Putting up Chicken Stock

Chicken stock is one of those things that I keep in the pantry because it can be used for so many dishes.  I can cook rice in it to add flavor, I can use it as a base for soup or in the crock pot to replace water in a recipe.  It can also be a filling warm drink on a cold winter's day.

My basic stock recipe is pretty simple.  I use the leftover bones from several chickens to start.  I cover the bones with water in a large stock pot and then set it to boil.  While that is heating up I slice up some carrots, celery, onions and garlic and add that to the pot.  I don't add salt to my stock, though sometimes I will add a splash of vinegar to help draw more minerals out of the bones.  I also add a couple of bay leaves for flavor.

I let the whole thing boil on low heat for several hours, sometimes the whole day if I have the time.  After it has boiled long enough I let it cool down for a while before I chill it in the fridge overnight.  Chilling it helps the fat to congeal on the top where I can easily scoop it off and save it to cook with later.  I take the bones out and remove any remaining meat which I save for things like chicken salad, chicken soup, or chicken tacos.  I strain out all of the veggies and feed those to the chickens as a special treat.  What I am left with is just the stock which I strain through cheese cloth and heat again to let it cook down a little and become more concentrated.

The final step is to pressure can the stock so that I can use it as needed over the next few months.  The stock is heated to boiling while the pressure canner and jars are prepared.  When everything is good and hot I transfer the boiling stock into pre-warmed jars leaving one inch of headspace in each jar.  One by one the jars go into the canner and once it's full the lid gets locked down and I wait for the pressure to rise.  At my elevation I need to process chicken stock at 13 pounds of pressure for 25 minutes.  When it's all done I let them cool down slowly before I remove them from the canner to cool completely.  This round of canning gave me five more quarts of fresh home made chicken stock to add to my shelves.

Bottling the Plum Wine

It has been several months since I started my first batch of plum wine.  I got a good deal on a couple of boxes of plums in August and got the ball rolling on what was to become my winter supply of plum wine.  I have been a little lax about the schedule of racking and bottling with this batch, but I figured that letting the wine age in the carboy wouldn't hurt anything, so I could wait for the chore of bottling for a few weeks while I attended to more pressing needs in my schedule.  I did the first racking of the wine in late October, so I was only a couple of weeks behind schedule for bottling.  The wine itself was finished fermenting for several weeks before I racked it the first time, so it had plenty of time to clear before I bottled it.

I began by cleaning and sterilizing all the bottles that I had available.  I asked my friends to save their bottles for me, so I didn't have to buy any wine bottles for this round.  I still had new corks available from my cherry wine bottling earlier in the year, so I didn't have to spend anything on that either.

I removed the labels from as many bottles as I could, but I didn't want to spend all day on that project, so I settled for bottles that were as clean as I could make them.  I sterilized them by filling them with boiling water right after washing them.  One by one they were set to dry before I got around to filling them with my sweet brew.

The bottles were filled and corked in small batches and I ended up with twenty six bottles of wine in all.  Since I only spent $50 on plums for this wine that comes out to between two and threes dollars a bottle when you figure in the cost of sugar and the few additives that were used.  Not bad at all for a delicious end product that will knock your socks off in a just a few sips.  

I don't know the specific alcohol content of my wine, but I know that it is in the higher ranges because of the quantity of sugar I use in my recipe.  The yeast I use can tolerate a fairly high alcohol content before it dies off, so I believe it to be between 15% and 17% alcohol, which is fairly high as far as wine goes.  This is the kind of wine best used for sipping, since drinking more than a glass will make most people a little tipsy.

I am so happy that I was able to make another batch of plum wine this year using locally grown fresh plums.  I really think it makes the final product something special and everyone that has tasted it agrees that it is a phenomenal wine.  I have one more small batch of late season plum wine to rack and bottle before I am done with wine making for the year, but I am happy with what I have accomplished in the wine department this year.  I have had more than enough bottles to share with friends, and I have a good supply that should last me until next summer when wine season begins again.

Another Hat Order

The past few weeks have been busy for me in the crochet department.  It seems like I have been crocheting nothing but hats for weeks now.  This week I had an order for a hat just like the one I wear.  I wasn't sure if I could find the exact same blue that was in my hat, but I came across one that was pretty dang close.

My customer was so happy with the way it turned out that she wants me to make a second one for her husband.  It will be the same colors but just the beanie hat (no ear warmers).  Beanies are the fastest hats to make since there aren't any extra steps involved so I should have a second hat ready for her in a day or two.

Potato Harvest: Better Late Than Never

I have had so many little projects to do lately that I have been putting some things off for longer than I would have liked.  Harvesting my potatoes was one of those things.  They have been patiently waiting in the ground for months.  Luckily for me they keep pretty well in the dirt as long as I can keep the chickens out of the bed.  I have had to cover the bed with a sheet of plastic if I let the chickens out or they will scratch up and peck holes in any potatoes that they find.  As I have been digging them out I have come to discover that I am also feeding a healthy slug population under the cover of the plastic sheet.  I decided it was time to save what I had left in the bed and get those taters out of the dirt.

Digging them out is a slow process for me because I try my best not to damage any as I go.  There will always be a few that get stabbed with the potato fork and those get put into the "use first" bowl.  These ones live on my kitchen table and I pick a few out the bowl as I need them for a meal.  I have also been trying to keep the tiny spuds in this bowl because they don't keep as well as the full sized potatoes and I can boil them up by the handful as new potatoes.  All the potatoes that are larger and unblemished go into the storage box.  These will live in a cool dark closet in my back room for the winter.  After I eat my way through the "use first" bowl I will start working on the stored potatoes in the box.  If there are any left in the box by spring they will likely get replanted in the garden to grow more potatoes for next year.

This box is about half full with the three varieties of potatoes that I grew this year.  The Purple Viking and Red Chieftain potatoes did the best this year, while the Yukon Gold only produced a handful of potatoes from what I planted.  All of the potatoes were "free"  to me this year since I planted what was left of last year's crop this spring.  I had plenty of them left over so I didn't need to spend any money on seed potatoes this year.  Between volunteer potatoes that came up in last years bed and these free potatoes I haven't had to spend a penny on potatoes since the spring of 2016.  If I am lucky I will continue this trend and have fresh homegrown potatoes for years to come.

The Hens are Laying Again!

My laying flock has been taking a break for the past few months.  They were going through a molt and recovering from rooster damage so it has been very quiet in the nest boxes lately.  I did have one younger hen in the flock and I believe that she and an occasional random older hen have been laying the one or two eggs that I have been getting each day.  I believe in allowing animals to follow their natural rhythms in life so I do not supplement light to keep the hens churning out eggs through the period when their bodies should be resting.  I would like to try to keep hatching chicks every 6 months or so just so I can keep my egg production more consistent throughout the year and still allow them to go through this natural break period.

The hens themselves are looking quite nice.  Most of them have grown back their full complement of plumage, though I have one or two stragglers that still look a bit on the ragged side.  They seem much more content now that they aren't under the constant harassment of the roosters.  I hope they don't get too stressed when I add the three youngest chickens to the laying flock in the next few weeks.  They have been getting acquainted with them when I let both flocks out together into the garden and fighting is minimal in that open context.  I'm sure it will only take a little while for them to adjust to their new shared quarters once I put them together.

In the past several weeks I have been getting one to two eggs a day.  It has been enough to keep me from running out of eggs, but not enough that I had any extra to sell.  In the past couple of days I have seen an increase in egg production.  I am hoping that a couple more hens have come back online now that they are done growing in their winter feathers.  If the girls get back to laying then they can start to pay for their food again.  They haven't always covered the bill, but it sure helps when they bring in a few dollars here and there.

I sell the fresh eggs to people at work.  I don't have many to sell and there is plenty of demand so I don't think finding homes for a surplus will be a problem.  I will just have to be careful to make sure that I keep a couple for myself here and there.

Backyard Harvest Dinner

Here it is the beginning of December and I'm still harvesting enough out of the garden to make a tasty dinner.  Since I was trying to round out the meal I did take a few things out of the cupboard and the freezer but overall the meal was grown almost entirely in my own front yard,  It included a fresh picked carrot and head of broccoli, onions, shallots and garlic harvested months ago, dehydrated yellow squash, and frozen chicken breasts.  The only thing that I didn't grow in my garden was the mushrooms that rounded out the meal.

All cooked up and ready to eatL

I still find it hard to believe that I can eat this well out of my garden at this time of the year.  I also love the color of the fresh foods that I am eating  The rainbow purple carrots, the bright green broccoli and the deep purple onions and shallots really add a depth of color to the meal that makes it even more enticing.