It is definitely fall. The weather has changed, the leaves are turning, the garden is winding down. The young hens are laying their first eggs, by the waterer, in the food bucket, in the mud.... The old hens are really slowing down, the 1st two batches of roosters are getting big, soon they will go off to the meat shop in tacoma and come back for the freezer. The basil needs to be harvested and made into pesto, the potatoes need to be dug, the beans really need picking, and the house needs cleaning.

Today is the 1st day off (full day off) I have had in about 3 weeks . The students have pillaged the bookstore. I am certainly tired...

Current Mood: tired

It is tomato weather, they like it, I don't. 

I made cheese this morning at the goat farm. The air temp was as warm or warmer than the temp of the cheese kettle - by 10 am!   We made a pepper jack because we can get out of the cheese kitchen faster.  I also packaged up some year old gouda like cheese - wow it is really good.

Last night we went to a couple of art openings (actually 3 but two of them were in galleries next door.) Bill had items in all three galleries.

It was hot in Tacoma (and olympia) I usually don't go to these things, because we get home so late. I don't last much past 10pm. It was a fun evening, lots of interesting art, good conversation and contacts made.

Today is laundry, garlic harvesting, weeding and all sorts of other house stuff.

Chickens are very stupid.  One of the smallest chicks crawled into the narrow necked mason jar that is the reservoir for the feeder (I can't even begin to figure out how they managed to unscrew it from the feeder.)  We had to break the jar as we couldn't get her out otherwise.

We like garlic, we like it alot.... We have 2,000 heads in the ground (Bill counts stuff like that.) and at least 7 varieties which I can only name 6 at the moment.

  I don't know, but I do know that we have been eating the scapes (the flower spike for hard neck garlic) for the past two weeks.  I have come to the end of the scapes, after 85 jars of pickled garlic (note to self buy more jars for the beans in a month or so) 14 tubs of garlic scape pesto in the freezer and a few scapes to blanch and freeze (experiment time.)  I ran out of jars and mustard seed at about the same time.

For our SCA friends, we won't be at the War.  The Bookstore has scheduled inventory for the 1,2 and 6 of July. 

Boy am I tired.  I am not sure I am going to stir from the property all weekend, I have to leave the house to tend the garden, the chickens and the incubator, I might walk to the bakery, and then again I might not.....

I spent Saturday and Sunday at the goat farm, making cheese.  Chedder with Ale soaked mustard seeds, made about 20 pounds of it.  We cleaned out the cheese cave, added a new shelf unit and sorted cheese.  We  tasted some of the wheels before packaging them for sale.  Th 12 month Cheddar n 10 pound wheels was very nice - sharp!  the year old jack was a nice dry jack.  We also figured out how to package teh haloumi in brine with teh vacuum packer.

The garlic is growing nicely, the potaoes are up.

omorrow is house chores, lawn mowing and repotting plants. Oh and dishes....

Yesterday I went to the Seattle cheese festival - going on today as well.

Lots of cheese, I wandered around with some folks from the Madrone Culinary guild and then went to some seminars.  Tasted way too much cheese, drank some wine and then went to another cheese tasting put on by the Mons compay from France - really nice cheeses!  Didn't bring home too many samples.

Too many cheeses to list.  Some day I am going to visit the Mons company and their 5 or 6 caves....

Picked up some Rose water, couscous and fine bulger at the Souk and mustard seed and Tea from World spice.

Now it is off to mow the meadow that is passing as our lawn.....

We have houseguests.  Unchi Rita and her son Nathan are staying with us this week.  They are part of a series of teachings/ listenings here at the College.  Unchi Rita is one the the 13 indigenous grandmothers (there are 4 visiting Evergreen this week.)They are Lakota from the Pine Ridge reservation.

I made 3 pepper jack cheese today. (three peppers because I used the Aji mirasol, Pasea Oaxaca and Paseo Negro peppers.) It turned the whey orange and the cheese molds too. The yield on the cheese was very good, 5 2.2 kilo molds full.  I also made ricotta.

It rained off and on (mostly on) today, very hard at some points.  My guests wanted to know if it rains like this all the time.  "at least until July" says Bill.

The chick count is up to 7 now, the last one is damp and very tired....  hatching is a lot of work!

The grandmothers are plotting a rip to shipwreck beads! Look out!
 

Yesterday I made 6 kinds of cheese in 3 hours with about 15 people helping.  I taught a cheese class for the local food coop. It was great fun, somethings workd and others did not.  I tok some pictures of the finished cheeses.  Will have to get them up.  Today, for the first time in many weeks I stayed home (I am fighting somthing off and didn't want to infect the folks at the goat farm.) So I did laundry and dishes and mowed the lawn.  2 wheel barrows full and I hardelymade a dent in the front.  there is areasn we have a big garden..... lawn mowing is one of them.....

Current Mood: tired

Yesterday I made a lot of ricotta, as a by product of making haloumi. Tomight bill made a lovely garlic parsley egg pasta and made ricotta and roasted garlic ravioli. Add a home made red sauce and wine we made last year and dinner was really yum.

The wine has made me a little tipsy - I am such a cheap date....So it's off to bed, tomorrow is an early day at the bookstore. Followed by a trip to the trainstation to pick up a friend.