End of Summer Garden

The prime garden season is quickly coming to a close. It's October 12, and we still haven't had a frost yet, but there are only a couple of tomatoes left to pick, and I just picked the rest of the peppers and eggplants. Even the pumpkins and squash are starting to wind down. I still have some things planted for the fall garden; Brussels sprouts, kale, parsnips and lettuce are still going strong, but they just don't have the appeal of a nice ripe tomato. Hopefully within the next couple of days I can muster enough enthusiasm to create a little synopsis of the summer garden, so I have a list of things that went right and things that went wrong. Overall, it was certainly a success. It produced more vegetables than I could eat, and it kept me busy for most of the summer. It definitely gave me an experience to build off of for my next garden.

Last Batch of Salsa

One of my highest priorities this summer was to preserve as much salsa as I possibly could. Salsa is by far my favorite condiment. I love the zestiness, and it's healthy, because it's pretty much nothing but vegetables. When the tomatoes first became ripe, I would make fresh salsa pretty much everyday. I love it. It tastes like summer itself, but I want to eat salsa all year, so I was going to have to do some canning. It was a lot of work, but anybody can do it. Almost everything going into my salsa came from the garden, with the exception of the vinegar and the salt. Unfortunately, I also had to buy some of the onions. I had a nice little onion crop, but we ate them all before the end of the summer, and salsa calls for a lot of onions. One other minor annoyance is that I planted so much cilantro, but most of it went to seed before I started making the salsa. I was able to salvage some of it, and I had quite a bit of parsley and spicy basil, so I added those to make sure the salsa had some herbal freshness.

I had a salsa recipe, but I only followed it loosely. I generally made it in batches with a base of about 20 pounds of tomatoes, so my recipe was something like this:

• 20 lbs. tomatoes
• 6 onions
• 4 bell peppers (various colors if possible)
• 20 jalapenos (or any chili pepper)
• 1/4 c. kosher salt
• 1 c. vinegar
• 1 c. mixed herbs (cilantro, parsley, and basil)

 I started by coring the tomatoes and putting them in the food processor. I put them in a 12 qt. pot (sometimes I need more than 1 pot) over medium heat, and I repeated the process for the rest of the vegetables. I then added the salt, vinegar, and herbs. After all the ingredients were added I would bring them to a boil, and let it boil for a couple of hours until it got nice and thick. When it got close to being done. I brought the 21 qt. canning pot to a boil. I then added the salsa to some clean qt. jars; added the lids; and submerged them in the canning pot for about 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, I got them out, and let them cool while the seal formed. I ended up making over 20 qts. Now they're up on the top shelf with the other preserves. Dwindling faster than I would like them to.

Fresh Pressed Cider

It's not even fall, and I've already had an opportunity to put my new hand-built cider press to work. My dad knows a manager of an orchard, and he let us go and pick a few bushels worth of McIntosh drops. Ideally, cider comes from a mix of apples, but it's fine to do it with whatever is available. I didn't have a bushel basket, so I don't know exactly how many we got. I do know that a five gallon pale filled with apples yielded about one gallon of cider. From the apples we picked, I got about six gallons. I'm turning five of the gallons into a sparkling hard cider, and we just drank the other gallon. It was a lot of work to get six gallons of cider with the cider press. The bulk of the work consists of chopping the apples before they go into the press. I was using a food processor, but it still took three or four hours to get everything pressed into cider. Next year I'll buy a grinder which will greatly expedite the process.

The fresh cider was crisp and tasty. My mom made some cinnamon and sugar doughnuts that went with it excellently. I'm interested to see how my hard cider turns out. With the exception of pressing the apples, it's supposed to be quite a bit easier than brewing beer, but it does take longer. Some people like to make it during the fall, and not drink it until the following year, but a couple of months should be enough. Mine has been in the basement fermenting for about a week now. I took a small risk by not adding campden tablets. They are supposed to kill the natural yeasts, which can possibly add off flavors to the cider. Not all people add them, but most do. I like the idea of going as natural as possible. I did add some champagne yeast, but I'll let the natural yeasts live. If I don't give it a try, I'll never know. I do have some tablets, so I might use them during the next batch. I'll let the yeasts do there job for another week, and then I'll transfer it to a five gallon carboy, where it will set until it clears. After it clears, I'll bottle it in a manner similar to the beer bottling process; Where I dissolve some sugar in boiling water, add it to the cider, and put it in bottles, while the yeasts turn the sugar into CO2.

Cider Press

I just completed my cider press. This was probably the most ambitious of my summer projects. I have very little wood working experience. I think I got a C in shop class in eighth grade. I bought a plan from ebay. The plan included all the hardware for $75. I had to buy the lumber separately, which was another $65. I have to admit that when I first got the plans; I was so overwhelmed that I almost sent everything back. It wasn't so much that I didn't think I could do it, but I just didn't have the equipment I needed. I give credit to my mom for talking me out of it. I thought about renting a table saw, but I looked on Craigslist, and I found one for $50. I figured that was better than renting one, since that would probably cost about the same. I also needed a drill press and a jig saw, and I ended up borrowing those from friends.  After that, I pretty much just followed the instructions. Everything is not as straight and tight as it could be if it were done by a master wood worker, but I'm pretty sure it will serve me well. For now, I will need to put the apples through a food processor before I press them to maximize efficiency. Maybe next year I'll get an apple grinder, so I can skip that step. I'm looking forward to making some nice raw, unpasteurized cider, and some sparkling hard cider.

Blueberries from the Argyle Swamp

Dad and I drove out to the Argyle Swamp. We entered it from Mills RD. just west of Banner RD. We didn't have to walk too far back to find some great picking. Probably less than a half a mile back is where we encountered our first blueberry bush. It was the first of many loaded bushes. We picked for a little over two hours, and we got 13 pounds of wild blueberries. I'd like to go at least one more time in the next week and get another load.

The Brutal Reality of the Simple Life

It's easy to forget about the darker side of living off the land. Most of us have idyllic images of juicy tomatoes, clucking chickens, and attractive red barns when we think of organic gardening, but sometimes things happen that remind us that good intentions are not enough to hide from mother nature's dark side.

Like a lot of rural households, we have a couple of dogs. My dad has a rat terrier named Chip, and my mom has a miniature dachshund named Sally. As you can see by the picture below, she's not a startling image of ferocity.

Despite many years of anthropomorphizing dogs as cuter and cuddlier versions of us; They descend from a long bloodline of killing machines. Otherwise, they never would've made it to where they have today. Sally is an uber affectionate, slightly dimwitted dog that is addicted to belly rubs, but she snuck out of the house the other day, and brutally mauled one of my chickens to death. I was pretty annoyed, but I can't blame her for it. Nature puts us in a position where we have to live off the death of other organisms. Which brings me to my next story.

Raccoons are a consistent menace to rural households. Every night they are trying to kill my chickens. They haven't been successful this year, but they've killed many of them in the past. In addition to harassing the chickens; They will eat every ear of my sweet corn if I let them, so I am forced to respond to nature with a little brutality of my own. My uncle Paul gave me a coon trap when I got the chickens, and told me I had to use it. I was really hesitant, because I'm not comfortable killing animals I'm not going to eat, but they are stealing food from me. I had to make a decision. Am I going to grow my corn to feed the raccoons, or do I want to eat it? I decided I wanted to eat it, so I set the trap with some doughnuts as bate. The first time I set it; There was a raccoon in there the next morning, and I had to shoot him in the head with a .22 at point blank range. I cannot emphasize enough that I took absolutely no pleasure in this chore. It pains me greatly that life is a constant struggle between various organisms trying to survive, but it does me no good to hide from this reality.

The purpose of this blog entry is to remind everyone that organic gardening and small scale agriculture are not as idyllic as we would all like it to be, and I apologize if the subject matter is a little harsh for some of you, but I want this blog to be a legitimate journal of both my successes and my struggles, so I think it's important not to misrepresent my summertime experiment as all pleasure and no pain. 

Homemade

In this simple living, self-sufficiency project I'm undergoing, I'd like to be able to harvest all my food from my garden, but that's simply not possible. Given that limitation, I'm trying to do the next best thing. I cook from scratch whenever possible, and buy very few processed foods. Three staples that I've been cooking regularly are bread, noodles, and tortillas. I can't grow wheat for the flour, but flour is very cheap, and all of these things taste better homemade than store bought.

Homemade bread is pretty common, and everyone loves it, but I hate turning the oven on in the summer time. Mom has a bread-maker, and she uses it regularly, but I found another alternative. Mother Earth has a great recipe for five minute bread. The dough is made in advanced, and the bread is made on the stove-top anytime bread is wanted. It's absolutely delicious, and I can use it in conjunction with other homemade foods, such as hummus and pesto. It also works really well for stove-top pizza.

The other two are a little less common. I love making homemade noodles. It's a great way to use my excess basil. In a food processor, it's extremely simple. I toss a cup of basil, two cups of flour, two eggs, and a teaspoon of salt. I turn it on until a ball forms. After letting the dough rest for about a half-hour; I role it flat with a rolling pin, cut it up, and drop it in the pot for a few minutes. I topped it off with a simple homemade tomato sauce, and some freshly grated Parmesan cheese. 

Homemade tortillas are even simpler, and just as important, they are infinitely better than most store-bought tortillas. I've been making these regularly, because we've been eating a lot of mom's homemade salsa from last year, and I'll be making them a lot when the tomatoes ripen, and I can start making some raw salsa. Like the noodles, a food processor makes these extremely easy, but they are easy enough without it. There are many variations, but the simplest one I found has 3 c. of flour, 1/3 c. oil, 1 tsp. salt, and 1 c. of warm water. Put it all in the food processor till it forms a ball, flour the counter and roll them out with a rolling pin. Fry them up, and that's all there is too it.

Preservation

I'm definitely at the point where the garden is producing more than we can eat on any given day. It's not an extreme overabundance, but unless we want to eat zucchini six times a day; We need to find ways to preserve it. The serious preservation project will come when the tomatoes start to come on a little stronger, but for now, we're doing a little bit of freezing, and a little bit of pickling.

The freezing was very simple. Some people online were suggesting doing a few things to the zucchini before freezing it, but a number of people said it can easily be shredded and froze, with no additional preparation. After picking and scrubbing all of the zucchini and yellow squash; I brought out the food processor, and attached the shredding blade. That made the process quite easy. I generally use the shredded zucchini to make zucchini pancakes. That's a savory dish that resembles hash browns more than zucchini bread, which is also an excellent use of shredded zucchini.
The turnip crop was another one that was starting to wear me down. I really like turnips, but it can be exhausting coming up with different ways to cook them. They were starting to get too big, and I didn't want them to start to get woody and flavorless, so I yanked them all out, and found a nice pickling recipe in my favorite cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food. His recipe for Three-Day Pickles is a nice simple refrigerator pickle recipe. It can be used on just about anything. I used it on the turnips, and mom used a similar one on the cucumbers.

• 2 lbs. of vegetable
• 6 tbs. salt (kosher or sea)
• 2 c. white vinegar
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1/4 c. pickling spice.

Slice the vegetables up, and put 2 tbs. salt on them; letting them sit for two hours. Rinse them, and pat them dry. Put remaining ingredients in a sauce pan and bring it to boil. Let it cool for a couple of minutes than pour it over the vegetables (I also included some fresh chillies for a little kick) and let it cool to room temperature. Transfer them to an airtight jar, and put them in the fridge. They can be eaten in three days, and will keep for three weeks.

New Fixie

I got a new frame for the fixed gear bike I put together for my brother. This steel Free Spirit frame is infinitely better than that Huffy piece of crap I was using before. I am glad I was using a cheap frame and throwaway components. I ran into a couple of problems I wasn't expecting. This really isn't going to be a long term bike for a couple of reasons. I somehow managed to cross-hread the drive-side bottom bracket. I should certainly know better than to put it in there with any force, but it was just sticking a little bit, and I tried it so many different times, and it took so little force. Once I found out it was cross-threaded; I just cranked it in there all the way as hard as I could, so the bottom bracket is now garbage, and the frame more or less is too. I mean, it's in there, and it's going to stay in there, but it will be unusable if it ever comes out, and the bottom bracket shell is ruined too, unless I could get it re-threaded. Another problem I had was with the non drive-side crank arm. I must not have tightened it down hard enough the first time, so it came out while Gabe was pedaling. Luckily, he wasn't going to fast. Online, a lot of people said that if it happens once it will continue to happen. I cranked it on there, and it seems to be on there fairly well, and it's been a month and a couple hundred miles, so hopefully, it's there to stay. I don't want to end on a negative note, because it's been a positive experience. I learned a lot, and my brother has a functioning bike. I can't wait to build my own.

Problems in the Garden

Overall, I've been exceptional happy with the early results of my garden's production. I've already eaten many pounds of produce, and flavored many meals with my herbs. Even so, I am a novice gardener, and I was bound to run into some problems. I'm hoping I can solve some of these with internet solutions, or others will work themselves out. I am a little worried about my tomato plants. While they all look very healthy on top, and have many blossoms and green tomatoes, there is some yellowing of leaves on lower limbs.

On the web, there are many potential explanations of this phenomenon. Over watering is one explanation. That seems unlikely. This happened during a dry spell, and while I was watering regularly, the soil did not look over watered. Hopefully, it's simply the result of healthy plants with too many branches to provide nutrients for. Apparently, it's not uncommon for lower level leaves on tomato plants to yellow and die, especially while producing tomatoes. For now, I'm just going to keep my eye on it, and hope for the best.

My cucumbers also have some yellowing and browning in the leaves.

Like the tomatoes, there are many potential explanations for the cause. It could possibly be a fungus. Because I'm trying to go organic, I'm going to let the plant try to fight it off on it's own. If I knew for sure it was a fungus, and what to use to combat it, I would just go ahead and use the fungicide, but since I'm in doubt, I'll continue to go the organic route.

Probably the most disappointing (so far (fingers crossed), if my tomato crop goes down that would be devastating) is the browning of my cauliflower heads. One of them was so bad that it had to go straight to the compost pile, and the other just had a couple of spots on it, so I cooked it up and it was good. This is disappointing, because I only had a couple of cauliflower plants.

I don't know what happened. It could have been the string of 90 degree days we had. The reason I didn't notice it earlier is because I had been blanching the cauliflower with the leaves. Blanching is the process of folding the leaves over the head, so it doesn't get any sun. This is supposed to improve the flavor and the texture. If I can find some more seeds I've going to plant some more cauliflower to harvest in the fall. I'm going to have to do a little more research before they start producing a head, so I can avoid this situation in the future.

Harvest is Gaining Momentum

I'm starting to have a hard time keeping up with the garden's production. This is a very nice problem to have, and I'll enjoy it while it lasts, because my supply of root vegetables (with the exception of potatoes) is dwindling. I did plant some more turnips and beets a couple of weeks ago, so hopefully, I'll have another round of root vegetables coming up. For the time being, I've been pulling up lots of turnips, beets, carrots, and onions. I don't know if I'll ever be able to construct an entire dinner with ingredients  solely from the garden, because I'll never be making my own vegetable oil or salt. Nevertheless, I'm beginning to make meals that are made mostly from vegetables and herbs from the garden. Most recently I made Cheesy Turnips and Carrots a recipe I got from my favorite online recipe source, allrecipes.com. It's a simple recipe that enabled me to use turnips, carrots, onions, and celery from the garden.

In addition to that dish, I made beet and goat cheese gratin from my favorite cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman. Like everything I cook, it's simple and healthy. After roasting the beets in advance, I tossed them in olive oil and salt and pepper. I then put them in a baking dish and sprinkled fresh time on them (from my herb garden, of course). Then I crumbled some goat cheese over the top, and put it under the broiler for about 5 minutes.

With the potatoes coming on strong, I hope my first round of root vegetables will last me until the tomatoes start coming on in a couple of weeks. Right now, the plants are loaded with green tomatoes and blossoms, so it looks like it's going to be a great crop.

Homebrew Success

I'm very happy with the results of my first batch of homebrew. My Brewer's Best, English Brown Ale came out about as good as I could have expected. It has a beautiful aroma, and a rich satisfying taste. I'm not saying it's better than Newcastle, but I'd drink it any day of the week over the mass produced domestic (or imported (such as overrated image beers like Heineken or Corona) for that matter) beers that most people drink. I'm very encouraged by the results, and I'm really looking forward to sampling my Red Ale next week, and getting started on my IPA.

Harvest Time

Even though I do enjoy all the work I do in the garden, it's the harvest that makes it all worth while. So far I've been able to grab a bunch of radishes here, a handful of peas there, or a few leaves of lettuce for a salad, but until today, I haven't been able to make a meal out of a harvest. I pulled out 9 turnips (about 3 pounds worth), and I still have a little over a dozen left (plus the seedlings I just planted).

I used them to cook braised and glazed turnips from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food. Like most of Bittman's recipes it's quite simple:

• 2 tbs. butter/oil
• 1 lbs. turnips
• 1/2 c. vegetable stock
• Salt & pepper
• Lemon juice
• Chopped parsley

Combine butter, turnips, stock, and S&P. Bring to a boil, turn it down and let it simmer until the turnips are tender (15-20 min.).

Uncover and raise the heat until almost all the liquid has boiled off. Turn off the heat and garnish with the lemon juice and chopped parsley.

Herb Garden

Vegetables provide the sustenance, but herbs provide the zest. This year, I'm going all-out on zestiness. I've got herbs located in about a half-a-dozen different locations. To the left here is my little herb garden in front of the greenhouse. The bushy plant in front is chamomile. It's flowers can be used to make tea. Behind it are basil and cilantro. Basil and cilantro are herb all-stars. I use basil in every pasta dish I make, and I use it in large quantities. Likewise, I use cilantro in every Mexican dish I make, and of course salsa. Italian and Mexican dishes lend themselves well to my style of eating. I care about three things when I prepare a meal. It has to be relatively simple. It has to be healthy, and it has to be tasty. Mexican and Italian dishes work for me, because they use recognizable ingredients. I can usually leave meat out of them, and most importantly, I can load them up with vegetables. Next to the greenhouse, in a pot I have a little bit of mint. My mint didn't germinate too well, so I should probably get some more seeds started pretty soon. Mint is another of my favorite herbs. It will allow me to impress my Sanilac County friends with my Mojito making skills. In addition to those, I planted some chives, dill (I also have some dill next to my cukes), marjoram, and thyme around a bird bath, just south of the basement wall. I would've liked to have some rosemary as well, but it didn't germinate. I don't use those herbs as much, but I do use them occasionally, and just having the opportunity to smell them once in a while makes the minimal amount of effort I've put towards planting them all worthwhile.

Just in case I didn't plant enough basil and cilantro in front of the greenhouse, I planted a few rows of it in the garden. I planted a couple rose of basil in front of the tomatoes, a row of cilantro in front of the peppers, and a few parsley plants (they didn't germinate real well) alongside the peppers.

I almost forgot to mention, almost a third of our back lawn is oregano. Mom planted it one year, and it became invasive. For the most part, we just mow it down, like we would do to grass, but we've let one little section of it grow. I hope my basil and cilantro shares its ambition.

Sweet Fixie Brah

I just slapped together what could possibly be the most un-hip fixie in existence. I told my brother I'd make him one, but I'd been having some difficulty locating a vintage road bike. At our hunting lodge, I noticed a hunk of junk Huffy mountain bike, and to my surprise, it had horizontal dropouts. I didn't like the one piece crank, but I figured that I had nothing to lose, so I started putting her together. Mostly, I used stuff I already had laying around: track wheelset, 17 tooth cog, and some sweet handlebar grips. Unfortunately, I was a little short on chain, so I had to get a KMC Z410 Bicycle Chain
from Amazon, and I also had to get a Pyramid Track Cog Lockring. After acquiring the parts, everything fit together fairly nicely (all things considered). Fortunately, the inner chainring wasn't riveted, so I was left with the 40 and the fifty. Ideally, I would've disconnected those two, and just ran the 50, but they were riveted. Right now, I have it on the 50, and the chainline looks acceptable. If it gives me any problems, I'll run it from the 40 tooth, and probably go with a 14 tooth cog. The distance between the dropouts is a little longer than it should be, but the axles on the wheel are long enough, so I just need to crank on the bolts to bend the steel in a few centimeters on each side. I would also like to change the saddle, and chop a couple inches off each end of the handlebars. As of now, it's a functioning bike, but I don't think it has much of a long term future. There's a lot of rust, and the tightening bolts on the stem are completely rounded off, so I'll never be able to service the headset. The important thing is that my brother has his bike, and everything I put on there can be transferred over to a vintage road frame if I ever find one.

Starting to Produce

It's very satisfying to see a little production from the garden. So far, it's come in the form of a couple of veggies to snack on while I'm in the garden. I've eaten a handful of peas, and a few radishes. I planted radishes from two different seed packets. The Burpee radishes have been very uninspiring, with skinny little roots, but the package I bought from Lowes is producing some plump little radishes.

I'll probably harvest the rest of that row sometime this week and make a nice little salad. I still have a month or so before my staple vegetables start producing, but the reassurance offered by my early producers is comforting. I'm hoping my cool weather crops, like cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage start producing relatively soon. The plants certainly look healthy, and have been growing away.

 My potato plants won't be producing for a while, but they are looking very healthy. As they continue to grow, I will continue to mound straw up around them in order to protect the young taters from sun poisoning.

 My tomato and pepper transplants mostly look healthy, and I even have a few little maters growing. We've been getting a lot of rain around here, but I'm going to transplant my eggplants on the next warm sunny day we get. According to the weather, that could be tomorrow.

Two More Chickens

On Memorial Day, I went to the Marlette Stockyards, and picked up two more chickens. I was much happier with the selection this time. I immediately found two nice looking Isa Browns. According to the vendor, they're 11 months old, and have been laying regularly. I hope so, because I've been less than satisfied with the average production of the three hens I purchased a couple of weeks ago. My brood now consists of five hens and a mean little two-toed rooster. They've been averaging about an egg and a half a day. I finally got my first pale blue Aracauna egg after two and a half weeks.  The banty has been laying four or five a week, and the other hen has also been laying about four or five eggs a week. 

 

The Isas have been here about four days now, and I don't think they've laid any eggs yet, but they are such nice looking, well-adjusted birds that I'm expecting them to start laying pretty soon. Once the birds start producing up to their potential, I'd like to collect at least three eggs a day, but I'd be happy to get more. I know I have to be patient, because chickens can take a while to settle in after being transferred to a new location.  

 

Bottling Day

On the first day of June, I transferred my English Brown Ale from the fermenter to the bottles. It had been in the fermenter for 10 days, and the airlock hadn't bubbled in over a week. I didn't take two separate hydrometer readings to ensure that it was no longer fermenting, so hopefully I didn't just create a couple dozen 22 oz. beer grendades. Actually, I was only able to fill 21, 22 oz. bottles, because of a miscalculation during the initial boil. Our well water here is borderline undrinkable, so I bought five gallons of spring water. Unfortunately, I boiled about a gallon of water off. On the bright side, I should have some nice strong beer. I think this batch will turn out to be drinkable, but it'll probably be mediocre. I made a number of mistakes that a more experienced brewer wouldn't have made: the aforementioned water mistake, letting the trub get into the fermenter, not cooling the wort low enough, not putting a wet towel around the wort to keep it cool, and causing a bit too much aeration during the bottling stage. According to the all-knowing internet, it's hard to make a terrible batch of beer, even for a mistake-prone noobster such as myself. I'll be putting that to a test in a couple of weeks, when I crack the first one open.

Tomatoes

The tomatoes have been transplanted. On May 26, mom and I transplanted 10 Bloody Butcher's, 10 Big Boy's, 4 Sweet Million's, 4 Red Currant's, and 4 Cherry Bambino's. That's about a week earlier than we would normally do it, but it's been so warm, and the 10 day forecast looks promising, so if everything goes according to plan, there should be no shortage of tomatoes at the Rheaume homestead this summer.

 We will be waiting another week or so before transplanting the eggplants and peppers. The garden has been doing some serious growing in this warm weather, and the peas are starting to blossom.

All we are waiting for now is a nice rain shower. It rained about every day for a week earlier in the month, but it hasn't rained since then, and we've had a lot of hot weather. I've been watering them once or twice a day, and we have a lot of clay in our soil, so it has good moisture retention, but they're ready for a nice saturating rain. There's a 50% chance of rain on Memorial day, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Homebrew: Part 1

I finally got around to starting my first batch of homebrew. I bought my Brewer's Best Kit from Eastern Shores Brewery in Port Huron Michigan, and my first brew was a Brewer's Best English Brown Ale Homebrew Beer Ingredient Kit The process went relatively smoothly, and it took about three hours. I already feel much more confident about brewing my second batch. The fermentation process has started. I haven't timed it, but it seems to be bubbling about once a minute. About a week from now, I'll take a hydrometer reading, to see how much alcohol my yeasts have created. Even though it went smoothly, there are a few things I'll be able to change for my next brew. First, I'll boil 3.5 gallons rather than 2.5. There was plenty of room in my Granite-Ware 21 quart canning pot for another gallon. Also, I'll have an extra gallon on hand. I bought 5 gallons of water, but I probably boiled about a gallon off the pot, so my beer is going to be a bit on the strong side. I poured the trub and everything into the fermenter (I didn't really want to, but it would have only been a little over 4 gallons if I didn't get that last inch of wort into the fermenter, and plenty of people said the trub won't hurt anything.), and added the 2.5 gallons of bottled water to the cooled wort, and the water level is just under 5 gallons. Also, I will get some cheap Vodka, to put in the airlock rather than water. This is supposed to help ensure a sanitary fermentation process. Also, I wish I had dipped the head of the spigot in sanitizer before I rinsed everything. Most people seem to think the beer will be fine, but it does increase my risk of contamination. Hopefully, I will have a batch of drinkable brew in about a month. If not, my first brewing experiment was an educational process, and I'm eager to start my second batch, with all the knowledge I've gained.

Chickens

On Monday May 17, I went with Uncle Paul, Candy, and Gabe to the Marlette stockyards. My plan was to buy four mature laying hens. The selection wasn't as nice as I would have liked. One guy had a number of hens, but they looked pretty beat up. He said they just came from the Amish hatcheries, where they put them in with a lot of roosters to ensure fertile eggs. Anyone who's ever seen the rooster-hen relationship knows what a violent affair their intimacies are. I did buy two Aracauna hens from him for five dollars apiece. According to him, they are about a year old, which gives them about another two years of laying. I also bought one Plymouth Rock Bantam from some dude with no teeth. It's a pretty bird, but I wasn't really looking for banties, because their eggs are so small, but I got one for five dollars, and I'm happy with her.

Uncle Paul said he would give me a hen when we got back. When we were collecting her, I thought it looked suspiciously rooster-like, but I made the mistake of trusting my uncle, and taking her/him home. He is a little guy, but I'm pretty sure Uncle Paul knew he was a rooster, and I suppose he thinks he's pretty funny. I figured it out the first morning when he struggled to let out a few ugly crows. According to everyone, the chickens might take a few days to start laying, because the move stresses them out. I've already gotten two eggs out of my bantie, but I've yet to encounter one of those beautiful pale blue Aracauna eggs.