The Melomel – mead with raspberries – seemed ready to be bottled. There were no more bubbles coming up through the mess of bleached raspberries on top. The one gallon yielded three bottles, here posing in my darkened desk area (another heat wave is upon us). This is the mash: the color was almost completely …
Category Archives: food (growing, cooking, preserving)
This is how I know it’s Summer
A Berry Berry Day
What a GREAT day. I was up at 3 am when Amie was coughing and then had trouble falling asleep, all the things I had to do running through my mind. Then the alarm rang at 6:30 Â and at 7 am I was at the Community Garden Plots, which no longer looked pristine like they …
Kombucha
Here’s another experiment in fermenting fun: kombucha. After several unsuccessful tries to get a kombucha mother (a SCOBY – a symbiotic community of bacteria and yeasts) from friends, and the usual apathy and mistrust when eyeing mothers for sale on the internet (ha), I found myself at the refrigerated case of kombucha and other such …
Raspberry Mead – Melomel
The mead is ready. The bubbles stopped rising, the liquid is clear, and at the bottom of each 1 gallon jug is this: Graveyard of a gazillion dead yeasts DH likes the taste of it and had a whole glass while racking. I like it sweeter, so I racked one jar into a new jar …
Berries Berries!
I would never want to sell all of my honey. Honey is my “currency”! I’ve rewarded lots of friends, helpers and volunteers with it, for taking care of my chickens, helping us rototill the Community Garden plots, offering their house for a meeting, the use of a truck, etc. The day before yesterday I traded it …
Goings On
Wild strawberries, which are said to be deadly when overripe, as these were: deadly because you die of disappointment: no taste, whatsoever. Bummer! A surprise patch of St. John’s Wort – this after trying to grow it from seed (50 seeds, only one germinated). Thank you! Hive 3 swarmed on the 16th and alighted in …
Community Gardens Bean Plot
The morning sky was leaden with promised rain, but three of us were in the Community Gardens, raking, weeding and dibbling, sowing and raking in the seeds. Here’s me behind the wheel. The bucket, filled with water, weighs down the light-weight contraption, pushing the dibbles into the soft soil. It got quite a bit of …
We’ve Got Wheels!
So our Community Garden plots is 40′ x 30′. That’s a lot of beans to sow. As I was thinking of how best to keep our lines straight, the spacing and depth consistent, I conceived of… THIS The Dibble Wheel(s)! Tada! My friend R came to help me chop up a dowel and screw all …
Community Garden Plots
 Before tilling After tilling Our first foray into tilling the two Community Garden plots gathered a dear friend and her neighbor, who brought his small rototiller. After two hours, we had 1/3 tilled. This morning it was my beekeeping pal and a young woman I met through garden consulting work, who brought “Mommy’s Machine” – a …