Homestead Birthday

Our oldest daughter turned sixteen.  Her birthday cake was her own design.  We made chocolate cake (with home-ground whole wheat) in a spring-form pan and sliced it in half.  After fully cooling, we put the bottom half back in, filled it with fresh vanilla ice cream and then put the top half back.  After spending the night in the freezer, we set it out to soften and poured a little fudge sauce on top before we lit the candles.

The slices came out beautiful.  Each one we covered in fudge sauce as we served it.  Some also had whipped cream on top.  Our nineteen-year-old said it was the best birthday cake we've ever had.

Living off the land in the winter involves regular trips to the cellar.  Our nine-year-old went down for some potatoes.  The birthday dinner included french fries and they wanted *lots* of potatoes to work with.

Christina's milk production is inching up.  She's at 4-1/4 gallons a day.  With all that milk and cream, we are making extra butter for the freezer, which means lots of buttermilk for the frig.  I found a recipe for "buttermilk cheese," which is basically ricotta made from buttermilk.  You just heat cultured buttermilk up to 160F, pour it through a cheesecloth, and hang it.  The flavor is a little tangier than ricotta, but it's very similar.  We need to find more things to cook ricotta into.

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the turning point back toward another growing season.  As I look back over the last growing season and all the food God stocked away for us over the winter, I feel especially grateful that we got Christina with her calving schedule.  Her dry season from mid-September to mid-November is at the height of harvest and canning.  Thank you God that we weren't also trying to fit in regular cheese-making.  Now, at her highest milk production and lots of cheese-making, there is nothing to be done in the garden expect wait and plan.  The annual schedule couldn't be more perfect.  Christina was one of those coincidences that comes with a wink from God.