A New Obsession

I think I am becoming obsessed with chickens. I keep wondering how many coops I will need to build before I am satisfied. I have 4 now, and will most likely need 2 more by spring. Not a good sign!

My girlfriend Amanda offered out 3 baby chicks for free. I see that FREE word, and I jump at it... doesn't seem to matter what it is. So, now I have little baby chicks in my living room, because I have no place else to put them. I don't know what will happen when they get too big for the brooder. I had better come up with a plan... SOON!! I am amazed, though, that the dogs haven't even tried to eat the chicks yet... not even my naughty boy, Reckless. I guess they are getting used to having chickens all over the place!

Then, my other girlfriend heard about a pair of Cochins up for grabs. Somehow, I found myself saying 'yes' to those, too. I don't even know why! Cochins are a bit rare, but they are more for pets rather than utility. They don't lay a lot of eggs, and are a bit scrawny eating. The only thing redeeming them are the fact that I've had someone offer to buy babies from me next year. The male had better be fertile!

I've also ordered  2 more varieties of heritage type breeds from my friend Amanda for next spring. Light Sussex, which are dual purpose, and soooo pretty. ( I stole the picture from your website, Amanda... please don't sue me;-)

I think I also ordered some either Lavender or Blue Orpingtons... can't remember which now. Both varieties are dual purpose, so at least I will be able to make use of both males and females.

Sigh. So many chickens, so little time. And space.

On another note, I harvested a bunch of sunflower seeds and roasted them yesterday. I had planted my sunflowers so late this year, I really didn't think I would be able to harvest any of them. I've never had home-grown seeds before. Are they EVER so much better than the crap you buy in a bag! What a difference! I am definitely planting WAYYYY more next year, so I will have enough for shares, and enough for myself to roast and munch on all winter long.
I accidently harvested one of my Snack Jack pumpkins, too. I picked it up to see if it was ready, and the stalk just snapped. Does that mean it is ready??? Anyway, my job tomorrow is to open it up and see if the seeds are any good, and roast them up, too. The pumpkins themselves are super-cute and little.

I am still making my own ginger beer. I made a giant batch about 2 weeks ago. It was the worst batch EVER. I ended up throwing it down the sink it was so bad. I know what I did wrong, anyway, so hopefully it won't happen again.
This week, I made apple. It should be ready in a day or two. I've really missed having it to drink the last couple of weeks, though.

The sun has come out to visit.... guess I should go think about getting some actual work done around here!

How to Make your own Ginger Beer... YUM!

I am going to teach you all how to make your own ginger beer. Ginger beer is the original soda pop. It's what we used to drink before Coke and Pepsi, and all the sugary crap we all drink so much of, and that's what I was addicted to for soooo long.
Now I'm addicted to ginger beer! So far, I've made blueberry, blackberry and ginger ale. I am going to be making peach later today, and next week... maybe mango? You can try all sorts of flavours. The berry ones definitely get fizzier faster, and if you ferment them too long, they EXPLODE all over the place. It's an adventure in every bottle!

To make ginger beer you have to make the culture first. This is what provides the correct bacteria for the fermentation process, and makes your pop fizzy!

Get a quart sized mason jar, and fill it 3/4 full of filtered water. This is important, as if there is chlorine in your water, it will kill what you are trying to do.
Add:
1 tbsp of ginger cut up in smallish pieces
2 tsp sugar.

Mix well. This culture likes to be stirred, so you can stir it once, twice, or more a day if you feel like it. Cover the jar with cheesecloth, and leave on counter.

Every day for the next 6 days, add in 2 tsp of ginger, and 2 tsp of sugar. Stir, and keep on counter.

At the end of the week, you have your culture ready to make ginger beer!

NEXT:
Make your flavour syrup.
You can just make 'Ginger Ale' by boiling a 1/2 gallon of water with 2 1/2 oz of grated ginger, a splash of lemon juice, and 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Bring to a boil, and simmer for a 1/2 hour.

OR

Make a flavour syrup. You can use almost any fruit or berry, or mix 'em up! Apple raspberry? pomegranate blueberry? Peach, mango, blackberry, whatever you like.

To make syrup:
1/2 gallon filtered water
6 cups of whatever fruit or berry you like
1 1/2 cups of sugar. For the sweeter berries, use less sugar.

Bring to boil, let simmer for 10 minutes. Do a taste test, make sure you like what you have. Adjust sugar, etc at this time.

Let cool to room temperature.
Strain syrup mixture into 1 gallon glass jar. Add another 1/2 gallon of filtered water. Add 1 cup of culture. Stir. Cover with cheesecloth, and let sit for 3-7 days. Stir twice a day.

At the end of the days, put into sealable bottles. I will take a picture of one soon, so you can see what they look like. I got mine from the local recycling depot for 50 cents each. You can reuse these things for years, so they are a great investment!

Let bottles sit on counter for 1-3 days. Put the berry ones in the fridge after just a day or so, or you will get an explosion. The ginger ale can sit a bit longer. The fridge stops the fermantation process. Fermantation is NOT an exact science, so you will have to do a bit of experimenting on your own. I think things fermented faster in the summer than they will in the winter, but only time will tell!

After it is cooled, it is ready to drink. I have a bottle every day now, so they don't last long, but apparently they will last a few months in the fridge.

Note about the sugar:
It seems you use alot of sugar while making this drink, but keep in mind the bacterias eat it all up, so you are left drinking little or no sugar at all. Just healthy probiotics and good stuff for you.
I am more regular than I have been in years.

Too much information????!!!! LOL.

Crazy Time is over for now....

Well, the crazy busy time is over for the moment. I had a bunch of dogs go home 2 days ago, and it's taken me this long to recover. That's just sad.
I have a bunch more dogs going home on Monday and Tuesday, and I think I even have a night with only my own dogs.... I am going to just sit back and enjoy it! That almost never happens anymore!
Then I have to get busy and make sure I am pulling in enough money for the winter. Classes to plan, and I want to expand my daycare dogs. I have more than I used to, but my goal is to get another 10 dogs coming at least once or twice a week by the end of Sept. Then that should do me for them moment!

I got back out into the garden this morning, and planted a bed of spinach. I still have wayyyy more to plant, but I hope to get on it this week, and get most of it all in. I need to be prepared for winter! I've been saving my grocery reciepts for over a year now, and my bill has gone down by about 70% this summer... that's a trend I would like to continue! I am eating lots from my garden, and am making my own drinks now (lots of ginger beer... more on this soon!). I am making sure I have something fermented in my diet each and every day. The whole fermentation thing took me a while to adjust to. You think 'fermented... EWWWW'. After you do it a bit, though, you get used to the idea, and actually look forward to the fermented foods. I just get sad when I realize how close we have come to completely losing this knowledge on how to prepare foods like this. My lunch today is cherry tomato salad with fermented beets and cheese and balsmic vinagrette salad and some sourdough bread, with ginger ale to drink. It cost me about 50 cents with everything, and I will be really full and everything is yummy and healthy!!
I have officially lost 14 lbs eating tradionally like this now. I'm not trying to lose weight, it just comes off. It's the coolest thing ever!

Rain, rain, beautiful rain!

It's finally RAINING! A good, slow, soaking rain. It's just what I ordered! The gardens will be so happy, and I won't have to water for days or a week. I was so SICK of watering! It was an endless chore, but it was more the stress of always having to watch how much I was using. My well would run dry regularly. At first, I was watering 5 beds a morning, and 5 at night. Then it was down to 4, then 3. The last week or so, I was only able to water 1 or 2 beds at a time before the well would run out. It was quite discouraging. I was falling farther and farther behind, and the plants were getting just enough to survive, but not to thrive. Hopefully, it will rain like crazy, then be sunny and nice again, so everything will grow gangbusters.

Tomatoes

About three weeks ago now, I made a trip up to Lantzville to visit Nicole and Dirk on their farm. They have a 2 acre organic produce farm, on which they make their entire living. You may remember I went up there last fall to visit, too. Nicole spent a good 2 hours with me, taking me for a tour, answering all my questions, helping me all she could. I learned so much! They start planting their potatoes in February... mine didn't go in until April/May. I'd better get on it better next year! The other major thing I learned was to keep planting. All year long. They never stop planting seeds. So, when in doubt, plant some seeds. Want to earn more money? Plant some seeds. Feeling down because of the weather? Plant some seeds! I've taken this advice to heart, and over the last 3 weeks or so, I've planted about 2 or 3 thousand seeds. Maybe more. Most of them were planted in seed flats that I borrowed from a friend. This is a bit more time consuming, but the savings on water is astronomical. Many of what I planted just 3 weeks ago is already ready to go into the garden. Some of it already has gone into the garden. I've planted 2 types of kale, purple sprouting broccoli, mega mesculin, 4 or 5 kinds of lettuce, onions, winter cabbage, and I can't remember what else. Peas! About 6 beds of peas. This year, I think I planted them early enough that I should get a crop off of them. Last year I was about 2 weeks too late. Everything I plant is getting the mycroizzial fungi, and I am doing weekly dousings of the EM and the plant tea extract. I've had some amazing successes with these products. I had bought a sad little lemon tree in the spring, hoping to get some lemons at some point. The little tree had been shipped up from the States without even being rooted out, and was so stressed - it was literally on it's last legs. I had potted it up in hopes of it perking up, but immediately after, a dog ripped it out and tossed it 'round and 'round the yard. That poor lemon tree! I thought it was a goner for sure. I repotted it, used the plant tea, the EM and my compost tea on it weekly for the last 4 weeks or so. It's looking AMAZING! The leaves have all greened up (no more sickly yellow leaves), it has lush new growth, and is flowering like mad. I've been taking the flowers off for a while, so the little tree can continue to grow and get healthier before it starts to fruit.
Other successes: tomatoes have a ZILLION blooms and tomatoes forming. Some of my squash and watermelons and zucchini are looking fantastic (some of them never took... just wasn't meant to be, I guess). I just hope everything is looking good on time to get a decent harvest out of them. If not, there is always next year, I guess!

Broccoli

I finished making my own ginger beer the other day. Blueberry flavoured. It was fantastic! Didn't last long, though! I am busy making some more, and plan to keep it going so I always have a new batch coming up.

I also ordered 25 new meat birds and 10 new turkeys from a different hatchery. They will be here late August. I plan on stocking my freezer before winter sets in, so I will never have to worry about eating through the winter. My heritage turkeys and 4 little Dorking chicks I got a while ago are doing well - they are getting big! Now that it's rained, the ground should be soft enough to finish building them an outdoor run. Guess I'll have to get on that, too. So much to do. A friend gave me some fencing and a gate from an old dog kennel, which I am going to use for the run. FREEEEE! It's my favourite word;-) My other score this summer was the new garden center that opened up near by - they were giving away seeds. Lots and lots of seeds. I was a total pig and took LOTS of them each time I went. The seed savings for me should be good next year- I got all sorts of stuff. Carrots, broccoli, squash, zucchini, watermelon, onion, and so much more. Too much to list.

Beans

Learning to 'put up' food for the winter

As you know, I have been changing my diet, and researching ways to preserve food, so I will eventually be able to live entirely on what I grow here on the farm. That day is getting closer sooner than I thought! I just signed up for an online (FREE!!) course on how to preserve food. I have always wanted to learn to can, but it just seems like so much WORK! I've just discovered there is an easier way. Yesterday, I harvested all my beets. The greens went into salads, but what to do with all those beets? I wanted to can, but all that work seemed daunting. Then I remembered you can ferment all sorts of veggies. Sounds a bit gross, but the flora it creates is super-healthy for you, and helps to keep your colon clean and you digesting well. So, I filled 2 jars with sliced up beets, added sea salt and water, and in three days... voila! Preserved beets. How easy is that? I'm going to do a couple more jars, and add apple cider vinegar... that sounds delicious!
Over the last few years, I have spent a fortune on juice and drinks. I just get tired of drinking plain water all the time. This week, however, I am learning to make my own pop - Ginger Beer - the old fashioned way. No chemicals, no additives, no preservitives. My friend made some last week, and was it ever delicious! I am going to try making blueberry flavoured. Then maybe raspberry. Then, something else. I will have endless yummy, healthy drinks for just pennies a gallon. No more store bought stuff for me!

If you are interested in learning about preserving food the old, OLD fashioned way (before canners) try this link:
http://nourishedkitchen.com/preserve-the-bounty/