The heat of summer has arrived! Phil ran necessary errands in town while I worked inside, camped in front of the oscillating fan. When he got back, he stepped inside, said, “I think it’s time for the air conditioner,” and immediately installed it. Life is livable.
Even when we got a call that the turkey accident damage will run over $3000. (Life almost felt unlivable there for a moment for me when I heard that number. What a horrific amount of money to spend on such a stupid bird! How many thousands of eggs would we need to sell to make up that loss? Enough to feed two people farm fresh food for a year. Unbelievable.)
I took the Boardman feeders out for the bees. They are no longer clustered around the entrance to the hive, so I trust they are expanding properly now.
The warm weather is making the sheep pant. It’s shearing time. Phil sheared Isabella today. Last year, that three-hour ordeal was published in sheep! magazine. This year, it took about an hour, and I didn’t even go to see his work.
It was a good day of Spring Forth food. After homegrown eggs with lard for breakfast, Phil and I shared an Asian salad for lunch. We didn’t raise the olive oil, maple syrup, or vinegar for the dressing, but we raised everything else: chicken, snow peas, Asian greens, cucumbers, cilantro, red onions. It was a recipe I found online and I was pretty stoked to realize that we have every main ingredient growing here now.
Dinner was our own pork chops from our Berkshire hog. We haven't tried any of those yet, and I was ecstatic. I'm not a confident pork chop cook, but just putting the chops in a bit of lard and cooking over high heat, flipping three times total, produced succulent chops with delicious fat and no off flavor. I've never had meat like that, and I can't wait to have some again.
Our pigs are doing a great job turning up the well-manured sheep dry lot, and the compost pile that has been sitting for a year. Phil sprayed them down today, and Charles the boar was so happy, he rolled over on his back and let the water fall on him. Phil loves the pigs. (They intimidate me too much to love them, but I like them and am happy for their presence here.)
I also picked some flowers today and attempted my first bouquet. Flower arranging is an art that I don't possess yet, but I hope I'll get better with practice. And, as the plants get bigger, I'll have longer stems to work with. For now, though, i just desperately want the color out of the garden and into my house, where I can admire it.
The strawflowers aren't quite opened, and the gomphrena has such delicate coloring, it delights me. Basil as a filler works well; cilantro as a filler does not (too floppy too quickly).
Did I mention the lacto-fermented beets I made last week? I made both beet kvass, a powerful liver detoxifier, and lacto-fermented beets. The latter is so delicious, I made almost a gallon more. After cooking the beets and peeling the beets (which I may try to do before cooking in the future, since cooked beets take forever to peel!), I julienne the beets and put them in a jar with whey from our cow, Celtic sea salt, cardamom seeds (one of my favorites!) and water. After about three days, the beets taste like cardamom-beet pickles. Even Phil, who objects to the earthy "dirt" flavor of beets, thinks these are good.
And you can't beat (beet?) the color!
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