Homemade Liverwurst

For over a year we've had four packages of liver and a beef heart sitting in the freezer.  I'm not a big fan of liver and onions and I had no idea what to do with the heart.  Today we tried something.

I got a recipe for homemade liverwurst.  I ground up two pounds of liver with two pounds of heart.  I added a minced onion, 1.5 tablespoons of salt, 1 tablespoon of pepper, and a teaspoon of allspice.  After two grindings, we patted it into loaf pans, covered it with foil, and baked at 300ºF for two hours in a boiling water bath.  It came out looking like meatloaf but tasting like a mild, lean liverwurst.  I'm giving it a two thumbs up.

...except for the part where the mixer died.  This one was only 2-1/2 months old and grinding the meat did it in.  They are sending a replacement, but we'll be without a mixer for one-two weeks until it gets here.  I'm beginning to wonder if all our attachments are not actually designed to be used.

With a dead mixer, that means our bread has to kneaded by hand.  It's not hard, but in combination with all the other things I use arm strength for, it wore me out.

Christina's quarter still isn't cleared up.  The lab result came back negative but the CMT results keep going back and forth between positive and negative.  Maybe it's a really low grade infection.  So we tried extra milkings and spent two days letting pepper nurse that quarter three extra times a day.  Then yesterday I noticed that the orifice of that teet was dark. I looked closer and it seems like she had a little scab.  It looked a lot like the pictures in the book of teets that have been overmilked.  It suddenly occurred to us that pepper is oversucking her and causing these problems.  Time for a new plan!  As of today, pepper is off the udder and on the bottle.  We'll keep watching and see if she heals up and those CMT positive's go away. 

All of this detective work with cows makes me glad I went to college!

We got another wet storm and had to move sand (moving sand is a lot like pounding sand, but more work). The pasture didn't fill up, but the area around the shed has gotten really soggy.  Christina had icky feet.  So my husband and daughters spent another morning moving sand.  While they were out, I churned some butter, made pudding, started a cheese, and did some fun preschool work with our littlest one.  When I saw them cleaning up, I got some hot chocolate started.  By noon we all felt like we had put in a full day.

It's Different

After the excitement and success of throwing the pulled grass and clover to the cows, it occurred to us that they'd be willing to do the work.  My husband walked Christina out of her pasture and over to the weeds.  She leaves the roots in, but we can take care of those later. This is heavy, healthy grass.  She worked it with gusto.

The outside chores seem to grow faster than we can keep up.  The garden needs weeded badly.  We need to bury an irrigation pipe and then move the manure pile over.  The lawn needs mowed.  The asparagus needs moved.  And then there's planting. I'm having a memory that last May was a pretty busy time too.

We are falling into a schedule of regular work outside, but there is so much to be done that it's hard to decide what to tackle first.  I remind myself that this is process.  We'll get to the immediate stuff and over time we'll see the long term stuff take shape.  But I'm impatient.  I want it all done now, sort of like the spiritual life.  I want to "be there" spiritually right now, but I know that the key to happiness is to enjoy the journey.

Now that we cook most everything from scratch we are learning new ways of taste.  Our food isn't manufactured to identical industrial standards and everything tastes a little different.  We make bread every other day and it's always a little bit different.  This one turned out especially good.

Full Dairy Day

This romano is coming out of the press and going into an all day brine.  It is cheese #55.  I am slowly learning how to make cheese better and how to accept the things that just don't work out. 

We're still getting holes in the cheese.  I emailed the cheese supply place about the holes and they said that we might try stirring less (we can do that!) or adding more pressure.  We're doing both.  It'll be two months before we know if it worked.

The day is full of dairy stuff.  A cheese culture is growing in a jar in warm water inside the crock pot.  A warmed gallon of whole milk with culture and tiny bit of rennet will be fromage blanc tomorrow after spending the night draining.  Cream is culturing in warm water to be churned into butter tomorrow.

Yesterday we had a family come over at milking time to learn about Christina and how we do things.  They plan to become regular milk customers.  It's so much fun to see people taste their first Christina milk and the smiles as they see how we live.  They all tried milking and did pretty good.  The kids especially liked visiting the steers who seemed to enjoy the attention.

Today we opened a new bucket of wheat.  We have six buckets left of the sixteen we started with.  But then I remembered that it's May and we bought that 700 lbs. of wheat in July or August.  This year we'll buy more if the crop is surplus or the same if it's not.  After a year of this Idaho organic whole wheat, I can't imagine we'll ever go back. 

The Goodness of Chores

I think we're getting pretty good at bread-baking.  Every two days we grind four-and-a-half cups of wheat with our fancy new pedal grinder.  Often my teenagers will sit with a book pedaling away.  This grinder makes a finer flour which makes a nicer loaf.  I get it all mixed and kneaded, let it rise, and bake it.   Fresh bread with Christina butter is a regular indulgence.

Our pediatrician says that children who have chores grow up happier and more responsible.  Our children have a lot of chores.  Each morning begins with everybody doing something — the older ones heading out with us to clean the cow shed, walk the cows, milk Christina, and get out hay, while a younger one scrambles some eggs and makes oatmeal.  The girls take turns feeding the chickens and getting them up.   They grind flour, churn butter, and help water the cows every other day.   Each evening two girls head out with my husband to milk and clean the shed while another child gathers eggs and closes the chickens up.

Each time we work outside, all or most of the children are outside helping.  Today was bright and warm and we finally got the leaves off the back yard.  The girls raked leaves off the patio and into the yard while my husband vacuumed them up with the lawn mower and dumped them in the garden.

Our lifestyle requires that everybody work and contribute.  Sometimes the kids gets overwhelmed, but most of the time they carry a sense of being needed, of being effective, and of being a real contributor to their family.  They have developed a low tolerance for silly stuff, something I've admired in "farm kids" for a long time.  They are truly responsible, often reminding us what needs to be done (like it's time to move hay).  Those are things that money can't buy.

Life Goes On

The stomach flu that claimed our nine-year-old daughter last week is now raging through the rest of the family.  Everyone has dropped except me and my other nine-year-old.  I think of this as something to get through, but my twins are excited at the prospect that they are the caretakers of the family.  Before I got up they had already fed the cows and gotten the chickens up.  Since then they've hung laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and folded some dry laundry.

Life does go on, even with so many in bed.  It was bread day again.  I make two loaves at a time and they last two or three days.  When our oldest was at home, they only lasted one day.  My morning began with wheat grinding.  The machine is fast, but every time I use it, I'm reminded how much I would prefer a hand-crank model. 

I make bread by hand occasionally, but it's faster and easier to use the KitchenAid.  In six minutes it's mixed and kneaded.  We were told by KitchenAid not to run the mixer longer than five minutes (although it never said that in their manuals), so we are careful about not running it too long.  After an hour rising in a warm oven, then I put it into two loaf pans, another 30 minutes of rising, and bake at 350F for 35 minutes.  With only two kids eating, I should be able to get the heal before the crowd descends.

It's been two-and-a-half weeks since our last fresh milk.  My days now have fallen into a rhythm with our store of frozen milk, and like most things, it hasn't been simple.  I tried just thawing the milk in the frig but it took five days and then it had a slight freezer burn taste to it.  I found a new way.  The first day that I get it out of the deep-freeze, I leave it on the counter for two or three hours and then peel the plastic bag off.  The second day, I break up the crystal block into a slush.  The third day it's ready to pour and drink.

I miss fresh milk.  I really miss fresh cream.  We are now eating commercial butter and I got some ice cream for pie.  Within two or three bites, I had that old ick feeling that I associate with dairy.  Not only does Christina milk taste amazing, it doesn't make me feel bad.  Not even a little.  ...seven more weeks... my hunger is growing.

Bread Rising in a Warm Oven

It is a bread-making day.  Timing has become routine, grinding the wheat while we clean up from breakfast, letting the machine rest, and then making the dough after family prayer.  The wheat grinding is noisy and can be a little messy, but the bread comes out sweet and deep flavored.  I used buttermilk saved from the butter we made last Friday.

I love fresh ground flour, full of the wheat germ and bran that is missing from “whole wheat flour.”  But we grind it with a machine.  The motor died a few weeks ago, still under warranty, and we were without a grinder while they shipped a replacement.  I felt our dependence.  We have to have electricity and this machine to make flour.  I looked over the hand-crank models again, thinking maybe now is the time to get one.

My life has become like the dough sitting in the warm oven, slowly rising.  As I’ve stepped out of full time ministry for almost 18 months now, telling the world I’m taking a little break, I’ve wondered many times if actually ministry was just a phase in my life, not this break.  Am I turning to something different, or is God resting me in the warm oven, letting the yeast slowly rise until I become sweet and deep flavored?

From the kitchen window, the garden looks healthy but not urgent.  Then I remember what’s out there, ripening under leaves, waiting to be harvested — watermelon, cantaloupe, corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, peppers.  It is urgent.  Tonight we’ll pick a watermelon for dinner.  We’ll put cucumbers in the frig until we’re ready to make pickles.  We’ll pick tomatoes and freeze them until I’m ready to make sauce.  God’s abundance can be demanding.