End of March Garden Update

It's nearly the end of March, time is slipping away! But the garden is, shall we say coming together. Last weekend I bought and planted 4 blueberry bushes, got 6 kinds of lettuces (seed) in the ground (just in time for a huge storm and a good soaking...), planted the rest of the potatoes that have been sprouting away in a bag for 2+ months (they are an experiment since they started sprouting early and I ignored them until the last few weekends, and they were potatoes from our CSA not official "seed potatoes"), and planted 2 containers with rhubarb.

The strawberries all took quite nicely to their new home, and the parsley has survived a second replanting in two weeks (thanks to my haphazard planting the first time it needed to make way for lettuce).

I am hoping to get peas and carrots in the ground this week. Then our weekend projects will begin to include some important pieces of the garden puzzle--the raised beds and the chicken coop. Last weekend we installed a new door to the garage, so that we can easily get our bikes in and out and access the garden tools from the back yard. Installing doors makes me very grateful to have my architect/former construction worker husband!!

The chickens are growing, entertaining us with their antics, and so far only mildly sounding like there might be a rooster amongst the flock.

Garden Planning & Spontaneous Planting

I have been walking a fine line between planning and spontaneity in the garden this year. I planned my tomato planting carefully- getting the seeds in under lights Valentine's Day weekend, and then quickly and haphazardly re-potted in the middle of our move.

We had to relinquish our community garden plot a few days before we moved into our new house-- which meant digging up our beloved strawberry plants (and a few other stragglers that made it through the winter- kale and cabbage) and then leaving them in a bucket in the rain all week. So they had to get in the ground this weekend if they were going to make it. Problem was we were cleaning our old house and finishing the move on the same weekend, which meant no time for a well planned out strawberry plot or perfectly amended soil.

So I found a spot that looked like it would get some sun, quickly dug it up and aerated a bit and plopped all the strawberry plants in. The cabbage and kale received an equally quick planting, and the garden is officially started.

I planting Anaheim pepper and eggplant seeds March 7, and they are under the lights now- still no signs of germination, but it's been pretty cold in the house.

The chickens continue to provide more than a healthy dose of humor to our lives, and occasionally a little scare. Like yesterday when Mark came home and found only 3 chicks in the brooding box... the fourth chick, Goldilocks, was huddled in between the brooder and the wall. Stuck. She'd flown out apparently-- time for some mesh across the top I guess. I'm still convincing that Hyper, the Plymouth Barred Rock, is a rooster but only time will tell.

The compost bin has been installed, with a wire platform on the bottom (rodent protection) and we're up and running on that front (which is good since we'd been piling compost up all week in various containers and it was only a matter of time before that got gross.)

Next on the agenda: building 2 raised beds (3 if I convince Mark to put one in the front yard too); the chicken coop; and cutting a new door in the back of the garage for easy access to all my garden tools.

Our new house!

The Urban Homestead in Progress is officially "in progress", as of this weekend we are very excited to call this little bungalow home. This week we've been busy refinishing the Doug Fir floors. In between coats of polyurethane I've been busy re-potting tomato starts, fussing over the chicks to get them used to us (and Stella Dog), and making a plan for the yard.

We'll move in Saturday, and then the projects on the short list include: fixing the bathroom door, building a chicken coop, and putting in two or three additional raised beds.

Beer and Cheese

Our winter activities (while stuck at home in the rain) have include two new experiments: brewing beer and making cheese.

The beer process has been guided by the advice of our local homebrew store employees, and a great book (Joy of Homebrewing).

We have about five gallons of "Baller Brown" brown ale bottled and chilling in the basement. Might have to crack into in over the weekend and sample our first batch. (We did sneak some sips when bottling it, and it seemed like we were on the right track!)



The cheese experiment was a huge success-- probably thanks to the liquid rennet I found at the homebrew store. A friend and I made two batches, one with the readily available Junket rennet tablets (presumably vegetarian), and one with the "animal based rennet" that came in liquid form. The animal based one is sourced from veal, so definitely not vegetarian friendly.

The batch made with liquid rennet was amazingly easy- from start to finish about 20 minutes. The tablet batch didn't work out so well, after an hour and a half of waiting for it to thicken, we called it good enough and ate it in mushy ricotta-like form.

I experimented with using the leftover whey to cook pasta last night and it was delicious!

Chicks! Day One

The chicks are three days old, but it's our first day delighting in the hilarity of baby chickens!
(And Stella Dog is majorly curious, and can't stop reaching her head into their box to try and sniff their tiny heads!)

Yogurt Round 2

So after the overwhelming success of last week's yogurt making, I decided to try it again this week. The recipe I used last week called for one cup of dried milk. Which I was out of this week... so I gave it a go sans dried milk. And it sort of worked. It's mostly set, but definitely not the thick, greek yogurt of last week.

Stella Dog is psyched though, because while I don't like watery yogurt, she and her yeast-prone Lab ears love it.

Yogurt

During our Locavore Challenge this fall, we bought dairy products from a small farm outside of town. The yogurt came in big ball jars and in addition to being delicious, produced no extra trash at the end-- no plastic film cover to throw away, and no plastic tub to recycle. We re-use the yogurt containers for any number of things around the house, but go through at least one 32 ounce container a week and have piles of them in our cupboard. So I resolved to try to make yogurt, mostly to eliminate the packaging from our lives.

My first attempt was a time-consuming failure and the yogurt didn't set right or taste very good. So we fed it to Stella Dog. Who loved it.

Four months later I was ready to try again. Armed with a new recipe (from the Whole Foods for the Whole Family cookbook), and a new plan for keeping the yogurt at the right temperature I set out with low expectations.

First, you put 4C of milk in a pan and the recipe says to "scald them milk", unsure of what that meant I just heated it until it was near boiling. Once it cools back down to 95-115F, you add 1C of dry milk, which they didn't specify needed to be whisked in to dissolve, but I discovered quickly, and then add 2-4 tablespoons of yogurt with live active cultures. We had a giant tub of Nancy's Organic in the fridge so I used that. I was generous in the amount of yogurt I added.

Once everything is mixed together you put it in jars and then for the hard part... Keeping it between 95-115 degrees for 3-9 hours, or until it sets. Last time I tried preheating the oven and then turning it off. Even on the lowest setting it was too hot (and probably killed my yogurt cultures resulting in the failure to set). Other ways of maintaining the temperature including electric heating pads, using your food dehydrator, or setting the yogurt in a thermos wrapped in a towel. My food dehydrator is the type with trays, so that wasn't an option for me. So I settled on yet another option-- using a cooler and a hot water bottle to heat it up. The cooler maintains the temperature and once I played with the number of heat sources a bit I got it right and was able to leave the yogurt to setting without constantly checking the temperature. I used a digital thermometer to monitor the temperature and with one hot water bottle and one glass jar filled with boiling water and a few minutes for them to cool a bit, the temperature maintained at 111 degrees for long enough that I left for a few hours.

Six hours later we came back and the temperature was 89 and the yogurt was set! Success!