Sunday, July 24, 2011

Sauerkraut

What do you do with 13 lbs of green cabbage? In our house you make kraut. This was one of my favorite farm successes last year and while we won't have farm pig to go with it it will be great for all kinds of applications. This was four very large and oddly conical head of Danish ballhead cabbage and 8 tbs of pickling salt. It was fresh enough that no extra brine was needed and I am at about 1/2 capacity in my 3 gallon pickling crock. Last year I used food grade plastic buckets and am excited to break-in the crock.

I think my yield will be about 15 pint jars. I must pack it as that math doesn't translate. It is finally summer here so hopefully fermentation will be fast but not go off the rails. We have a lot more cabbage out there.

Incidentally, kraut Is vastly easier when using a food processor with a slicer attachment. I managed to do mine in about an hour start to finish. The Magpie crashed en route home from Seattle after a very successful 24 hr visit from her buddies Henry and Iris. Not much sleep to be had but lots and lots of fun including NW Trek and the farm. We will have to do that again soon.

Eric off at Rainier today emoting some split board action with Robie and I am looking forward to easy dinner out after the crazy weekend!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

photos for real



Finally - meet the Magpie.



Apparently it is very difficult to post photos from an iPad, and I have been lazy about posting from our regular mac laptop.

My fix? Using my PC at work. I promise - it's lunch time, and I won't do this regularly. But really, didn't we need some pictures? I thought so.



Thanks to Keith for the images!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Monday, July 11, 2011

Lost post

Oh Blogger - why do you hate me? I just wrote ON MY IPAD which is not easy an entire post about the farm tours we put on today for the retirement community where Doug works. Yes, our hosts have "real" jobs too, as well as the farm. But the post is now lost so I will just say it was a really nice day with some great folks. Sheep were coaxed to run for kettle corn, blue eggs were oohed and aahed over, berries were sampled, and the Magpie got a ton of attention. She also got some really good kid time with her farm friend and some visiting new friends.

The thing that I lost that I liked the most wasn't actually about the tour, it was shortening Doug's job description to recreationista, which is just perfect. And I will leave it at that.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

No excuses

I could get into all of the reasons why I haven't been posting but that is no fun and I am typing on an iPad during Magpie's swim class.

So I won't.

At the farm things are finally growing as now that we are in JULY summer seems to have hit. We are eating peas, onions, garlic, garlic tops, GREENS' herbs, lettuces, radishes, strawberries, raspberries, broccoli and beet greens. I don't count those with the masses of cabbages and kales. We have carrots, beets, and basils coming up from seeds, tomatoes putting on fruit in the hoop house, and the chiles are starting to take off. I have visions of late summer bounty and will plan on preserving mightily!

Things already preserved and, in some cases consumed: cabbage kimchi, green onion kimchi, strawberry jam, pickled onions (quick). I am so excited fo sauerkraut that I can hardly wait - last year that was a huge hit. Fermenting and pickling are more interesting than the sweet stuff but we will probably have a mix of all of it.

Off to help clean up the farm for the annual tours.

There are some photos to post but I need to figure that out....