Early Summer Project: Strawberry Wine

The best season for fresh fruit is upon us and this year I want to try my hand at strawberry wine.  I started this batch of wine on the Fourth of July.  I wasn't able to get any fresh strawberries at the local farmers market, so I had to settle on three pounds of fresh strawberries from the local grocery store.

The recipe itself is quite simple.  First I put on a pot of water to boil.  I think I used about three quarts. Next I washed and cut the tops off of all the strawberries and then sliced them into chunks.  I mixed the strawberries with two pounds of sugar, some yeast nutrient and some acid blend that I bought from a wine making supply store.  Once the water was boiling I poured it over the strawberry mixture and stirred it until the sugar dissolved.  I allowed the mixture to cool until it was about 85 degrees at which point I added the wine yeast to the mix.  I gave it all a good stir and then covered it and put it in the back room to ferment for a week, stirring the mixture once a day.  At the end of the week, I poured the mixture through a strainer to remove all the strawberry bits, then transferred it into a one gallon glass carboy.  I topped it off with more water, then fitted an airlock on to the top and put it in the closet to continue fermenting.  Once a month I will rack the wine into a new carboy until the wine is clear.  Once it clears it is ready to bottle.  I'm sure it will be months before I even get to taste this wine, but I'm positive it will be a drink worth the wait.

Meat Chicken Update

The flock of chickens that I am raising for my freezer are growing steadily.  They are about 11 weeks old here and seem fairly happy.

The original plan with their enclosure was to move them every few weeks or days.  However I didn't plan on the weeds boxing them in so well, so the enclosure has been in a fixed position.  I would have liked them to be more free ranging, but I didn't give myself enough space to move the enclosure  without destroying part of the garden.  Before I start another batch of chickens, I will address this problem.  For now I decided they can stay in one place and I will simply feed them free choice weeds from around the garden.  Yes, it's more work this way, but it keeps my garden safe from destructive chicken scratching, and helps feed my flock at the same time.

The roosters in this flock have also started crowing in the mornings.  At first they sounded quiet and awkward and unsure of themselves, but as the days go on, they are finding their voices one by one.  I know that at least seven of them have been crowing and it generally starts around 5 am.  I am usually a morning person, so it doesn't really bother me, but they are pretty much right outside my bedroom window, so this is not something I want to put up with for a long time.  They are almost full grown as far as height, but they do have a little more filling out to do.  I am thinking that they should be ready for slaughter in another month or two.

There is this one chicken that stands out from the rest of them.  He is very friendly little guy and doesn't mind getting pet or picked up.  He is usually the first to greet me when I feed them in the morning. If he remains friendly, he may get to live for a little while and may father my first batch of home hatched chicks.  He isn't the fastest growing rooster, but he is the nicest so far.  Couldn't hurt to breed a little good personality into my lines right?  I know they will be mutt chickens, but I hope if I select for good traits then I will end up with something even better than today's current breeds.  I may keep the largest rooster from this batch around as well, to help diversify my lines in the fast growing direction.  I try to observe my flock for a few minutes every day, to help me choose the right ones to keep.  I still haven't decided if I am going to keep the hens from this flock for layers.  I don't really have a need for more layers, but I'm sure I will be able to sell the extra eggs.  I guess it will depend on how many hens I end up with out of the batch and how big they are at harvest time.  I think I will probably spread harvest over several sessions since there will be some that are ready before others - biggest birds going first of course.  Only time will tell, and there are only a few more weeks left for these birds before they go in the freezer.  I am looking forward to reducing my feed bill and having many delicious home grown meals out of this endeavor.

Garden Dinners

I think that one of the best things about growing veggies in your back yard is the garden fresh dinners.  You can't find anything fresher than what you pick in your own backyard and the farthest it will ever travel is to your kitchen.  Couldn't get more locally grown than that!

Tonight's main feature was a vegetable medley that I conjured up out of thin air (and dirt).  The summer crops are just beginning to be ready for harvest, so there isn't much in the way to pick yet.  That is the reason that I decided a veggie medley would be a good side dish for my steak dinner.  I could have just a little of everything and still have a filling meal.

Walking around the garden I found a handful of broccoli florets, five or six green beans, a small yellow squash, a couple of small onions, and a handful of small potatoes from a plant that was starting to turn brown.  I chopped them all into small pieces and fried them up with a couple chopped slices of bacon.  Made the most colorful side dish and was delicious to boot!

The garden salad I picked for my appetizer was also beautiful and delicious, but I was hungry and managed to eat the whole thing before I even thought to take a picture of it.  I made it with a variety of red and green lettuces, radishes, a white cucumber, and a purple carrot from the farmer's market.  I topped it off with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette.  It was magnificent!

I am so proud of my little garden and the fact that I can have a really good meal from right out my back door.  Now that harvest season is here I will be eating like a king for the rest of the summer, and probably using all of my spare time to preserve the harvest.  It amazes me that the seeds to grow all these meals only cost me a few dollars.  If I bought all of these veggies from the supermarket it would cost me so much more and still not be as fresh or as nutritious as what I grow in my backyard.

Replanting Spring Beds for Fall

One of the crops that is done for the year is my spring peas.  I was disappointed in the harvests from these plants, but I think that they were not watered enough and didn't tolerate the heat well.  I pulled up all the dried up peas and then weeded the bed thoroughly.  I removed the trellis as well, since the next crop wouldn't need it.

I had originally planned to till the beds as little as possible, but the soil was so uneven and cracked even under the mulch, that I decided it would help if I turned the bed with a shovel, mixing the mulch with the soil.  It didn't take long, since the soil wasn't compacted like last year.  In about 20 minutes, the three by ten foor bed was ready for planting.

I knew the drip irrigation wasn't working that well in this bed, so I fixed it my own way - by poking more holes in the line with a thumbtack.  Once I was sure that the hoses had enough holes, I laid them back down on the bed where I wanted to plant my next crops.  I decided to plant a row of turnips and a row of beets in this bed.  Both crops grow quickly and should be ready to harvest in just two months if everything goes well.  After I planted the seeds I sprinkled a thin layer of fresh grass clippings over the whole bed.  I start with a thin layer of mulch, so the seeds I just planted still get enough light to germinate.  Once they get a few leaves on them, I will add a deeper layer of mulch to help trap moisture better and to block out weeds.

Hopefully, this bed will be ready to harvest by early October.  The original plan had called for this bed to be planted with garlic in the fall.  If everything goes as planned, then there should be plenty of time to harvest this bed and plant garlic in it after the first frost.  If it works out, then I will count this as getting three crops out of one bed in a single growing season.  It will be a first for me.  I have spent the last couple of years trying to figure out the scheduling for rotating crops in a bed like this.  I think I may be onto something.

Happy Cucumbers!

The cucumbers are happily chugging along in this hot summer we are having.  I have trellised them twice now and they seem to be getting the idea.  The tops are already halfway up the chicken wire fencing I have stretched for them to climb, and they keep sending out side shoots into the paths.  They are starting to look like a small mountain of leaves.

I picked my first little cucumbers a few days ago and have been getting about two a day since.  In a week or so, I think they will really start coming on and I will be able to start pickling them.  There are two varieties planted here; one with small white fruits with black spines and the other with dark green fruits.  The green ones seem a little bitter to me when I eat them fresh in a salad.  I guess I will see how they hold up to canning. They seem like they would be better as large pickles, or spears.  The white ones are smaller and less bitter.  I think they will make good baby dills.  I can't wait to see the harvests I will get from this patch.  There are flowers everywhere!

Blooming Sunflowers

The sunflowers have been growing steadily in the heat as long as I keep them well watered.  I am happy to see that many of them are forming flower heads and they should start to really take off in the next few weeks.  One of them was in a hurry and made this beautiful flower.

Looks like I should have a lot of pretty flowers very soon!

Once these flowers finish blooming, I plan on saving their seeds to feed to my chickens this winter.  I will mix it with the corn and amaranth I grew as a supplement to their regular feed.  Home grown chicken scratch.  I'm sure they will love it!

Blue Lakes Hike

Summer is officially here when you can hike the high country again.  A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to do one of my favorite hikes.  Blue lakes is a hike that takes you to just under treeline to a good sized lake surrounded by jagged peaks.  It is a hike well worth the effort.  The first part of the trail climbs and climbs through a series of switchbacks.  We took our time getting up this part as it was in the 80's when we started and we were at about 9000 ft.

There were some nice waterfalls along the way.

Once we got near the top the trail leveled out a bit and the hike became easier.  There were plenty of wildflowers along the way.  There were also several groups of hikers that we encountered.  One of them included a group of campers that were using llamas to pack their gear up the mountain.  Sure was neat to watch them come up the trail.

Once we reached the lake, the view really opened up.

We enjoyed lunch by a waterfall and dipped our feet in the lake's ice cold water.  Sure was a refreshing break after the hard climb up the mountain.

The hike back down the mountainside was much easier even though the lower elevations were much warmer.  We took far fewer breaks, though occasionally had to stop to cool down in the shade for a few minutes at a time.   It was a nice long hike through some old forest and we couldn't help but notice how large some of the trees were on the way back down.  I was thankful for their shade.  All in all it was a day well spent and a beautiful day for a hike.

Let the Canning Begin

Canning season is finally underway here at the Handspun Homestead.  I haven't officially canned anything out of the garden yet, but I did stop at the local farmers market this weekend and the fruit season is well underway.  It started with cherries a couple of weeks ago, but now the bigger stone fruits are coming ripe as well.  My most recent find was some beautiful, perfectly ripe fresh apricots.  They were nearly as big as a small peach!  After shopping around at the different stalls, I settled on about 10 pounds of them for $23.00.  I saw some peaches that I wanted as well, but I think they just started ripening and I will wait a few weeks before I buy any of those.

I started the canning with some good old fashioned apricot jam.  I started boiling the water for the canner and then turned my attention to the apricots.  I pitted and chopped five cups of apricots and put them in a large pan. To this I added 1/4 cup of lemon juice and a box of powdered pectin.  I started heating this mixture once the canner started to boil.  It didn't take long for the apricots to come to a boil, at which point I added seven cups of sugar to the mix and stirred it all in.  It took a little time to start to boil again, but once it did, it started to form a thick layer of foam and became thicker itself.  After about a minute it was ready to add to the jars and go into the boiling water bath.  I boiled the jars for 20 minutes because of the altitude I live at and when they were done I let them cool on the counter.  I love the rich color of this jam!

The next canning project was halved apricots in light syrup.  Since the canner was already hot, I simply moved on to the next recipe.  I started by making the syrup with 2 1/4 cups of sugar and 5 1/4 cups of water.  I brought this to a boil in a pot while I added another round of jars to the canner to be sterilized.  While everything was heating up, I started cutting the remaining apricots in half and removing their pits. The cut apricots were then put in a lemon juice/water bath to prevent them from browning.  Once the jars were ready, I packed them with apricot halves and topped them off with the syrup.  These were canned for 25 minutes and then cooled on the counter overnight.

These will be a nice taste of summer when the weather turns cool again.  In all I made eight half pints of jam and five pints of canned apricots  Not too bad for a little over $20.  And I don't think you could get fruit any fresher!

Fall Cabbage

Since the garlic harvest I have had an empty bed in my garden in the peak growing season of summer.  It seemed like such a waste to me so this year I am trying to make maximum use of my time and growing space by growing several crops in a single bed.  I decided that I want to see if I can grow fall cabbage.  This crop needs a relatively long growing season, but is also frost tolerant, so planting it for the end of a season seems to make sense.  The garlic was out of the ground by late June, so I thought there would be plenty of time for cabbage to grow.  I planted this bed with three varieties of cabbage: Red acre, Brunswick, and Mammoth Red Rock.  I decided to direct seeds these plants, since I never got around to starting the seeds indoors a few weeks ago like I had planned.

The first seedlings emerged just a couple of weeks ago and are already being over run by weeds in the freshly turned bed.  I will have to be diligent about keeping this bed weeded if I want my cabbage to have a decent shot at forming heads before the weather turns too cold.

Now This is a Head of Broccoli

I have been watching this head of broccoli grow for the past few weeks and have stopped myself from harvesting it on more than one occasion.

I am glad that I did.  Today I decided that it had grown enough. so I cut it off the stalk right beneath the head.  The stalk itself was at least 3 inches thick, maybe more.  I brought my prize inside and proceeded to trim off the large leaves and set them aside for the chickens.  When I balanced my final product on the scale it read 3 lbs, 1.6 oz.  Amazing.

This broccoli seems to hold up well to the heat seeing as it's been in the 90's every day for the past few weeks and it never even thought about bolting.  I believe it is a variety called Atlantic.  Perhaps I will plant more of these in my garden next year since they seem to be quite productive.  From this one head I was able to blanch and freeze about 13 servings of broccoli for myself.  Just imagine if I had ten of these plants!

The other variety of broccoli I planted was called Waltham.  This variety didn't take long to start bolting, but once I trimmed off the main stem, they have started producing side shoots which I will freeze if I ever get enough of them to make more than a single meal at a time.  They have been nice in stir fries and salads, but I don't think they will match the hefty weigh in that I had with the Atlantic.

The First Egg!

I am pleased to announce that my dear chickens have laid their very first egg!  I came across it on July 14th.  The girls were 21 weeks old.  Granted, only one of them is laying as far as I can tell, but I'm sure the others are not too far behind.

I'm pretty certain that this egg belongs to one of the barred rock girls since they are the one's spending more time in the coop and kicking up a ruckus like they have something important to say.  Guess that means they get to stay.  Even better is the fact that once this egg appeared, I had an egg each day after that, so I hope she stays this regular!  I can only wish that the rest of the girls follow her good example and start laying soon!

Pruning and Trellising Tomatoes

In years past I have tried over and over again to use tomato cages with a range of results.  I have found that letting tomatoes grow uncontrolled almost always ends up as a heavy, tangled mess of vines that make harvesting tomatoes quite difficult.  I have also noticed that they tend to get blight more easily when I grow in this fashion.

This year I am trying something different.  Instead of cages I am going to try trellising them using a fence made of t-posts and baling twine.  I planted five plants on either side of the fence and as they grow taller I am going to help support them by tying them to the trellis using more baling twine.  The other thing I am trying this year is heavy pruning.  I have never pruned my tomatoes before, but I've heard you get a better crop if you prune all the suckers off a plant.  Pruning also helps air circulate better among the plants which helps reduce blight problems due to moisture.

When I pruned the tomato plants I tried to identify the leading shoot on the plant before I started cutting off the suckers.  Larger plants were a little harder to do , so in some cases I left two leaders on the plant.  The suckers closest to the soil had already become quite thick and I had to use scissors to remove them.  The smaller suckers were easy to pinch off.  I made sure to trim all the suckers off the bottom 8-12 inches of the plant if they were tall enough.  I'm sure I will have to re-prune them all in a few weeks, but today was just to get them ready to tie up to the trellis.

Once they were all trimmed I started tying them up to the trellis.  I used the lowest "rung" of the trellis to support the base of the plants and to guide them closer to the trellis as they grow taller.  The next rung up is currently supporting the tops of the growing plants.  On some of the taller ones that had begun to flower I made sure to place the support under the young flower stalk. Once these flowers become fruit they will be quite heavy and will need all the support they can get so they don't break off the stem.  A few of the plants were tall enough to reach the third rung.  At this level I used the ties as more of a guide to keep the plants growing in the right direction.  I am trying to train each plant to stay more or less in line with where I planted it.  Tomatoes can easily grow out of control if you let them, so this year I am hoping that the trellis is up to the task of taming the tomatoes.

Knee High by the Fourth of July

Most people have heard the saying about corn : it should be knee high by the Forth of July if you are going to get a good crop.  If this is true, then I am expecting a stellar harvest from this years corn plantings.  The corn I planted in late April was a gamble that appears to be paying off.  This corn comes to my shoulders already!  I am glad it is growing so well because the beans that I planted in this row will be climbing these corn plants very soon.  They have already been stretching out their tendrils looking for something to climb.  As fast as this corn is growing I think it might just keep ahead of the beans and still be strong enough to support them as they grow.

The second planting of corn was done around Mother's Day and isn't quite as tall as the first planting, but it isn't far behind.  The weeds among these rows have gotten out of hand, so these plants may be a little stunted from their competition.  This weeks garden projects involved weeding these rows very thoroughly and then mulching the walking paths heavily to keep the weeds down.

I think I owe the height of these rows of corn to the variety of corn I chose to plant.  It is call Pungo Creek Butcher.  It is a dent corn that can grow over 10 feet tall and produces beautiful large cobs of corn in a variety of reds, purples, and yellows.  I plan on using it to supplement my chicken feed this winter, so a decent harvest could save me a few trips to the feed store.  I was able to grow this from seed that I had saved from previous years and am pleased by how well it grew even though the seed was a few years old.  I like to save the seed from the largest cobs with colors that appeal to me.  I figure that any type of seed saving of old varieties of corn might help preserve varieties that would otherwise be lost to time.  Who knows, I might even selectively breed the corn enough to come up with my own strain of it that is well adapted to the growing conditions here in this semi arid area.  I have noticed that it seems to tolerate the heat here well as long as it is adequately watered.

Pickling Season Is Near!

I was pleasantly surprised today when I came home from work and found that my cucumbers had begun to flower.  Both varieties that I planted came up very nicely and have really put out good growth in the past couple of weeks.  I had just started to train the ones that I could to the trellis earlier this week.  Most of the plants need to grow a few more inches before they will be able to reach.

At the bottom of the plants the first small yellow flowers have started their season.  In a couple of weeks I will probably start picking the first cucumbers of the season.  I can never resist eating the first few fresh from the garden, but when the harvest starts rolling in I won't be able to keep up with them.  I do have about 20 cucumber plants after all.

The fun begins after I have enough cucumbers to fill a good sized bowl.  If all goes well this year I hope to be canning a batch of pickles every few days.  I really love pickles, and now that I have learned to make my own, I can have a near endless supply of them by the end of the season.  Last year I canned about 12 quarts and 12 pints of dill pickles.  I ate the last jar of them last month, so I am sadly without pickles until the harvests start rolling in.  With any luck, I will start stocking my pantry again in a few short weeks.