WENDELL WEDNESDAY.
After a two week break (doctor's orders), Wendell was back to his daily swimming routine today. Happy dog.
DOUBLE BOOKED.
In addition to our lovely little blog, Jesse is happy to have joined the team over at Sustainable Kentucky! He will be contributing an article each month dealing with fermentation - pickles, wine, beer, kimchi, kombucha....you name it! Be sure to check out his first article here, and leave him some comments about what you'd like to see in his future posts!- Hannah.
 |
| (image from Sustainable Kentucky) |
FARM SITTERS.
While some of our CSA members are away on vacation, they asked us to do a favor for them in watching their own little farm. We happily agreed, because this is truly more of a favor to us! We LOVE their farm - especially the sheep and donkeys. Jesse and I worked with sheep at Bugtussle, and they are wonderful animals. We cannot wait to have our own - to raise for meat and fiber. And donkeys - I mean, just look at them. We're probably gonna need a few of those, too.
BETTER BUTTER.
While living at Bugtussle, we had the amazing privilege to drink our daily fill of raw milk. This was new to me at the time (I had previously been a VEGAN!) but I quickly learned to love it. But even better than the milk was the heavenly, golden yellow, raw milk BUTTER. Jesse and I love to dream about the day when we have our own milk cow and our own butter. But until that day, when we we are up to our elbows in milk and yogurt and cheese and butter and kefir – we have to buy cream to make our butter. We use a low-pasteurized local cream (we haven’t yet found a source for raw cow’s milk) and the process is quite simple. Simply fill a mason jar (only about half way full) and shake. And…that’s pretty much it. I usually have to shake for about 10 minutes. As you are shaking, you can feel the cream start to change. It will fluff up and you feel as though it is done, but that is simply the whipped cream. Keep shaking! It will eventually separate (you’ll hear the “KA-CHUNK KA-CHUNK” again as you are shaking). Then you can pour the contents through a screen (save the liquid…that is buttermilk!) and work the liquid out of the yellow, solid butter. Run cold water over the butter as you press and squeeze out the liquid. You can then scoop the butter into a mold, if you like, or add salt or other herbs. This works well for us as it makes a lot of small batches and you don’t have to worry about making too much. It definitely is NOT cost effective for us (We eat. A LOT. Of butter.) But it is a lot of fun. Also, I am pretty sure this would be an awesome way to buff up your arm muscles….it’s tough work! Someday, we will have enough of our own milk to use our beautiful butter churn (thank you Elin!), but until then, I’ll just keep on shakin'.
