Got Cabbage?

It's absolutely amazing to me how God provides.

Here I was, subtly lamenting how little produce our garden was producing this year (although also thankful for the lighter workload), telling myself it would be a good year to eat down what we have in the fruit room. 

Then G comes home from the garden center with this: 

His boss/coworker went to an Amish produce auction and came back with humongous quantities of veggies, all at very cheap prices (sold in bulk). Cabbage, cucumbers, beets, green beans, potatoes, sweet corn. 

What was I saying about that lighter workload? 😅 

We plugged in an extra fridge out in the garage and loaded it with cabbage. The heads are so massive only 20 fit. 

This is the entire fridge portion of the appliance. 😂I was able to fill the door with apples, so it's not just cabbage in there. 

G ate the last of my homemade sauerkraut, so I'm due to make more. These will keep for a long time in cold storage, so we'll be able to pull from them for months. If they get a little gross or wilted, just peel off the outer layer!

Potato Harvest

Out of potatoes in the house? No problem! Time to see what's in the potato containers.

G moved them into the garage a few weeks ago once the tops of the potatoes died off. We didn't want the containers to get waterlogged in the rain and rot the potatoes, but we weren't ready to dig them up yet. So they've sat in the garage until now. 

I had to dig down quite a ways to get to the potatoes. 

Not a super gigantic harvest, but the potatoes are much bigger than last year's (for the most part). 

I chopped them up and cooked them in New England Boiled Dinner (cabbage, potatoes, sausage, carrots, water to cover, and salt and pepper to taste). So tasty! I wish I remembered which variety these are... I'd definitely plant them again. 😅

 

Smorgasboard Post- Garden, Mildew, Sybil, Jaron

The soup bean plants have been flowering for a few weeks. G thought they weren't actually going to produce any pods, but Jaron found one. He really wanted to pick it. He's a picking monster. Anything he thinks he can pull on in the garden, he does. 

I thought we had escaped the vining plant mildew this year, but it has appeared. G thinks it's because it wasn't very windy for a number of days so the plants stayed damp. I sprayed them with neem oil, which Google says is supposed to help. 

I did another search and apparently mixing milk with water and spraying it on also does the trick. Hmm... we do have an abundance of milk right now...

Speaking of milk, Sybil has been seen eating in the pasture! She still would rather eat hay from the shed. Her milk production seems to be picking back up a bit. 

For a while, she did not want to put her head in the milking stand; my theory is that it was too tight on her neck. I adjusted the stand- pounded in a fence staple a little further in to give her another inch of neck space- and since then she's gotten a little better about putting her head in. 

Still, for a while it took both G and me to convince her to stick her head through. We actually resorted to using an old sheep halter from my 4H days to pull her head through once she was up on the stand. But, it seems we've turned a corner. The past two milkings G has been able to get her in there himself without help. 

A few fun Jaron moments from the past week: 

 

Apple Pick

Apple season! It's so fun to watch Jaron get excited about picking apples. He did pretty well putting them in the basket and not taking a bite of every single one (though he did take some bites). 

Our apple trees are pretty young still; the oldest has been planted for about three years. That means we aren't getting a huge crop of apples yet. This tree's branches are pretty spindly and you can see how weighed down by the fruit they were- almost touching the ground!

Since we were picking things, we checked out the garden too. 

I planted these beets last fall and thought none of them had come up! Lo and behold, two grew to a pickable size- candy cane beets. They certainly live up to their name!

We did another apple pick this past weekend at my parents' farm. Their apple trees were all ready to harvest, so we brought our students along to give them the apple picking experience. 

Focaccia, Fresh Ground Flour Style

I wondered if part of my problem with fresh ground flour is the recipes I'm using. Maybe I'd have better results if I found recipes that call for fresh flour. 

So I found a focaccia recipe from Grits and Grains. 

The dough came together quite nicely; I was very pleased. And then what always happens when I make bread happened. I had to leave the house right when it went into the oven. 🤦‍♀️

Thankfully, G was going to be home just in time to take it out of the oven. 

Unfortunately, he ran late and the timer was going off when he walked through the door. We're not sure how long it had been going off. 😕

So, I'm not sure how many of the issues are because of the bake vs. my baking skills, ha. 

It was very salty. If I make it again I'd definitely cut back on the salt. 

It was pretty gritty. I didn't mind, but G wasn't a fan. I could try sifting the flour to take the big pieces out, although the recipe didn't call for that. 

It was pretty dry. Definitely caused by the bake. 

Otherwise, it was pretty good! 

I might use the leftovers as bread for grilled cheese. 🤔

Yellow Milk?

Sybil has been at our homestead for about a week and she's gradually getting more adventurous in her eating. I've both seen her eating grass in the pasture and noticed it in her milk. 

The fresh milk we get has stayed the same color, but the freeze dried milk has more of a yellow tint. My theory was that the higher nutrients in the pasture were causing the color change. 

I asked Google to make sure:

Why Goat Milk Stays White

• Beta-Carotene Conversion: Fresh pasture grass contains beta-carotene, a yellow-orange pigment. When cows eat grass, this pigment passes into their milk, giving it a golden-yellow hue. [1, 2]
• Vitamin A Metabolism: Goats (like sheep) metabolize beta-carotene much more efficiently. Their bodies convert the pigment into colorless Vitamin A instead of passing the yellow color into the milk. [1, 2, 3]
• Consistent Appearance: Because of this efficient conversion, goat milk remains stark white whether the animals eat stored hay or graze on fresh, green spring pasture. [1]

Hmm, interesting, but doesn't explain the color change. Maybe because ours is freeze dried? 

"While a goat's body normally prevents fresh milk from turning yellow, the process of freeze-drying changes the rules entirely. When you alter your goat's feed, you alter the concentration of certain nutrients and fats that freeze-drying exposes to plain view.

Diet Shifts Overwhelm the "Vitamin A Switch"- A rapid shift to a much richer feed (such as lush green grass, clover, or fresh alfalfa high in carotenoids) can temporarily disrupt the goat's high-efficiency conversion of beta-carotene into colorless Vitamin A. When this happens, trace amounts of yellow carotenoids slip past the liver and bind to the milk fat globules. While you won't see this in the liquid milk, the dehydration process concentrates these fats, making the yellow hue visible in powder form." 

It also said the color could be from higher riboflavin levels, changes in fat globule size, or a higher lactose (milk sugar) level (causing a faint Maillard reaction -caramelization between milk sugars and proteins). 

Fascinating!

Her milk production has dramatically dropped. Friday morning she produced half what she started at when we got her. Apparently this shift happens for the first 1-2 weeks in a new place. We just gotta hang in there and ride it out. 

If she does end up drying out, I don't think either G or I will be terribly sad about it. Dealing with all the milk has been challenging. Even so, I would probably feel a bit of failure that we couldn't acclimate her well enough to keep milk going. The environment change she's adjusting to is pretty massive, so it wouldn't surprise me. 

We do want the lamancha genetics in our herd, so we plan to keep her around long enough to breed/kid, even if we don't keep her specifically long-term. 

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!

Egg Salad for 70

Our last Saint Mark Summer Night was Tuesday night, theme- Out of This World. 

G and I came up with space themed foods. 

• Crescent moon sandwiches (egg salad on croissants and ham/cheese as an alternative)
• Alien jello cups
• Meteorites (cheese balls)
• Star shaped chicken nuggets 
• Rocket pops

We debated between egg salad and chicken salad, but we have a ton of eggs, so we settled on egg salad. 

We planned food for 70 people, which meant I needed to hard boil 80 eggs. 😳 My mother-in-law gave me the idea to do it in the oven. You crack your eggs into a loaf pan, then put that pan into a larger pan of water (water up to the level of the eggs), creating a bain-marie. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, boom. Done. 

Well, you still need to chop the eggs and mix in the other ingredients, but the hard work is done. 

Cracking 80 eggs actually went fairly quickly... I had a little helper handing me eggs. 

He was ecstatic the entire time. I counted as we went, and Jaron kept chiming in, "Fourteen! Sixteen! Eggs! Crack!" So proud to be handing me eggs. 🥰

 

It was nerve-wracking at first, but he's been pretty good at handing me eggs when we collect them from the chickens. It helps he can only hold one at a time. 😜 In the kitchen, he only cracked three on the counter, and two of those three were salvageable. 😅 

The poor guy cried when there weren't any more eggs to crack. 

After cooling, I chopped the eggs in batches in my food processor. For about two seconds, I used my hand pastry cutter. That would've taken forever. 😂

The food processor worked better than I expected. I had mixed up the sauce ingredients in a gigantic bowl first:

• 5 cups mayonnaise
• 1¼ cups sweet pickle relish 
• ¾ cup + 1 tablespoon yellow mustard 
• 1½ tablespoons salt 
• 1½ teaspoons black pepper 

And then added the processed eggs, one bowl at a time, stirring each. So easy to mix everything in. 

Jaron wanted to help again, so I let him stir the salad. 

Man, I love that big bowl.