I checked on the nucs we took off the big Sam hive and one after the other they turned out queen right with laying queens. 100%! One hive became seven, just like that. The chickens are robust and healthy and laying too many eggs to keep up with, and the six chicks are thriving too …
Category Archives: ferment
Bottled
The carboys with the Cabernet and the Malbec you see in this post moved from basement to dining room table to bedroom dresser, and finally, last weekend, to the kitchen counter, where we emptied them into bottles. The dresser is ready for the seed potatoes.
More KNF: Introducing the fabulous LAB (Lactic Acid Bacteria)
I use LAB primarily in the chickens’ water, their bedding, the compost pile and my garden’s soil. It’s versatile. The large jar I made last year is almost finished, so it is time to make some more, and to introduce it. LAB is one of the easiest Korean Natural Farming (KNF) inputs to make, so …
Continue reading “More KNF: Introducing the fabulous LAB (Lactic Acid Bacteria)”
Korean Natural Farming for the 2017 season
I’m in good shape for this growing season with the KNF (Korean Natural Farming) applications. The FPJ (Fermented Plant Juice; explained here, along with OHN) is a beautifully thick and deep chocolate brown, sweet-smelling syrup. My only worry here is that I don’t have a lot, but I’ll be gathering a lot of the meristems …
Continue reading “Korean Natural Farming for the 2017 season”
It’s Only Logical
Because This: This: My apologies for the dearth of posts. As you can see, I am deep into study. So deep I had to move to the dining room table. Where, you can also see, we’re still up to our usual/unusual activities. These need to be bottled, by the way, this weekend. And outside it …
Can’t Get Enough of Local Food
Homemade yogurt from local milk and homegrown honey. Yum!
Compost and Comfrey Tea and Wood Chip Heaven
After a couple of unseasonably cold and gray days that warranted warm socks and a sweater, we’ve returned to hot (+90F) and sunny again. I return to monitoring my one barrel of rain water, which is about 1/5 full (empty). The couple of rain storms we’ve had and the one night of drizzle failed to …
Continue reading “Compost and Comfrey Tea and Wood Chip Heaven”
SCOBY Hotel
My two kombucha Continuous Brews (one with a spiced Indian chai, the other a more subtle Earl Grey) are growing vigorously, the mothers in them giving birth to more SCOBYs (scobies?). They are starting to fill up the jars. Time for a special hold-over vessel: the SCOBY Hotel. I learned about this from the Big …
IMO I > IMO II
I tried again to capture those Indigenous Micro-Organisms, again in the leaf mulch pile, and again I got mostly yellow, pink, blue and predominantly black. It smelled sweet, though, so I decided to make a batch of IMO II, adding 1:1 brow sugar. This can be kept indefinitely in a …
Fish Amino Acids (FAA) Update
I visited the two buckets of FAA today – they’re nicely tucked away in the cool, dark basement. Amazing how it doesn’t smell awful or even fishy at all, since it’s just fish and sugar, and some apples. The apple smell dominates, along with a sweet fermented smell. The top of one had a lot …