Ducks' New Digs

The ducks are getting too big to be crammed in the goat shed much longer. 

We wanted to put them in the trampoline, but they still need shelter from wind and rain. I had the idea to move the trampoline next to the shed and cut another hole in the side to let them back and forth. 

We strategically positioned the trampoline so the goats can't use it to jump out. And we reinforced the sides where the goats had bent it from rubbing against the metal. I guess chicken wire is a great scratching post. 🤷‍♀️

The hole is small, but it's big enough for the ducks. 

They figured out the door in no time!

Medicinal Herb Garden - Finally!

Not all my native plants made it to planting. They had a hard life though. Those that made it overwinter had to survive being munched on by goats. These are the ones that didn't make it.

G made a trip back to the nursery we bought them from and repurchased. 

The area of the planting has had the tarp over it since I posted about it last summer. Massive thistles grew around the edges, so I took a weed whacker to it.

I've heard it's nearly impossible to kill thistles and I guess they're right. Look at them growing under the tarp!

I weed whipped those too. 

I had made a map of where I wanted my plants based on height and width of the mature plants. I remember having to do that as an assignment for an ag class in highschool. I hadn't enjoyed that assignment, it took a lot of brain power at the time to take into consideration the sun and water requirements plus the color, flowering dates, not to mention the hight and width at maturity. My brain has a better capacity for those things now; it was a challenge, but not too difficult. 

I set the plants in place, then dug holes to fit the cubes. 

G mulched afterwards for me.

Looks pretty good! 

Dishwasher

This is such a tiny little thing, but it made my day and I had to share... 

The whole time I've lived in this house, the silverware container had been housed on the left side of the dishwasher in with the dishes. I thought that was where it belonged. It wasn't a tight fit and it would've been nice to have bigger dishes there, but oh well. 

Some visitors today helped us load the dishwasher and when I came back later to add more dishes, I discovered this: 

It fits in the door. 🤯

Forgotten Flowers

I forgot I planted these flowers. 

Last year the deer ate them and I didn't get to enjoy them. This year, G has been throwing Jip's poop strategically at the edge of our property in an attempt to keep deer away and so far they've left these flowers alone. 

I also forgot I sprinkled flower seeds around the front yard. We haven't mowed and now they're making an appearance. 😅 

Found this volunteer raspberry plant north of our lilacs outside the goat pasture. No berries yet! Maybe it's a variety that only fruits on old stalks.

The asparagus patch I planted last year is doing great! They are the tallest of all of our patches on the homestead. Hopefully next year we can harvest some.

Weeding

The garden is finally weeded! Just in time to start back at the beginning... 😅

It was challenging with this little nugget. He didn't enjoy being on a blanket very much, plus the time of day I did most of the weeding was when the whole garden was in full sun and there wasn't a place for him to hang out in shade except for at the very edge. Poor hot, tired, dirty, sweaty baby.

This is what I had to weed through...

Thick, luscious grass. Better than our lawn. And amidst that, teeny tiny plants. Can you spot the keepers in the picture above?

Cilantro! Bottom center. 

Celery!

Baby basil! Can you spot three little guys?

Repotting

My experimental fruit trees need a new summer home. They had been kept up next to the house for easy watering (and to acclimate to the sun), but they've been outside plenty long to acclimate and now that the leaves have come in, there isn't enough sunlight. 

G had the idea to repot them in grow pots and bury them in the ground to help them stay moist longer. 

We have tons of empty grow pots from other trees we planted, so I had my pick of the lot. 

Date palm, fig, two pomegranates, lemon, two bay plants, and an aloe vera. 

The fig has gotten munched by goats and deer, and it was too leggy. G thought I should prune it low to the ground to cause it to bush out. It was hard to do, but chop it I did. Hopefully the new location in the sunny orchard will do the trick!

 

Powdered Sugar

One of my sisters-in-law sent me this recipe months ago and asked me to make it for her. I knew we would be visiting her soon, so I made it as a surprise. 

I ran out of powdered sugar though...

I had heard how easy it is to make your own from regular granulated sugar. Take a cup of sugar plus a tablespoon of cornstarch or arrowroot powder, and then blend in a blender or food processor for 30 seconds.

Here's my first attempt: 

Not very powdery. 

I had the idea to use the spice and nut grinder to grind it even finer. That worked much better!

The only downside is it will only hold about a half a cup at a time.

I wrote my adjusted recipe on a Post-It note and stuck it to my jar so it will be easy to make next time I need it. 

 

Tortilla Redo

Remember the second tortilla recipe where I used baking soda instead of baking powder? 

I tried again. Didn't notice too much difference. 

I definitely like the first recipe better! These are still tasty, just not as soft and fluffy. 

Last of the Peacocks

Not as great a hatch rate for the peacocks. Six total hatched- four on their own and two with help. 

I candled a few before we pulled the plug and found more quitters and a few I wasn't sure about. We cracked a couple open to see if we could guess why the others didn't hatch. The first one had a fully formed chick inside. The other one was a quitter. 

My best guess is that because our incubator was overfilled, the humidity was too high throughout the incubation and/or there wasn't enough air movement around the eggs. Disappointing, but a learning experience. 

First Freeze Drying!

My family went berry picking Saturday morning. 

We saw rain off in the distance, but didn't take it into account for our picking plans. Oops. 

It poured right as we pulled up to the berry farm and continued for 45min. Hailed briefly too. There were plenty of ripe berries out there, but most of them were soft and we had to sort through them all. Note to self, berry pick earlier in the season. 

G and I took home about 15lbs of berries. We ate some fresh; the rest were for the freeze dryer! 

The first batch the booklet recommended was slices of bread, just to make sure the unit works correctly and to absorb the factory smells. 

It takes a long time, but it did work. I loaded the trays with halved strawberries. 

I still had berries after loading the unit, not enough for a second batch, so I dehydrated the rest. 

Both turned out great! 

To store them, I put them in glass jars and vacuum sealed the lids. The freeze dried strawberries got an oxygen absorber in their jars. I don't know if it's necessary with the vacuum sealing, so I'm doing an experiment. I put a small amount in a jam jar and vacuum sealed without an oxygen absorber; the rest have them (I didn't want to wreck our whole batch in case my prediction is wrong). 

The strawberries took over 24h to freeze dry. The booklet said you can load trays with fresh items or freeze them for 48h first, which saves a little time. I wonder how much time it actually saves. It seemed to take forever for the unit to freeze the berries and get to the actual drying stage. Our next batch is mulberries which are prefrozen. 

Peachicks

The eggs are hatching! 

We have five total- two out of the incubator and three in (still drying off)- and one that is clearly pipped. 

G created a little brooder for the dry ones. This one hatched much sooner than the others, and was cheeping nonstop (lonely), so I made a "mother" for it. Got the idea off Pinterest. 

I added some straw to the bottom of the box because the chicks have a hard time standing on the slippery cardboard; their legs splay apart. 

Of the three drying in the incubator, two are doing great. One is a little slow, but that's to be expected. That particular baby needed help getting out of its shell. 

Normally, you don't offer any help to hatching chicks; they can handle it themselves and people helping can actually hurt them or cause them to die. So it's a last resort. 

To hatch, chicks first peck a hole in the egg to access outside air so they don't run out of air when they hatch. They rest after that hard work. Then, they rotate around inside the egg pecking a line in the shell so it will pop apart like an Easter egg when they push. They take rest breaks while they do this and then finally break out. Somewhere during that process, the blood vessel that connects them to the egg yolk closes off so it's safe to detach from the shell. If someone intervenes, it's possible to break the blood vessel if it hasn't closed off, and the chick can die. 

This chick hadn't made any progress yesterday afternoon through late in the evening. We hoped to find a hatched chick in the morning, but still no progress, so at that point we decided to intervene. 

The feathers seemed dried to the inside membrane of the shell. I picked off pieces of the shell in a ring around the egg, trying to mimic its normal hatching pattern. The chick didn't try to bust out, so I took a scissors to carefully cut the membrane 2/3 of the way around the shell and then put it back in the incubator. 

Maybe a half an hour later, the chick broke free! It's resting, but seems to be slowly gaining strength. Nutrients from the last bit of yolk are enough to give the chick energy for at least a day without food or water, so we will leave the chick in the incubator until it is dry and fluffed up. 

Chocolate Velvet

The backup dessert for Saturday was chocolate velvet dessert. It's as luscious as it sounds. I got the recipe from a friend who had made it for a gathering knowing certainly guests would be gluten free. And it was tasty enough for me to ask for the recipe. 

My friend had tweaked the recipe - got rid of the crust and traded the frosting for a raspberry sauce to cut the richness. I followed those suggestions. 

The recipe is very simple. Chocolate, egg yolks, and heavy whipping cream. 

Melt chocolate chips in the microwave (or a double boiler). Allow to cool. Mix heavy whipping cream and egg yolks together. 

Add that mix to the chocolate a bit at a time. I wasn't sure I did that step correctly because the chocolate looked like it seized. Then I realized the milk and eggs were cold and probably cooled the chocolate too much. 

I tried heating the chocolate back up in the double boiler and letting the milk mix get closer to room temperature. Eventually I just went for it. 

And it came together! 

After baking: 

I flipped it upside down to get it off the parchment paper. Neat lines from the paper! 

My sister brought toppings for both desserts: whipped cream and a homemade berry jam sauce. Delish!

Gluten Free

A friend is getting married this summer and I wasn't able to attend her shower, so instead my sister and I had her over for dessert. 

The overabundance of eggs makes angel food cake a no-brainer. I have a great angel food cake recipe, but no cake flour. You know how I love making things from scratch... 😉 A quick Google search pulled up much of the same info- take out 2T of flour for 2T of cornstarch. Easy peasy. But then I noticed a YouTube video with a very gripping title: "the cake flour trick everyone uses (but mine is softer and fluffier)". Basically, it says use potato starch instead of corn starch for a better overall texture (not as gritty). 

I was about to start baking when my friend messaged that she's gluten free. Cue another Google search! 

I found two very highly rated recipes that are quite similar in ingredients (including amounts), but very different in technique. This one from Meaningful Eats called for gluten free flour but had a substitute for it that included a variety of flours/starches that I already had on hand. This one from Let Them Eat Gluten Free Cake had a super easy technique but seemed pretty firm on the gluten free flour mix. I spent way too long deciding between the two recipes. 😬 In the end, I went with the Meaningful Eats recipe (with their gluten free substitute for gluten free flour) and the technique of the LTEGFC recipe. 

Here's my kitchen setup: 

ingredients recipe on left, instructions on right 

Gotta keep the baby entertained! The mobile is hanging from the handle of an open drawer. 

The super easy technique to make this angel food cake is to put all of the sugar in your mixing bowl, then add cold egg whites directly from the fridge and whip to make soft peaks, then fold in sifted flour. Even easier, the recipe only calls for granulated sugar and it instructs you to only sift your flour once (as opposed to other recipes' instructions to do it seven times!). 

I was a little nervous about combining these two recipes because after I had already gotten started, I noticed that my ingredients recipe called for the powdered sugar to be mixed with the flour blend. I had already done that step before I decided to use the method of the second recipe, so only half of my sugar was getting whipped with the eggs. It was too late to turn back, so I just kept going. 

Here's how my whipped eggs and granulated sugar turned out: 

The technique recipe also says to stop whipping when they have soft peaks and not stiff peaks. The reason for that is it will allow the eggs to rise more in the oven and reach their full potential there, resulting in an even softer and fluffier cake texture. 

Jaron wanted to eat after I put the cake in the oven, so we sat on the floor in front of the oven and watched it bake. I felt like I was on the Great British Baking Show! But, it was interesting to watch the cake rise and fall. At one point the batter was two inches above the edge of the pan!

It turned out pretty good, although the texture is grainier than I would like. 

Could be from the rice bran flour or, as I poured the batter in the pan to bake, I discovered that not all of the granulated sugar had been whipped into the egg whites. I folded it in, but maybe that would make it grainy?

Let There Be Light!

The night gardener struck again! This time just G since I was on baby duty. 

He installed a bright light on a tree near our garden that covers the majority of the garden. 

Our garden's weed population is thriving. 😅 Look at that lush carpet of grass! 

I did a little hand weeding when Jaron hung out with his grandparents, but I barely made a dent. G brought home a stirrup hoe and targeted the walkways between our veggie beds. Much better!
 

We wanted to get the "easy" stuff done before the big rainstorm today/the rest of this week. 

Expanding Orchard

G brought home some more plants for our orchard.

We now have two cherry trees and a Bartlett pear on the east side of the driveway.

We added a couple more honey berry bushes to eventually grow together into a hedge.

Some apples are coming along on our existing trees:

Potatoes coming along nicely too:

While G planted, I did some spot weed whipping around the bases of the trees. I left some of the clover long and also left some grasses I knew would not grow very tall. Come on pollinators!

Remember when our goats got out? One of the mamas broke this apricot tree; she was trying to make the leaves more accessible and the trunk cracked. I am attempting to fix it. I should have done it a week ago, so the odds of it working are kind of low. G pounded a stake in and pulled the trunk upright. I sprayed tree pruning seal on the crack. 🤷‍♀️ We'll see if it works.