A beautiful birthday gift

My birthday was on Wednesday, and I had had a nice day of celebrations but the chores must still be done.  So around 9 pm I went out to close up the chickens.  It had been storming quite intensely and was still drizzling so I had my raincoat on and my head down.  When I passed the workshop and got out to the coop, I looked up and was stopped in my tracks by this sight: a perfect, richly colored double rainbow.

It was absolutely beautiful.  I felt immediately filled with gratitude for such a gift to finish my birthday.

I also felt my mom's presence whispering, "happy birthday cupcake."

The first time I saw a spectacular rainbow like this over our home was on the day that she passed from this earth so every time I see one now it feels like a sign that she's still here, that she wants me to know she's watching over me.

As the rainbow began to fade in the east, the sun was fading in the west, bathing the house in a golden glow.  My stepson came outside to see what was keeping me and marveled, "wow, it looks like heaven."

The golden light faded and the clouds were painted like a rich watercolor scene with shades of pink and purple.

The wet driveway acted like a mirror for the sky.  Truly spectacular.

"Look for me in Rainbows"

Time for me to go now, I won't say goodbye;
Look for me in rainbows, way up in the sky.
In the morning sunrise when all the world is new,
Just look for me and love me, as you know I loved you.

Time for me to leave you, I won't say goodbye;
Look for me in rainbows, high up in the sky.
In the evening sunset, when all the world is through,
Just look for me and love me, and I'll be close to you.

It won't be forever, the day will come and then
My loving arms will hold you, when we meet again.

Time for us to part now, we won't say goodbye;
Look for me in rainbows, shining in the sky.
Every waking moment, and all your whole life through
Just look for me and love me, as you know I loved you.

Just wish me to be near you,
And I'll be there with you.

Music and lyrics: Conn Bernard (1990). Vicki Brown

Mint Wine in the Making

After Rita and I siphoned our Dandelion Wine over into a new carboy, I was so excited about our brewing adventures that I decided to start a new project: Mint Wine.  I went out into the herb garden and filled a colander with all the varieties of mint growing there: Apple Mint, Pineapple Mint, Spearmint, and Chocolate Mint. 

I brought them inside and rinsed them clean.  It was so fragrant in my kitchen!

Meanwhile, I brought about a gallon of water to a boil.

I added three cups of sugar and stirred until it was thoroughly dissolved.

Now I had my syrup.  

To that, I added the mint leaves.  I pushed them under until they were saturated then left it alone until it cooled to near room temperature. 

The air was full of freshness at this point!  It almost smelled like I had rubbed Vicks Vapor Rub on my chest.  I stood over the pot inhaling the minty-ness. 

When it was cooled enough, I threw in a couple teaspoons of yeast then covered it with a damp towel.

I left the mash on the counter for three days, stirring daily and re-dampening the cloth.  After three days it looked like this...

I strained out the leaves and my remaining liquid had turned a rich golden color.  

It wasn't incredibly bubbly so I decided to add a little more yeast.  I mixed this in then poured it into my sterilized carboy.  I set the airlock in place and now I wait.

My counter is getting crowded.  I have Dandelion Wine from April, Honeysuckle Wine from May and now Mint Wine from June.  I wonder: what will July bring??

Mamma duck has learned to sit

If you have been following our adventures here on the farm for long, you know that it has been a constant learning process for us figuring out what our ducks are doing and what they need from us.  Bossy Pants, our adult female, has made various nests around the yard and filled them with eggs but never really gotten into incubating the eggs.  She would occasionally sit on her nests but not consistently enough to make anything happen.

Then we had our little experiment into letting a chicken hatch duck eggs.  One successful duckling came of that, our now large Cupcake, who continues to think of herself as a chicken.  

So we were torn when we discovered that mamma duck had made a new nest in the front of the house, under my hollyhocks.  What to do?  Do we collect the eggs or let her try again?

Initially we did collect the eggs but then something different happened: she started to sit, and sit, and sit.  She began to leave the nest for less and less time each day until she got to the point where she only left at night, when she would seek out the safety of the chicken coop with her male companion.  Then she made the full plunge and even started to sit on her eggs at night!  Who knows what made it happen, but mamma duck seemed to finally understand how to be a mamma!  

Needless to say, we stopped collecting eggs.  We have actually stopped even going near her because she has become very protective of her growing babies.  When you approach, she hisses quietly at you and puffs herself up to look bigger. 

She had to choose one the hottest spots in the yard!  It has been really bakingly hot and humid so I brought her a container of water and carefully set it down as close as I could get it then backed away slowly.

The only times she leaves the nest now seem to be very early in the morning - when she goes back to eat and drink in the chicken coop - and just before dark - when she gets up and paces in front of the nest to stretch her legs.  The other morning I snuck out while she was off eating and caught a glimpse inside the nest.  Looks like we may get a nice big bunch of ducklings if she really gets this done!

I watched her from afar yesterday afternoon while she used her bill and feet to gently turn each of the eggs.  What a marvel to get to witness.  I am so excited for babies.  

I so hope that she can get through this safely and bring a new generation of ducks to us here at Phillips Farm.

If life gives you lemons, make limoncello!

I had about half of a bag of lemons sitting on my counter about a month ago.  I had used a few of them for recipes but didn't have plans to make anything that needed lemon so I thought to myself: What can I do with these so that they won't go to waste?  Then it hit me: limoncello!  

I spent my junior year abroad in Milan and dated a man who lived on the Amalfi Coast, well known for their fabulous football-sized lemons and the sweet digestivo that they produce with them: limoncello.  Needless to say, I became quite the connoisseur of the stuff.  I could drink limoncello everyday if I had it!

I did some reading online and it looked fairly easy.  There are really only two steps:

1. infusing the alcohol with the lemon peels

2. adding a simple sugar syrup for sweetness

I thought, I can do this!

And so I began...  I used a peeler a remove the rinds from my lemons.  

I juiced the lemons and froze the juice in a couple small containers so I'll have it for later use.  You could also use it to make some homemade lemonade.

I had a bottle of vodka, hardly opened, in the freezer that someone had given me long ago.  I'm not a vodka drinker so it had sat untouched.  I think the only time I used it was to make a vodka sauce for pasta.  I grabbed a large mason jar from the pantry and in went the alcohol and lemon peels.  I sealed it up and put it in the back of the fridge to infuse.  

After three weeks it looked like this:

I tasted it to see how lemony it was.  Miraculous!  It was very tasty, but not sweet enough.  We can fix that.

I poured the mixture through a strainer and disposed of the lemon peels.  This is something the chickens won't eat - they don't do citrus - so it will just be added to the compost.

The remaining liquid was a bright, sunny yellow.  I set this aside while I made the sugar syrup.

For the syrup, I set a small pot on the stove.  I added three cups of sugar and just enough water to moisten it.  With the temperature on medium-high I stirred continuously until the sugar dissolved and it became a thick syrup.   

I let the syrup cool a little then poured it into the infusion, stirring constantly, and tasting every now and again to see if it was sweet enough.  I ended up adding all of the sugar syrup because I like mine sweet, but taste yours as you go to ensure it's just right for your palette.   

And ta-da!  Limoncello complete! 

I ended up with two mason jars about 75% full.  Traditionally, limoncello is served straight from the freezer, in a small cordial glass or shot glass.  My jars are in the freezer getting nice and frosty so that I can enjoy an ice-cold digestivo after dinner tonight.    I'm so looking forward to it!

An ecstatic pollen bath

Walking by my flower beds yesterday evening, my ears filled with the buzz of flapping wings.  I looked down to see bees all over my lavender plants.  Each plant had easily 15 bees on it.  How exciting!  

You hear more and more about how bee populations are struggling with environmental factors and other predatory insects wiping out vast quantities of them.  We are fortunate to have a healthy and active set of hives across the street from us.  The man who owns them offered to set one up in our yard too as soon as he has enough bees to split off a new hive.   

As I watched the bees fluttering about, I followed one that flew up towards my taller hollyhocks.  It landed smack in the middle of one of the big black flowers and commenced an ecstatic pollen bath.  It rolled and crawled and covered its whole body in pollen.  The black petals, too, were smudged with it.  The bee seemed oblivious to everything except for gorging itself on Mother Nature's sweet gift.  

Watching this whole scene reminded me of a poem I had once read, which I went back and looked up again.  Enjoy!

Extract from Kahlil Gibran’s "The Prophet"

And now you ask in your heart, 
"How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?" 
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, 
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. 
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, 
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, 
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy. 

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.

Dandelion wine: part II

It has been almost two months since Rita and I started our dandelion wine and 99% of the fermentation seemed to have stopped.  We each had just a minuscule amount of teensy bubbles in our jugs, and the liquid had cleared significantly; so we decided it was time to move on to the next step: siphoning the wine into a new carboy.

I lugged my full wine and an empty, clean carboy across the street to Rita's house after dinner.  I must have been quite a site carrying those jugs as I got honks from every pickup truck that passed!  

Rita had kept all the supplies that we got from our wine-making neighbor down the street.  We got them back out and tried to remember all that she had told us.  There was a solid plastic tube with a sort of cap on the end, which she had told us to insert into the carboy and hook the siphon onto.  This would prevent sludge from getting sucked up with the liquid.  So we set this up, put the empty carboy down low and I gave it a suck to get the siphon going.

I tried and tried but I couldn't get it flowing so we recruited Rita's husband Frank to help.

Frank had a little better luck than me, but even he could only get a little liquid to flow.

We looked at our set-up and decided it was the solid plastic pipe with the cap that was messing up our suction.  We took this off and resolved to just be careful with the end of the siphon in the full carboy, to not let it down too close to the bottom.  I held it in place.

Frank sucked on the end of the tube again, and - Woah!  Did it flow!

Before long we had gotten all the clear liquid out into the new carboy, and just the sludge and a little liquid remained in the original carboy.

Here's a look down into the original jug.

And the remaining liquid is pretty clear!  We did it!  Now it has to sit a while longer to clarify more and see if anything else settles out of it.  Then the next step is to bottle it.

This is my official "bootlegger" picture Rita took as I was walking home.  

While sucking on the end of the siphon, I got the chance to taste the wine so far.  At this point, it tastes a lot like a dry white wine, maybe a little too dry for my taste.  Our neighbor told us that you can add a sugar syrup to it at the end of the process, before you bottle, to adjust the sweetness to your particular taste.  I think that might be on the horizon for us.

Now that I have a free carboy, I think I might start a batch of mint wine.  I'm hooked on fermentation!  It's fun to learn something new and now I'm so interested to see how the different wines made from stuff already growing in my yard will taste.  

And the busy season begins again

I haven't written anything in a while because the busyness has begun.  

The garden is lush and growing more and more day by day.  As my garden plants grow, so do the weeds!  I spent most of Saturday afternoon weeding, thinning. and adding some more seedlings.  My dad came over and worked with me in the yard, which was both a great help and a nice chance to catch up as we worked.  

Here's a view into the most active side of the garden now: asparagus, radishes and broccoli in the front; then sweet potatoes, lettuce, beans and beets; followed by garlic and kale at the back.  I also planted my cucumbers a couple weeks ago and they are starting to come up.  I've been planting a couple rows of corn every two weeks so we will have a continuous crop once it starts to produce.  The rest of the garden is filled with tomatoes, peppers, squash, okra, and eggplant.  Still to plant: melons and pumpkins.

I put dad in charge of thinning radishes and beets, since he has become an expert at that working the CSA garden at Grailville.  Some kind of bug had eaten away at the radish greens, so we gave those to the chickens to enjoy, but the roots are for me!  Here's what he got from the baby radishes he yanked.

The beet greens, however, were in good shape so they went into the kitchen whole - two buckets of them just from thinning the rows!  I chopped and blanched most of the leaves so that I could freeze them for later use.  The beets I'll probably use for a nice beet and tomato salad.  This was my first chance to try my new Food Saver so I was excited.  It is soooo much easier and more effective than my poor man's version sucking the air out with a straw. 

My kale is lush and full and needed to be cut back some.  So I plucked a tray full of the Curly Leaf variety to start.  I had to be careful to check the leaves because the cabbage moths are beginning their onslaught.  I picked off a handful of them and fed them to the chickens before I brought my tray of leaves in for another round of blanching and freezing.  I still have to tackle the Lacinato plants.  I'll have frozen chopped kale for a year's worth of recipes in no time at all!  So many things to look forward to: quiches, pastas, "spinach" artichoke dip, soups...

Here you can see my process.  I have to cut the stems out and trim any brown pieces off  (these go to the chickens).  Then I chop the leaves.  Next they get blanched and laid out to dry.  Finally, I package them up in recipe size parcels and store them away in the freezer.

Earlier this spring, I began planting the beds around our pool with berries.  I put in about six blueberry bushes, five raspberries and a couple blackberries.  As I passed by them this weekend I caught a glimpse of a first red ripe raspberry.  I, of course, immediately devoured it.  It was so perfectly delicious!

The blackberry plants are loaded with fruit.  I can't wait for them to ripen up.

In the front yard, my lavender is profuse.  I love to walk by the front of the house and take in that smell.  It is so intensely sweet; it's hard not to be happy when you smell it.  I think I may start harvesting and drying some bouquets of lavender soon.  I also want to learn some new recipes to use it in the kitchen.

My flower beds are filling with color as things come into bloom.  It's a struggle to keep up with the weeding, but it does look so nice when I get everything in order.

I'll try to keep you posted so you too can share in the joy of things growing again.  I hope you'll forgive me if I lose track of time!


What's your favorite thing that's growing now?