BRINGING WINE HOME: BOOK TWO.
....IS OFFICIALLY OUT!
You can find it on Amazon HERE (and as an e-book very soon) and read it anywhere––your apartment, the train, space––totally your call.For the uninitiated, Bringing Wine Home is a book project I've been working on for the last couple of years. It's the story of how I came to find farming (Book One), my first year on the farm and how I met my wife (the recently released Book Two), then our crazy first year of marriage (Book Three––available spring-ish 2014). Do you have to have read Book One to enjoy Book Two? No way––at least not necessarily. Though I believe Book One enriches the experience obviously, it's not a necessity. If you want, try Book Two out, and if you enjoy it, go back and read the first. Oh, and as the description reads, although it's technically a book about wine, and a book because of it, it is hardly a technical wine book. It is for anyone and everyone and that's you!Thank you and enjoy!- Jesse.
THIS & THAT.
Some random photos from the past week.
We had a long, hot day of harvesting garlic. But it was worth it!
Today, we will be making lots and lots of blackberry wine!
Adorable little turtle friend!
One of Little Seed's piggies found a creative way to cool off.
The kids learned how to identify mushrooms with spore prints.
PARSNIP WINE.
Parsnips are white-fleshed root crops which spend a significant amount of time in the ground––we're harvesting parsnips now that were planted in April. This slow maturation, coupled with the chill of winter, help to create a slightly sweet vegetable. There are few fresher flavors to me than parsnips. They taste a bit like carrots, though perhaps a touch meatier, woodier and often sweeter. I enjoy them roasted, pureed or caramelized, and soon - we're going to find out how much we like them in wine!I have already posted a basic mead recipe on Sustainable Kentucky, and there is simple wine recipe on our site, so I will spare you the basics of how I make wine. The only variation I made this round was to chop raw parsnips––in an attempt to preserve that fresh quality I love––and and added them to a basic mead. I let if ferment naturally, stirring a few times a day, and so far the results are very promising. I might one day try a recipe with cooking the parsnips first, but I greatly enjoy the raw flavor and so long as this works, I think I'm going to stick with it!- Jesse.
WINE AND (SHEEP) CHEESE.
Jesse and I went to a dinner party of sorts last night. Our friends Willie and Erin got a "Cheese of the Month" subscription for Christmas, which basically means that a box full of crazy cheeses comes in the mail each month. We were lucky enough to taste the latest delivery, along with some wine and sherry and homemade bread and figs and olives and blood orange truffle oil and all sorts of amazing treats.Besides hanging out with Oliver (the cat), my favorite part of the meal was surely the sheep milk cheese.....which has me curious once again about milking sheep. We have researched this topic before, and sort of forgot about the idea when we saw how expensive the milking breeds were. But man, that cheese was so delicious....- Hannah.
