Welcome to New England!

All weekend it was beautiful out. We spent the days outside putting a fence around the garden, beginning to acclimate our seedlings to the outdoors by bringing them out for a few hours, and mowing the lawn (see previous post). Yesterday, little man and I even went for a walk to see the lambs at Shelburne Farms. And then....... today happened.

Another Good Weekend

Day one of my spring vacation:

The boys put a fence around the garden to keep out the bunnies/toddlers who want to pull up my lettuce.

Toddler man takes the seedlings for a ride in the wagon to get some sun.

Diapers hanging in the sunshine!

A walk by the river, followed by lunch at the local snack bar.


It's going to be a good break.

Trial and Error

This whole raw milk thing has been an adventure with many ups and downs (and it's only been two weeks so far!). It has definitely been worth it though. There is something rewarding about taking your own home-made yogurt into work. It is also a lot of fun deciphering what recipes are actually trying to tell you. So how has it gone so far?



Week 1:

For starters, I have to admit my poor husband has been sucked into a world he wanted no part of. Mostly because it is his kitchen and he is afraid I am going to mess it up, and secondly because he is an amazing cook and I need help!

I started by attempting to make yogurt. Sounded pretty easy, and it proved itself to be! All week I brought my home-made yogurt into work, and it tasted much better than the stuff I had to use for the initial yogurt cultures. Pasteurization proved pretty easy, although the impatient part of me (that hates being in one spot for too long) is looking for a way to speed up the 15 minute process. And then I attempted to make butter. I did everything the directions said to do, and after shaking a jar of cream for 45 minutes, I still had cream - no butter. I gave up!



Week 2:

I went into this week psyched and ready to go. I was going to do it all perfectly and there was no stopping me. Pasteurization, fine! Yogurt, I thought was fine. When I woke up in the morning and had sour milk instead of yogurt, I realized that yogurt can be a little bit touchy. I am not sure what I did wrong yet, but am bummed out about the lack of yogurt this week. Making cheese turned out to be a pretty cool science experiment. Warm the milk and start slowly adding vinegar to the pot. The directions said the curds and whey would separate nicely. We didn't realize how nicely until we had the right combination of vinegar and milk in the pot and they immediately separated into a nice ball of cheese (that we needed to squeeze the remaining liquid out of) and clear whey. It was so neat to see the process that we immediately made more cheese to see it happen again. As for the butter, I am still shaking the stupid jar. I may have to hold out for the wonderful butter churn that we are going to inherit in a few weeks.



On go the adventures of milk. Stay tuned for next week when we try different types of cheeses.

That Was Fun!

The adventures of raw milk, here we come! We currently have a gallon of raw milk in the refrigerator. Well not totally, I just took some out to make yogurt. 10 minutes of effort, let sit and enjoy tomorrow, I can't wait.

I got little man excited about the adventure by telling him we were going to his friend's house to see cows. Which was true and actually I think next week we will plan on making the trip a bit of a playdate. When we first got there, I talked with my friend whose cows they are while her daughters led little man all over the place. Playing with the dog, petting the new baby calves, chasing the chickens around the yard, everyone loading into the car and driving up to the milking parlor to see the cows being milked. He had a blast and the girls wanted us to stay longer.

We finally left with a jar of very fresh milk.

After little man went to bed, I used some of the milk to make yogurt, and am letting it sit in the fridge overnight to separate; so I can skim the cream off the top tomorrow for butter. Did I mention my mother in-law is going to let me use the family heirloom butter churn? Very excited about that one! After making butter, I am going to pasteurize the rest for drinking. I was going to make farmers cheese as well, but we don't have any white vinegar, so that will have to wait for next week. Can't wait!

Wonderful Weekend

For my birthday this year, I received gifts from people who know me well: my mother and my mother-in-law. Along with several pairs of gardening gloves (which will probably all be worn out by the end of the summer), I received gardening soap (which works very well) and a few other items to start off the 2010 gardening season. I looked forward to gardening all week and was a bit fearful when we woke up to the sight of snow out the window. Thankfully it was just flurries and it was gorgeous by noon-time/nap time for little man.

While Andy tilled up our garden with the tiller we borrowed from a friend for the weekend (last year we turned our new garden by hand and it was not pretty), I dove into the raspberry bushes. Had I not attended a "Village University" class on fruit trees and bushes, and not spent countless hours looking up 'pruning raspberry bushes' on the Internet, I would have guessed that I was completely wiping out my bushes. For those of you who have never pruned raspberry bushes, you clean out all the branches that produced fruit the previous year to make way for new growth and help the new stuff get some sunlight so it can flourish. The reason it was such a big job is that the guy who had owned the house 5 years prior to us never lifted a gardening tool, and up until this spring I was not ready to tackle the raspberry bushes. So, there was a lot of cleaning out to do. Thankfully I had little man's two hour nap time to tackle it (the threat of the toddler being awakened by the Chinooks circling our house from the Nat. Guard training site behind the house kept me moving as well). I have to say that part of my garden looks great! I took pictures of it to show you, but then forgot the camera outside overnight in the rain. Needless to say, Andy is not happy with me, although I have to admit I am very thankful it was not his new very expensive camera that I had also been using to take pictures of my flowers.

After I finished and little man was up and running around in the yard, excited about the helicopters flying over, we commenced helping daddy with the vegetable garden by using his wagon to cart top soil (that we got for free from my dad) back and forth from the barn to the garden plot. He was all too happy to unload the bags just so he could jump in the wagon and ride back to the barn. After letting the plot sit overnight, we planted our cold-hearty plants in the ground (peas, carrots and lettuce), although I have to admit it was a bit cold and wet today and not as fun as yesterday. Oh well, there are plants sitting happily in the ground that will soon be providing us with some fresh wonderful greens and that makes it all worth it.

Contagious

I am beginning to realize that good things and good people are contagious. The community center in Jericho is sponsoring a "Village University" on Sustainability, and I have gone to two of the sessions so far. With each, I have come home wanting more. Each speaker is limited to thirty minutes, and after their time, I have been left wishing that they had more time to share their ideas. This week's session was even better than last, possibly because I knew 3 of the 4 speakers, or possibly because 3 of the 4 topics presented are things we are working towards at home. Actually, by the time this Village University is over, 4 of 4 are going to be. I am hoping to spread some of the contagiousness on to you, so hang on.

The first speaker was our local soil scientist (who just happens to attend our church). I learned more about soil than I ever thought was important, and actually enjoyed every minute of it. I also realized that our lazy method of not really turning our compost pile every few days is actually OK, it just takes longer. Be lazy, be energetic; it really doesn't matter, and you end up with some great stuff for your garden at the end of the year and don't have to go to the local garden store to buy it.

The second person depressed me and excited me all at the same time. It was the lady that talked about raising poultry (who also attends our church). I came away ready to go, but fearing for the annual garden I have been working on so hard to make into my own little paradise. So, apparently chickens will tear up a flower garden if given the chance, and they don't really care for snails like I had hoped (escargot anyone?!). The good thing is my garden is going to get a lot of attention as I work in it while the chickens are free ranging (to keep them from digging holes in the garden and killing the flowers that keep me very happy throughout the summer). Of course, I think I am more fearful of the toddler who has already run down my daffodils. Thankfully, that episode was early on, and they have recovered to a wonderfully happy yellow that makes me very happy.

The third person made me run home and tell Andy that we need to till the garden right now!Apparently, anyone who really knows how to garden has already planted their cold weather plants. Needless to say, my lettuce, carrots and peas will be in the (freshly tilled) ground within the next 24 hours. Also, for those of you who live in New England, you can have a wonderful garden of greens for most of the winter and not even have to heat where they are growing. The hearty greens will grow almost all winter as long as you protect them from the wind and being buried in the snow. Now, Andy may take a little more convincing to make me a hoop house out of PVC pipe, but if I can manage it, in February while the rest of you are hoping for spring, I will be cutting fresh lettuce and herbs from my garden.......

Andy has already told me I am on my own with this last one. Although, the more I think about it the more into this idea I am. The last speaker this week talked about raw milk. Now before you shake your head, pause and think a moment: if your parents grew up on a farm, they drank raw milk. If you went to see your grandparents at that farm, you have drunk raw milk; and if you have ever traveled to a Third World country, chances are you have had raw milk. Now, I say this with the knowledge that I am probably going to pasteurize the milk after I get the stuff I need for cream, butter, cheese and yogurt from it. It is super easy, heat to 160 for 30 seconds, cool quickly in a water bath and refrigerate. The coolest part was the butter. The woman who taught this part skimmed the separated cream off the top, put it in a jar, shook it vigorously for a few minutes and then passed it around. By the time she was done talking (about 15 minutes), the very act of all of us passing it around and shaking it a little had turned it into buttermilk. I never even imagined I would consider raw milk, and now we may be buying it from a family we know well from church (their 4 year old is obsessed with our 2 year old), whose cows we have seen and know what they eat.

Hopefully, in my less than elegant writing, my enthusiasm for these ideas has proven to be contagious....

Not that bad.......

I have to admit I looked at this week with fear and some expecations that I wasn't able to live up to. For those of you who have not been following this, it was my first week washing my own diapers. For starters, I should admit it was not as bad as I thought it would be. Secondly, due to the rain, I did not live up to my own expecations.
What did I learn you ask? Well for starters, trying to dump a weeks worth of smelly diapers into the washing machine at one time was not a good idea for two reasons: 1. They all go rushing into the wash at one time and you end up picking diapers up off the ground. 2. Dirty diapers weigh a lot and a week's worth may be a little too heavy for my little washing machine. I ended up doing a midweek load to cut down on the weekend load the second time around. I also learned that feeding little man a lot of tomatoes is not a good idea. They don't rinse out of the washing machine well and in the end you have a few little red tomato (very clean) skins floating around in the washer.
The rain was a bit of a bummer because I really wanted to go all out on the being eco-friendly thing and not use the dryer. The first night the sky was gray and rain was in the air and weather forecast. Of couse, the second I put the diapers in the dryer, the sun came out. The second night this week I washed diapers, it was so windy I was afraid little man was going to blow away walking from the garage to the house and figured I really did not want to chase cloth diapers around the neighborhood all night. In all it wasn't too bad, although I am praying for a sunny day the next time I have to wash diapers.