Getting Water

Life can change so quickly!  The basement walls that I had posted about last month are done and painted.  The water line has been connected from the well to the house.  The garden has been tilled and a few early crops planted.  The geese are sitting on their nests.  I have hatched out two batches of chicks in an incubator.  And I have started a new job during a pandemic (I am now an essential worker).

This well line trench is now all filled in and the dirt piles are only slightly smaller.  It may not look like much, but we had been dreaming of connecting the well for about 4 years now.  We are so much closer to being able to move in!  And not haul water for all the animals.  Geese ungratefully use a lot of water.

Gilbert wants you to know that he disapproves of everything.

Basement Walls and Root Cellar

This morning, Jon and I worked on putting up boards for the basement walls.  The cement walls have insulation and studs up and rough planed boards will make up the final wall.  This corner of the basement will someday be my weaving studio (as well as home to a hot water heater).

The middle section of the basement will be root cellar/pantry.  This section will be walled off on three sides with insulation.  The left side has drawers and shelves and the right side has shelves floor to ceiling.  I am waiting on a quote for a countertop.  All of the extra kitchen supplies will be kept here and I am very excited to have a place to stock up on bulk items and keep canned goods.  The temperature stays steady and cool.

The last section will be closest to the door and will be Jon's workshop.  There is only one wall to go now, and the weather keeps getting warmer!

No Knead Whole Wheat Bread

It has been five years since I have written here.  So many things have changed and some are still the same.  We have started to build a house, we have animals.  But I am once again a housewife baking bread and using an ancient laptop with several broken keys.

 

Rising bread in a brotform

I hope to start up this blog again to share new recipes, progress on the house, as well as other events on our growing homestead.

Ready to go in the oven

To celebrate restarting this blog, I am sharing the bread recipe that I have been using, adapted from this recipe for no knead bread.

Smells so good!

No Knead Whole Wheat Bread

1 1/2 TBSP active yeast

3 cups plus 2 TBSP lukewarm water

1 1/2 TBSP salt

1 TBSP olive oil

2 cups whole wheat flour

4 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

Proof yeast in water.  Add in whole wheat flour and mix in mixer.  Add in salt  and oil and mix.  Add in white flour one cup at a time, mixing after each addition until flour is entirely incorporated.  Do not add in any additional flour.  Let rise for approximately 2 hours.  It will get very big!  After the first rise, punch down very carefully, it will be sticky.  Remove 1/3 of the dough, refrigerate the rest lightly covered for bread later on in the week.  Flour a brotform well.  Form the reserved dough into a ball and place into the brotform, it will be very sticky.  Cover and rise for  45 min to 1 hour if warm, 1 1/2 to 2 hours if cold.  Preheat oven to 400 F with a tin on the lowest shelf and heat up a kettle of water.  Invert bread carefully into a cake tin lined with parchment paper.  Cut top with pattern as desired.  Place in hot oven and at the same time pour hot water into the hot tin to create steam, closing the oven quickly.  Bake for 30-35 min until browned and hollow sounding when tapped.  Let cool on a rack.  The remaining refrigerated dough contains enough dough to make two more breads and should be used up within about a week.

Cucumbers

My favorite time of year!  Cucumber season!

This is my favorite variety, Russian pickling

As always, I have far too many cucumber plants out there in the garden.  Last year, I was picking about a quarter bushel a day.

My favorite dill slice recipe comes from Summer in a Jar, a lovely vintage cookbook for canning in single jar batches.  This book also has the best dilly bean recipe, featured in Mother Earth News.

I can't wait for the cucumbers to really start coming in!  I should probably stitch one of these for my kitchen:

Apricot Scones with Almond Glaze, Summer

It started out as a slow Sunday at work in the bakery, so I took the opportunity to come up with a new recipe to use up some of the seconds apricots from the orchard.  I had never baked with apricots and had just tried my first fresh apricot.  Perfect for scones!

I couldn't take any pictures at work, but trust me, even if you don't like apricots on their own, these scones will win you over.  It is even worth taking the time to peel them.

Apricot Scones

with Almond Glaze

Scones:

2 cups flour

2 tablespoons granulated sugar (turbinado would also work)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 c butter, diced, chilled

1 cup peeled, diced apricots

3 tablespoons milk (whole is best)

2 eggs

Glaze:

powdered sugar, water, almond extract

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Grease a cookie sheet.  Peel, pit, and dice apricots to measure 1 cup of the diced fruit.  Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Cut the chilled butter into small pieces, then using a pastry blender or fork, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until pea-sized.  Add the diced apricots and stir so that they are evenly coated with this dry mixture.  Add milk and eggs, stir until it comes together, then turn out onto a lightly floured surface.  Knead a few times, adding a dusting of flour to the dough if needed to keep it from sticking.  Pat out into an 8" circle.  Cut into 8 wedges.  Transfer each wedge carefully to the greased cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes, until the scones are golden and cooked through.  Cool on a cooling rack.

When the scones have completely cooled, throw some powdered sugar in a bowl.  I think I used about a cup, but I never measure for glazes.  Add about 1 tsp almond extract.  Then add water, slowly, mixing to form a thick glaze- must be thick enough to slowly drizzle from spoon, but not too thin and watery.  You may need to add more powdered sugar or water to get the desired consistency, but it doesn't matter.  Taste the glaze and add more almond extract if desired.  Drizzle glaze from spoon over scones in a zig zag pattern.

Let glaze harden before serving, or just eat them all at once.

Variations:  

• use 1/2 cup peeled, diced apricots and 1/2 cup blueberries
• use vanilla in the glaze instead of almond extract

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We have just got a new rabbit!  She is a beautiful REW (red-eyed-white) English angora, born in May.  Jon wants to name her Jane Doe, my coworker calls her Snowberta, and I can't stop calling her Princess.  I can't wait to see what beautiful kits she will have when she is older!

Pika is bred again, I have two five month old does for sale, and there are five two month old kits out in the hutch.  Rabbits for sale!

Too many (not enough) words

They grow up so quickly!

This is Belle, the beauty of our new angora kits.  We also have another doe, Bête, and a buck, Toro.  Pika is due to have another litter in just over a week.

I've been busy working full time at an orchard/farmstand, translating, and neglecting the garden.  There is yarn to skein, fiber to spin, angora fluff to pluck...so many things to do and so little time to get them all done.

I am taking a break from ebay and have started listing in my etsy store again.  I'm planning on taking a break from selling at farmers markets until the winter market.

I am thankful for all the work that I have to do and for how green everything is once again.

Kits and Pups!

If it weren't for all the leaves on the ground and the stark blue sky, I would think that it was spring here!  It does seem that the animals have chosen fall this year to multiply and give us quite a surprise.  A couple weeks ago, as Jon was removing the panel that separates the back of the insulated outdoor hutch for cleaning, he saw two new little fuzzy faces looking at him.  This was a complete shock, as we were sure that the mother was a male!  She had recently molted so we didn't notice when her belly fiber went missing and was made into a little nest way back in the darkest corner of the hutch box.

I won't know what gender they are for a while, but now that I am certain that Firari is a female and Tavie has proved to be the male that I knew he was, I now have a breeding pair, both with really nice fiber.  So, oops!  I'm breeding angoras once again!  Now to be strong and not keep them all!

As for the guinea pigs, they couldn't help themselves, either.

Gary Busey the guinea pig had been living with other male guinea pigs.  The pet store had sworn that it was male, and we had them check before we left to be sure.  Wrong again!  Busey, as she is now called, gave birth to just one pup, but it is healthy and cute and I'm going to have a really hard time not giving this one away.  Look at the face!

To complicate the situation, we took another look at one of the newer angoras that we got over the summer, and are pretty sure that this one is female, not male like we thought.  It is VERY difficult to tell when they're young.  Two other people had agreed that Pika was a boy.  Now there is every possibility that she has been bred as well.  No wonder Tavie was so happy with his living situation!  So far there is no sign of pregnancy, but she is going to be isolated for a month just to be sure.  It also wouldn't be tragic for another little to appear, a bit more expected and planned for, with another few little balls of fluff to play with.

I'm a bit overwhelmed at this point with trying to figure out the new living situation.  I am still grateful for each of these new little creatures.  They all have their own personalities and quirks!

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We have started to have frosts here at night, and there is even a chance of snow this weekend.  The garden is almost done.  There are only a few root vegetables and onions left out there, and they will be fine through even harsher weather.  I harvested corn last week and hung the cobs up to dry in the basement.  The kernels will be ground into meal later this winter (once I figure out how to do that...).  The stalks decorate our front door.

The canning jar shelf is nearly full.  I still haven't done any applesauce yet, either.  The freezer is full of local pork.  The mini fridge is full of pickles.  Extremely sour mustard pickles, to be specific.

Time to go having another cup of coffee and rake some leaves!