Garden Update

The short answer - zucchini and cucumbers. Everything else is slow. 

The longer answer - the plants are staying small, but there are small veggies beginning to form. Peppers are slow. Tomatoes are slow. Herbs are doing okay. 

My melons and squash have avoided the mildew from the past two years! I actually have a couple growing on the trellis. I tied them up in a net so they don't break off the vine prematurely. 

My poor cucumber plants (three varieties) have been attacked by squash bugs. We treated them with diatomaceous earth and a soapy spray. One variety is completely dead, even with treatment. The other two are hanging in there. They've been strong enough to send out new growth on the bottom even while the tops are decimated by bugs.

I'll end on a fun note. Weeks ago, I accidentally broke off a couple branches of my cherry tomato plant. I was so annoyed because they had a bunch of fruit on them. Wasted! 

I couldn't bear to throw them on the compost pile, so I left them in the garage. This week, a pop of red caught my eye. They're ripening!

Now they're in the house for us to eat. 😀

Freshly Milled Flour

I finally got around to milling the three different grains we purchased for home milled flour. 

Hard red and hard white- used in baked goods with yeast. Soft white- used in baked goods with baking soda or powder. 

Freshly milled flour lasts about a week at room temp, two months in the fridge, and six months in the freezer (freshness and nutrient quality). For ease of use, I ground a half gallon worth each and currently store them in the fridge. The whole berries are in the pantry in glass jars, and the rest of the bulk bags are in the fruit room under the stairs. 

Using them is going to take some adjustments. I made a roux for homemade chicken wild rice soup. The soup was fantastic. Definitely saving that recipe. The milled flour wasn't noticeable. 

I made a batch of carrot zucchini muffins, and you can definitely tell the flour is different. They're very crumbly and have a grainy texture. I should probably sift the flour or grind it a second time to get it finer. 

I also made a pie crust for pastie pie. So hard to roll out!!! Worse than the gluten free crust! Sticky and crumbly. 

You'll notice I attempted the cookie cutter top crust again. My flowers are blobs this time. (And I ran out of dough.) 😜

Everywhere I've read says that freshly milled flour is more absorbent and you'll need to increase the water. I only found that to be true with the muffins. They also say that the batter/dough need time to rest so the gluten can relax/absorb the liquid/do it's thing. I definitely didn't do that with the pie crust, so that's probably part of my issue. 

I feel very torn right now because I have favorite recipes that work very well with regular flour; it would be easy to stick with them and give up on the home milling. But I want to give freshly milled flour a chance and fix some of the errors I no doubt am doing. I should probably find someone who's been baking with this kind of flour for a long time and ask them to teach me their ways...

Creative Storage

I've slowly been organizing the laundry room, trying to maximize space and efficiency of storage. This Christmas tree base takes up so much shelf space, it had to go. But where? 

Up top! 

A bungee cord and a nail made it super quick to tuck it away in between the ceiling studs. 

In other news, the chickens enjoyed eating an unripe apple from an unplanted tree after it tipped over from the wind...

And finally, we're hosting two Japanese college students for three weeks! They're on a school break right now and are doing a three week program at MSU (kind of like a J-term). Jaron has taken to them well... His first words to them were, "read it!" And he made them sit on the floor with him to read books. 😂 

They arrived last Saturday and are on their third day of classes. We've taken them on a few adventures already - Goofy Goat Farm, sunflower patch, pontoon ride on a MN lake, Pleasant Grove Pizza Farm, and the Yellow Candy Barn. 

The sunflower patch is pretty close to our house. And it's just what it sounds like - a huge field of sunflowers, specifically there as a photo op. We took a couple pictures ourselves. 

Meet Sybil

We bought a goat in milk.  

She is a purebred lamancha (a breed of dairy goat with little nubs for ears), a former 4H show goat. Her previous owners were selling her because she has a little mastitis scarring in one of her udders, and that makes her not great for showing anymore. She still produces about 3/4ths of a gallon of milk a day. 

The other goats were a bit intimidated at first; Sybil is about twice their size.

Jip barked like crazy every time he saw her, probably because she's bigger than he is. She obviously didn't like that. 

We needed to set up a place where she and Jeff could smell each other and hear each other but not see each other just until they got used to each other. I wanted to give the other goats access to the shed while keeping Sybil inside, so we put two boards across the door. 

Eventually she did figure out how to get out of the shed, but by that point the other animals had calmed down some.

A picture to show size perspective. 

Sybil loves people and wants to be wherever they are. Other goats? She could care less. If she hears a door open or a car pull up, she'll come around to that side of the house to see us. She loves to peek in the laundry room window at me. 

This goat has been dry-lotted her whole life, which means that she has never been out on pasture. Her previous owners said they only feed alfalfa because what goats eat can impact the flavor of their milk. 

Sybil didn't love our dry hay in the shed (although I've seen her chewing cud, so I know she's eating). She didn't seem to be eating any of the fresh grass either. 

It's almost like we need to teach her how to be a goat. G led the goats out to the north pasture and then he finally saw Sybil eating the brown, dried up grass. Then she took a tentative bite of clover, then one of chicory. So she's warming up to it. I hope she's watching what the other goats do and copies them. 

As expected, her milk production has gone down a bit in her adjustment to our house. We're still getting just under 3/4ths of a gallon a day. 

I heard on a podcast that immediately chilling the milk will reduce the chances of it being strange-flavored (less time for bacteria to grow), so after G milks, we filter it and put it in the freezer for an hour to quick chill it. 

This is what we did the first night we milked before we got our system down. 

I've freeze dried a bunch to make powdered milk. 

We're hoping to find a few customers who either just want to try it or want to be regulars. 

In the meantime, I'm looking up milk recipes! Chicken wild rice soup, goat milk ice cream, and yogurt are the top recipes I've found so far. 

Cocoon!

Well, my prediction was correct. The cecropia moth made a cocoon the same day we found it! By the time G got home from work, the caterpillar was completely covered. 

He moved off the stick I set him into the tree with and onto a bigger stick to make his cocoon. G is worried the crook of the tree will fill with snow and the caterpillar will die overwinter. I'm hopeful the cocoon will be protected by all the branches and it'll be okay. Time will tell! 

We'll check back in in ten months!!!

Cecropia Moth

We found this GIGANTIC caterpillar in our driveway this morning. 

Cecropia moth, North America's largest native moth, part of the silk worm family. You can see some silk on the caterpillar's legs/the cord.

They live as caterpillars for about one month before making a cocoon they overwinter in for 10 months. As adults, they live for two weeks and don't eat - they don't even have mouths! Their sole purpose is to mate and lay eggs. 

We rehomed this big guy to our maple tree so he can keep eating! 

A quick Google search revealed that he's pretty close to going into cocoon mode: 

"Cecropia moths remain in the caterpillar stage for about 4 to 5 weeks (approximately 30 to 35 days).

Growth and Molting

During this brief period, they grow from tiny, black hatchlings into massive, bright green giants. They go through five distinct growth stages called instars, shedding their skin between each one:

• 1st Instar: Tiny, black, and covered in small bristles.
• 2nd Instar: Turn bright yellow with black spikes.
• 3rd Instar: Become green or bluish-green with yellow, blue, and orange bumps (tubercles).
• 4th & 5th Instars: Grow up to 4.5 inches long, turning a brilliant sea-green with striking red, yellow, and blue knobs.

Once they finish feeding at the end of the fifth instar, they spin their tough brown silk cocoons and begin the long pupal stage, which lasts all through the winter."

Scaled Down Egg Salad and Freeze Dried Herbs

The egg salad was a hit! Unfortunately I wasn't around to witness it; my summer sand volleyball team was in the playoffs that night with a double header (we won our division!) and I missed the whole event. 

But she said that everyone loved the food. I actually got a call from a Saint Mark member who wanted the egg salad recipe. I offered to write it down and bring it to church on Sunday and he said "Oh Emily, I don't think that will be soon enough." He wanted to make a batch that afternoon! So, I scaled the recipe down and brought the recipe and a dozen eggs over to his house. 

If any of you are itching for a scaled down version of the recipe, here you go: 

Makes: About 6–8 sandwiches

• 12 large hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
• ¾ cup mayonnaise (I used Hellman's)
• 3 tablespoons sweet pickle relish (drained if very watery), I added a little more for extra tang
• 2 tablespoons yellow mustard 
• ⅓–½ cup finely diced celery
• ½–¾ teaspoon salt (start with ½ and adjust)
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper

The garden might be slow, but I was able to harvest some herbs. I've heard that freeze drying herbs is super easy and has a great result, so I popped these leaves in the freeze dryer. 

Basil, sage, and bay leaves. 

The freeze dryer app said to skip the prefreeze and have them dried at a lower temperature (95 degrees), so I adjusted the settings. 

I only put the three trays in. Mistake. The machine has sensors in all four tray areas to detect doneness, so when I don't have a fourth tray, it messes up the machines sensors and it doesn't actually recognize when the items are dry. Of course I found that out after the fact. 

When I took the trays out, some of the leaves were completely dry and others were still filled with moisture.

I left the ones that needed more time out to air dry and put the dried leaves in glass jars. 

I'll try freeze drying herbs again when there are more herbs to harvest!