10-mile meal to become a 100-foot meal

Blackberry topped goat's milk yogurt

For the past couple of days, I've been having a breakfast that is currently about a 10-mile meal. I'm having home-made yogurt made with our raw goat's milk (and then strained to make it a little thicker), topped with blackberries that we picked last summer and froze, and then drizzled with honey that comes from a farm up the road in the next town. I bought the honey because it was 'local' but I didn't know how local it actually was until we passed the farm when out biking a couple of weekends ago. I figure that if we drove directly there, it would be about 10 miles from us. This meal is not only a wonderfully filling and refreshing breakfast, but it brings back sunny memories from last summer. And if I have this same breakfast next spring - I'll be using our own honey and will be calling it a 100 foot meal!

This past weekend, we did a bunch of planting. I put in seeds for some more kohlrabi (the previous seeds were pretty churned up by baby goat hooves...so I doubt they'll sprout if they are even still in the same location!), some different lettuces, turnips, beets, parsnips and carrots. Because carrot seeds are so small, it's hard to not just dump them in the soil and then keep them thinned. But I suck at thinning because I just hate to terminate the life of those little potential pieces of food! I got this idea from a forum I belong to for planting carrot seeds. They were using newspaper, but since I didn't have any readily available, I used TP. I gently spread out the carrot seeds on a dry strip of TP. Then I folded it over the seeds into thirds and lightly misted it with water. Then I layed them on a piece of tinfoil to carry them out to the garden. It worked really well! Now lets see how well they sprout. :-)

Carrot seeds in TP strips prior to planting in the ground.

We stopped by ACE to use up the last of a gift card we had to buy another rain barrel. While we were there, I decided to see if they had canning jars yet. They didn't, but they were so helpful in letting me order some that I decided it was time to start stocking up again. I selected 3 wide mouth pint cases and 5 wide mouth quart cases for now. We'll need more later on, but I can wait for local sales for futher purchases. ACE called me two days later to say that my jars were in, so we picked them up last night. I always feel better with more jars available to me. I'll feel even better once these are full of home grown produce and safely tucked away in the pantry!

The canning jar 'tower' awaiting a trip to the basement.

Blackberry recipes

We have had a lot of blackberries in the fridge since last weekend, and it was time I didn't something more permanent with them. First order of business was to make more jam. I'd crushed 5 cups worth when we picked them, but didn't have time to do anything with them all week. I had ordred a food mill/sauce maker last week and it arrived yesterday. I decided to give it a shot with the jam. My plan was to use it for half the berries and use crushed berries for the other half. I ran most of my crushed berries through the mill and it produced about half the sauce as I had expected. So I added more berries until I had enough. With the exception of one minor accident due to my poor first attempt to attach the mill to the counter top (that caused much of the highly staining liquid to splatter!), it went well.

When I had enough sauce, I made jam using the same recipe I'd used the first time. It made 5 pints of seedless jam. All 5 jars sealed perfectly and they are quietly resting in the pantry downstairs.

Then I set about using the balance of the berries. I pulled out a blackberry crisp recipe that I'd saved. It was super easy to make and it tasted absolutely amazing!

We worked together to harvest the last of the apples off the tree that has been dropping them like crazy. We picked about a bushel's worth. I set about sorting them and about 2/3rds of them went into the basement for storage for now. The last third is going to go towards applesauce. As soon as I have time, I'll give applesauce a shot. I may wait until I get more of another type of apple, but we'll see. This tree was the one of all of them with the least amount of apples, so we will be up to our ears, eventually. And the pears? We have way, way, way more of those!

Yesterday, we had the guy from the siding company by again. We signed the paperwork and got ourselves on the schedule. I'll have an official date sometime this week, but we expect it to be about 2 or 3 weeks. When I knew that the guy was coming over, it served as a catalyst to move 'cleaning the house' higher on my priority list. I felt like I'd really accomplished something when both bathrooms and the living room were spotless. I love having a clean house!

Oh, one last little update - I MADE YOGURT!! Yes, you read that right. I successfully made yogurt this morning! I actually followed the same procedure I'd tried one other time, but for whatever reason, it worked today. The bad news? I didn't like it much. Figures, huh? I decided to make yogurt cheese out of it. I strained it through my cheese cloth and then threw it in the fridge. I'm going to mix in some garlic and chives and make a cheese spread out of it.

The yogurt saga continues

The yogourmet maker.

Goat's milk - on the way up to 180F for one of my previously failed attempts...

Yeah, I still suck at making yogurt. I can't seem to get it right! Last night I heated 2 quarts to 110F, and then split them in half. One quart got the appropriate amount of the freeze-dried culture and went into the oven. I heated up the space to about 110, turned on the light, and turned off the oven itself. Then I set the jar on the rack in the back corner near the light. I've heard that this is a good way of keeping your culture warm and happy. It didn't work. Either 1) the culture is bad or 2) our crappy broken oven isn't sealed or insulated well and it wasn't warm enough in there all night. Or both. Either way, after 9 hours, the milk was still milk - but smelled funny. Lovely.

The second quart went into the yogurt maker and I added live culture organic yogurt from the store. 9 hours later, I had another container of smelly milk. What is going on??

Today I had another discussion with a raw milk yogurt 'expert' at work. I also spoke with H (who is out of town) and we all came to the same conclusion. I get one more shot, and then I need to give up on making yogurt!! For my last attempt, I am going to follow a recipe from "Goats Produce Too" a book written by a woman who raises Alpine dairy goats in Michigan. Her book came highly recommended, and since she also uses raw Alpine milk...her methods should work for me. If not, I'm done. If H wants to give it a try, he's welcome to do so, but I'll be done with it.

Can you imagine my excitement if I am successful after all this? I think I'll scream out loud if I actually see creamy yogurt tomorrow morning! If I fail, I still have plans to make more blackberry jam this weekend - so at least I'll feel like I'm capable of something!

This weekend, we have a couple of small tasks on our plate. First of all, we need to move the chicken coop/tractor. The chickies are doing a number on that grass patch. I think we need to make a point of moving it every week at the very least. We also need to put up the perches and add a door to their opening. I'd also like to get the water proofing done if it stays dry enough.

The other thing we have to do this weekend is harvest apples. We have one tree that is dropping them like mad, so we need to get out the ladders and grab them off the tree as soon as possible. I also want to clean up the hundreds that are already on the ground before the dogs eat too many of them and get sick from the bugs/worms.

We have an appointment to meet with someone about getting an estimate done on replacing our siding. I can't wait! I'm dying to see how much it'll be. I'm fearful of the total cost, but man, what an amazing improvement it'll make on the not only the appearance of the house, but on the longevity of it as well.