Here come the peas!

After a week of dancing with the IRS, Sunday mornings are for the homestead.  There is much to do, and a span of hours to get it all done.

During the week, my husband cares for the kids, animals, and house, so indoors, it is only the once weekly necessities that draw us in.  Bathrooms, ironing, vaccuuming - all tackled before 7 am.

Glad to have that behide me.

Once the kids, and the sun, was up, it was onwards and outdoors.  Cleaning chicken coops, hauling wagons full of composted hay to the garden, continuing the annual spring extravanga of raking gravel off of the front yard.  Oh, yeah.  That's the fun stuff.

And lets not forget about those guinea pigs - who need their giant condo of an adobe cleaned out every Sunday...  Not the fun stuff.  But, they are soft, and randomly cute as they beg for carrots everything single time I walk by them on the way to the fridge....

Wonder if that means I am walking by the fridge too often....

Today was also the day to rack the 4 half gallon containers of soon-to-be hard cider.

Or, at least, I hope they will be hard cider....

Really hope.

The seedlings started last weekend are popping up - broccoli, kale, onions.  Tomatoes, however...well, I don't know.  Hidden, they are.  But hidden, I hope they do not stay.  This is the first summer that our garden's bounty will be feeding more than our own family. 

Those tomatoes have a job to do.

And now it is 8am.  And I will probably continue the morning by begging my kids to get dressed, and heading back outside again.  High temps are in our future, and I was to get my share before it is back to the office this afternoon. 

'Cause, that's just how we roll ;)

A week gone by...

Well, the week got away from me.  I meant to post before now, I REALLY did!  But, I did not.  A blink, a wish, I don't know.  The week as gone by....

March is here.  The start of spring, or so I thought.  However, temps in the 40's have given way to the single digits, and our poor chickens are back to shivering in their coop.  I, however, think that I am adjusting to the temps - a thought made obvious by the fact that I continue, dispite efforts to the contrary, to leave my coat in the car.  Oh well. 

Last weekend, I racked my second batch of hard cider, and I wonder if it might be ready by the end of tax season.  I hope so - it would add to the celebration.  A celebration that is a bit odd, I am realizing.  See, my children have begun referring to the end of tax season as if it was a holiday to rival Christmas.  Easter is has gone by the wayside, and my coming birthday does not get a thought.  But, the end of tax season?  Oh yes - they are excited :) 

This coming weekend, I hope to start some seeds for the garden.  Onions, sweet peas, broccoli...delicious delights.  I ordered the seeds when grass could be seen in the dead of winter.  Now that spring is around the corner, and snow is here, I am not feeling enthused yet.  But, action will bring reaction, and the inside spurt of gardening will be a delightful rousing event. 

Can you tell I am looking forward to the warmer days?

Homebrewing...an update - Day 3

Just an early morning update on the home brew excitement.

The balloons filled with gas from the fermentation about 1 hour after they were capped on the bottles on Saturday.  Since then, they have remained filled.  I know that some of the gas is leaking through the pin pricks in the balloons, but those holes are so very small that I can't find them...oh well....details, details... ;)

In a close look at the bottles, you can really see that the fermentation is still in process, as tiny bubbles are in a constant race to the surface.

Homebrew, here we come!

Adventures in homebrewing...

OK - the Day is Here!

No, I am not speaking of the Broncos v. Patroits (aka Tebow v. Brady).  While that game may dominate my house at the moment (Go Tebow!  Let 'Em Go!), this is not what we are speaking of today.

Today for the big homebrewing event!

Now, first to give proper credit - the recipe I based my brew on can be found here, but I will recap my fun below. 

And as you all know from my post earlier in the week, the recipe I used called for glass bottles.  And, as you all know, glass bottles are hard to find these days.  Plastic has taken over our world, and that is not all good.

So, where do we turn, you ask?  The trusty natural foods store, of course.  This was the only place that I could find glass bottles bigger than a beer bottle.  And what were these bottles holding?  Why, Vermont Organic Milk, of course! 

Feel free to cue angels singing...Now!

OK, but to be serious, and get now to business, the first course of action was to free up 2 of those glass bottles.  And my family can only drink so much milk.  So, into holding tanks they went (more about that later) and the now empty bottles had to be cleaned and sanitized.  I know that there was probably fancy ways to sanitize bottles for brewing and I found plenty of products on homebrewing sites, but here, we gotta work with what we got.  Which was bleach.

Yuck.

A small amount went into each bottle, and then we rinsed, rinsed, rinsed...and then rinsed again.  When absolutely no trace of bleach could be smelled, it was time to move forward.

The ingredients for this brew were very simple.  A gallon of unfiltered apple cider, four to six cups of sugar (white and/or brown), bread yeast, and some party balloons (more about that later, too).  The rule of thumb, as I read it, was that the more sugar, the sweeter the brew and the higher the alcohol content.  Now, as a complete novice, I can't vouch for this, but this is what I read.  So, to stick with a middle ground, I decided on 5 cups of brown sugar.

To start, you pour the sugar into a large sauce pan and then add about half of the cider.  Set another cup of cider aside for later.  On a low heat on the stove top, you mix the sugary solution until all of the sugar is dissolved.  This, of course, involves near constant stirring - burning would not be so good.

 

When the sugar is dissolved, turn off the heat and let it cool a moment.  Then take the other half of the cider and split it between to the two clean 1/2 gallon containers.  You, of course, do all of this with 1 full gallon container, but I am just working with what I have.

Once the clean containers are each about 1/2 full with the cold cider, add equal parts of the warm ultra sweetened cider to each.  You want to leave about  2-3 inches open at the top, so if you fall short, this is when you use the cider you set aside to top it off. 

And then, it is time to add the yeast.  Just 1/4 teaspoon of yeast into each and it is set. 

All that is left is to get the balloons, rinse them out (cause of the non stick stuff inside), and put a pin prick into each.  The stretch one over the mouth of each balloon.  Now, as the yeast is working its magic, the fermentation will happen, and then the balloon will blow up.  As this happens, gas will be able to escape the pin prick, but no bacteria will get back in.  Simple enough.

And now the work for today is done.  I will just keep an eye on the fermenting brew for the next two to three weeks, making sure that the balloon remains secure.  Then we will "rack" it, and sent aside for another couple of weeks.  Come summer or early fall, we will have our own brew to enjoy!

And, before I forget...we did find a home for all of that milk.  How, you ask?  Well, for cheese, of course!!

Homebrew planning...

So, first let me say that I am not a big drinker.  I don't like beer, can't stand most wine, and straight liquor might as well be rubbing alcohal to my taste buds.

But, I love hard cider. 

Truely, truely love.

So, inspired by another blogger, I am going to try my own home brew of the good ole stuff. 

The ingredients are pretty simple.  Unfiltered apple juice (aka apple cider), bread yeast (!!) and sugar.  And glass bottles.

Ah yes, the glass bottles.

Until I started looking around, I didn't realize just home much plastic has taken over.  Hardly anything larger than a bottle of beer is in glass.  And I needed big containers.  Like gallon or half gallon size.

But, after much racking of the brain, I found a solution.

Vermont Organic Milk!

It is still packaged and sold in glass bottles!  So, I headed to the local natural foods store and bought four of these breakable babies. 

And due to their precious cargo status, I proceeded to secure their safety by buckling them up in my daughter's booster seat.  Fitting, don't you think?

Just don't tell her....

I am hoping to get down to the nitty gritty of the homebrewing this weekend, and will post some updates them.  Until then, wish me luck.

I think I will need it....