Amie and the Fedco catalog Homemade rice pudding in one of my pots. Garden planning (in Plangarden)
Category Archives: food (growing, cooking, preserving)
Pouring Myself a Soda
Can’t call it ginger soda anymore. “Ginger champagne” is more like it, as it’s definitely alcoholic and tastes a little like champagne. Foams like it too! To your health! {Update 1/17} I immediately put all the bottles out on the porch, where it has hovered around freezing. That immediately squashed the fermentation. When I open …
One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall… Bottling Ginger Soda
DH’s buckets with the wine grapes had company: my ginger soda carboy. The trouble in our house is that there is no place where the temperature remains constantly warm enough. My 1 gallon carboy was being moved from next to the wood stove, to next to the radiator, to next to the gap between fridge …
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Pressing Wine
Yesterday evening we took the next step in making our wine. We picked up the grapes in early December. They’re from Behm Vineyard in California and get shipped here as part of a wine club. We got a Cabernet Franc and a Merlot. Â The grapes come crushed – so with skins and pips – and …
Garden Goals for 2013 (and Beyond)
Ah, it’s 2 degrees out, but bright and sunny and in between running out to swap out the chickens’ frozen water I am dreaming of the garden. My goal for 2013 is to do more work on the homestead, because I realized what an opportunity we have here, to build a place that is a …
Root Cellar Roots
Time to check on the stored roots. I didn’t grow any these – as usual I lost control over the garden mid-Summer and have yet to grow a successful Fall crop. These came in my CSA farm share from Siena Farm. As you can see I had a hard time keeping up with the parsnips! …
What Makes an Ordinary Day Extraordinary?
A couple of days ago as I was walking to the elementary school to pick up Amie I was suddenly struck by what a fine day it was. Then I stopped in my tracks – we walk to and from school through “the woods”, that’s the neighbors’  wooded backyards, so they were, literally, tracks – and …
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Edible Mushrooms in my Garden and Neighborhood
You may remember I tried to grow King Stropheria in a bed of sawdust and leaves. Unfortunately it dried out and I never got any shrooms from it. But my mushroom adventures just began anew. I learned a while ago that a neighbor is a hobby mycologist and I expressed interest. Today she came by …
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Fire Wood and the First Fire
Ah, that first fire. Over the weekend DH and I hauled a bunch dried fire wood from the woodpile to the screened porch, and I cut up a lot of kindling. It was my first go with the small electric chainsaw that a friend gave us. It does the job! Another friend commented “My favorite …
Making Simple Mead
I started my first mead – fermented honey wine – Â today. I used my own honey, of course. This little jar was from our last extraction (09/26). All the air bubbles that were “invited” into the honey when spinning it had risen to the top, taking the wax and propolis that had hitched a ride …