Another Thing we do with Muscadines

First off, we were blessed to receive almost none of the effects of Hurricane Ida.  That was mostly felt on the southeastern part of the state.  

Two days ago we were talking about the muscadine harvest that gets bigger every year as our vine grows.  We eat most of them just snacking on them, but tonight I'll show you another thing we do - we make New Wine with them.  New wine is full of flavor, fizzy, refreshing with none of the alcohol that regular wine has.  Here's how we make it:

After picking we thoroughly wash the grapes.

We use a very old juicer.  I think it is called the Juice Man, or something like that.  I think it was invented shortly after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.  We feed the grapes into the hopper and it spins into a mechanism that juices it.  The juice comes out one end and the pulp and seeds fill a bucket on the other end.

The juice is pretty thick, with some pulp in it.  It is sweet and sticky.

Here is the bucket full of muscadine skins and seeds.  I like to get everything I can out of it.  I thought about running it through the juicer again...

But instead, I squeezed it through a muslin cloth.  This has an extra benefit as some of the red color from the skins comes out which gives the wine a red tint.

The recipe comes from The Maker's Diet, by Jordan Rubin.

New wine only has 3 ingredients: grapes, whey, and salt.

Add 1/2 cup of whey.  This separates from the yogurt when Tricia is making kefir.

Then you add 1 tablespoon sea salt:

We pour it all into a big jar, cover, and sit it on the counter at room temperature for two days.

After two days, put it in the back of the refrigerator and 'forget about it' for a good while.  We start drinking it when it is about 3 weeks old.  It looks horrible, but the taste is delicious and something that you look forward to every year during muscadine harvest.

Tomorrow Marks the Anniversary

August 27th.  On that date last year, Hurricane Laura, a destructive hurricane hit the coastline of Louisiana.  It is tied for first place as the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the United States.  Friends and neighbors are still recovering, still not in their homes after a year.  Buildings are destroyed and still await repair.  It seems like an eternity ago in some ways, but in other ways - just like yesterday.  The wound, though scabbed over, is still tender.  I posted about Hurricane Laura Here and Here.  

So one year later, to quote Yogi Berra, "It's deja vu all over again."  Happy Anniversary!  We are yet again "in the cone."  Tropical Storm Ida.  We are beginning to prepare.  We have checklists and things we do in advance of tropical weather.  We'll enact our plan.

In looking at the projection below, this thing is projected to become a hurricane at 2PM on Saturday and hit Sunday at 2PM.  We live in Jennings.  On the map below, Jennings is directly below the "LA" and sits about 35 miles from the coast.  Last year, at this point in time, they were pretty accurate in the storm's track.  They were 'off' on the category and strength of the storm.

We'll pray and prepare.  We aren't afraid. We serve a God who created all and One who the winds and waves obey Him.  Whatever happens, His grace is sufficient.  We trust in Him.  We will keep in touch with you a little later.

High Time for Muscadines

Seven years ago my son worked at a nursery in Forest Hill, Louisiana.  He brought home a muscadine vine and we planted it in the side yard.  Muscadines are a grape native to the southeastern United States.  We used a cattle panel wired between two t-posts for a trellis.  Each year we've watched it grow and have picked many muscadines off of it.  It keeps getting bigger and bigger and we've installed extensions to the trellis to accommodate its growth.

They are delicious!  They have a deep flavor that is good even eaten off the vine while warmed by the sun.  They are full of seeds, so you better be ready to spit!  My oldest son solves that problem by eating the seeds.  Can you imagine?

The variety we have is ripe when it is dark.

At the peak of the season, you can pick a couple of quarts of muscadines.  There's always a bird's nest in the middle of the vine.  It is such a nice hiding spot for birds.  Birds certainly have to be careful around our house.  Our cat, Ginger, is a hunter.  She routinely hunts and eats birds, squirrels, rats, mice, moles.  She'll leave their bloodied and half-eaten carcasses on the back door welcome mat to proudly show us what she's done.  This morning there was a young cottontail rabbit that Ginger had killed.  The bad thing is, when Ginger eats her kill, it makes her sick.  She threw up all over the hood of our car while it sat in the garage today!  That was a long explanation to say "birds like to build nests in the middle of the muscadine vine to stay safe from Ginger, the crazy, murderous cat.

Here is a nice shot of a quart of fresh-picked muscadines, plump and beautiful.

Here is a photo of a few days' of the muscadine harvest:

Tomorrow I'll show you something else we do with them besides snack on them.

I Never Knew It Was a Berry!

It blew my mind when I learned that Eggplant is a berry!  What?  How can that be?  Well, This Link explains it:

"Eggplants are berries because of the way they grow and their structure. Berries are fleshy fruits that grow without a pit in the middle. They must also come from one flower with one ovary.

Since they fit that description, eggplants are berries."

Look at this nice crop of "berries!"  I was doing my best to support all the eggplant branches so that they could hold the weight  by wrapping them around the wire cages that support the plant.

There are a bunch of blooms on the plants as well, a promising sign for a bigger berry harvest.

My wife selected two nice eggplant from the garden.  Purple, shiny, smooth.

She sliced them up like you would normally do to fry them, but she had other ideas.  (I looked strangely at her when I observed that she had not peeled the purple skin off of them.)  "You can't eat that!" I said.  Well, apparently you can.  The skins are nutrient-rich.  But you must do it with a younger one, and these were younger.  Tonight, Tricia was making Baked Eggplant Parmesan.  She got the recipe from https://www.loveandlemons.com/easy-eggplant-recipes/

Preheat oven to 400 F.  Slice eggplant into 1/4 inch rounds.

Whisk 2 eggs and 1/4 milk.  In another dish mix 1 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs, 1 cup Parmesan cheese, 2 teaspoons oregano, 2 tablespoons thyme, 1/2 teaspoons red pepper, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and fresh ground black pepper.  Dip the eggplant rounds in the egg mixture and then into the panko mixture.

Put the eggplant onto a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and bake for 18 minutes or until golden brown.

Meanwhile, Tricia made a marinara sauce on the stovetop.

Spread 1/2 cup marinara on the bottom of a baking dish, layer half of the eggplant and top with 1 cup marinara and half the mozzarella.  

Repeat with the remaining eggplant, the remaining marinara and the remaining mozzarella.  

Sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup Parmesan Cheese, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with sea salt.

Bake 20 minutes or until the cheese is nicely melted.  Turn the oven to broil and broil for 2 to 4 minutes or until the cheese is browned and bubbling.  Remove from the oven and top with fresh basil.

This meal was a hit.  In fact, a home run!  We will add this to the rotation and will eat again and again as the eggplant harvest continues to come in.

The Water Trough

On a hot summer day, there is nothing as satisfying as a nice, long drink of cool water.  I can remember as a kid playing in the yard.  We'd be all sweaty and stinking like little puppies.  We would line up at the water spigot and someone would turn on the water hose.  This was an exercise in patience as you would have to wait for the water to cool off.  The water that was in the hose was scalding hot from the sun and unfit to drink.  

However, as they say, "Good things come to they that wait."  The person at the head of the line would be rewarded for their patience.  Soon cool water flowed from the end of the water hose.  You could drink and drink and drink.  It was so refreshing!  Pretty soon, though, the next guy in line would nudge you and let you know it was his turn.

Animals enjoy lining up for water, too.  August 22, 2021 was an important date at the Our Maker's Acres watering hole.  Today was the first day this year that I turned on the water valve to allow water to flow to fill the trough.  All year I've refilled the trough with rain water that we captured from our rainwater catchment barrels.  We have barrels that can catch about 500 gallons of rainwater off the dripline of our roof.  This doesn't count the 730 gallons we can catch off our our barn in the back.  Up until today, rainwater provided all water for the animals.  That shows how much it has rained so far this year.  

Here is the water trough.  The small one is for the chickens.  The big one is for the cows and goats.  There is a valve so that it doesn't overfill.  Looks like a peaceful place to drink, doesn't it?

I potted and replanted a pecan tree near the water trough to provide the animals some much needed shade while they drink.  

I like to watch the cows when they come walking up to drink water.  They are panting heavily.  They don't do well with the extreme heat.  They dip their nose into the water.  They drink much differently than a dog or a cat.  They don't lap it up with their tongues.  Cows slowly take deep gulps, drawing water into their mouth.  You can watch their throats as large volumes of water go down.  The cows are happy, peaceful and refreshed.

It is amazing to watch the water level go down as they drink and the valve turns on to refill the trough.  How much do they drink?  Estimates vary, but I did read that there are many variables, but a dry cow should drink 9 - 12 gallons a day and a lactating cow should drink 30 - 40 gallons day.  Amazing!!

Not For The Squeamish or Faint of Heart

Rosie is the matriarch of our little herd of Jersey cows.  She's the oldest, the leader, the bell cow.  Her breed, Jersey, tells you she is from the Island of Jersey, which sits in the English Channel right off France.  The temperatures are much nicer there.  Rosie is not real keen on the tropical climate in south Louisiana.  She gets very hot.  She pants.  Her tongue hangs out.  Often, we'll spray her down with water. 

She has a spot that she likes to sit in.  It is on the east side of our barn under a roof.  It is shady and cool.  Here is a photo of Rosie's shady oasis, where she seeks respite from the heat.

Rosie is mom to LuLu.  LuLu is two months old, so Rosie is very much in milk.  She has a nice big udder.  Well, here is the uncomfortable story of Rosie's latest adventure.  Rosie sits in the mud to stay cool.  Her body is sprawled out to get cool.  When Rosie went to stand up, she stood with her sharp hooves ON HER TEAT!  Ouch!  When she lifted herself, there was a big problem.  She continued to rise while standing on her teat.  Something had to give.  Rosie's sharp hooves sheared off a portion of her teat.

When Tricia and I went to the barn for evening chores, Tricia noticed that one of Rosie's quarters had not been emptied out by LuLu.  We looked and thought that there was mud on the teat.  I told Tricia, "Well, that's why LuLu won't nurse on that quarter.  I'll go spray it off."  So I took her outside, turned on the water hose, set the nozzle to the "jet" setting and began to spray off the 'mud.'  Rosie began kicking violently.  The 'mud' would not come off.  I quickly discovered that it wasn't mud - it was a big scab.

We tried to milk the quarter out, but Rosie was some kind of mad.  No success.  If you can't get the milk out, mastitis will set in.  Tricia visited our vet and got some antibiotic.  We gave Rosie a subcutaneous injection last night.  

Today, however, we needed to give it another try.  We don't have a head gate or a squeeze chute.  Using redneck engineering, we did the best we could, tying Rosie to a post and used two swinging gates to sandwich her between.  Note the purple lead rope that pulls the two gates together.

Then, we used a dog leash to hobble Rosie's leg.  This is crucial to keep her from kicking.  If you don't do this, she will kick you into next week.

Here is where I brag on my wife.  I can butcher chickens with reckless abandon.  It doesn't bother me.  However, an injured animal, bleeding and hurting really bothers me.  Tricia is strong.  Once Rosie was in our homemade squeeze chute and hobbled, Tricia tried to milk out the quarter, but no dice.  The scab covered the opening to the teat.  She then began the uncomfortable task of peeling the scab off of the teat.  Let's just say Rosie was not pleased with this medical procedure.  It is interesting that Tricia and I are different.  The things she's good at, I am not.  And vice versa.  We complement each other.  I am proud of Dr. Tricia's excellent work on Rosie.

You can see the damage to the teat below.  Eye Yie Yie!  But Tricia successfully opened the teat.

She began milking out Rosie's injured quarter.  You can see the infection from the mastitis she was able to get out.  It is the yellow globs of stuff below that looks like cottage cheese.  It is important that we get this out.

Finally, we emptied the quarter.  Thank you, Lord!  Tomorrow, we will do it again.  Saturday and Sunday we will repeat it numerous times. It was a stressful, painful afternoon.  As if to counteract the ugly task, God gave us a beautiful sunset to insert a little peace and stillness to the afternoon.  

It is good to finally have a peaceful afternoon after a rough go at it.  Rosie seconds that motion.  

Preserving Eggs - Part Deux

Back on April 20, 2020 we discussed an experiment we did called Waterglassing or Brining Eggs.  We used an old 'tried and true' method of preserving eggs.  You can click on the hyperlink above to read about how we did it.  I have to be truthful and tell you that this experiment was a massive, colossal, utter, total failure.  Eight or nine months following the experiment, Tricia opened the bucket and found...  eggs floating.  They were rotten!  Nasty.  Foul.  In Cajun French, the word is "pourri."  Tricia threw them back in the woods.  100 eggs.  Can you imagine?  

Well, we don't give up easy.  "If at first you don't succeed...." Tricia seems to think that maybe her hydrated lime had gone bad, so she bought new lime and we're going to give it another try.  It is summertime and our egg production has dropped to only about a dozen a day.  

They are nice, clean eggs.  You don't want to wash them.  The 'bloom' on the eggs keeps the eggs safe from bacteria.

You add 1 ounce pickling (hydrated) lime per quart of water into a bucket with a lid.  We stirred up the solution with a fork to agitate it.  The water becomes white and cloudy.  Then we added eggs - 2 dozen.  The eggs made the solution rise to the top of the bucket.

We put the lid on the bucket and we'll put it in a cool, dark place - the pantry.

We will once again check them in 6 months, maybe, to see if they are preserved.  If they are not, we'll shelve this experiment and eat eggs when they are fresh.  If our hens don't lay enough in the short days of winter, we'll just tough it out 'til the spring.  We'll keep you posted on our egg preserving experiment (Part Deux)  Maybe we should subtitle this post, "Don't try this at home!"

Treating the Feet

We've had a lot of rain this year.  So much so that we have become accustomed to mud even more so than we normally are.  Just a big mess!  The past couple of weeks it really dried out.  It was timely as it allowed us to drive right up to the bard to load the hay into the loft.  Wet or dry, you can count on one thing with animals -foot rot.  The poor goats struggle with it mightily.  We watch them gingerly walk around on sore feet.  You can smell the stench of infected feet when you get near them.  Yuck!

Tricia tries to keep the goats' hooves trimmed.  She diligently works at it, pouring Hoof and Heel over the affected area.  It will work for a few days and then we'll see Annie and Buckwheat limping around.  You just can't help but feel sorry for them.  They are miserable.  So we decided this weekend to give them a good treatment.  

We mixed 1 teaspoon of copper sulfate per cup of water into a bucket.  We put Annie up into the milking stanchion and tied her front legs and back legs together.  Then we lifted her feet up and put them in the bucket of copper sulfate solution and tied the bucket to the front of the stanchion.  We made sure the solution was high enough in the bucket to cover all the areas of her feet. We used our phones' stop watch to time the treatment for 15 minutes.  Then we repeated for the back feet.  

It was hot and uncomfortable.  Annie kicked.  I'm guessing the copper sulfate was going to work on the infected areas.  Sweat ran down our backs as we fought to keep her feet in the bucket.  It was a LONG 15 minutes.  

After much kicking and fighting and only minimal spillage of the copper sulfate, we were done.  All four feet treated.  By the next day, she was walking much better.  I think she might have even tried to tell us "thank you," but I cannot speak the goat language to interpret.

In Oberlin, Louisiana, where our family farm is, there is a road that my buddy lives on called Dipping Vat Road.  I'm told that it was named that because back many years ago, there was a cement (I think) trough-like structure that they would run livestock through to treat them.  It might have been flies, it might have been foot rot, but whatever the malady, the animals were run through for treatment.

I wish we could fabricate something like that at Our Maker's Acres for our animals.  We've read some about having them walk through tubs of lime.  Trouble is, with cows, goats, and chickens moving in and out, it would be very hard/expensive to do. We will keep researching to see if we can formulate an idea that would work a little better than tying up feet and shoving them in a bucket!  (But if it works, it's hard to knock it, right?)  We're always looking for an easier way.

Homemade Garden Markers

Every spring and fall when I plant the garden, I keep records of what is planted, when it is planted and where it is planted.  I keep all this in a note pad that I can put in my back pocket and carry with me into the garden.  I am aware of software programs that allow you to map out your garden so that you know all that data, but you can't conveniently take it outside with you.

To confuse matters, sometimes I plant saved seed that might be a little old.  If the germination isn't good, I'll dig up the ones that did come up and move them so that I can use that row for a planting of something else.  When I do that, it REALLY messes up my system.  Especially cole crops all look the same for the first month or two.  It makes it hard to know what I have planted on each row.

We've tried garden markers, but they didn't work.  The combination of sun and rain faded them so that you couldn't read what was on the label.  By the end of the season, they fell apart.  I figured this year I would use a little redneck engineering and make my own.  The only thing you'll need is: A quart sized yogurt container, a Sharpie, and scissors.

I cut of the ring at the top of the container and then cut inch-wide strips all the way down.

Then, I cut a point on one side and use the Sharpie to label the crop planted along with the date a planted it.  The date is a little something I added later.  If you know your crop matures in 90 days, you can inspect each row and anticipate when you'll be harvesting.

In the row below, I have 3 separate crops on one row: Rainbow Swiss Chard, Brussels Sprouts, and Bok Choy (Chinese Cabbage).  The markers help show where one crop ends and the other begins.

No more guesswork in trying to figure out what is in row 7 between the carrots and the beets.  Our handy-dandy row markers clearly show us.

We're still in the middle of a hot summer; however, yesterday morning and this morning, it wasn't quite as humid and there was a slight breeze.  We look forward to fall and winter and look forward to all of the fall garden crops.  We'll talk about what we planted later this week.  Perhaps this year we won't have to deal with two hurricanes...

A Loft(y) Goal

 A loft(y) goal.  Pardon the pun.

We got a text from our neighbor down the road that said, "We're baling hay and trying to get it done between rainfall.  Can you come pick it up?  $5 per bale picked up in the field. $6 per bale picked up in the barn."  Tricia contacted me and I did my best to finish pressing work at my job so that I could leave an hour early and head home to get the hay.  I left at 3:35 pm and made the 40 minute commute home.

Tricia and Benjamin had hooked up the cattle trailer to the truck and were ready to roll when I pulled up in the driveway.  I quickly changed and we made the 1 mile trip down the road to pick up the hay.  Our order was for 70 square bales of good Bermuda hay.  Our goal for the day was to pick up 70 bales behind the baler, pack them into the trailer and truck, bring it home, load it into the hayloft in the barn.  The over-riding goal was to get this all done before it rained on the hay.

It was really threatening to rain.  Note the rain you can see falling from the clouds as we arrived in the field at 4:30.

We moved FAST!  We each had a role to play.  Tricia drove the truck.  Benjamin loaded the hay bales into the back of the trailer, and I stacked the bales tightly in the trailer.

We kept an accurate count by calling out the number of bales as they were transferred into the trailer.

Tricia lined up the truck between the rows of hay that just came out of the back of the baler.  She would stop as the back of the trailer was lined up with the bales, so we wouldn't have to carry them far.  It was hot, but not oppressively so.  The trailer filled up quickly.

In order to get 70 in one trip, we had to stack the bales in the back of the truck, too.  The truck was squatting down in the back with all the weight of the hay, but she got the job done.

Benjamin, with all his youthful energy, would throw the bales easily to the top.

Finally, the 70th bale was loaded and our work in the field was done.  Benjamin rode on top of the hay on the way back home.  We made record time loading the hay - only 20 minutes lapsed between arriving and leaving.  We were in such a rush to beat the rain, we forgot the money to pay the neighbor, so Tricia headed back to pay as soon as we got home.

The work in the field was done, but we still had to load all the hay into the hay loft in the barn.  The pasture was too wet to pull the weight of the trailer to the barn, so we unhitched the trailer and made several trips to the barn in just the truck - about 16 bales each trip.

We have a pulley on a 4x4 in which we hook the hay by bungee strap and pull each bale up into the barn and then stack it.

We got all the bales stacked neatly in the loft.  They fit with a few to spare.  This will get us through the winter.  We also purchase round bales of hay from another neighbor friend.  We were happy to have the work done.

The work crew was still smiling after all the hard work.

We were sweaty and smelly.  We will certainly sleep good tonight!

We're always a little nervous about the hay spontaneously combusting and burning down the barn.  This happens if the hay isn't properly cured.  We just have to trust our neighbors.  They are professionals in what they do and have done it for many years.  For safety, we did move Elsie out of the barn for the night.  I can hear her mooing as I type.  The hay is in the barn and our goal was reached!  Hallelujah!!