Firewood Arrives!

Delivered this morning.  What a nice surprise from my husband.  Thanks babe!

My sewing room will definitely be warm again this winter in spite of Mother Nature.

Another week passes on our little suburban homestead...

Another beautiful week has come and gone.  I love the cooler Fall temperatures and how the weather influences the colors in our trees and plants.  As usual, I spent several hours primping the garden, starting seeds and transplanting them into ready beds.

This week I started a new project.  Readying new, portable conduit hoop houses for the beds.

I bathed and groomed my furbabies, although they were very unwilling participants.  

Here, my baby Chocolate stands awaiting a warm water bath and clippers...  He was trying to get out that door, but alas a metal screen.  If you look real close you can tell that I have already made a pass with clippers to help the shampoo get him clean.  Doesn't he look just like an Ewok from Star Wars?  I think so.

On Friday, we worked at the farm on my weekly FARM LAB trip to Bakersfield College's campus farm.  You can see our progress here.

After a hard day's work at the farm, Jerry and I managed a trip to our local Kern County Fair to experience the animals, crafts, tractors, vendors, rides, and of course the fried foods.  We saw some really unique things that we have never seen before, and so rather than share what we all see at the Fair, I am going to share a few interesting pictures below.

Jerry loves old tractors

Shark tooth fossils...

beautiful handmade, intricate beaded jewelry

like this delicate looking beaded necklace

 

Jerry found a puppet show theater, he was so excited, but he missed the show...

We saw pretty young ladies dancing...

and local California State University Bakersfield (CSUB) Nursing students helping the community by providing FREE health screens that included BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose testing.  I got my screening done.  It was great fun.  These young men and women were very professional and informative! Great ambassadors for their school!!!

Hey, that looks like our fair mascot K.C. The Bull!!!

Here's Jerry standing beside one of the most interesting pieces of artwork I have ever seen made from gourds...  These "people", the chess set, table, chairs, acrobats, dogs, cats, and even mice were all made from manipulated gourds.  

I still can't believe they're gourds

another gourd craft, what a pretty purse.

and a gourd candle lamp...

followed by a gourd basket or jar...  

Who knew you could do so much with a gourd.

It wouldn't be a county fair without food crafts.  I found LOTS of lovely fondant cakes...

This one is decorated in some of the most lifelike gum paste flowers I've seen.

FRIDAY FARM LAB AT BAKERSFIELD COLLEGE

Fridays are lab day at the school farm for my Vegetable Crop Production class.  Today we were very busy.  We spent the last two Friday Lab Days preparing the soil for crops.  Today, we actually made beds and planted close to 11,000 transplants.  (*Click on a picture to enlarge the view)

Our teacher is amazing.  He is new to our school, so we were all curious about his teaching style, but as the weeks go by, we are learning that he is organized, tech savvy, and helpful.  He also happens to be the Farm Adviser for our region.  Which means he is the State Extension Office representative to local commercial vegetable farmers.  We live in the 3rd biggest Ag county economy in the country and just below the #1 and #2 Ag counties in the country, so he HAS to be very knowledgeable.  Already, picking his brain just a few times, I am so excited to have him nearby.  We are going to learn a lot from him this semester.

He prepared a diagram of the field that demonstrated what and where we would be planting.  Then, he gave students bright pink flags to place at intervals to mark the rows and sections off. (You may be able to see them in the background of the photo) Next, he broke the class into teams of two students and he gave each team an 8" long cookie spatula and transplants.  The cookie spatula worked great.  We used them to make the holes for the transplants and to measure the distance to the next hole.  It worked like an assembly line.  One student would make a hole, measure forward to the next hole, and the next student followed behind placing and planting the seedlings.  It really went FAST and because of the cookie spatulas, the plants were evenly spaced making the rows look great.

Our professor was able to obtain an amazing 11,000 seedlings via donation from a very generous grower- Greenheart Farms.  Thank you GREENHEART FARMS and customer service representative Paul Hertel for getting our vegetable crop production class off to a GREAT start.  

We planted romaine lettuce, green and red leaf lettuce, purple and green cabbage, and broccoli.  The seedlings looked great, so I expect some nice looking vegetables.  They were all planted about 8" apart.  Have a look at a few pics of our progress.

and when we were done planting, the sprinklers were turned on and everything got a good watering.

This is the last class I need to graduate, and I have some experience in classrooms.  This group of students are really hard workers.  Most of them are young, my son's age.  For the most part they all work well together and are good to each other.  I feel blessed to be in this class with such a nice group of kids, but it does make me miss my kiddo...

At the end of the lab, our professor asked us to get together for a class photo.  I have a keepsake to remember the day.

This class runs through November so I will post about our labs as often as we experience something of interest to home gardeners.  Our field is broken up into two main sections: organic and conventional.  I hope to learn a lot of helpful information through the course of this experiment as we compare crops in both sections and learn alternative remedies for the organic field setting.

Have a GREAT weekend!

This post was linked up to the following HOPS:

http://deborahjeansdandelionhouse.blogspot.com/2011/09/farmgirl-friday-blog-hop-24.html

http://homesteadrevival.blogspot.com/2011/09/preparedness-challenge-26.html

(You may notice that I have pasted code instead of a link, that's because I recently found a few instances where links were deactivated after a post was archived by blogger.)

Preparedness Challenge...

LINK UP HERE!

In my dehydrators I'm dehydrating Fruit- strawberries and raspberries.  I am following the instructions I found from the how to garden advice website LINK HERE.  

 

In the oven, I am dehydrating more corn using my BFF Michelle's recipe LINK HERE.  I tried it last week for the first time and was very happy with the results.  The corn tasted sweet and nutty when it was done.

I am also experimenting with my new homemade yogurt.  I am trying to separate the curds and whey to have  cream cheese.  I have only just begun, but I am really excited.

This last month has flown by, and I am learning so many new skills and honing others.  Within the last several weeks I have:
- learned how to pressure can veggies
- learned how to make homemade tomato sauce
- expanded my dehydration skills
- expanded my freezer preservation skills
- learned how to make lacto-fermented pickles
-learned how to make yogurt
and more...

I am thankful for the Preparedness Challenge and all of the contributors.  I have learned so much from all of you.  Thank you for sharing such important, practical knowledge.

Now, I am going to bed.  Goodnight!

Sour Dill Pickles the Old Fashioned Way... Fermented in a Crock!

UPDATE 10/26/13- Before we begin it's important to note that in the recipe below the ingredients list calls for a ratio of 6 tablespoons of salt to the first 8 cups of water, and if more water is necessary to fill your crock, add additional water/salt at a ratio of 1 tablespoon per 1 cup of water. As per Sandor's instructions this will make a brine of approximately 5.4% salt (for the first 8 cups of water) which is salty, but does not require desalinization like a 10% brine would.

If you prefer saltier/ less salty pickles you can experiment 

1 T salt to 1qt water = 1.8% brine

2 T salt to 1 qt water = 3.6% brine

3 T salt to 1 qt water = 5.4% brine etc.

 

This is my first time trying this recipe, but I am working from (adapting a bit) the recipe for sour fermented pickles out of the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz, so I expect it will be great.  I have been researching online for a while now, and many, many blogs and videos on the web credit their success to the recipe in this book.  So, here goes nothing...

Tools needed:

crock or 1 gallon glass/ceramic jar

glass plate or weights to hold down cukes in brine solution

clean cheesecloth or some other cloth material to cover crock/jar with

2 liter glass bowl or pitcher (to mix brine solution in)

measuring utensils

spoon

Ingredients:

recipe calls for 3-4 pounds fresh, unwaxed, pickling cucumbers

handful of fresh grape leaves (tannic acid in them helps keep pickles crispy)

6 T sea salt

3 or 4 fresh flowering dill heads or 3-4 T dried dill leaf

2-3 heads garlic, peeled

1 t black peppercorns

and other herbs you like in your pickles

2-4 liters non-chlorinated or distilled water

(I have a 7.5 liter crock, so I doubled this recipe.)

Instructions:

Clean and rinse cucumbers and grape leaves.

 

If you cannot use fresh picked (today) cucumbers, give them a cold water bath for an hour.

Make sure to remove blossoms.  They will make mushy pickles.

Clean crock or jar well.  Sterilization is optimal.  My crock is too big and heavy to put into the canner or dishwasher, so I washed it with hot, soapy water, dried it thoroughly, and rubbed apple cider vinegar allover inside of crock. Then, let dry.

Pour 2 liters of water into the glass pitcher.

Add the sea salt to the water.  Stir well, until salt is completely dissolved.

Place the grape leaves into the jar or crock, followed by whole garlic cloves, peppercorns, and dill.

Add the cucumbers and cover them with the salt brine.

Put weights on cucumbers to weigh them down.  If you don't have weights, you can use a plate and weigh it down with a water filled jar or a bag full of water or a boiled clean rock.  At this point, if the salt brine does not cover the weight, add more brine at a ratio of 1 T per cup of water.

Cover the jar or crock with a cloth or lid made for lactic-fermentation.

Maintenance:

1. Store your jar/crock in a cool place.  (I am keeping mine on my kitchen counter.)
2. Check daily, skim mold off (if you get any)  If there is mold, you must clean the weights/plate too .
3. After a few days, taste the pickles to check on their progress.
4. Always check crock daily for mold and brine level.  Never let brine solution drop below weight/plate.  
5. The recipe suggests that your pickles will be "done" between one and four weeks time. Apparently, temperature is the big variable that influences this.  Once, you are satisfied with the taste, move your pickles to the refrigerator to slow down fermentation.  Enjoy!