This week we found some green grapes while we were visiting the local park. We have standing permission from the elderly couple who owns the grapes to eat anything that grows on the outside of the fence, so we gathered about 5 lbs of grapes in about 1 minute of picking.
We usually wait till the first frost to pick their concord grapes, but with green grapes, it seems that the flavor is good before then. It looks like this year will be a good year for grape juice :)
We also canned more peaches. This time we preprocessed them by boiling them down in a little water mixed with citric acid and sugar (they produce a lot of juice when you cook them down, so a lot of starting liquid is not necessary). So many more fit in a jar if you preprocess them, so we will do that form now on. It really isn't that much more work.
We have also been enjoying squash (zucchini, yellow, etc) from a couple of different sources this week. We personally planted a ton of plants, but we are not harvesting nearly enough ourselves, so we have been supplementing our own production with squash from other sources (co-workers and church members).
How anyone cannot grow enough squash is a subject of discussion in many circles that we frequent, however I have decided that the family of Mrs. True must have angered an irascible gypsy, or something like that in some ancient time, and that the curse still follows them till this day.
To be honest, though, the True family (including Mr. True) does has a bit of a problem with growing squash, which is a pity because we love to eat it. Just this week we made pasta with squash, stir fry with squash, pancakes with squash (sort of like a mixture of Okonomiyaki and pumpkin bread), and we have also had squash as a side dish multiple times. Our goats and chickens would probably also love the stuff, but we don't have any to spare.
Speaking of goats and chickens, they are doing well. We expect to have a new kid soon, as Clarabel visited the stud almost 150 days ago now. Perhaps our next post will be about that.
Also, I finally fixed the bucket bike. I will make a post soon detailing what it took to get it all working well as this post is being posted much too late already.
Monday, September 12, 2016
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Three cheers for a pick!
This past week Mrs. True and I mucked out our goat shed. We use a "Deep Litter" method for taking care of the shed, so we only do this about once a year. It took a few hours, but it was not really that bad (and for us it is way easier than cleaning out the shed every week).
For those that have never heard of deep litter, the method is basically this:
Every day you strew straw over the parts of the floor that have visible manure or are wet. The floor slowly gets higher and higher over the course of the year. Once a year you clean it all out.
This works great in a desert habitat, as the upper layers tend to dry out, so you can't really smell anything. We have been using it for a few years now, and it is really easy.
We have always used an ensilage fork (which are made for this job) and a wheelbarrow (which are made for every job) to clean the shed out, but this time we tried a new tool for part of the job and were highly impressed. The new tool is a rail road pick. They don't look like they would do much, but they are perfect for getting the stuff broken up so that the ensilage fork can easily lift it away.
Instead of taking all day like we thought it would, it took only about 4 hours. I am blaming it on the pick.
We also went on a walk to the woods behind the local park, and found tons of old fruit trees (apples, peaches, pears, and plums). It must have been an orchard before it became a forest.
While we were there we found some Oregon grapes. We have made Oregon grape jelly before and loved the flavor, so we will be back later in the year to pick these ones. if they are still around.
Finally, while we were there I saw some berries that my dad told me as a child were poisonous ("Twinberries" he called them). Since I recently learned that a lot of the "poisonous" berries that I grew up avoiding only were poisonous if you ate the seeds, I decided to look these ones up. They were honeysuckle berries, and were in fact poisonous. Oh well :).
For those that have never heard of deep litter, the method is basically this:
Every day you strew straw over the parts of the floor that have visible manure or are wet. The floor slowly gets higher and higher over the course of the year. Once a year you clean it all out.
This works great in a desert habitat, as the upper layers tend to dry out, so you can't really smell anything. We have been using it for a few years now, and it is really easy.
We have always used an ensilage fork (which are made for this job) and a wheelbarrow (which are made for every job) to clean the shed out, but this time we tried a new tool for part of the job and were highly impressed. The new tool is a rail road pick. They don't look like they would do much, but they are perfect for getting the stuff broken up so that the ensilage fork can easily lift it away.
Instead of taking all day like we thought it would, it took only about 4 hours. I am blaming it on the pick.
We also went on a walk to the woods behind the local park, and found tons of old fruit trees (apples, peaches, pears, and plums). It must have been an orchard before it became a forest.
While we were there we found some Oregon grapes. We have made Oregon grape jelly before and loved the flavor, so we will be back later in the year to pick these ones. if they are still around.
Finally, while we were there I saw some berries that my dad told me as a child were poisonous ("Twinberries" he called them). Since I recently learned that a lot of the "poisonous" berries that I grew up avoiding only were poisonous if you ate the seeds, I decided to look these ones up. They were honeysuckle berries, and were in fact poisonous. Oh well :).
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