Hoop House Experiences

It has taken me a bit to work up a plan for this post and not turn it into a bunch of dos and don'ts. We did get so much education out of this that the losses to me are just part of the course. I'm hoping that this info is something I'll want to read about sometime next year, say around January when I start daydreaming about dirt again. Sorry to say but the whole subject now is a drag, but I need to write it down before I forget!
Anyhow...Hoophouse. Love it. Yes, it's a great idea. I might have been even better if our weather in the early spring hadn't made the point of a hoophouse obsolete. In fact that is were we first ran into trouble. But who would have known? I'm thinking that we didn't need to make it so big either...but that is the way Bryon does things!

Kale: This grew great and as long as I kept it watered very well it produced lots of good greens for our family, because we do love kale. I plan on keeping up this fall with this one. Around June it started not having fun in the heat and well...don't think for once that the cabbage worms wont make their way in! I gave up the trying to deworm and pulled most of it for the goats. There is still a big patch but I'll keep it for fall after the frost kills the worms. It would have done just fine outside though.

Lettuces: These did well except for the excessive heat that took us by surprise. They soon bolted but so enjoyable while we had them. This was one(of many) of those things that we should have just planted outside it was so warm!

Beets: We ate a few greens but I don't think that I was able to supply enough water by hand. We didn't have the soaker hoses up at that far end. That or it got to hot for them also.

Bunching onions: I couldn't water them enough either and my hand watering only packed down the soil, stunting their growth?

Peas: Actually the kids had a hayday on these! We didn't get a trellis up soon enough so my onions got trampled in the search for peas, oh well.

Cabbage: So sad. I had started beautiful plants and they grew so lovely. Of course, we know how they like it cool! And what little knots there were the worms feasted on.

Broccoli: Another sad tale. I read that if broccoli gets too hot early in early stage it will "button". Growing well and healthy looking (uuumm I thought it was a little too tall and the leaves too small) but only forming a small button of a head. And that's what happened here.

Brussel Sprouts: Same story. I didn't look this up but the sprouts never formed they just sort of bolted, I'm blaming this on the heat too. The goats loved them, worms and all.

Tomatoes: Bryon's pride and joy and faithfully kept them pruned. I thought this was so awesome how he had this set up. And it worked! This part of the hoophouse was black plastiked and soakerhosed so it is well watered and weed free. The tomatoes reached the ceiling and at this point continue out the top!  The twine is wound around the plant all the way to the bottom. This actually really works but we need to keep after them as after a while they will sag a bit under the weight of the fruit. Our blunder here was not taking the plastic off soon enough and the tomatoes stopped blooming. I will be interested to see if they start back up now that the plastic is off.

Green Peppers: Doing wonderful. Full of blooms and growing lots of peppers. We might have got them planted sooner and we would be more ahead, but  I hesitated not sure where I wanted them to go.

Herbs: Doing ok, but who can tell with the chickens able to run in and out.

Cucumbers: In cucumber heaven. Bryon made a wall and lined the roof with snow fence for the cucs to climb. They grew like crazy, produced a huge amount and then ...the vines are dying now, not sure why yet.

Then we had a gustnado July 6th and the top of a tree went thru the plastic. Bryon decided that it was long overdue to get the plastic off.

So we did.

Sourdough For Real

True Sourdough Bread

I have tried to make my own starter so many times, each in a different way, with no luck. Oh, maybe they had a good sour flavor or maybe a not so good dirty sock flavor. Never did any of my starts give my loaf a lift, I always added a bit of yeast to help out. That made me feel like I was cheating and it was, as far as I'm concerned. I was provoked by Diane about three weeks ago to give it another try, that was the same week we bought the book to build an outdoor oven. I spend all my free time one Sunday reading on line and watching little you-tube videos here about it. I think I just needed to see pictures! And I am disappointed in the pictures I took, but I'm hoping to provoke someone else to try it on their own, and yes, you can collect enough wild yeast to lift a loaf!

This isn't my original start- I used white flour as my first try. I read also that fresh ground wheat berries are the best as they have enough yeasts present to give things a super start.
The recipe called for pineapple juice (specifically for the citric acid to kill a bacteria that can kill most attempts at this), you've probably heard of people using unwashed (homegrown) grapes or raspberries with bloom to do this. But as I had nothing of the above and more enthusiasm than I could contain I decided to try it with whey (left over from cheese making). Yes, in a week I could think about baking my first batch.
Since it worked so well, I though I would make another start using whole wheat flour and straight water (I was too cheap when I went to the store to get the pineapple). This one worked too - I'm still using both of them.
And here is my success story!

Day 1

Day 1

Day #1 Mix together 3 1/2 TBS flour of choice and 1/4 cup of water ( from our Berkey water filter) into a jar. Covered the jar loosely with a lid and set it aside. I made an effort to come back and stir a few times that day.
Day#2 Stir 2 or three times this day...oops I didn't. It was foamy on top and had a funny whole wheat smell.
Day #3 Added 2 TBS ww flour and 2 TBS filtered water. Tried to remember to stir a few times that day. Didn't look any different or smell worse so I carried on.
Day #4 This is what it looked like:

Day 4

I stirred it and smelled. At this point I wasn't sure if it was going to work, but seeing some activity was encouraging!

Day 5

Day #5This morning I added 5 1/4 TBS flour and 3 TBS water. This was the day to see if it would work so I made a mark on the jar to see how much elevation would happen, because so far not much was going on.

Day 5 morning

 

Day 5 in the evening

When I got back home that evening this what had been going on while I was gone! Doubled and began to descend. Bookues  of activity! I couldn't resist messing with it, so I did! I stirred it down, tucked in 5 TBS flour and 3 TBS water and put my little sourdough to bed.

Every day for a few more days I fed it twice a day 1/4 cup of flour and 1/8 cup of water each time. I only used this measurement because I was too lazy to find the TBS. More flour than water and once or twice I forgot and added the same proportions. See? You don't need to be exact. Just be there with the goods!
After I published this post I discovered another website that has experiments, calculation, and the science behind sourdough. There is a lot to being exact, I need to get my head into that thought more often. And there are a few techniques that I didn't know about like bulk proofing and autolyse. Check it out if you've been inspired here to learn more...from the experts!

A few tips (and I should add to this as I keep learning how to use my sourdough starter):

• Smaller feedings (but still twice a day) seem to produce a stronger starter.
• Use filtered water (if you have a softener- as salt interferes with the rising power).
• I've been using 1/4 cup per loaf with great results. The recipe I use is my artisan no-knead one and I just replaced the yeast. I want to try a banana bread and biscuits still.
• Careful not to over proof! Actually as soon as it looks like the dough has doubled or getting close work the dough into your loaf. Once it descends I'm out of luck...except at this point it makes a great pizza crust because it still will puff up quite a bit in a hot hot oven, just not enough strength for taller loaf, unless of course you don't mind bricks!
• When I have my bake day (I've been using  5 cups of starter at a time) I need to plan waaaaay ahead of time. I use it all but a 1/4'' from the bottom of my jar ( my starter now grows in a 3/4 gal. pickle jar) and build it up by the next baking day (with twice a day feedings).

• Supposedly it is a hard thing to kill, and can keep very well in the fridge with weekly feedings. Do you do other fermented things? Same principle! It's alive and growing, keep it healthy! 

Linking Up with:
   Frugally Sustainable

Enduring Losses and Counting Blessings

Friday night baking

 It's been so long since I've updated here that I have started putting it off as it seems too overwhelming. So I've decided just take it piece at a time instead of writing a complete novel in one boring post.

Taking up our time these days have basically been divyed up between garden sprints and baking marathons. Not to mention a funeral, a difficult plumbing customer, a "Gustnado" and a half, over 100* too close to my kitchen for too long...etc, I promised no novel. I took a chance and went against the grain to put house cleaning at the bottom of my priorities list and believe it or not stuff got done and there was less worry, so my creative challenge for June actually helped me that way. The only thing that bugged me about that endeavor was the amount of time I spent checking on facebook to see what the other girls were doing. Bla, I had to cut that out. But my biggest achievement this month was my sourdough starter. I am so pleased with it, and it works. That is on my list of blog posts to write.

My biggest challenge was the learning mistakes we made with our hoop house (a definite series of blog posts), and patience with garden timing. One of the good things about blogging and being 41 is the ability to laugh at yourself or realizing that you should be laughing at yourself. I can't agonize over the time and money spent and lost in the hoop house adventure. Thinking about it, they aren't real losses accounting the knowledge and experience we gained. How much time has been wasted watching a stupid movie, or money lost on eating out at a crummy restaurant. I'm coming to terms with it I promise, and laughing with myself. AND I learned that I am not cut out to run a CSA. Farmer's Market is as far as I can go! Oh, it isn't a total loss and so much was out of my hands, like the weather and all, but I'm learning, we're learning. I still love my hoop house.

Back to the gustnado. That was Friday and we were in it! It came so fast there was no time to get in the house. It looked like it was going to be just a thunderstorm so Jeremiah and I thought we would run to the garden and see if the beets would be big enough to pull for Saturday's market. We got half way there and after observing the two farms in the distance and the horrible way their trees looked and the amazing cloud of dust foaming up in their yard, we decided to RUN back home. Problem was that we didn't hardly turn around and the wind slammed into our woods. Huge wind gusts rolling the dust, leaves and branches straight up and out. Trees, huge trees were breaking and crashing and I couldn't tell if I should hunker down where I was or run back to the kids. Jeremiah didn't hesitate and was out of sight, supposedly getting the rest of the family to basement. Anyhow, this isn't a novel, long story short, the limb that fell down in front of me didn't kill me, the tree top that fell and landed on Nathanial as he huddled around his bantam chicks didn't kill him, just four of his birds, the trees that crash onto the house and deck didn't break any glass or injure the rest of my kids standing at the glass door watching. It is apparent that we don't do any safety drills or have a disaster plan, although I was screaming "get into the basement!", no one heard me (nothing really new there either). Our losses were so minimal, just a beautiful sycamore, and the cherry bee tree and at least 20 others that landed within inches of complete disaster (trucks, chicken house, shop, etc). It was so frightening, I can't image what a real tornado would be like.

Meanwhile our electricity blew away too. Bryon and our neighbor sawed most of the tree off the house. He decided that we must still push for the market the next day. After all I had  piles of granola, bread and pizza crust stacked in the kitchen, and I still had 20 pieces of sourdough proofing, by now hours overproofed! Bryon plugged us up to the generator so my convection would run (but no lights or water- we would stop and switch according to the need). Learned something here too, don't try and bake a loaf of overproofed sourdough- turned it into a fabulous pizza crust!

And here is market day, nerves testy, sales low, but the sourdough sold out!