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.

Inherited Cabbage

Can you guess from the picture what I made today? 

A friend of G's gave us a couple heads of cabbage. What better use for them than sauerkraut? 

I've tried a few recipes over the years, and my favorite so far is the one my grandma gave me for my first batch. 

In addition to the recipe variable, I had been tinkering around with different sizes of cabbage shreds made with different means. Last batch, I settled on using the food processor for most consistent sizes. G likes smaller, finer shreds for using on hot dogs and brats. I enjoy eating sauerkraut just plain 😅 or as a salad topping, where a thicker shred would be appreciated. We had enough cabbage to do both, about 6.5 pounds.

To make the thicker shreds, I tried using our new mandolin. It was quick and effective, and easy to clean. Depending on the angle of the cabbage, I got different lengths of shreds.

Here is the fruit of my labor. The container on the left is a fermenting lock and weights that G brought into our marriage. The container on the right is one of the canning jars I inherited from my grandma and a silicone fermenting lid I'm testing out from Mason Jar Lifestyles. I didn't buy the weights that go with the lid, so it's also an experiment to see if not having them makes a difference. 

 I'll do a taste test in a few weeks!

Hyperbaric and Squid School

Our home hyperbaric chamber arrived in four boxes in the mail. A few weeks later, one of the main guys from the clinic we visited in New Orleans came on a Saturday to install it for us and teach us to use it. 

It's pretty simple to use and extremely safe. We don't have to take any of the precautions we did at the clinic in New Orleans - fiber content of clothing doesn't matter, you can have your cell phone or a tablet inside with you, paper/books are allowed, etc. The one thing they stressed is the going "down" and "up", aka the pressure change. It takes time for the chamber to build up pressure. When your time is up inside, it takes 10min or so to decrease pressure to unzip. 

The first couple times we used it, G dove with Jaron. 

The first day, Jaron got hot and hated his wet diaper and got hungry. The second day we fed and changed him right before he went in; he still hollered. Bored perhaps? Third day, we added a bunch of books to keep Jaron entertained. All is good until Jaron notices where he is. Then comes the crying and screaming. We actually cut our #4 dove short because he was so upset.

G's theory is that it's still too boring in the chamber, even with the books. I think that's part of it. I think he misses me or wants to eat for comfort or sleep. I also think he is bored (the car seat is also a not desirable place these days). And I think the pressure is getting to his ears, especially these past three days. 

This week was also infant survival swim lessons for Jaron. They'll take babies as young as 2 months old. The infant class is done with parents in the water with their babies, and the skills they focus on are mostly to get them used to being horizontal in the water. They learn to float on their back, spend a little time on their tummies (too easy to gulp water there), practice their head going under water, and practice "falling" into the pool/flipping to their backs right away (this is done by sitting them on the edge of the pool, counting to three, and guiding them off the ledge sideways/backways into the water. 

Poor Jaron is not a fan of the cold water. He wants 90 degrees! (apparently the perfect pool temp). It was so bad, you could see his teeth chattering. His teacher let him use a baby wetsuit for the last two days of class. That helped, but he still didn't like putting his bare legs in the water (held them in the air like a dead bug) or his ears. Maybe that's why he hasn't liked diving in the chamber this week... Too much water in his ears. 

Bag of Bags

Knowing how much I love elephants, a friend gifted me a pair of elephant pants from Thailand. Unfortunately, they've always fit a little small, so I hardly ever wear them. I decided to turn the pants into a couple of bag sleeves. 

I cut the legs apart, then cut each leg in half; the pant legs seemed too long to be a single sleeve. My mom assisted in sewing a cuff for either the top hanging string or elastic bottom depending where the cut was. 

In no time at all, I ended up with four sleeves. Two are filled with T-shirt rags, one for upstairs and one for downstairs.

Two are filled with plastic grocery bags- stuff from the top, pull what you need from the bottom. Easy peasy. Again, one for upstairs and one for downstairs. 

Hang on a hook or nail. ✅

Chick Feeder

Making a no waste chicken feeder has been on my list for a long time. Not my picture, but what I'm hoping to build:

I had all the supplies, just needed to do it. We were going away for a weekend and wanted to make chores simple, so I figured it was time to make it. 

Instructions said to cut the holes with a hole cutting drill bit. I don't have one of those, so I tried a couple different ways... 

Jigsaw - too bumpy and couldn't get through the plastic 

Box cutter - hard to make a perfect circle, didn't easily cut through the plastic 

Drill bit- painstaking to drill enough to get it to punch out

In the end, nothing worked great. I paused the project until I can get my hands on a circular drill bit. 

Berry Season

It was my dad's birthday last week, which in our family is the indicator that strawberries will be ready soon. 

I kind of forgot about the strawberry patch I planted last year, west of the orchard directly into the grass. Mostly because you can't see it from the tall grass. 😅 

We were out of town for the weekend and our neighbor did chores for us. Right before we left, G noticed some bright red berries in the patch, and he told her that she could pick them for herself. She did pick them! However, instead of eating them herself, she froze them for us. How sweet! 

There were a lot more than I anticipated! 

I recently read that rosemary is a companion plant for strawberries, increasing their flavor and fertility. I have a couple rosemary plants I plan to add to the patch hopefully this week. Stay tuned if we notice a difference afterwards!

Peacock Candling

Day 12 of peacock incubation and I finally got around to candling them. According to my quick Google search, that's around the time the embryo begins moving inside the shell. 

I could see wiggling and moving inside 12 of the eggs! It's amazing; every time I saw the twisting and fluttering, it brought a huge smile to my face. 

Three eggs had veins developing, but I didn't detect movement. Not very worrisome since it's right around the time they'd start moving. Five are probably quitters but they were questionable enough I left them in. Those I marked with a permanent marker where the air sack is so the ink wouldn't absorb through to the chick. I'll candle again in a few days and see how they've progressed! 

Chicks Escape

The chicks have a tendency of escaping onto the pasture (and Jip) side of our backyard.

We haven't figured out exactly how they do it, but we think they are sneaking through the woven wire fence. That will not happen forever; they're very close to being too big to squeeze through. However, it's still makes us paranoid that Jip will get one of them.

I solved the problem by attaching deer fencing to the wire fence.

Amazingly, I had two pieces that fit perfectly in the two areas I needed to cover.

If the chicks still get out, I give up; there's no other place for them to escape.

Our hatched ducklings were getting too big for their box in the garage. They got moved out to the shed as well, back in the area where Svetlana and her kids used to sleep.

It didn't take long for them to acclimate to their new home. I think they'll outgrow it sooner rather than later at their current pace. We'll have to give the trampoline and overhaul...

Hilling Potatoes

The little one seemed content to chill on a blanket while I hilled my container potatoes. 

Ideally, I would've added more soil when the plants were about 4 to 6 in tall. Unfortunately, Jaron didn't have the patience at that time and the potatoes were much taller than that. 

I was able to add a lot of soil to make it so about 4-6 inches are showing. I'll add more in about a week and continue adding layers as the plants grows, up to an inch below the lip of the container. 

The above container got a little lopsided because of that teeny tiny potato started (bottom right of the photo). I thought about burying it, but in the end am giving it the chance to grow bigger. 

When it came to the sweet potatoes, Google was not very specific about whether hilling sweet potatoes actually improves their production. 

I added a bit of soil around the bases of the plants. We'll see if it makes a difference. 

Since the potatoes are out in the orchard, that makes it easy to check for fruit. I was able to harvest a handful of Honey berries. There were enough that I didn't feel like I should eat all of them as I picked, so G will actually get a chance to taste these! They are similar to blueberries, perhaps a bit more tart.