February 2013

It's very frustrating when you start a post, get interrupted, then never finish. That's the state of my last unfinished post and those before it.

We've been rather busy to say the least. The days are getting longer and it was getting "springy" then this winter storm rolled through. We currently have 6" of heavy, wet snow on top of nice gooey mud. I think we're done with snow for a little bit, however, cold weather is settling in for now. How long is a big unknown as the weather forecast really can't even tell me for sure.

Current Projects:
-hot bed for starting garden transplants

Projects in Development:
-Greenhouse
-kerosene heated egg incubator

365 Days of Photos: Day 10

Winter and Refrigeration

So I started doing the 365 days of photos thing and I have fallen way behind! The stomach virus we got kept us down for two weeks! Yuck! Now we're just trying to get back into the swing of things.

I'm working on a design for a cheese aging shelf to put in my cooler. After doing some reading, I found that though the optimal aging temperature is 50-55°F cheese can be aged at cooler and slightly warmer temps. Cheese can even age in the 20-35° range! However, it takes longer to ripen and the flavor turns out fine but the texture is grainy. I have a bit of difficulty keeping my temps super regulated but I tend to range from 38-47°. I've decided I can live with that. And it's always a little warmer in the top of the cooler.

Maybe I need to explain the "cooler" a little further... We use a deep freezer for our refrigerator. We buffer our temperatures with ice jugs we freeze at a friends house for the time being; at least until we get our complete off-grid system up and running. I look forward to that day... The cooler outside temperatures make this much easier to do but it's pretty difficult to do in the heat of summer. We use the generator to run the freezer to help keep it cool. So this is our current refrigeration situation and we're plugging along to improve it. I also look forward to the day we have a root cellar... I get to have a cheese aging area in it! I'm pretty stoked about that!

Winter seems to be approaching... the weather cycles are getting colder. It's getting colder faster this year. Our grazing is getting dire for the cattle. It's looking like we may have to disperse the beef herd to keep the dairy herd fed. We purposely haven't been selling milk and are looking at having to return to doing so in order to keep the dairy herd fed. The drought has put us in a pickle this year...

Food Preservation and Fall Gardening

I feel like all I do is can food. I am not one of those who are addicted to canning. I do it out of necessity. When you're off-grid there aren't a lot of easy food preservation techniques out there. Really, the only easy food preservation is freezing. Not an option around here. Dehydration is an option but only solar dehydration. I HAVE a Nesco Gardenmaster dehydrater, which works super awesome, but I can't use it here! It draws 1 kW of power! Too much for my little off-grid system at this point. When I get my big system set up it could probably run it but do I want to? Maybe for dehydrating meats ..

Anyway, I have been canning apples and tomatoes (Picked two 5 gal bucket fulls of green tomatoes the day before a freeze) primarily; some pumpkin but I have a great deal more to do! Still have a number of ducks to butcher and can. I'm hoping once I've waded through the gobs of fruit, pears are next, I'll be able to do poultry.

In the garden, I've got spinach growing as well as some brassica hold-overs and I've commenced garlic planting. I plant a huge amount of garlic because we use it for deworming livestock. I started by putting a layer of rabbit manure on the garlic bed first and this year I'm giving each individual plant quite a bit more room; I planted way too densely last year.

365 Days of Photos: Day 9

365 Days of Photos: Day 8

Yuckiness...

We have had stomach flu rampaging through. I kicked it off, which is unusual, then my oldest DS. We for the most part are over it though both if us are still weak just in time for the other four boys to come down with it. My oldest DS is awesome! How many 8 year olds would do bucket patrol? My DH is hanging on by his fingernails. He seems to be on the verge of being sick never quite getting there.

Right now I'm snuggling my 10-month old praying he's done with it. It was a rough night for sure ...