Blogging al fresco

Happy Zombie Jesus and Marijuana Appreciation Day to all who celebrate! I am sitting on my front stoop with a big 7-Eleven coffee, enjoying the spring sunshine and admiring all the green growing things in the yard. I'm so happy our landlords planted a bunch of tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and narcissus in the garden. It's been such a nice surprise watching them all come up.

The dogs, cats, and chickens are all hanging around too. I just watched our hen Beatrice scavenge up the bedraggled, disembodied wing of a little birdie, probably killed by Freya our cat, and eat it with clucks and chuckles of pleasure. A few days ago she ate a mouse, whole!

Pictured above is Pearl, who was just acting very interested in going inside, and also in the contents of my coffee mug. I don't think that's a good idea, girl! Anyway, the garden is coming along. I have planted several perennials, including this artichoke:

It looks so alone and puny! Artichoke plants can get really big, though, so I planted it in the corner of the yard so it can just grow and sprawl out as needed.

This really exciting picture is of a bit of the polycultural vegetable bed, which is a fancy name for strewing a bunch of different types of seeds in the same bed together and just letting them all grow, thinning out and adding more as needed. I've got a few types of greens, beets, carrots, turnips, and such in here. I'm excited to see how this goes because it's way easier than planting in rows.

Here's a picture of the elusive Minerva Louise, from about as close as one can get to her. As I was taking this photo, Pearl snuck up and nipped my thumb, coincidentally the one I sliced open with a bread knife a couple weeks ago.

I've been continuing with my dairy preservation efforts. After making ricotta and finding it so easy, I made it again, this time with goat milk, and have also tried making butter, yogurt, and creme fraiche, with mixed results. Butter is as easy to make as ricotta, so I've made that twice now as well. I made yogurt successfully once with cow milk, then tried with goat milk and was left with a weird, half-lumpy yogurt-type liquid. My most recent experiment was the creme fraiche, which didn't work at all! It ended up as a quart of warm cream. I made it using some creme fraiche starter culture RC got from his work, but maybe the fact that it's expired means the cultures are dead. Who knows! It's been a lot of fun trying all these methods for preserving dairy. I could honestly see myself making butter, ricotta, and yogurt regularly, and I like the idea of rescuing a bunch of expired milk and cream and putting it to use instead of throwing it away.

Making Ricotta

In essence, urban homesteading is about taking oneself out of the cycle of consumption, and turning instead to creation. I make a lot of food from scratch but I still buy lots and lots of pre-packaged food: cheese, bacon, yogurt, bread, those plastic containers of baby salad greens, and so on. I want to start making more items myself, and so I turned to an easy one: ricotta!

RC works at a food co-op, and thus he gets first pick of expired items. This is how he was able to score two half gallon jugs of organic, raw milk from grass-fed cows, usually pretty pricey stuff, for nothing. To make ricotta, you need a half gallon of milk, one and a half cups of cream, a teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 cup lemon juice. You also need some specialty items: cheesecloth and a thermometer. Obviously a dairy thermometer is best, candy thermometer is good too, but I had neither so I used a meat thermometer, which was less than ideal but it did get the job done.

Put the milk, cream, and salt in a big pot and put it on the stove over medium-high heat. Stir it frequently, and when it reaches 195 degrees (which I tested by sticking the meat thermometer in the middle of the milk every so often, but if you have one of the other types of thermometer it should be easier to tell when it happens) pour in the lemon juice, stir a bit, and take off the heat. Then let it sit for five minutes.

After five minutes it will have curdled. It will be chunky and kind of nasty-looking. Now you have to drain off the whey, which is a yellowish liquid that is high in protein and can be drunk OR used to make lacto-fermented pickles, and can be frozen. Anyway, to separate, line a colander with three or four layers of cheesecloth and put the colander in a bowl. Dump the contents of the pot into the colander. Most of the whey will drain into the bowl within twenty minutes, and you can then decant into a jar or other container of choice.

If you want firmer ricotta, you can gather up the edges of the cheesecloth into a hobo bag and tie it over the wooden spoon, then hang it in the pot to let it drain even more. You're supposed to do this for an hour. We left the house at this point to run errands, but our car battery died while out so we ended up coming back after a lot more than one hour, and it was still okay.

After hanging it's all done, and will keep in the fridge for four days. It's that easy! Go forth and make cheese!

(I got this recipe from the June 2013 issue of Martha Stewart Living.)

My Plant Sale Spoils

We went to Seattle Tilth's March Edible Plant Sale and brought home some babies!

Clockwise from top left, you can see mint, fennel, comfrey, and rosemary. In the brown paper bag is the shy and elusive rhubarb, which is grown from a chunk of root.

I bought all perennials. I do plan to grow annuals as well but I am going to start them from seeds I already have in order to save some money. There are also many more perennials I'd like to get, but this is what I could afford to get for now. It's easier, cheaper, and less stressful to build one's garden gradually, rather than trying to get the whole thing done perfectly in one try. Meanwhile, these babies are living in the mudroom at night and sunning themselves on the back steps during the day, hardening off while I dither about garden fencing.

Honey Lavender Ice Cream

Or, what to do with all those eggs?

Both RC and I love ice cream! It's so good. I'm pretty much a lifelong fan: from grades 6 through 12 I ate a mug full of mint chocolate chip ice cream every night for dessert. I've branched out a bit, flavor wise, since then. We had a surplus of eggs, and so I decided to use them to make this vernal treat.

Since RC is lactose intolerant, I modified a recipe I found online to be dairy-free, but if you dig the dairy you can just use milk instead of rice milk and cream instead of coconut milk. Another thing to keep in mind: ice cream is easy to make but it takes a long time. So, start this the day before you plan to serve it.

Honey Lavender Ice Cream
(adapted from Martha Stewart)

Ingredients:
2 cups rice milk
1/4 cup dried lavender
1/4 cup honey
5 large egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk

Directions:
Heat the rice milk, lavender, and honey until it boils, then take off the stove and let sit for five minutes. You're basically steeping the lavender in the milk, just like making tea. Strain out the lavender and throw it in the compost bin! Put the lavender-infused milk back on the stove and bring to a simmer.

In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar together until thick and pale. I love using the whisk attachment on my stick blender for this step. Slowly pour in half the rice milk while whisking, then add this egg/milk mixture back in with the remaining milk in the saucepan, again pouring slowly and whisking the whole time. This step may seem finicky but you don't want to curdle the eggs!

Once everything is all back in the saucepan on the stove, continue simmering and stirring until the mixture has thickened enough to coat the back of the spoon. Remove from heat and stir in the coconut milk. Congratulations, you have successfully made custard! Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate overnight.

The next day, put it in your ice cream maker and freeze it up. I'm not gonna tell you how to use your ice cream maker: I don't know if you have an electric one, a hand-cranked one, or just a couple coffee cans that you kick around in the grass, so you'll just have to follow your directions. If you want soft-serve you're all done at this point, if you want hard ice cream you just pack it into a suitable container and freeze it for about six hours.

That's it! Happy ice cream eating!

Color

All four chickens are laying and so they're all, officially, adults! Hens not pullets. And we appreciate their efforts very much. It certainly sounds like a great effort to lay an egg; they all make that well-known "cluck-a-cluck-a-CLUCK!" sound right after laying, sometimes in harmony. It's loud but quite charming. It lets me know they're working hard!

Something I am coming to appreciate about these homegrown eggs is how beautiful they are. Sure, the nice deep yellow-orange yolk is often mentioned, but you can't forget about their shells. What variety of color and texture, even between the eggs of one hen!

Some of the eggshells have freckles, some have raised bumps, some have bands of darker color around the middle, some have wrinkles. The three hens laying brown eggs produce shells in every shade from the lightest tan to dark chocolate. Makes a carton of plain white eggs from the grocery store seem so boring!

Front Yard Pictures

There's actually been some respite from the endless gray clouds and rain lately. Yesterday there was a bit of sun in the afternoon, and today has dawned quite sunny (for Tacoma), so I'm feeling some hope that spring may eventually come. And that is getting me very excited for gardening!

I took a few photos of the front yard yesterday, with some cameos from the chickens. Though the garden bed is little more than bare dirt at this point, I look at it and see it filled with green, growing, edible things!

As well as adding plants, we will need to make sure that we integrate the chickens properly into the garden. We let the chickens into the front yard in the afternoons, when we're home to keep an eye on them. The rest of the time, they hang out in their run, which is accessed through that lime green gate in the last picture. But when they are up front, we need to make sure they aren't scratching up plants, eating them down to nubbins, or pooping all over them. At first, I believe we will just add one of those little wire fences along the inner perimeter of the garden beds so that the plants can become established, but I do want to make it mostly chicken-accessible in the long run. To that end, I have been reading this book:

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to attending Seattle Tilth's March Edible Plant Sale and buying my first perennial, edible babies!

Preliminary Garden Plans

Even though I'm thinking constantly about my garden these days, I'm not actually at home right now. I just had a total thyroidectomy, so I'm recuperating at my parents' house in Seattle for a few days. I haven't had much time to familiarize myself with the quirks and microclimates of our property yet, but I have a pretty good idea of a basic, preliminary plan for each of the three main areas. This post brought to you by hydrocodone and dreams. . . .

The first area of our property is the front yard. The front facade of the house faces north, and though this may not be ideal it seems as if there will be decent sun out there as there's no big street trees or anything. We have a white picket fence (squee!) and the garden bed borders the lawn along the fence line. At this time, the only plants growing in the bed are a lavender bush and a peony, so I'm very psyched to fill it up with plants that I can choose myself, rather than having to work around a bunch of dumb tiger lilies or something.

The second zone is the chicken run. It is fenced on all sides and encompasses the side yard and part of the backyard. I'm so glad this was here already so I didn't have to build anything, as fun as building the coop at our last place was. So far, this area contains the coop, the compost bin, and a lilac bush. The ground is covered in wood chips and weeds, a pretty good surface for chickens, but I also see this space as a blank slate wherein I can plant chicken-friendly plants that will function as shelter from airborne predators or the elements.

The last zone is a cute little brick-paved patio which is accessed from the driveway and from steps out the mudroom, which makes it perfectly placed for entertaining visitors in summer, planting things in containers, and grilling everything that's edible and not nailed down. It is on the south side of the house, but it has fences and the shed enclosing it on all sides. My friend Amber, who knows about this kind of stuff, tells me the brick paving will mean this area will be somewhat warmer than other zones.

So now that you know a little bit about the three zones, here's a quick rundown of my plans. I will be planting a varied mix of perennials and annuals, edibles and ornamentals, in the front yard. I want a large variety but I'm most interested in perennial edible plants, like rhubarb, artichoke, asparagus, strawberries, blueberries, grapes, and so on, as well as perennial herbs/medicinals like rosemary, thyme, sage, chives, anise hyssop, and of course, comfrey. I don't think one is allowed to have a permaculture garden without comfrey in it. Then, I will tuck annual veggies and flowers in between all these.

The chicken run seems to be a perfect place for native woodland plants, and so I am looking to add Oregon grape, salal, various ferns, and so on. I would also really like to try growing mushrooms out there, perhaps tucking a few pre-inoculated logs under plants or in moist, shady corners. I also want to add things like a dust bath area and other amenities for the ladies.

The patio seems to me to be the best place for growing tomatoes and annual herbs in containers, since it is easily accessible from the kitchen. It will also have the usual patio suspects like a picnic table, the grill, and my beloved aluminum-frame, nylon-webbed lawn chairs. The fences and walls on all sides will be great for hanging Woolly Pockets and slinging strings of cafe lights. Additionally, the landlord may be adding a built-in planter as part of the fence separating the patio from the chicken run, which I feel will be the perfect spot for some bamboo.

Okay, that's it for now! Pictures to follow if it is ever sunny again.