Today was windy and freezing (literally), but in a good way.
For the past week we have seen the high temperature of the day hover around ten
degrees below freezing, and the nightly lows hit the single digits. It was a
pain in the ass to keep the animal’s water liquid. I’m pretty sure their water
tubs were icing over within an hour of me doing chores. Today, with the
practically tropical breeze of 32 degrees it was a pretty nice reprieve from
that. As long as the animals managed to make their way over to take a sip every
hour or so, the surface wouldn’t freeze over. Which meant less pick axing
required of me.
As you will be able to notice, by simply just reading this,
that I did not get around to making the tour around the farm and completing the
photo update today. It will be coming, I promise, it just didn’t happen today.
Between getting caught up on the chores (because of the beautiful weather), and
needing to make my way into town for a few errands and to stock up on a few
things, I didn’t find the time during the daylight. By the time I got home and
unloaded, the sun was already setting beyond the horizon, and the photo shoot
was therefore postponed.
On to a different topic: I have been experimenting with
fermented foods for a few months now, and, quite frankly, I’m not having any
luck with it. I have been reading The Art
of Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz (what a cool fucking name?!), and he
swears that it is so simple to ferment food, that it practically (and in some
cases, literally) does it itself. I have had no such luck. I tried fermenting
five gallons of kosher dill pickles over the summer, and they went bad after
eating just one pickle out of the hundreds in the batch (that one pickle was
epic tasty though). And I have tried a few separate attempts at making sauerkraut,
and basically the same thing happens: the kraut is really, really tasty for
about a day, and then it is rotten. I thought the whole point of fermenting
this stuff was in order to preserve it old school style. I don’t think
temperature is my problem, this last batch of kraut (that I just found out went
bad today) was in the pantry, which we keep at around fifty degrees (it does
vary, but only be a few degrees –no massive swings into the seventies or anything
of the sort, and it never gets near freezing…) Am I rambling? I can’t tell…
Either way, making cheese was way easier than this fermenting shit. Speaking of
which…
I know I only shared half the story of making my first batch
of feta on here, but since that first batch, I went ape wild crazy in my new
cheese hobby. I do have some pictures saved on my hard drive of some of those experiments…
like this one, of aged marinated feta in olive oil and herbage that made my
mouth orgasm…
But this is my current experiment.
I made just one batch
(two gallons equaled this little disk) of homemade goat cheddar. I don’t know
how it taste yet, because I am trying to let it age for one year first (I enjoy
sharp chesses). Come the spring I intend to make batch after batch of this good
stuff because it will store for up to twenty some odd years… Well, I guess I
can’t say it is good stuff until I have tried it… Right now the goats are dried
up until the spring when they start popping out little ones, so I have had to
put my cheese adventures on hold for now… So, maybe I will try a younger
cheddar in the early summer in order to make sure I’m not fucking the recipe
all to hell or anything.
Well… I guess that is going to be the update for the day. I really
and honestly could go on for about five thousand words today, there is just so
much that has been going on and has happened, and is happening around here,
that I hardly even know where to begin. But I reckon that is a good thing… It
means I will be able to update this thing day after day, and you guys will have
a reason to check back in a see what is new. I’ll talk to you guys again
tomorrow.
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