Catching up
As stated in a previous post, Clarabelle calved on August 10. The former bull-calf is now a steer. We call him Chuck. (Take your pick: Ground Chuck or Chuck Roast)
Chuck and Clarabelle
We've been milking Clarabelle for a couple of weeks, now, sharing that responsibility with Chuck. This works out well; there is plenty of milk to go around (for now). We're also able to fellowship longer on Sundays with our church family.
The gardens have pretty well played out. The extreme heat and drought hastened the end of the summer crops, and greatly reduced our normal harvest. We have put up some green beans, tomatoes, and a bit of tomato sauce, as well as squash relish. We also froze some corn, but that was bought at the market. The only corn we harvested was eaten immediately (which is when it's best, anyway!). The corn is quite a target for critters--they love it! I don't think we have as much food put up as we usually do. Oh, yes, we also froze a few butter beans and some purple hull peas, but again, not as many as I'd like.
We processed 46 chickens this past Saturday. The freezers are quite full of chicken and beef. We also processed one turkey--18.75 lbs! Keith is planning on processing the other three this Saturday, I believe. And here I'll put in another plug for the Whizbang chicken plucker--wonderful; awesome!!
The pigs are growing like weeds. They should make some good meat; just think of those ribs!!! However, I'm not sure where we're going to put the meat, at this point, with the freezers approaching capacity.
One of the Angus cows calved last week. Amazing difference between the Angus calf and Chuck the first couple of days. Chuck was so much weaker (seems more normal, really!), and had a difficult time standing for a day or so. The Angus calf, however, was jumping around three or four hours after birth. This one is a heifer.
I'm busy trying my hand at making different dairy products. Thus far, I have made kefir (from powder, though, so I have no grains to continue this), lots of yogurt, creme fraiche, and cottage cheese, and everything has turned out great. We've not yet needed buttermilk or butter (had a lot of this on hand when Clarabelle calved), but making those will be a normal part of our routine soon.
And of course, we've had a number of batches of ice cream. One batch had so much butter fat that it had chunks of butter in the ice cream--quite good!
We officially "started school" last week, and that's going surprisingly well--generally expect bumps the first few days, but we've not experienced any, although I think I'm going to need to tweak some schedules.
The oven/microwave combo our pastor's family got didn't fit in the cabinet they had, so Keith and the boys made them a new one. They (Keith and the boys) are now working on a large table for their (the pastor and his family's) dining area. Keith also painted a bit last week on our kitchen backsplashes, which he's been installing.
Guess that's about it.
Blessings to all!
Mary Susan
posted by The Bradshaws at 9:07 AM
3 Comments:
Sounds great to me! We gave up on the garden a long time ago with no rain and an infant to care for this summer. We canned nothing to my disappointment.
I'd really like to try my hand at making cheese sometime. Joe is unequivocally NOT interested in any dairy animals, but I would love to have some. Some neighbors have dairy goats so maybe I can purchase milk from them eventually.
Sounds like you are getting into the swing of the homestead dairy. I get behind and all of the sudden, we have enough milk to supply an army. I am making a 4 gallon batch of cheddar as we speak. It is ripening into curd. =)
What recipes did you use for your cottage cheese? Also, what is creme fraiche and what do you do with it?
Marci,
Sorry I've taken so long to respond!
I use the cottage cheese recipe from Encyclopedia of Country Living (pp. 748-749). If you don't have access to the book, I can post a synopsis here; just let me know.
Creme fraiche is described in the book Nourishing Traditions (I think that's where I read this) as a European-style sour cream. I've not made a lot of this (cream is in high demand around here!), but it's milder than sour cream from the grocery store, and quite tasty.
It's simple to make: place 1 pint of quality cream (NOT ultrapasteurized) in a glass container, add 1 T buttermilk (or creme fraiche from a previous batch), stir well, cover tightly, and place in a warm spot 20-24 hours. Then chill well and enjoy.
(Nourishing Traditions, p. 84)
I have mixed a bit of this with yogurt and fruit for what I think is a tastier breakfast than straight yogurt and fruit. I've also added some to smoothies. It's even good to simply spread on bread, although French chefs may frown on that--as would doctors, probably. (As I said, we appreciate cream products around here!)
I read somewhere (I'm guessing that was also Nourishing Traditions, since that seems to be the source for my creme fraiche info) that it does not always act like sour cream in recipes, and since it seems like my recent uses of sour cream have been for a crowd, I've not risked trying the creme fraiche as a substitute; rather test it out just on the family first.
Hope this is helpful!
Mary Susan
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