Elbows, Ducks, and Cheese

It was spring all winter; now it’s definitely summer. I’m dealing with the odd seasons oddly—I’m confused and rushed. I haven’t done a thing in the garden, in part due to the tennis elbow I’ve developed working at the dairy. Tennis elbow isn’t a joke, as it turns out—it’s seriously debilitating! I may have to give up my remaining shift at the dairy to let it heal.

We sold the two Dexter cross calves—Hester from last year, and Maeby’s new calf. We just don’t like the Dexters, and there’s always the issue of breeding when you have a breed that’s smaller than any of the other breeds in your area. We would have to find Dexters to breed to, or Dexter crosses, and they’re not very common here.

I’ve also sold the Khaki Campbells. They are just too much of a pain to deal with; a pond or stream would help, but it also turns out I don’t really digest duck eggs all that well. Chickens and chicken eggs are more my thing. We’re keeping our little flock of Anconas and one Muscovy—they’re so much calmer than the Khakis, and then we’ll have a few duck eggs for DH.

I’m spending a lot of days in the kitchen making cheese right now. The girls are bringing in 6-7 gallons of milk a day, and we’re about to have a goat and a few sheep in milk. The relentless tide has begun! ED and I (and DH and Bernard to a lesser degree) are revisiting the idea of a small licensed cheesemaking facility—a micro-creamery. I’ll keep you all posted on those plans! Meanwhile, I’m pleasantly lost in the world of acid titration, butterfat, and flocculation.

Suddenly

Pearl’s milk production has picked up to 2-3 gallons a day, and suddenly I have to be making cheese. I’m trying to make enough feta to get through the summer, even though I much prefer making it with goat or sheep milk, partly for flavor, but mostly because yellow feta looks wrong to me!

The weather has been so, so lovely, but I can’t get a thing done in the garden, because it rains so often, the ground won’t dry out enough to work!

Baby tomatoes are up, and peppers, and cardoons. And nicotiana.

The girls and I are all burned out on the dairy. There’s too much to do here, and way, WAY too much to do there.

Maeby looks gorgeous. Her sister, Maude’s daughter, just had a calf and it sounds like she’s doing well.

Ok—off to the kitchen.

Equinox

The peach tree in front of the house has finished blooming, and is leafing out. The grass and clover in the pastures is belly-high to Joon.  It’s an early, early spring (it was 80° yesterday), and so far, there’s no end in sight. DH took on the miserable task of cleaning out the greenhouse this past weekend, which was a big job after the duckies spent the winter in there, and today I’m starting tomatoes.

Peach Blossoms

This seems a little early—here’s hoping a late freeze doesn’t kill all the flowers (and therefore the fruit)!

Spring

Spring is suddenly here. The peach trees are blooming, the daffodils are almost done, and I have so much to do that I keep procrastinating doing anything at all!

I’ve had such a hard time posting this month, I guess mostly because there’s been so little going on.

It’s snowing this morning, and last night was a howling windy snowstorm, after a couple of days of rain and thunderstorms and hail and tornados. Weird winter weather.

This afternoon, I’ve given myself two assignments: put together my seed and potato order for our group order at Fedco, and work on a design to replace our current barn, which is coming apart in all this wind. It’s been falling apart since before we moved in, and is too rotten to save, so it’s time to figure out how we want to replace it.

It’s actually refreshing to have a snowy day—though tonight’s 13 windy degrees isn’t sounding that great!

Potatoes

We dug more potatoes yesterday. The big knobby purplish ones are Caribe, the yellow ones are Cosighin, and the small red ones are Red Thumbs. We ate the Caribes and Cosighins last night.

The Caribes had a great yield, producing really big tubers, and they were kind of gorgeous (you can’t see in the picture that their skin is bright lavender-fuscia). They have white flesh, and an ok flavor, but with a hint of bitterness—just the tiniest hint. Their texture was kind of meh—DH called it creamy, I thought it was watery.

The Cosighins had a small to medium yield. They were also beautiful—golden skinned and yellow-fleshed, but their flavor and texture were great. They were very dense and smooth with a buttery flavor with no trace of bitterness. They were wonderful—too bad they’re almost impossible to find! These came as part of my sampler from Tom Wagner, so we’ll see if I ever manage to get any more!