Homestead Pantry

Well we blew it today, the wind was still nasty and we didn't get much done outside.  The cheese pot is going again, though.  I pulled the cultures out of the fridge and started fresh cultures.  Tomorrow we will set up some cheese.  It's nice to have the milk available to make cheese again.  It's hard to know which kind I want to make first!

I went out to see if I could get anymore strawberry plants tucked in for the winter but it was too windy.  I was in a bad mood anyway, having found out on my way to the garden that the silly young dog had stolen from us again.  Yesterday his granny gave him a good whoopin' for stealing Little Miss Muffet's big floppy yellow straw hat with the big purple flower on it...said hat is now sans big beautiful purple flower.  <growl>  Going out I found two T-shirts, a tennis shoe, a small child's shoe that was in a bag to go to the shelter, and my horse's winter blanket.  The blanket was destroyed.  It had the stuffin's chewed out of it.  Bad Dog!  Where was GrannyDog when Bratpup was doin' that dastardly deed??

 So, to bring a happier note into this post, we'll get on our way to the garden.  The peppers are still lovin' it in our greenhouse, they are even blooming again.  The herbs in there are doing well, those that weren't smooshed by the heavy wet snow collapsing part of the greenhouse down on them. So we'll see how long they last but likely I will need to be pickin' peppers again soon.  Dr. Noel Falk told a caller on his program today that lettuces and other vegetables wouldn't do well in a greenhouse, that they wouldn't get enough light unless you hung a powerful light, and that would use so much electricity that it would not be worth the expense.  Well, he needs to have a talk with my lettuces.  They came up after we put up the greenhouse plastic and they are doing very well.  Don't remember what the one is, but the other is an oak leaf lettuce. 

 Still growling about the horse blanket, I went back into the house for some fiber therapy.  I finished spinning up the angora bunny wool I had carded out for sock knitting, and started to hang a picot hem on the sock machine.  I then realized it was too dark and the light was not bright enough to really help.  Nor was the flashlight, held in my mouth, helping me enough after I worked my way around about halfway.  Guess the batteries needed recharged, so I shut it off, set the cultures in a cooler to incubate, put the lid on the jelly, and shut off the lights. 

 So good night, sleep tight, and be sure to eat fresh.

Today we're cleaning out the strawberry beds, and transplanting them to the greenhouses' beds.  These plants have grown amazingly well despite the tough growing conditions this past summer.  The May floodgates closed, then two weeks later we had a scant half inch of rain, and then late July we had a scant 3/4 inch, (really pushing it on that one!) and that was it until Irene opened the floodgates again.  We had nary a dry day from that point on, it seemed.  Oh, there were dry days but not enough.  All this moisture coupled with the warm temperatures grew our gardens like crazy.  The pole beans took off like a tropical rain forest, as did every blessed vegetable out there---except the tomatoes.  They just turned black and died.

Our sweet peppers are lovin' hangin' out in the greenhouses with a couple of tomatoes, some herbs and  the brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli transplants.  Despite several very frosty nights and days too, they are lookin' good and still producing.  Amazing.  A little sunshine makes the greenhouse quite tropical. 

 The sweet potatoes made a huge crop, we're going to be digging up some more of them today, too.  We've already baked a couple of fall harvest pies, combining our goat milk cream cheese, sweet potatoes, immature punkins, and tahitian neck punkin's.  Mmm-mm delicious!

Update on Andromeda:  She went to guard chickens and goats in Virginia, her sister went to another farm in Virginia to guard chickens, and her other sister went to New York to guard sheep in partnership with an aging Maremma male.  Her brother Picasso is proving his worth here on the homestead.  More on him later, gotta get back to those strawberry beds before the sun goes down!  After that we have to get on the road to be onsite for a barn raisin'!