Incubatin'

Last week one of our hens, Scratchy, died. I knew something was up with her the day before, when she hadn't come bounding out of the coop as I opened the door. Rather, she quietly hung out in the chicken run drinking water and occasionally pecking at the food. This was the first I'd noticed anything being amiss with her, and by the next day she was dead. That same day, the kids noticed that one of the white chickens we had raised from the batch of chicks this past Spring had hidden a few eggs in the leaves under our wood rack. In light of Scratchy's passing, they asked if we could try to hatch a new baby chick. Having looked into the matter previously, I was a bit dubious about our prospects for two reasons:

1. Incubating eggs is surprisingly tricky, and seemed best done by either a store bought incubator or a live chicken.

2. Brown Spot, our rooster, is so hen pecked - both by actual hens and our well intentioned children - that I doubt he has actually gotten his groove on enough fertilize many eggs.

Nevertheless, it seemed like a fun project to do with the kids on a day off school. We built the incubator completely out of materials that were laying around the house. The only thing we had to purchase was a 25 watt light bulb. Everything was put together, and in went the 3 eggs. We counted out the 21 days it should take for them to grow, and as luck would have it, the prospective hatch day is the boys' 8th birthday. Will anything come of this? I hope so, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Sauerkraut

The art of preserving vegetables by fermenting them is something that goes back thousands of years, and is prevalent in cultures around the world. Considering my family's strong German heritage, it's sort of strange that I've never really learned how to make Sauerkraut before now. The process is incredibly simple: shred or chop vegetables, add salt, squash to release the veggies' juices, top off with some water, cover it, and let it set. As the vegetables ferment, the beneficial microbes and bacteria that are present help to break down the ingredients, preserve it, and make it easier to digest when you eat it. If you cook or can it, all of those organisms are killed. I decided to make my kraut with some carrots and radishes, along with the cabbage. Why? I had them sitting around and I thought it might be good.

I cut the veggies coarsely with a kitchen knife

I used coarse kosher salt to mix them in a large bowl.

This is what the mixture looked like after a few minutes of squeezing. There was a fair amount of liquid that formed as a result of this.

I put it all into this large jar and topped it off with a little water. I used a small plate and a cup to keep the veggies submerged. I covered it with a thin dish towel, and let it sit in my basement for about 3-4 weeks.

Once the Kraut was fermented, I put it into mason jars to keep in the fridge. From 2 cabbages, a handful of carrots, and 6 big radishes I ended up with 2 1/2 quarts of Sauerkraut.

The fermented Sauerkraut is crisp, tangy, and delicious.

I'm not certain how long this stuff is good for in the fridge. At the rate I've been eating it, I don't think I'm going to find out. It's darn tasty. Making it in smallish batches like this seems to be the smart way of doing it. Cabbages and root vegetables store really well on their own, and this is something that lets you make use of them throughout the year. Below is a video featuring the eclectic fermentation guru, Sandor Katz (who may or may not have been the narrator for the infamous "Honey Badger" video). It lays out the process that I followed pretty clearly.

New Growth in the New Year

Fun at home on Christmas Break

The Christmas/New Year's holiday rush is finally over, and now we can settle back down into the routines of regular life. I'll do a bigger post in the next few days looking back at what happened around the 'Burbstead in 2011, and what I'd like to see happen in 2012. For now, a quick update about a few random odds & ends.

Hoop House:

I got the hoop house covered with the salvaged plastic a while back. I knew that it wouldn't last more than one season, and the fact that the weather here has been remarkably mild up until this past week was certainly helping things. Since New Year's, the temps have been getting down in the 30's (which by itself isn't a big deal), and they've been accompanied by 40+ mph winds. That's started to test the strength of the plastic. I've repaired a number of small tears and holes. Yesterday I found a large opening in the back wall. I'm trying to keep in mind that this is an experiment and that we often learn more from failures than quick success, nevertheless, it's frustrating to have to continually break out the transparent duct tape. The plants have taken it all in stride thus far. I've pulled a ton of radishes, lettuce, and other greens out. The carrots and turnips are looking good, and I'm curious to see when the spinach that I planted in November will start to take off.

Swiss Chard, Black Seeded Simpson and Winter Density Lettuce, Beet and Turnip greens fresh from the Hoop House.

Cool Christmas Gifts

I had the good fortune of receiving a number of awesome Christmas presents this year. I'm not the sort of person who needs a lot of material things to be happy, but it's still nice to get some things that I probably wouldn't have bought for myself. A few of the "Burbstead related things I got were:

Food Mill with 3 different sized sieves.

A couple of books that I'm looking forward to reading

Squash and Garden Porn

We went down to my parent's house this past weekend for a Christmas party. When we left, my mom let me take along a couple of very cool winter squashes that were left over from fall decorations. I've wanted to get seeds for these varieties for a couple of years, and now I don't have to buy them. Woot!

Musquee de Provence: 120 days (C. moschata) These gorgeous, big flat pumpkins are shaped like a big wheel of cheese, and are heavily lobed and ribbed. The skin is a beautiful, rich brown color when ripe. The flesh is deep orange, thick and very fine flavored, fruit grow to 20 lbs. each. This is a traditional variety from southern France and makes a great variety for fall markets.

Rouge Vif D'Etampes: (C. maxima) Most beautiful flattened and ribbed large fruit are a gorgeous deep red-orange. A very old French Heirloom, this was the most common pumpkin in the Central Market in Paris back in the 1880’s. The flesh is tasty in pies or baked. This one can also be picked small, like summer squash, and fried. It is a good yielder too.

The descriptions for those squash come from Baker Creek Seed Co. I mention them because they are related to the second part of this post's title. Last week I got the 2012 Baker Creek Seed catalog. The fact that they send this out for free boggles my mind. It's chock full of amazing photographs of all sorts of cool heirloom and open-pollinated fruits, vegetables, and flowers. 61 of the catalog's 192 pages are full page photos! Jere Gettle (who frequently dresses like Gene Autry on acid) runs a great company, and year after year they put out a catalog that is good enough to be a coffee table book. If you've never bought anything from them, give 'em a try this year.

Thoughts on Liberty

One of the things that appeals to me most about homesteading is the way in which it offers people the opportunity to gain some measure of independence from the corporate and governmental systems that regulate so much of our modern lives. So many people now days are completely unaware of myriad ways in which the choices in their lives are controlled. They have internalized the values of their masters, and as a result they want what they are told to want - even when they think that they're exercising their own free will. Goethe had it right when he said, "There are none more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe that they are free." Here is a blog post and a speech that both deal with how the modern political and economic structure keeps us in cages, and conversely, what it means to be truly free. Read, listen, and THINK.

The first is from "The Downward Spiral", a fantastic blog that documents the ongoing decay of America.

Free Your Mind

The second is a speech that Lew Rockwell recently gave at a Casey Research Summit. He does a great job of getting past false notions of left-wing/right-wing, Democrat/Republican nonsense, and gets at the heart of our national political system - it's really fascism

The Fascist American State

Jars of Seeds

I'm something of a pack rat. I have a hard time throwing away "disposable" items that are still perfectly usable: tin foil, plastic bags, hardware, I hang onto all of it. Glass jars are another thing that I tend to squirrel away as they get emptied of their original contents. They're great for a lot of things, especially organizing and storing seeds. This afternoon I finally got around to shelling out some beans and corn that I've had sitting in my kitchen. The Bloody Butcher and Marbled Indian corns come from down at my parents' house, and the Blue Hopi is the only bit that I was able to salvage from the squirrels and drought this summer. The Navy and Kentucky Wonder pole beans were saved from plants I grew in my garden. The original seed for the Hopi corn and the beans came from Heirloom Acres seed company.

Hot Sauce

Spicy food occupies a special place in my palette. Chili, Indian food, chicken wings, pizza. eggs, you name it - the hotter the better. Next to tomatoes, I have more varieties of hot peppers than any other plant. I'm always looking for different things to do with them. I found a recipe in Mother Earth News for a Tabasco brand-style hot sauce. Personally, Tabasco isn't my favorite type of hot sauce, but the recipe sounded interesting. It called for fermenting the peppers in brine for 4-5 weeks. I chopped a bunch of jalapeno, tobago, and pablano peppers, mixed in some salt and water, and let them sit. After 4 weeks, I mixed in a little white wine vinegar and let it sit for another week. In the end, this is what it looked like.

I tasted the liquid. I was spicy and very salty. The recipe was rather ambiguous about the amount of salt to add, and apparently I added a bit much. Undeterred, I strained the mixture through a cloth to separate out the pepper bits and seeds. I then used a makeshift sieve to get all of the seeds out of the pulp.

I heated the pulp, and mixed in some tomato paste, honey, brown sugar, coriander, and ginger. As per usual, I was making this up on the fly. I was hoping for something sweet, spicy, and vaguely exotic. It came out pretty good. Thin enough to mix into soup, but thick enough to put on a sandwich. I liked it enough to call it a success.

The liquid was a different story. It was so overwhelmingly salty that I wasn't sure what to do with it. I heated it up to boiling, added butter and sugar in an effort to balance the flavor out some. Ummm... I suppose it worked. The sauce was less salty, but calling it good might be a bit of an overstatement. I kept it, but I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with it. I the future, I'm going to use far less salt in the brine. Here's the final product:

This is a link to the original recipe at Mother Earth News. The article promises to help you save money. To be honest, I'm not sure how much hot sauce you need to consume in order to save an appreciable amount of money by making your own. At any rate, give it a try and enjoy!