cheese, but with the addition of caraway seed. Recently this cheese began to take on the smell of Camembert, so we thought we oughta use it up. So Sarah whipped up some rye dough for the crust, and had enough left over for 3 loaves of rye bread. Anyways, we spread the homemade cheese over the homemade crust, covered that with homemade sauerkraut, and topped that with fried Aldi's bratwurst. My goodness, this thing was the best yet.


In other news, my floor corker came just in time, I used it yesterday. It was funny, I have waited some many months to justify the expense of this particular tool, but it paid for itself in the first bottling and it wasn't even a full batch! Sarah got a video of the corker in action.



I wound up with a case of 750 ml bottles (thanks Ma), and one 1.5 l bottle (thanks Nuccia!) There was enough left over to try some that night, which was the first night we spent on the hill.



We picked that particular night to spend at the pond because yesterday was the last day of school in McGraw, and it seemed likely that the (presumed) teens would spend the evening trespassing and making a mess of the pond. No dice though. Perhaps our presence was enough to keep them away. We'll just have to sacrifice and spend more time camping at the hill.

Since spring began to transition into summer Sarah and I have been blown away by the size of the wild strawberries in the field, but last night we discovered that they don't hold a candle to the strawberries in the forest!


And not just strawberries, but the raspberries of the forest are just beginning to ripen as well. Hmmmm, what else...there are a number of redberry elder bushes, but we've only confirmed what we've read...unimpressive fruit. However, there are also some elderberries (we think) which have yet to bear though they are now in flower.

So anyways, we spent our first night on the hill by the pond, and cooked some hotdogs and bratwurst. Amazing! We also cooked some kale with butter and water in a mess kit. Sarah says they are getting bitter, but they're still a lot better than any turnip or collard greens I've ever had. But what a green!


I liked them.


And lastly, our freezer came today, which means Sarah and I have a keezer! My controller set-up isn't the prettiest girl at the ball, but she keeps our beer and cider cool.

Belated post from Philadelphia

'tis hard to believe two weeks have passed since we last updated, but when we look at the pictures of the garden, (especially the willamette hop) it's quite clear. I guess I'll start with the most recent and work backwards. I finally bought a jack (I won't be borrowing yours anymore, pa) and a set of jackstands to go with it. I went with three ton capacity for everything, because I don't know what vehicle I'll be driving next, and I'd rather buy something overbuilt once than buy underbuilt now and end up buying twice. Sadly, the American-made jacks cost far more than my current car is worth so we just went to advance auto for these:


The jack is monstrous! Not quite as big as the ones we used on the HMMWVs, but still beefy. Speaking of beefy metal devices, when I got back from drill I decided that life was too short to bottle wines with cheap plastic corkers, so I bought an Italian Floor Corker. I've checked craigslist for months to no avail, so I finally picked up this sweet machine:


Not only does it work better and easier than a cheap corker, it can handle Belgian beer bottles and champagne bottles as well. Moreover, it will last forever. I used one of these when I worked at Amberg Wine Cellars to bottle off waste and unsaleable wine for, um, the use of employees. It looked like it had been around for decades and would be around for many more. Another thing I've wanted since Afghanistan but haven't been able to justify the expense is a banjo. With a little help from Sarah I finally did:


It came Friday, and I can sort of play Cripple Creek. With much hesitation and peculiar noise-making, but nonetheless I'm glad to do be doing this. It's intimidating to try and learn to play an instrument, especially with no musical background, with a great pianist in the house. Maybe a banjo and piano band is the next big thing!

Let's see, what else have we done? Sarah was out of the trailer the other day and I managed to bottle my last batch of cider. I think I'm actually caught up now (not quite like you, dad, but still pretty good). I've got a 5 gallon keg nearly filled, but it's quite acidic, and needs some time to age. I think by the end of the summer it will be fantastic. Which is great because we also ordered a new (larger) freezer and a love temperature controller, which to explain to everyone other than Uncle John and my Dad means I'll have a keezer (keg + freezer) next week! This is critical, as we have the major portion of a keg of European Pilsner, which desperately needs to be chilled before consumption. Thus far we've mixed it half and half with the black lager, which gives a sort of black and tan that tastes like a Marzen and doesn't need the refrigeration as much.

Oh, and I started using the bottle filler for bottling (thanks Dad!). That combined with the bottle tree and air compression-siphon really takes the chore out of bottling.


And a sincere "thank you!" to everyone for all the bottles. I've got several gallons of wine that are fast getting ready for the bottle, and now I have the bottles, the corks, and the corker. So thanks to you, we'll be ready for them. I probably have 5 or 6 cases worth de-labelled and washed. John and Judy, the last batch of cider wouldn't haven't been bottled without your liter flip-tops, thank you so much. We'll have to get together when it's ready to drink. It's amazing to be able to spend money once, and increase your standard of living and save money thereafter for evermore!

One project I whipped up when Sarah was working at the school was a loo. I bought this book, the Humanure Handbook last year, and since then every time I've used a regular toilet I've felt regret. What a waste! We soil our drinking water to dispose of something that is incredibly biologically valuable. So finally, we're done exporting our organic matter:


I'm not done yet, I still have to do some final sanding, finish it, and put on the hinges, but it's useable, and as soon as I get some kind of power sander I'll finish it up.

(Sarah takes over)
Mick put in the second row of trellis in the vineyard, using the gravel our neighbor Dave dumped for us. It is really starting to look officially like a vineyard! and we can't wait until the grapes finally are tall enough to reach the wire. It will probably be within the next couple of weeks.


At the end of each trellis the wire is attached to earth anchors, which (it looked to me) were really hard to "screw" into the earth. But it looks great and the wires seem to be holding well.



Our scarlet runner beans have been coming up, so Mick put the trellis in. He told me it would be a post set at either end of the plot, with a rope stretched between them and ropes hanging down from that for the beans to grow up. This is what he came up with instead.


Doesn't it look amazing?

And of course, no post is complete without including the animals! The other day they were together merrily munching away at the grass

A good way to start the month!

Hallelujah, it rained last night and this morning! We've waited over two and a half weeks for this (I know, not exactly a drought but with all the perennials we put in, weekly watering by hand is a bit of a chore). We collected all the water we could in buckets (and coolers) off the patio roof, we probably wound up with over 30 gallons! Enough for one half of one watering, but still we were awfully excited. Pa, you'll appreciate that we got the hop trellis up:



And here's our slowest growing hop, Horizon



But the hop trellis wasn't the only training system I got up today, the grapes were also rewarded for coming back from a bad frost. All I had left to do was string the wires for my 4 arm kniffen trellis, and set the earth anchors. Here I am putting in the eye bolt that gets strung to the earth anchor



And a beautiful view of our vineyard



Besides some pruning, sumac-wacking, and mowing, the only other thing I accomplished on the hill today was putting in two raspberries (Prelude, supposedly they bear very early), and 3 grapes, all Cayuga. Sarah on the other hand managed to put in three more mounds of corn for a total of 11, plant two cherry tomatoes in pots, plant hills of beans around 3 of our plum trees, and help me with the sumac-wacking.

Our zucchini are all up now



along with most of our Scarlet Runner Beans



About a third of last week's corn planting is up too



In other news, we had a small grub problem in our rhubarb, but Sarah was happy to salvage the ungrubby part of the stalks



And we can't expect people to ever read our blog unless we include cute pictures of our animals, so here is Gerard, quite content to be out of the rain, but still out of the house



But even a cat can be unphotogenic!



And Roscoe truly enjoys our slow drives to and from the hill; it's fast enough to smell at super speed, but slow enough to be able to breath (and avoid choking on one's jowls). He takes his job of sniffing the neighborhood very seriously






But even at 30 mph, he still has to take breaks



Oh, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but we killed our keg of Red Lager. What color that beer had!



Cheers!