Puttin' it Up

My boo had the day off from work. The plan was for him to go salmon fishing in the Sound, just down the road a piece. Well, some bozo's boat had come untethered in the night and blown ashore at the boat launch, preventing Bill from putting in until the tide came back in, allowing the bozo in question to move his errant boat back where it belonged. And so, the day meant to be spent slaying fish was out. Instead, he came home and helped me do some serious catching up and putting up re: our garden landslide.

Socked away/made today -

Chelle -

Processed (washed, cut and froze)
*5 gallon bags of carrots
*6 gallon bags of summer squash

Picked and thrown in the dehydrator
*1/4 cup +/- bread poppy seeds
*1 cup German chamomile
*1 cup calendula blossoms

Bill -

Made
*1 pound goats milk mozzarella
*1 pizza dough
*1 beautiful Apple Pie (with our apples, of course)
*1 gallon apple cider (fermenting now)
*1 loaf white sandwich bread

Bill's homemade apple pie, bread and pizza (with his mozzarella)

Tomorrow I need to make a decision about what I want to do with our 10(ish) pounds of rapidly-ripening pears. Maybe jam, cider, pear sauce or ???

The pumpkins and tomatillos cometh SOON so I need to get ready for a wallop.

Today's Take & Booze News - 9/23/12

Today's take isn't really much to speak of, except to mention that Sidney's milk production seems to finally have begun its decline. We "only" got about a quart and a half from her for the past few days, instead of the usual half gallon. Drying off time is approaching.

Drying the girls off to give their little bodies a break, and, to prepare them for breeding back, is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the milk will definitely be missed for the 6+ months that we won't have it. On the other hand, milking during a cold, wet, dark Washington Winter is zero percent fun for the farmer and the goat both, so it makes sense to take a break then.

The hens have been laying a bit less too, not on account of the weather, as we have a pleasant Indian Summer going - for now. Most likely, it is because some of the gals have begun their molt. Molting is the yearly bad-haircut-grow-out phase of chicken adulthood. In years past, the gals have left it 'til much later in the season, counter-intuitively commencing their feather loss just when the temperatures take their great initial dips. This year, it seems that the hennies & roos are slightly ahead of the game.

The real news for today is the booze. ;) Bill and I did our first racking of this year's ciders. My batch is about 2 gallons of blackberry apple cider, made from the juice of 30 pounds of apples and 6 pounds of wild blackberries, and using a packet of Lalvin V-1116 Montpellier cider yeast. Bill's is  nearer to 3 gallons of all-apple cider, made from 70 pounds worth of homegrown apples, and a packet of Nottingham ale yeast. Both tasted very promising, with mine having a very full body, sort of the cider-y answer to a Merlot, and Bill's being very light and crisp, reminding me a bit of champagne on my tongue.

I can't wait to see how these babies finish out!

*Eggs - 4
*Goats Milk- 1 1/2 quarts

Apples & Cider - A Family Affair

First, we picked our apples - 50 pounds worth!







The girls were in charge of the sorting, washing and drying.



Bill and I pared and cored the lot. God bless the inventor of the Yankee Apple Peeler!





Chillaxin' while the steam juicer works its magic



Finally, Bill adding the sugar and pitching the yeast to get this cider brewing.




It's hard to believe that it took 50 pounds of apples (cored, but not peeled) and a day's worth of labor to make roughly 2 1/2 gallons of juice. We all enjoyed some of the fresh cider before handing the remainder off to our brew master, Bill, for "hardening". ;)

He added some sugar and half a packet of yeast, and into the man cave/basement it went to ferment a while. Our fingers are crossed that this will be fermented, bottled and carbonated by the holidays. See you in three months!