1 Million Pound Harvest

This growing season I am going to track what we grow (weight wise) and add our meager amount to the Freedom Harvest challenge. Think we can grow 200 pounds of food? Eh. Me either. But it's worth a try! I think last season our harvest was about a pound...
Here's to hoping this season will be better! To learn more about this challenge, and to participate, read about it here.

So far we have baby lettuce sprouts, morning glory (not edible, of course), some cauliflower...and I think that's about it.
Come on Spring!!

Wheels, kilns, and galzes! Oh my!

Oh yes. I was gifted with a potters wheel a couple days ago. Oh hell yes.

My mind has been a non-stop mash up of pottery ideas! Toothbrush holders, pitchers, soap dishes, mugs, bowls, my own glaze recipes, fermentation containers, sponge holders! Oh hell yes.
Rumor has it that a kiln is also on the horizon. I can hardly contain my excitement!

In other news....
I began a new etsy site yesterday for the new face of the wee soap company (which is soon going to have pottery added). Stay tuned for that unveiling.

Winter Sowing

This year we are going to try our hand at winter seed sowing (more info here). It makes perfect sense to let Mother Nature do Her thing and have the seeds get to growing when She tells them too. The practice is also fun because you get to recycle containers, and boy do I love recycling! We've got two flats set out now (we ran out of seeds), but hope to have more set out soon so that they can go through the fun freezing and thawing stuff!

Chinese Lantern (Physalis alkekengi) (we are Winter Sowing these bad boys)
Seeds from Johnny's

Vegan Mac and Cheese

We have been eating a lot of more vegan food over the last couple of days and I wanted to share an absolutely fantastic dish we had for dinner last night (and lunch today)

The low down...
Vegan Dad's Creamy Mac & Cheeze (As directed. We didn't have any sunflower seeds, so I subbed more raw cashews)
1 Tbs Green Chile Powder
1 Tbs soy sauce
1 bag Morning Star Crumbles (I have a weakness for these)

-Mix everything together.
-Pour into a greased 13x9 pan.
-Top with homemade bread crumbs (ours are, of course, spiked with some green chile powder)
-Bake in a 400* preheated oven for about half an hour.

So. Tasty! Even tasty as left overs!

Rather Lazy

I've been rather lazy about updating this blog. Oh my. Hopefully I will have some exciting adventures over the weekend to share.

Current Fermentation Stash:
1/2 gallon organic wine
1 gallon wild fermentation apple cider
1 1/2 gallons wilder fermentation mead
1 pints kimchi
9 bottles wild fermentation ginger beer
1 very large bowl of some scary looking stuff The Boy is wild fermenting
2 gallons kombucha (our last batch was perfect! they keep getting better and better!)

We bought a little space heater to help the fermentation group since we are refusing to heat our house with the furnace this year :)

Fermentation Madness

The Boy is reading Wild Fermentation and seems to want to make every single thing in it. Since we are short of flat surfaces to store our jars of bubbling goodness we will be putting in shelves this weekend.

Currently bubbling away-
Kombucha
Ginger Beer
Hard Apple Cider

On the short list of things to get started this week-
Kimchi
Mead
Sourdough (this is a maybe for me, but The Boy loves sourdough)

We are in desperate need of more glass jugs though. Sunburst Bottles has a great selection of large capacity glass bottles, if we can't source them locally that is where we will get them for future projects.
Oh the excitement of wild fermentation! I love to sit and watch the jars start to spontaneously bubble with no aid from us other than a piece of muslin to keep the flies out. (photos coming soon)

Wild Fermentaion and New Fur Kid

I've been a bit MIA lately :) We got a new furbug! His name is Ziggy and he is such a little terrorist! He is a doll, but rather a handful. Here is a photo of him while still at our local Animal Services Shelter (he is an ex-stray)

(Can you see his little goatee? So cute!)

After reading several stellar reviews of the book Wild Fermentation, I just had to get it. It's a brilliant book! I read it in one day and we now have two (not including our kombucha) wild fermentation projects going! One is a hard apple cider and the other is ginger beer, both are starting to bubble and do their fermentation dance. I'm so excited about this project! I've been taking lots of photos, so hopefully a how-to/step-by-step post for ginger beer will be in Herb-Cat's future...

New Project

We started a new project here at the faux urbanhomestead. I'm very excited about it! It took all of yesterday to get the bare bones together, but I think it will be worth it later.
Stay tuned for details :D

Thinking Not Doing: Week 4

Goals:
1. Plan a garden.
-The Boy planted the bamboo (pictures to come)
-While he was amending the soil for the bamboo I found a cache of more morning glories. I have no idea where they have come from but they have the most beautiful purple flowers.

2. Take a "formal" herbwifery class.
-I brought several Sage Woman and The Essential Herbal magazines that Cory gave me. Both have amazing information and inspiration.

3. Choose a major, and act on that choice.
-The Boy and I have been talking about opening an all vegetarian restaurant. I think that would be a wonderful project, but not one we are ready for at this time.

4. Learn to tie dye.
-I'm really slacking on this goal. All the materials are in a box next to the back door, I just keep putting it off for some reason.

5. Organize the soap lab, and make space for an herbal lab.
-I went on a "cleaning out the cupboards" over the weekend on a couple products I am making for swaps. That helped a bit.

6. Replace our current refrigerator.
-Nope

7. Learn to can and preserve food.
-I made and canned mustard yesterday. I think I must have done something wrong though because it is as thin as water. I took a lot of photos so hopefully I will have them up some time this week.

8. Get 24/7 off the ground.
-Voted on logo colors.

9. Exercise four days a week.
-I'm so embarrassed about this goal. We did yoga for about five minutes on day. I spent some time weeding. That's about it though.

10. Be a vendor for two more shows.
-I still haven't heard from the woman I emailed last week. I think it's safe to assume I didn't get in. I wish she would email me so I would know for sure.

Kombucha

Here are some fun photos from our most recent batch of kombucha.



Here you can see the scoby fell to the bottom and folded over on itself. It looked a bit like a tortilla. Notice the yummy bubbles at the top? This was our best batch of kombucha to date.




And a shot from above. Doesn't that look delicious? Ok, maybe not. But it sure makes a delicious beverage!

Cob Oven

I've been browsing the internet for cob oven instructions and information after seeing one on The Path To Freedom site. Isn't it beautiful?
I found some instructions on the Instructable website here. In the article keeps referring to Kiko Denzer's book, which, lucky for me, my local library has! I'm so excited at the prospect of having my very own outdoor cob oven.
Here are some photos of artistic cob ovens built by Kiko Denzer and others for inspiration.

















Here is an adorable toad shaped oven from cobcottage.com



















And a snail from the same site



Another frog oven from ranchomastatal.com


I'm sensing a frog theme. This cute oven is from cobworks.com


I love the mustache! This creative cob oven comes from appropedia.org

And lastly, here is a great article on a community center putting in there cob oven. Southern Cross Permaculture Institute and their oven.

Kombucha

Yeah! I got my Kombucha babies in the mail. Thank you Dancing in a Field of Tansy! (Kristine keep an eye on your mail box *grin*) I'm so excited to make my own rather than fork out four dollars a bottle for the ones they have at the store. If you have never had Kombucha you must try it! I didn't know a lot about the health benefits until recently. It just always made me feel so refreshed and clean. I recently read an article on Nourished Mother regarding fermented food and it all clicked! Now I need to locate a continuous brewing system so I can have Kombucha every day!

Cheesey Weekend

Good Monday Morning!

I had a fantastic weekend making mozzarella and bread. I didn’t get around to making the liquid soap that has been on my to-do list for the past several weeks, nor the tie dying. It was, none the less a very wonderful weekend.

Here are some photos of the yummy cheese making experiment.

Here we have the curds setting up. They are in cubes because I sliced them to make them easier to scoop out :)

Here are the curds after a night of hanging in the cheese clothe to get as much whey out as possible. At this stage it was very crumbly!

Here is the finished cheese! See how it is shiny and more "plastic" looking than the previous photo? That is because I kneaded it and soaked it in hot water until it had the delicious mozzarella consistency.

I made a delicious wheat bread with my fresh mozzarella, about a cup of chopped garlic, and oregano. It was fabulous! It didn't last long...