First Again

Today we made our first cheese since Christina freshened.  We haven't had milk coming in the house two days and we already had so much that something had to be done with it.  So into the cheese press it went!

I made a colby.  It's not my favorite, but it's good and it's faster than cheddar.

We used to do this all the time, every day managing the milk, figuring out what to make, planning ahead.  It was improved choreography.  Right now I feel more like I'm stumbling than dancing.

With no other thought than, "sour cream," I got a batch of culture going.  Afterward it occurred to me that culture would nice for cheese too.  Culture is good for lots of things!

Coming to the End

The baby chicks seem to have quadrupled in size at two weeks old.  They are growing so fast.  We opened up the other end of the brooder to give them more space.  We may be pushing it to go four weeks before moving them to shed outside.  They are easier to take care of in the garage than outside so we'll wait as long as we can, but they get more flighty when they are packed too tightly and these cardboard boxes can't grow any bigger to give them more space.

Yesterday I made cheese #58, a colby.  The process is smooth in my head, I remember all the steps without looking, but I still messed it up by heating the curds too quickly.  Dang.  Hopefully it will still turn out good.

Our cheeses have flavor comparable to the expensive "specialty" cheese at the store, even the mild ones.  The flavor isn't strong, but it's well developed.  My husband has been making toast with melted cheese for years, which I never much enjoyed, until we did it with these homemade cheeses.  Wow, it's good!

Fast food in our lives means food that we've cooked another day.  Today we're making a big pot of stew for the freezer.  When the day has been busy with weeding or cheesemaking or canning, it's nice to pull something out of the freezer and dinner is ready in 15 minutes.

Our children follow a year-round schedule for schooling.  Most of the time they are enjoying being off while their friends are in school, but next week is the last week of school around here and my daughters have five more weeks to go.  I'm anticipating a little bit of a hardship with that.  Even though we only take a two week break in between "years," there is something about getting to the end of the year that even wears me out.  I find myself trying to condense stuff to finish a little early.

Heavy Cooking Day

It was a heavy cooking day.  The stove was full culturing sour cream, cream for butter, and milk & cream for ranch dressing.  I had a cheddar cheese going and afterward we made ricotta from the whey. 

We also crock-potted two of our home-grown chickens that we'll make into chicken pot pie today.  Plus, we made cream cheese danishes with the butter layer that's been lounging in the frig for too long.

Sometimes cooking piles up on us.  All of a sudden there is so much to be done, and I often don't see it coming. It makes me feel ADHD to have so many things going at once, things that need constant care and watching.

And then God soothed me this morning. The sunrise, glowing out our back window, was a gentle warmth to my shivering brain...

Thank. You...  Thank. You...  Thank. You...

Christina hasn't shown us any signs of heat.  Well, she seemed a little restless yesterday, but we can't use that to tell.  We'll watch closely again today, but we may miss it.   If we don't know when she's in heat, we can't breed her, and we want her bred in about three weeks.  We called a lady who knows what she's doing and she said there is another way.  We may have find out more about it.

Cream Cheese Success

I am going to proclaim my cream cheese a success... up until the very end.  I warmed up a half-gallon of cream with a little milk, added some mesophilic starter and a few drops of rennet.  I put a lid on the pan, wrapped it in a towel and put it in the oven (turned off) overnight to stay warm.  The next morning I cut the curd into about one inch cubes and then poured nearly boiling water into it until it reached 125F.  I poured it through a colander lined with butter muslin and hung it to dry all day.  It is thick and smooth, almost three cups.  Then I added a teaspoon of salt and things bombed.  It's too salty!  I should have added only half a teaspoon.  Not to be deterred, I started another batch and will add it in to this one, diluting the salt.  By the time I'm done we'll have about five cups of cream cheese.  I guess we'll have to make a cheese cake to use it all up. ☺

My daughter's row of turnips has done fine under the snow.  She is digging up a few each day for the cows (but, it obviously takes too much energy to put gloves on so she just pulls her sleeves down).  We cut them up and give them to the cows after evening milking.  Christina goes straight for the greens and eats the rest later.  Next year we'll have to grow kale for her; I've read that it's really good for cows and will survive the winter easily.

This life has given me new favorite things.  Right now it is my silk long underwear.  They are so thin that it's no problem to wear them under jeans but they keep me warm.  I mean really warm, the kind of warm you don't even notice, but at the end of the day you're just happier.  I'm accustomed to winter being a time of jostling between chilled to the bone and cooking, and a resulting daily cranky.  This winter has been so different and it's all because of my silk long johns! 

First Caramel

When people ask me if I'm working, I say, "no, but I keep really busy." I talk about raising our own food, the homeschooling, the cow, the cheese-making, but as it comes out of my mouth, it sounds like fluff.  It sounds so optional, just keep-me-out-of-trouble work.  I realize that I still harbor some lack of respect for this life-style.  But we are working hard and it is real work!  Long days with lots of time on my feet, lots of planning and figuring things out. And a tiny little grocery list.

Our three squash a week diet is already falling behind.  It's very possible we skipped last week; I honestly don't remember.  Today I grabbed the three sorriest looking fruits to cook up before they get any worse. 

Last year we made lots of caramels to give away and eat.  Caramels are easy to make and they just taste like Christmas to us.  Our regular recipe starts with butter, cream, and milk.  We decided to try with just cream and milk and see how it goes.  It saves us the step of making butter.  Figuring that a pint of cream makes a half-cup of butter, we mixed it up and got it cooking.  It cooked down in about the same amount of time as regular caramels. 

The texture isn't perfectly smooth, but the flavor is good.  The girls descended upon the pan and licked it clean.  As soon as we get the recipe worked out, I'll post it.  My family loves it when I'm working out recipes like this because it means I have to make a lot of them.

Today I'll try my first Monterrey Jack cheese.  It doesn't need much pressure so I can use my mold with just weights on top, rather than that nasty spring thing.  These cheeses use whole milk, and it's hard to let all that cream go.  In the three gallons I'll use for the cheese, there is at least half a gallon of cream that could go for caramels!  But hopefully it will become really good cheese (please God).

We got out the advent wreath and candles.  Counting down advent has become so much more fun since we got this wreath.  Every night this week at dinner we'll light one candle.  Next week we'll light that one and another one.  The week after that we'll light those two and the pink one.  The last week of Advent we'll burn all four.  On Christmas we light the white candle and all five will burn through the Christmas season.  By the end we'll have five candles at different heights witnessing to the time we have waited, the steps we have taken to be ready to meet God face-to-face, and the anticipation we savored in it all.

Cheese Trouble

The parmesan gave me trouble.  It didn't make a nice curd in the normal time, it matted a lot during cooking, and then it didn't hold together well during pressing.  I finally looked up curd problems, thought back to what I had done, and realized I put in too much starter and too little rennet.  In the last pressing, it finally mushed together and it looks nice.  Today it sits in salt water (brine) and tomorrow it begins its 10 month aging.  Maybe next time I'll follow directions better.

We added a little milk to the whey (the left over liquid from the cheese) and made ricotta.  I think of this as the normal way to make ricotta — heat whey up to 200F, add a little vinegar, strain, and hang to drip (I slip in a cube of "fresh" starter for flavor).  My husband set up a hook on the pantry ceiling and it makes it so easy to hang things, with food buckets underneath to bring the bowl up higher.  This ricotta is creamy and rich.  I can just eat it straight.

I've had a busy morning — hung the fromage blanc that I started last night, boiled brine, got the parmesan in the brine, skimmed cream and poured milk for the day, made bread, made chocolate sauce for hot chocolate or chocolate milk, and churned butter.  When I tell this stuff to people they look at me like I'm crazy and must be about to collapse.  I keep expecting to feel overwhelmed, but instead it feels invigorating, like the afterglow of a good workout.

It's our third time making butter and we're finally remembering how to do it.  We were stopping the churn before it was in big clumps and it needed a lot of kneading.  This time, we went until the churn wouldn't move, the chunks were so big.  A few quick kneads, working some salt in, and we had a beautiful glob of butter.

A half-gallon of cream gave us this mass of butter that looks like about a pound to me.

This morning, after a fast milk filtering, we are declaring a preliminary victory over Christina's mastitis. It had been getting better, no clots and faster filtering, but it was still hanging on.  Yesterday we added an extra milking in the afternoon and it seems to have done the job.  We have milked that mastitis right out of our cow!

Having a cow takes lots of time — milking and all this time making dairy stuff.  Is it worth it?  I sat down and figured it out — whole Jersey milk is about 170 calories per cup (higher than Holstein milk because it has more butterfat and protein), we're getting about 3.5 gallons per day, and there are seven of us — Christina is giving each of us about 1300 calories every day.  That's more than half we need!  Add in the meat from the calves she has every year, and a cow has been the biggest step toward feeding ourselves that we've taken in this urban homesteading adventure.

Tonight at sundown Advent begins.  We start our four week journey in preparation for Christmas, the incarnation of God among us.  My advent discipline will the same as most years — working for presence, because that's where God is most fully, in the present moment, not in my memories of the past or my plans for the future.  I come back to this disciple each season because I still have so much to learn from it.  May your preparation for meeting God face-to-face make your ready for the fullness the joy has to offer.

Homesteading in the Dark

Our Thanksgiving dinner was mostly homegrown, but not the turkey.  It was a locally-raised free range bird.  We spent a lot of money on it, but it was the best tasting turkey we've ever had.  We are feeling well affirmed for the expense.  A day of homegrown and homemade food on my great-grandmother's beautiful china was a specialness I've never experienced.

Our butter is yellow.  Really yellow.  High food-coloring frosting yellow.  Christina's butter has always been yellow, we've assumed it was because she was on pasture, but we've forgotten how dark it is.  This is the same dark yellow as our chickens' egg yolks.  During our two dry months, we ate commercial butter with its mild color.  Christina's butter is such a strong color that I feel like I'm putting frosting on my toast.  Because I grew up with margarine being the strong colored stuff, it creeps me out until I taste the flavor and confirm it really is butter.

The freezing weather has kept up and our hard-won water system is nonfunctional.  My husband thinks he may have figured out the problem, but needs to wait for a thaw to fix it.  A storm this weekend is supposed to bring higher temperatures.

In the meantime, we've instituted a bucket brigade after each milking to fill up the water tanks.  The girls half-fill four buckets and run them out.  Two girls can do it faster than the time it takes them to get dressed for the outdoors.

Our evening milking is in the dark.  It's been overcast which gives plenty of light for walking out to the cow shed.  As we go through this milking routine — my husband and I milking, me taking the milk in to filter while two girls run water out and help fill the cows' feeder — it makes me wonder if this life is feasible for a small family.  Would we be able to do it if it was just us?  Or is it made practical by our large family?  I am grateful that the burden is lighter because it is spread out.

Christina has developed a nasty habit of peeing when we milk.  She only does it when jerky is not nursing.  At first it may have been an accident, but it's feeling like a pattern now.  I read that you can break a cow of the habit by catching her pee in a bucket, so today we tried it.  My husband said that when he caught it, Christina had a look on her face like, what the heck is going on?   I hope so, that's the idea, to creep her out.

Our first cheese is cottage cheese.  Two gallons gave these curds, about six cups.  The process is the same as for hard cheese except you skip the pressing and aging.  In the store they add cream to the curds, but we leave ours dry.  With applesauce, it makes a wonderful lunch.

There are three gallons of milk in the frig calling to me to become a block of parmesan.  Being in the kitchen with warm milk sounds pretty good to me.

Homegrown Freedom

Four milkings yesterday have left us with fatigued hands and arms, but the mastitis has gotten a lot better.  The milk is filtering faster and the clots are almost gone.  We still have to be vigilant, but we are on the right track.  We didn't end up giving any medicine, so we can still use all the milk.  I guess I'd rather buy the medicine and not use it than buy it and use it.  The extra milkings have brought up production — Christina gave a full four gallons yesterday and two this morning. 

Jerky is a week old today. I'm amazed how much bigger he is already.  He's strong and energetic, a spaz.  As we've gone through this week of worry, it's been a week of new life for him.  He has a wonderful exuberance to just be alive. It's a reminder that God always has something else going on besides the worry in front of us.

Jerky "helps" with milking. He gets one quarter and we get the other three.  With aching hands, it's nice for one hand to have a break and he gets his milk.  We still have colostrum from last week so he also gets a bottle in the middle of the day.

My cheesemaking life starts up with making starter cultures.  After sterilizing the milk by water-bath canning it, I heat water up in a crock pot and then culture it all day long.  Tonight I'll pour it into ice cube trays and each cube will be an ounce for cheese recipes. I have three different starter cultures to make — one for italian cheeses, one for cheddar & colby, and another one for cottage cheese.

Some friends came over yesterday to see our "farm."  I asked what they were interested in and they said, "just everything."  So I started showing them around and watched the sparkle in their eyes turn to fire. 

I feel deeply called to this life, but it amazes me how much it touches and inspires others.  I think there is something about actually seeing it done that makes it seem possible, and they never knew it was possible.  Just a year ago there were big pieces of this that I thought were impossible too.  Somewhere along the line I concluded that feeding yourself was just too hard to do without a grocery store. 

Where did I get that idea?  It came from stories, but I think it came mostly from advertising: you can't raise your own food, you have to buy it.  We lost the link with the past that held the knowledge for raising food.  Today the advertising even goes further: you can't cook your own food, you have to buy it.  Something as basic as baking bread is seen as super-human today.  Deep down I think we all know that living with that kind of dependence on commerce is an oppression.  We are kept in our places by forces stronger than ourselves.  In these circumstances, an economic recession is a genuine threat to survival, not just something to be waited out. 

I think that when people see our "farm," they see freedom.  They see freedom from the grocery store, and therefore freedom from dependence on money and occupation.  They see freedom from systems that are raping the earth and freedom from helplessness to change it.  Jesus said, "the truth will set you free."  I think that homegrown food also sets you free.

Bonus Eggs

Seven eggs!!  We got seven eggs!  The twins ran in from putting the chickies to bed with eggs rolled up in their shirts.  How will I use them all?!

I had shifted my thinking to three or four eggs a day. I had accepted it as God's way and in humility, I adjusted.  Right at that moment to have seven eggs in one day feels like God winking at me: that's right, it all came from me in the first place, and today I felt like a bigger gift just to surprise you.

It is so easy to take control from God.  When we got our first laid egg last February, it was magical.  The eggs were just there and all we had to do was go get them. But as time went on, I began to feel entitled to those eggs.  When they started to decline, I was a little out of sorts.  I felt the eggs were mine now, that somehow I had earned them.  I had gotten to that place without thinking about it, without any conscious or malicious thoughts toward God.  My eyesight had dimmed until God was the small wish-giver that pervades most of American spirituality.  And then God reminded me, again, of who is the Creator and who isn't.

Christina looks different this morning.  Her udder is rounder and the birthing area has become red and a little swollen.  Three days until her due date.

We pulled out the last cheese I made before Christina dried up.  It had more holes in it than I had hoped, but the flavor is good, although mild.  It tells me that I still don't have it all figured out (dang!), but things are moving in the right direction.  When Christina freshens I'll make extra cheese so some has time to sit around and get sharp. This cheese was two months old.  We have to let it sit for six months to get sharp.

With two bushels of grain corn drying in the garage, we figured it was time to use some.  We popping the kernels off the cob and then we ran it through the grain mill.  It ground fine like wheat flour.  Tomorrow I'll add some to our bread and see how it goes.

A friend told me about being caught in a blizzard years ago and having to live off the canned food in the pantry for a week.  I realized that we could probably live off the food we have stocked away for at least a month.  We rarely get traffic stopping blizzards here in Boise, but now I kind of look forward to one, just knowing how well we'd eat through it.

Cozy Warm

It is a day of cooking.  I started with putting together a big stew, made mostly from homegrown food — carrots, onions, potatoes, turnips, tomatoes, peas, beans, yellow squash — along with beef, celery, rice, thyme, salt, and pepper.  I kept cutting and adding until the pot was full.

The onion skins, celery tops, etc. went into anther pot with a beef soup bone to make stock.  We'll simmer them both all day and see what happens.

As soon as the soup was done, I realized that we are out of bread, so I ground the wheat and made the dough.

The pumpkin bars I made yesterday, from a recipe in Simply in Season, were a big hit.  They were gone by evening.  I put another batch in the oven for today's snack.  We called them zucca bars. My two-year-old was so cute saying, "dat good, dat zucca bar."

It's been two months since I put that parmesan to age.  The book says to oil it to keep it from cracking.  Without saying a word, I handed the block to my daughter and asked her how it smelled.  She took a long whiff and said, "that smells like parmesan."  That's a good sign!  I rubbed it with olive oil and put it back in the cellar.  Next July we'll find out if it tastes like parmesan.

It been freezing at night but warming up during the day.  Our automatic waterer for the chickens had a layer of ice this morning.  Before letting the chickens out of the coop, my daughter broke it up enough for them to get to the water while the ice melts during the day.  Soon, we'll have to switch to the heated waterers, which means filling them every few days.  Last year we didn't have warmers so we took water out three times a day in the coldest weather.

Christina seems the same.  We are one week from her due date.  This morning as my husband headed out to feed the cows he said, "well I think I'll go count cows."    She'll probably be late, but we're still watching her.  We are down to three gallons of milk and one quart of cream in the freezer.  I'm hoping it'll be sooner rather than later.

Yesterday we entered the twelve darkest weeks of the year.  Here in Boise, we also deal with haze for much of the winter and it makes it even darker.  Today with the sun shining into the kitchen and the cooking stew warming the house, it feels cozy.  Thanksgiving this year will be special with so much harvest of our own.

Cheese Tasting - Finally

There are boxes and boxes of apples staring at me from the garage.  We went to a U-Pick place and picked over five bushels.  The texture is good, but they are pretty bland.  I picked up some Jonathans and McIntosh at the fruit stand to mix in and beef up the flavor.  We haven't had time to can, so we started with some dehydrating.  My 13-year-old ran the apple-peeler-corer and got a dozen apples done in less than 10 minutes.

I dipped them in water with a little salt and lemon juice to prevent browning and then laid them out in the dehydrator.  Those twelve apples filled nine dehydrator trays, although I probably could have fit a few more in.  After about six hours, they were nicely dehydrated without being crunchy.  They filled a gallon ziploc and I'll store them in the freezer.

It's been two months since I made my first cheese.  Hard cheese has to age for at least two months, four to six is better.  Today we got our first taste of homemade cheddar cheese.  It was harder than I expected and the flavor was mild, but there was a hint of pungent aroma that made me optimistic.  This was my first cheese.  As I gained experience, I learned how to cook the curds without overcooking and that a higher cream content gives the soft texture of cheddar.  Just before Christina dried up, I made a perfect looking block that will be aged to mild in another month.  That's the one I'm looking forward to.

We grew soup beans for the first time this year.  Today we picked another row and were discouraged to find that many of the shriveled pods had gotten wet from irrigation and had the mold to prove it.  Even so, there was still a lot.  It took about two hours for four of us to shell them all.

The beans are a beautiful red.  I had to get after the girls for playing in them while we were shelling.  Because they have too much moisture still, we spread them out to dry for several days before we put them away.

Today we are getting ready to go camping.  We used to camp regularly from spring to fall.  Even though we haven't gone since early summer, I'm hesitant to leave. My hunger for the hills isn't strong.  Camping used to be a primary way that I connected with the earth and with God the creator.  With so much time outside this last year, I feel deeply connected to this land that I'm not enthusiastic to leave it.  Our oldest will stay to care for the animals and all will be fine.  But I'll miss this sacred ground and the animals who live on it with us.