Honey Tallow Balm

Found this recipe on Pinterest. 

A friend gifted me some rendered tallow, so I thought I'd whip up a batch. Seems like I could use this as a cloth diaper friendly diaper cream. 🤷‍♀️ 

First, I melted down the tallow. I strained it through cheesecloth to remove the last remaining impurities. 

The honey, oils, and essential oils stirred right in. I chose 5 drops of lemon, 10 drops of lavender, and 5 of roman chamomile. The recipe calls for more essential oils, but I don't want them to irritate Jaron's skin. We'll go less is more for now. 

I put it in the freezer with timers set at 15min intervals to check. It only needed 15min! The edges were solidifying and the center was runny, but stirred together was a perfect consistency. I could pour it into my balm containers. Low and behold, one batch fit perfectly in all of these! 

 

Quest for a Cake #1

Jaron's first birthday is coming up. Since he'll be the adjusted age of 8.5mo old on his birthday, we're maintaining our no added sugar rule. I've been on the hunt for a cake recipe that fits the bill and I've found three I'd like to try. 

Fun fact from my research - the USDA recommends no added sugar for all children under two years old! Does anyone follow those guidelines these days? Apparently by two years of age, a child's gut microbiome has been established, and if they haven't had much sugar, their gut is full of the bacteria that eats fruits/veggies (which is generated by eating fruits/veggies), and that's what the child tends to crave. Interesting, very interesting. 🧐

Recipe #1 is a lemon poppyseed muffin recipe using spelt, a starch on the first 100 foods list Jaron hasn't tried yet. I did modify it a bit in my attempt. It calls for 1/2c of maple syrup/honey, so I substituted applesauce. If substituting apple sauce, Google says to reduce the liquid by 1/4c for every cup of applesauce. 

I had everything mixed together and it smelled wonderful. Last step was to add the poppyseeds. Mine were rancid. 😣 No poppyseeds next door either. What to do? I thought about putting the batter in the fridge, buying poppyseeds, and baking later, but when I looked at the batter, big bubbles were already forming from the baking powder and baking soda. I figured if I waited longer, they'd be completely flat. 

So, I made a few plain lemon, a few blueberry lemon (with frozen berries), and a few lavender lemon (with dried lavender flowers). 

They turned a nice brown, but it was hard to tell when they were done. The innards seemed doughy still even after the full cooking time. Of course, the recipe calls for muffin tins, not loaves, so that could be a factor. 😅 I wanted something more festive than a muffin shape, but in hindsight, I probably should've stuck with the muffin tin. 

I did sample a corner of each variety. Gotta taste a new recipe before offering it to guests on a birthday! They did firm up as they cooled. The flavor is nice and tart. You can really taste the fresh lemon and the Greek yogurt. Not sweet, yet not savory. I think Jaron will love them. 

They don't look very impressive. Pretty flat in fact. Maybe if I baked them sooner after mixing they'd have more height. I could stack three on top for a little layer cake effect... 

It's definitely a keeper recipe. But is it the final recipe for the birthday? Stay tuned! Two more recipes to try!

Pasture Plants and Goats on the Loose

It's been so windy the past few days, leaves are blowing off the trees. The goats love it. Their pasture has been eaten down quite a bit and all that's left is their least favorite grass. They have been vacuuming up leaves as they fall, casting a wide net across the pasture to catch them all. 

G had some time to plant a few trees in the backyard pasture, crabapple trees from the garden center that weren't going to make it. He put a fence around them to keep the goats out. 

It didn't take too long for Svetlana to find a way through the fence. We think she pushed on the fence until it was low enough to jump over or she pushed on it to raise it up enough to sneak under. This goat is determined. 😵‍💫 Either way, it worked. G couldn't get her out, so he opened the fence. Soon, the other goats wandered in to nibble the fresh, young bark. 

Our goat fencing is great for the long fence stretches but too flimsy for smaller enclosures. We need something sturdier to encase our trees. 

The goats, specifically Svetlana and her kids used the same pushing against the fence tactic to escape the pasture. There's a loose place on the west side with tall grass on the outside. The goats push against the fence to reach the tall delicious grass on the outside, which pulls up the bottom of the fence enough for a goat to slip underneath. They enjoy eating the tall grass for a while and then they work their way up to the front yard where they can hop into the garden or munch on the unplanted trees sitting up by the front of the house. Thankfully I've caught them before they have done too much damage. But it's happened waaaay too many times. 

Maybe it's time for Svetlana to hit the road. Get rid of the bad influence before it's too late. Or maybe it's too late already...

Science Experiment Consultant

A former coworker of mine messaged me yesterday to ask my opinion on a science experiment. 

"Emily, we are doing this experiment with celery, food coloring, and three temperatures of water. After an hour, nothing has happened. Do you know what should happen?? Thanks"

I did a quick Google search just to make sure that my instinct was correct. The hot water should cause the food coloring to be absorbed quicker and the cold water should go slower. But I didn't think one hour would be long enough to show any results. The textbook said to do the experiment for an hour checking every 15 minutes. 

Another issue I thought of: over time, the water temperatures would become the same, especially if it were going to take over an hour to complete. How to maintain the integrity of the experiment?

The cold one could be kept in the fridge. The warm one could be kept in the oven with the light on. But this particular school's oven wouldn't be able to do that. Back to the drawing board. How about putting the cup in a crockpot of water on warm? For that matter, you could set the cold water jar in a bowl of ice cubes. Room temp obviously on the counter as a control to compare. 

I wasn't sure you'd be able to see the color creeping up through the celery. My friend said the book's picture showed colored leaves, but he worried because his celery leaves were wilted, it wouldn't work. I assured him the wilted leaves wouldn't be a problem. 

Maybe slicing the stalk horizontally would show the color moving up? You could take an inch off each stalk to measure the distance the dye traveled. 

My friend decided to wait it out. "Update: after the soccer game, I put the celery in cold water in the fridge. I left the other 2 out. They can both be room temperature examples, or I may add hot water to the one in red."

Another update this morning: "This morning, the room temperature celery is noticeably colored."

Salsa Round Two

I had enough tomatoes to can another round of salsa. This recipe is from a blog, but the author said it was verified and tested for safety, she talks about possible substitutions you can/can't make, and she cautions against altering the ratios (because it will change the acidity to potentially unsafe levels). So, I figured this was a safe recipe. 

The recipe recommends cooking it in a 10 quart saucepan or splitting the batch into two. I chose to split it into two, and I made one saucepan with vinegar and one saucepan with lemon juice. The author recommends using vinegar over lemon juice because she likes the taste better, and I actually agree with her! 

G hasn't tried the salsa yet, so I don't know if this recipe is a keeper. I will have to try this salsa side by side with the previous recipe to see which I like better.

To me, this batch tastes sweet. Now I'm wondering if that's from the variety of tomatoes we have. Guess next year we'll do a different variety. If only I could remember what kind we grew. 😅 I think it they are Amish paste tomatoes which Google says are a sweeter variety.

Oil Shelves

For years I have wanted a shelf for my essential oils so they can be out and easily accessible. G didn't like the idea of having a shelf on the wall in the hallway (thought it would look too cluttered), so we compromised by agreeing they could go on a magnetic shelf stuck to the fridge. 

Both of us scoured the Internet and drew a blank. There are tons of shelves for essential oil bottles, but none magnetic. The best thing I found was to go in a locker for lipstick /nail polish and could only hold three oil bottles. It was too expensive to buy enough for my entire collection. 

So the idea was put on pause. G has a co-worker whose husband 3D prints stuff, and G thought we could get him to design and build something for us. It took a while to get connected with him and send him the specifications. Right around that time, his wife became pregnant, and since she was our go-between, the project stalled again.

It recently occurred to me that one of my former students 3D print stuff. He actually makes farm toys and sells them. I figured he would be able to build me a shelf for my fridge. I was right! It only took him a few weeks to buy supplies and find magnets strong enough to hold up all of those bottles. 

His printer isn't big enough to make a shelf that stretches across the entire side of the fridge, so he planned to make two shelves that could go next to each other. Since I wasn't sure how they'd turn out, he made two and if I was satisfied, he would make two more. Here they are! 

The big challenge was making sure the magnets were strong enough to hold all of the bottles that would go on the shelf. They seem strong enough! I did a test to make sure they weren't slipping over time. I put a magnet next to the shelf at the same height. A few hours later, I checked if the shelf had slid. 

Neither had! I messaged him to request two more shelves. 😎

Duck Door Update

Well, the duck door fix keeps the goats from getting inside... But it's big enough for Brighita to put her head through and get stuck. 

You'd think she'd learn after the first two times. Nope. She's gotten stuck at least four times. 🙄

Basically, every time we open the duck door to let them forage in the pasture, she gets her head stuck. I've taken to counting goats whenever I peek out the windows that overlook the pasture. If I don't see her, I know I have to go rescue her. 

Really, we should kick the ducks out and shut the door so no one can get back in, ducks or goats. We can open the gate back up at night to lock the ducks in. 

Sneaky Goats

Once again, the goats surprise me at how they can sneak through tiny holes. Today, four goats found their way into the trampoline. I couldn't see an access point from my window view, but once I got up close, I found the culprit. 

Yes. That little opening. 

Since they'd eaten all the chicken feed and wanted a drink, they walked out the door without complaint. 

I refilled the chick's water and feed, and once I did, the lure of feed brought our boss goat sniffing around again. 

I fixed the opening by weaving twine through the broken chicken wire and the trampoline pole. 

That ought to keep them out! Although, I've said that before... 😅

Salsa

It's so hard to find a USDA approved recipe for the kind of salsa I want. I don't enjoy very spicy food, so it's tough to know if the recipe will be too spicy with the amount of peppers it calls for. 

Last year I made "choice salsa", but that ended up being heavy on the onions and bell peppers and not enough tomato for my liking. This year, I tried paste tomato salsa. The recipe seemed to make a huge amount, so I halved it, especially not knowing if we'd like the end result. I like it much better than previous recipes I've tried, but G says to keep looking. It's not chunky enough. 

I thought the spice level was good. One resource on the USDA website said that if a recipe calls for long peppers or chili peppers, bell peppers can be substituted. So I used a quarter cup of spicy peppers in my seven quart recipe with bell peppers for the rest and the spice was perfect. 

 

Garden Update

I spent some time in the garden to pick my plethora of tomatoes. It was so nice out and Jaron stayed asleep long enough, I was able to do some weeding too.

I uncovered a patch of onions I forgot about. I don't know when onions quit growing, so I left a couple green ones in the ground.

Most of my carrots aren't peaking out of the soil, but I did find a couple big ones. A fresh carrot straight out of the ground is one of my favorite garden treats. 

The seeds on my cilantro plants are dried now. I wasn't sure if they'd fall off or stay on the plant. They stay on the plant. I was able to pick them and store them for next year. 

Believe it or not, my mildewy squash plants are still producing! I got three nicely sized zucchini and two pattypan squash. I haven't picked beans in weeks, so the beans I found were large and coarse. A few smaller ones are coming, so I picked the big beans hoping that would cause more to grow. G isn't as picky as I am about beans, and the goats can always eat them if he doesn't. 

This little guy woke up right at the end and still somehow ended up with a mouthful of grass and seeds...

Make Your Own Melties

Jaron loves melties. I finally made him a batch of homemade using pear sauce, freeze dried bananas, blueberry powder, a can of coconut milk, and dried mango. It tasted so good on its own, I could've eaten the whole thing myself. Maybe I'll make a batch for that purpose. 😅

I put the blend in a ziplock bag and cut the corner to pipe dots on a silicone mat. They ended up pretty small. Next time I'll make them bigger. 

I popped them in the freezer until my freeze drier trays were open, then used a cookie scraper to relocate them to the freeze drier trays.

They didn't puff up at all after freeze drying. The flavor wasn't nearly as strong as it was pre-drying. I wonder why. 🤔

Duck Door Adjustment

Our sneaky goats keep going through the duck door to get to the duck feed any chance they get. We've been letting the ducks out to the pasture, so it's been a daily thing lately. 🙄

G and I finally adjusted the door by screwing two thin boards over the top of the opening. Hopefully now it's too small for the goats to fit through but big enough for the ducks! 

Freeze Dried Pears

This handy kitchen gadget makes prepping pears much easier. 

I bought it for apples, and the blade is getting dull, but it's still sharp enough for pears. The tomato corer on the right of the cutting board makes cutting out the seeds super easy too. 

I packed as many as I could on the freeze dryer trays. Once both of my sets of trays were full, I arranged slices on cookie sheets lined with silicone mats and put two more loads. The freeze dryer will be active for a while!

For canning pears, I blanched, peeled, and cored pears. I ended up with 7 quarts. 

 

Battling Fruit Flies

Our house has been overrun with fruit flies. Just when I think I have a handle on them, there's another influx. It doesn't help that I'm in the midst of preservation... apples, pears, tomatoes... My kitchen is a fruit fly's dream come true. 😜 

It got bad enough G joined the battle. We cleaned all the kitchen surfaces, tucked fruit in the fridge, took out the garbage, and cleaned the sink drains. 

And we made a ton of traps. Some have kombucha and some have apple cider vinegar. It's actually a batch I made years ago from apple peels/cores that had been used to make apple cider vinegar once before. The cores/peels still had so much juice in them, I couldn't throw them out! But the ACV ended up as something else, more alcohol scented and flavored. It's been sitting on the shelf and I haven't been able to bring myself to throw it out. Good thing I didn't! The flies like the vinegar best. 

I tossed the kombucha traps and made all of them vinegar. Some have paper cones and some have plastic bags with holes poked in the top. The paper cones are winning right now. 

 

Moving Kittens

A few weeks ago, Mopsy, our mamma cat, had her second litter of kittens this year. SIX healthy kittens. She had them up in the haymow, which is a good place, aside from the gaps in the 'floor'. Somehow they all survived, even if one of them needed to be helped back up into the haymow after falling down. 

Well, she decided to relocate her family to the side of the garage where hiding places abound. 

My father-in-law keeps a close eye on them. He started feeding them hard food and all the kittens are eating it. No doubt Mopsy is already teaching them her hunting ways ...

Bigger

The pullet eggs are getting bigger! The green ones are from Dixie, our full grown hen. The white are from the leghorns we got earlier this year. 

A couple of the eggs are very dirty. That's because those hens choose to lay their eggs in the duck pen where mud is abundant. 😐

Ruling the Roost

The ducks like to sleep outside and rarely go into the goat shed, however, most of the chickens go inside when night falls. Not this guy. He found his own ideal night perch. 

That got me thinking that our trampoline chickens don't have anywhere to roost. Well, that can be easily fixed.

I started by sticking an old wooden baseball bat through the goat fencing reinforcing the trampoline. You can see that was a hit (pun intended). 😉

Not much room for them all. 

How about some logs? There's plenty of firewood against the garage; it was easy to find two with crotches a longer branch could bridge. 

The curious chickens checked it out right away! 

At one point, six of the seven birds were on at once, but I didn't get a picture; they moved too fast. I didn't use anything to fasten the wood together, just gravity. So far it's still standing!

 

 

Taste of Freedom

Goats are pretty smart. They remember stuff too. I.e. how good the food on the other side of the fence tastes.

Of course that makes them try harder to escape.

We've had a few mishaps with the fence this summer and unfortunately our fruit trees and bushes have suffered. G thinks they'll make a comeback next year and the damage isn't severe. All I can see are my poor hostas nipped to the ground yet again. It seems like every time they get going again, the goats sneak out. "That's what you get for having goats!" people say. It's a good thing they're cute...

The latest round of chicks are enjoying trampoline life. Jip was interested at first, but now they're background noise. The goats love sitting on top of the trampoline soaking in the sun. How many can you see in the picture below? G says he's seen as many as six on there at once. 

They love rubbing against the sides. We've had to reinforce the chicken wire with goat fencing to keep the chicks in. 

One chick has tasted freedom. She figured out how to get out through a gap in the chicken wire. It's covered with goat fencing, but she's small enough to fit through those holes. She is also smart enough to find her way back inside the trampoline. I've given up trying to keep her in. 

The chicks are getting close to being able to be with the rest of the flock. I'm not sure how we're going to meld our flocks together. They said do it in the middle of the night so the chickens can't see anything and move them all to a neutral place. They wake up in the morning and their cliques are all messed up, so they form new ones. 

The thing we're missing is a neutral place...

Asking for Work

I'm a little crazy...

Apples from my brother's tree, a laundry basket of pears from a friend, and a few bags of sweet corn. 

Some of the corn got cooked right away for supper. Unfortunately, the ears that didn't get cooked dried out before I could get to them. G fed them to the chickens and ducks who thoroughly enjoyed them. 

The apples are still hanging out in the garage. They should be good there for a while. The pears on the other hand... 

Pears ripen from the inside out. They also ripen within a few days of being picked. I sorted through the laundry basket organizing them by ripeness. I ended up with a small bucket of green, a slightly larger amount of yellow green, and a big tote of ripe and ready. Less than half a five gallon pail had bruise marks and less than half a gallon were completely bad/tossed out. 

The bruised ones got cleaned up and cooked into sauce. I might turn them into freeze dried melties for Jaron. A load of pears is in the freeze dryer with a second load in the freezer to go in next. I'll probably can the rest if Jaron cooperates. He's been under the weather and therefore doesn't want me out of arms reach all day. 😵‍💫

Buckwheat

Buckwheat is one of the foods on the first 100 foods list for babies doing baby led weaning, and it's one food we haven't had Jaron try yet. 

I whipped up a batch of buckwheat pancakes. There was a simpler recipe, but I didn't have any bananas. This one calls for either bananas or applesauce, so I used applesauce. There is a variation for eggless pancakes substituting chia seeds or flax seed for the egg. I made a second batch using chia instead of egg. Egg batch on left, chia on right. 

The batter on the left was runnier and easier to pour. 

The texture is pretty similar, although the egg batch is a little more spongy and smooth. That chia seed makes the batter a little bit more grainy. Top- egg, bottom- chia. 

Left- egg, right - chia

I tried pouring some of the batter into strips to make it easier for Jaron to grab onto and eat. The egg batter made this easier as you can see from the pancakes pictured below. Chia- left, egg- right. 

It made plenty! They're all in the freezer for the days we need a quick breakfast. 

Jaron was a neutral about them. He got tired of the plain ones pretty quickly. I put almond butter and coconut flakes on one and he liked that better. Strawberry jam on mine was delicious!