This Years' First Picking of Muscadines

Muscadines are a grape that is native to the southeastern - south central United States.  If you take a walk into the woods in our area, you'll find them growing wild along the banks of the bayou with vines growing high into the trees overhead.  In May 2014, we planted our own muscadine vine in the side yard and we have it on a trellis made from a cattle panel.

Each year we pick more and more muscadines!  This year appears to be a bumper crop.

I like to eat them right off the vine while they are warmed by the sun.  The muscadines are so flavorful.  They have probably 3 to 4 seeds in every grape, but that's okay.  We just spit them out.  I like to pick them when they are a deep red coloration and soft.  The harvest goes on for a while, so every day you can go out and pick some.

I was planning to go and pick some the other day, but Russ beat me to it.  We've been eating on these in the kitchen.  Tricia reminded me to be careful while picking as there is a wasp nest amongst the muscadines.  I don't want to get stung while picking and eating.  That would put a damper on the fun.

Tricia and I planned on going to the vines to pick this afternoon after work; however, we started visiting with the neighbors under their grape arbor and eating their grapes.  We talked and snacked on their grapes for so long, we didn't ever make it to pick from our vines until it was time to go eat supper.  Tomorrow is Friday.  We'll make time to go pick tomorrow or this weekend.

Growing a New (For Us) Type of Cowpea (Southern Pea)

Saturday morning is a morning different from other mornings.  We slow down the pace to that of a three-toed sloth or maybe a snail.  It is a day that we allow the sun to beat us outside.  We rise at a respectable hour, have coffee, and slowly make our way out to milk the cows.  Once finished, I usually take a stroll through the garden, not to work, mind you (that comes later in the day), but just to take in all the changes that I didn't get to observe during the week. 

It is usually around 9AM by this time and the sun filters through the live oak trees to our east and lights up the garden with soft light.  I notice the beautiful blooms of some peas.  If you look closely below, you can see that a fire ant is enjoying the bloom as well.  Can you see that dad-gum thing on the flower?

This beautiful bloom is on a new plant for us.  Several years ago, we went to a sustainable agricultural conference.  In one part of the conference, they have a seed exchange.  They invite attendees to bring heirloom seed to trade.  It is a good opportunity to pick up some new varieties of old heirloom seeds that you can't buy from seed companies.  These are seeds passed down in families from generation to generation.

This bloom is from a plant in the Southern Pea family called a Whippoorwill Pea.  I had never heard of it before.  I opened the small brown envelope with a hand-written label containing the seeds and planted them a couple months ago.  The seeds were old.  I was not optimistic, but lo and behold, they grew!  And now they are blooming and setting pods of peas.

The peas seem immune to the heat and dry conditions of south Louisiana and send out vines that stretch across the ground and climb up the trellis supporting the luffah gourds and birdhouse gourds.  This is an old seed!   This seed was harvested from the gardens at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's garden.  Here is what is written about it from the Monticello website:

In 1798 Thomas Jefferson wrote that the cowpea (also called southern, crowder, or field pea) "is very productive [and an] excellent food for man and beast."  He also praised the species' ability to improve the tilth and fertility of the soil.  Cowpeas, first brought to the southeastern U.S. by African slaves, were sowed in the South Orchard at Monticello between 1806 and 1810.  Whippoorwill Cowpea, a bush variety with short runners, purple flowers, and 7-9" pods, was popular in the 19th century.

The pods of the Whippoorwill pea turn white when they are ready for harvest.  I've been picking quite a few of them. 

In the evenings I sit in the kitchen and shell peas.  Sometimes the boys help me if they are around.  It goes faster when you have help, but like Saturday mornings, we don't get in a rush.  Shelling peas is a relaxing exercise.  Time seems to stand still.  The stress of the days' demands roll off of you like water off a duck's back. 

When you are done, there is the gratification of a job well done.  Here we have a nice bowl of fresh-shelled Whippoorwill Peas.

Whippoorwill Peas are different from other cowpeas.  They are a little smaller and have a green-grey mottled color.  I like the way they look.

Now, to complete our review, we just need to cook up a pot of them and taste them.  The flowers are pretty, they laugh at the heat and dry conditions of the summer, the yield is great, and they are nice to look at.  The proof, though, is how they taste.  I'll report back on that.  I am optimistic and have saved some of the best looking pods to hold back for next year's Whippoorwill Pea seed planting.

These peas have survived for over 200 years in America.  Might as well do my part to keep them going for at least another season.

As We Near Drying Off the Cows - An Experiment

In four days we will be drying off the cows.  In dairy-speak that means we stop milking them.  You'll probably hear us talk about that a lot.  We've been milking for over two years straight without a break, and we are ready.  When we bring the milk inside, we pour it from our stainless steel pails into gallon-sized glass jars.

Those jars are immediately refrigerated and the cream rises to the top.  I remember being young and my teachers would always tell us, "Work hard, prepare yourself, for the cream always rises to the top."  That saying may sound strange to some, but it is a truism.  The cream is the best part of the milk.  It is the thickest, sweetest, best part.  After it rises, we take a big spoon and skim off the cream, putting it into a pint-sized jar.  We use that for our coffee, and for ice cream, and for whipped cream and butter.

But soon, we'll have no more fresh milk for a while.  For how long?  We don't know.  We haven't had the cows palpated yet to see how far along in their pregnancies they are.  We were talking about what we were going to do.  Sometimes, in the past when the cows were dried off, we wouldn't even buy milk.  We would only buy cream. 

Tricia reminded me that my Mom had given us a neat thing that was from Bumby, my grandma.  It was some little glass jars to freeze sweet cream in.  See the photo below?:  Freezer Creamer - Always have cream for unexpected guests.  Thaws while your coffee brews.  Slips into your ice cube tray.

There are six little jars with lids on a tray.  I couldn't find a date on these, but I think it is a neat family heirloom.  We are going to see if we can successfully freeze some cream using Bumby's antique sweet cream jars.  (One is missing because I'm about to fill it.)

I simply filled the jar with sweet cream from Clarabelle's milk from earlier in the morning.  It doesn't get fresher than this!

I placed the little cap on top of the jar...

And I placed it in the freezer.

I pulled the little jar out a bit later to find that the cream had completely frozen. 

I think our experiment was successful, but the proof will be in the pudding.  We'll thaw out and drink in our coffee this weekend.  If it is good, we'll make more, and we'll ration the remaining sweet cream for special coffee time!  I hope it works.  The last time we dried off the cows, we tried to freeze some milk.  I was not impressed.  Once it thawed, it had a different texture and consistency.  I was not a fan.  Perhaps this will be different.

Making and Eating Ricotta Cheese

We discussed making Simple Farm Cheese in our post Making Queso Fresco back in June.  Did you know that once you finish making cheese, you can still make another type of cheese from the whey that remains.  We've made a couple of batches of ricotta since then and wanted to show you how we did it.  Credit to the book, "Home Cheese Making" by Ricki Carroll.

Once you make cheese, you are left with whey.  We normally use kefir whey as a preservative to make lacto-fermented vegetables, pickles, etc.  With the whey we get after making cheese, we sometimes feed it to the chickens.  In this case we make ricotta.  Pour 1 gallon of whey into a pot and heat it to 200 degrees.

Keep stirring, turn off the heat and add 1/8 cup of apple cider vinegar. 

The acid makes things "break."  Tiny flecks of protein will appear in your spoon.  These are the curds that form your ricotta cheese.

Pour the entire contents of your pot into a muslin-cloth lined colander.  This acts as a strainer.

You can see that the whey flows right on through into a bowl we have positioned below the colander.

We added in 2 ounces of buttermilk to the curds.  This is a mesophilic starter that improves the flavor.

We tied the muslin cloth in a knot and allowed it to continue dripping for several hours.

Once you open the muslin cloth, you can see your ricotta cheese.  It is done!

We add a quarter teaspoon of salt.

Stir it all up...

The hens will be happy to drink up all this whey.  We always find that they lay more eggs the day after they drink it.  (Maybe it is just in our minds, though)

And now for the best part - eating it!  We like to spread it on water crackers.  The cheese is flavorful on its own.

Or ricotta cheese is perfect for adding herbs for hints of another flavor.  Here I've added tarragon. 

Tricia also has added garlic and dried basil mixed into it that we really like.  It is an easy, delicious cheese to make right in your own kitchen that requires no special equipment or aging. 

Birdhouse Gourds Are Flourishing

Check out the birdhouse gourd vines and luffah gourd vines that completely cover the cattle panel trellises we have in the center of the garden.  The yellow flowers are the luffah gourds.  The birdhouse gourds have a white flower.  The flowers that cover the vine are nice to look at.  On a Saturday morning there is a lot of bee activity as they buzz in and go flower to flower pollinating.

The vines are so thick and they keep sending out growth.  The tendrils wrap around anything.  I think if I stood still they'd wrap around me and Tricia would have to come free me from their grip with a machete.  Amazingly, all this growth is from 3 luffah gourd plants grown from seed and 3 birdhouse gourd plants grown from seed.  Both were seeds saved from previous years.

The luffah gourd flower reminds me a little of a a hibiscus. 

As I lift up the canopy of leaves and look beneath, I see a multitude of birdhouse gourds that are growing and maturing.

I will continue to let them grow until ultimately they will dry out on the vine.

At that point, I'll drill a hole in the bottom and make a birdhouse.  I'll show you how I do this later this fall.  The two that are hanging below are from two or three years ago.  I have them hanging in the backyard from a pecan tree. 

It is a cool little craft to make and give away.  Some people paint them white, but I like the natural color.  I would like to tell you that birds moved into the birdhouses and raised a family there, and perhaps they had in the past.  Right now, unfortunately, each one has a big wasp nest inside.  That is probably why the birds don't move in.  Killing the wasps in the birdhouses are on my project list for this weekend.

Milk Fever?

I don't know the creator of this cartoon, so I have to give credit to Tim S. for sending it to me.  Fortunately, our cows don't take our temperatures when we go out to milk them.  Good thing, too, because we have to do this at work.  We're certainly not wearing masks around our cows.

We have 10 more days of milking cows.  We've been milking for a year and a half now - every day, two times a day.  It is time for a break - both for us and for the cows.  We have had our cows exposed to bulls during their cycles and we think that they are all bred.  Their gestation is nine months and then they'll calve again and then we'll have milk again.  That is called "freshening."

We will enjoy the break, but will miss the milk, cheese, homemade ice cream, kefir, and all the other benefits of having a family cow or three giving us milk.  When the cows are dried off, we'll take some time off to relax, but we have other animals, a big garden, and other projects we'll be working on.  Come spring time, if breeding was successful, we'll have new calves on the ground and will be back in the milking business.

We'll talk more about the drying off process at some point in the next 10 days.

The Window Sill Facing East

Our kitchen window faces east. We purposefully designed the kitchen window to be large and wide to allow for natural light to invade the kitchen area.  Normally, I can't enjoy it much.  When I leave the house each morning on the way to work, I can't see anything outside because it is dark.  On the weekends; however, I get an opportunity to see the view out of the kitchen window.  Simple pleasures for a simple couple.

The window sill measures a foot across so that we can place items there.  Sometimes there is a vase with freshly picked flowers.  Other times there is a bowl containing beans that are drying.  It is a great place for fermenting tomato seeds in order to save them for next year.  In addition to the window sill providing a functional, utilitarian role, it also provides aesthetic enjoyment.

Tricia had just made a batch of Mayhaw jelly.  In addition to being delicious jelly, it has a striking color!  I placed a few of the jelly jars on the window sill to let the eastern morning sun filter through the mayhaw jelly.

Mayhaw jelly is made from the fruit collected from mayhaw trees.  Mayhaws grow in low-lying areas around our neck of the woods - bayous and river bottoms.  Growing up, we learned where they grew in the woods and collected them when they ripened.  My mom made (and continues to make) jars and jars of it. 

I stood there and took in the view of the sun shining through the jelly.  There's no artificial colors in this jelly.  It is like a stained glass window that you can eat!

What's on your window sill?

When Chickens Go Missing

Tricia mentioned to me that it seemed like our flock of hens seem to be dwindling in number.  We have found a few dead ones with their heads eaten off.  Mostly though, they are disappearing.  The last time we counted, we had over 100 birds.  Now Tricia estimates somewhere between 50 and 60. This hasn't really happened to our flock over the last decade.  Something's afoot! 

My first thought is that a predator is on the prowl, killing our birds, and taking off with them to the little patch of woods directly behind our property.  I pulled our cage trap out of the barn.  It is a cage trap that I bought for cheap at Harbor Freight.  I have caught many varmints with this thing.   There is an art to trapping animals.  Some are easy to catch - some not so much.  I put the trap on what appears to be a trail in the grass where animals walk repeatedly and I set it with cat food as the bait.  The animal walks in the trap, steps on a metal plate while advancing toward the food, and that closes the trap behind them.

What experience has taught me is that I'll catch the possums first.  They aren't smart at all and are always the first thing you catch.  Other animals are more intelligent and crafty.  A few years ago I caught the neighbor's cat, Smokey.  I had to call and let the neighbor know.  The trap doesn't hurt the animal.  Smokey was fine.  We'll set the trap out tonight and see what happens.

The next morning I walked out and found, just as we expected, a possum (or if we want to be formal - an opossum).  She was a small to medium sized critter.  She hissed at me.  I think she could definitely kill a chicken.  I know if left alone, would breed and produce many, many possums which could decimate our flock.  She must be dealt with.  I handle the job humanely.  I don't enjoy doing it, but if it is going to be the possum's life or my chickens' lives in peril, I will choose to give the possum a dirt nap any day and twice on Sunday.

If there is a small to medium sized one, then that means there is a big one out in the woods as well.  I re-set the trap that evening.  Lo and behold, we caught a bigger male, no doubt the dad to the previous occupant in our trap.  This guy was not happy about his predicament.  He had scratched up his nose trying to get out.  I got him out of the trap.  Let's just say we are hopefully solving our predator problem.

I reset the trap again this evening.  I'm shooting for the trifecta.  We will continue setting the trap until we stop catching critters.  I walked through the woods and see many holes.  I think most are possum and armadillo holes as well as rabbit holes.  Obviously rabbits and armadillos don't eat chickens.  I think the culprits are possums, coons, hawks, and owls.  Hopefully, I'll knock the population of chicken thieves down.  The chickens thanked me for my efforts as I walked back through the barnyard.

Cooling Off With a Glass of Lemongrass Tea

It's hotter than a two dollar pistol.  This morning driving to work at 5:18 AM, the temperature was already 85 degrees.  At the end of another summer day, we are all exhausted - animals and humans alike.  We feed the chickens, gather the eggs, feed the goats, and get ready to milk the cows.  We have a little more than two more weeks of milking and then we will "dry the cows off."  There will be no more milk for several months until they start calving.  We've been milking twice a day for a year and a half.  It is past time to take a break!

Summertime is hard on us all.  At the end of the day, the cows gather around the water trough.  It is their sacred time.  They dip their mouths in the cool water and draw deeply.  You can watch as the gulps of water glides down their long esophagus.  It is a peaceful time.  The breeze gently blows, signaling a respite from the sun and heat for at least the evening.

Even Belle has found a cool spot underneath the pecan tree.  Unfortunately she's made some sort of a nest in the foliage of Tricia's lillies, destroying them in the process.  She doesn't know any better.  The leaves must be cool, I'm not sure.

Cows love drinking water in the shade.  Dogs like lying in a cool spot.  Humans have come up with a multitude of ways to cool off and refresh.  I'll show you one of the things we do.  A couple of years ago I purchased some Lemongrass Seeds.  There weren't many seeds in the package.  They were small, and light.  I was not impressed.  I didn't think that they would grow.  I planted them in our raised bed for herbs and lo and behold - they grew.  They proliferated and prospered.  I cut them back in the winter.  The Lemongrass survived over the winter and here it is in its second year:

It smells so good!  Even walking past it, you can shake the leaves and smell the refreshing fragrance of lemons.  On Sunday I cut off a handful right at ground level.  I washed it up in the kitchen and then began to cut the stems and leaves into little pieces. 

I filled a pot with water and began to boil the water.

When it started to boil, I turned the heat down, put a cover on it and let it simmer for a while.  After a while, I just let it steep.

I poured it through a colander to separate out the stem and leaves and put the lemongrass tea in a glass pickle jar we use for tea.  Once completely cool, I placed it in the fridge.

After coming in from a hot day working outside, I like to put some crushed ice in a glass and fill it up with homemade lemongrass tea.

So refreshing to drink with a lemony taste and fragrance.  It can be served hot or cold, but on a hot day like today - I like it COLD!