1. We have the space for a garden
2. We like to eat food fresh from the garden because it tastes better
3. We know where the food came from and what was (“was not”, in our case) sprayed on it
4. We want to be more reliant on our own abilities to produce food
5. Its a good experience and atmosphere for the whole family
6. We feel we are better stewards of the earth and its resources by limiting the resources it takes to get the food to us

We did two things this year that I think has really paid off for us, we built some raised beds with good topsoil and we started our plants indoors instead of buying them at the nursery.

We built the sides of the beds from 2x12s with 4x4s for the corners . We located the boxes in the existing garden area. The boxes are four feet wide and ten feet long and there is space for twelve of them currently. We bought a dump truck full of topsoil to fill the boxes because our soil here is all clay. We felt that, overall, it would be best to get started with good soil instead of working for years to amend the clay to get the soil we wanted. This, so far, has been a great choice! The plants this year are better than we have ever had.

Plants From Seed

Starting the seeds inside has been very good for us too. I bought a florescent light fixture and two plant bulbs for it at the blue store. I then suspended the light above the table that we were going to use for the plants, and hooked the light to a timer. The timer was used so that we could get twelve hours of light to the plants when we still had snow outside.

We bought seeds and pots from the local seed store. We planted packman broccoli, watermelon, eggplant, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, bell peppers, anaheim chilies, serrano chilies, jalapeno peppers, artichokes, rutger tomatoes, big beef tomatoes, and italia roma tomatoes. We also planted some flower seeds for a new flower bed we were planning. The plants came up really well. It was very exciting to see them all grow and many times we were surprised at what actual plants looked like, we had never seen a broccoli or artichoke plant!

We didn’t lose any plants when we moved them to their new home outside in the new garden beds. We had a lot of leftover tomato plants and gave some to friends and planted some in the flower bed. Now that things have progressed during the year we have been thinking about our planting arrangement and will do it differently next year. Now that we know how some of the plants grow we will not plant the broccoli as close as we did, and we will probably space the tomatoes a little differently also. Overall, it has been a great garden and a great experience planting our plants from seed.

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Caramel Apples

I love caramel apples. Whenever we go to the local amusement park I can’t leave without buying one. There is just something about the sweet caramel and the tart, crunchy apple together that makes my taste buds do back flips. A few weeks ago I even broke down and took Tani to go and buy a caramel apple at a local place that makes fudge and has a few caramel apples in a fridge. They were not exactly how I like them, but they were really good. Unfortunately they were pretty dang expensive.

I decided that we should make our own. We have tried caramel apples in the past by unwrapping a bunch of caramels bought from the store, melting them and dipping apples in them. This just did not work well, the caramel does not stick right. Besides if I buy caramels at the store and melt them in the microwave, is that really homemade?!? I say no! I want real homemade caramel apples! I decided to try a recipe that Tani picked up recently.

Ingredients: 
• About 3 dozen apples at room temperature
• 5 1/4 c. sugar
• 2 1/4 c. light corn syrup
• 1 t. salt
• 2 c. half & half
• 1/2 c. butter
• 2 t. vanilla
• 2 cans evaporated milk

Instructions: 
1. Put sticks in apples and dip briefly into boiling water to remove any wax that may be on the apples. Dry the apples.
2. Spray or butter flat pans to place the caramel apples on when they are finished.
3. In a deep 8 quart heavy kettle combine sugar, corn syrup, salt, half & half, and butter. Cook over high heat stirring until temperature on candy thermometer reaches 220 degrees.
4. Add the evaporated milk gradually, stirring so that the temperature does not drop below 220 degrees or go above 225 degrees.
5. When all the milk is added continue to cook over high heat until the temperature reaches 238 degrees, stirring constantly to prevent sticking. (240 degrees if weather is rainy).
6. Take pot off the heat and stir until bubbles subside then mix in vanilla.
7. Working quickly, dip apples into caramel. If the caramel is too thick add a little water and heat it up again.
8. After they are coated with caramel, hand them to the kids to decorate with nuts, m&m’s, chocolate chips, melted chocolate, etc.

More Caramel Apples

The first batch we used some really huge apples, some Granny Smith and some Cameo apples. In my opinion only Granny Smith apples should be used but we wanted to try some red ones too. Like I said before the key to success is tart, crunchy apples and caramel. Mushy apples just don’t cut it, and many times red apples are mushy. I do have plans to try some other reds, in an attempt to let red apples everywhere gain my esteem.

There are a couple things that I can tell you from experience that will make things easier. Make sure you use a pot that is big enough, you don’t want this stuff boiling over and getting the stove all sticky with burnt caramel. Don’t get your knuckles too close to the caramel when dipping the apples, the caramels tastes good when you lick it off your burnt hands but it is nicer just to wait. If the temperature drops below 220 while you add the milk it still turns out super tasty. If you let the kids get as creative as they want decorating the apples everyone will have a blast.

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The Littlest Farmhand

We are pleased to announce that we have decided to add a new farmhand to the crew here on the farm. His name is Liam Michael McNees. He’s a little scrawny (8lbs 12oz), he will really need to put on some muscle before we let him buck any hay. He won’t be pulling his weight with the chores anytime soon either. So far he just lays around and eats as much as he can. None of his short comings seem to matter though, every time that he yawns or even opens his eyes everyone gets all excited and compliments him on being so cute.

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We have had a rash of things needing attention around here. It seems that things are breaking down left and right. So I had my pick of problems to start with.

I have a very long commute to Salt Lake City every weekday and so the thing that jumped to the top of the list was the air conditioning in my car. I took my car in to have the mechanic fix the air conditioning. The mechanic charged up the system with refrigerant and added some dye to locate the leak in my system. After a week I was able to see where the dye was leaking myself. We took the car back and we were told that the car needed a new condenser and that parts and labor would run $800.

I was encouraged by the fact that I was able to see where the refrigerant was leaking from. Never mind that it was right on top of the part that I was unable to identify as the condenser. I took the car over to my friend Eric’s house. Eric is a mechanic and I trade computer work with him for car repairs. I asked him about the findings and he verified that the condenser was the problem. He told me that the dryer should be replaced also. He walked me through the steps that would be needed to make the repair. By the time I got home that evening I really felt that I could make the repair myself!

I ordered the parts from Autozone (other parts places claimed they could not get the parts I needed) and the parts came in a couple days. I made arrangements with my carpool buddy to drive the next week just in case I had problems. Then on the designated Saturday, I went out to the garage with wrench in hand and set to work.

Condenser and Fan

The first step was to take out the radiator. No problem, I had it out in one piece in about 30 minutes. The next step was to remove the condenser, fan and dryer which are all connected. Again, no problem, in another 15-20 minutes I had the whole unit out. Sean came to help me at this point and we laid out the new condenser, took the fan from the old condenser and put it on the new condenser. At this point things were going really well, but things were about to change.

I removed a doohickey from the old dryer and using a wrench I put that doohickey on the new dryer. Sometimes super-human strength can be a curse. Apparently the doohickey and the dryer are both made out of aluminum and using my super-human strength I totally stripped the threads off of both parts. I was able to get a new dryer no problem, but the doohickey turned out to be a dual pressure switch which has to be special ordered from the dealership in Salt Lake City. It costs $98 and takes 3 days to get shipped and arrive in Salt Lake City.

Sean and I were prepared though. We needed to change the oil and filter in the car anyway and to replace the back break shoes. We had all the things we needed so we decided to change the oil and filter since we could not continue with the air conditioning. Sean drained the oil while I washed out the radiator, but he was having problems getting the oil filter out. We spent more time trying to get that oil filter out than it took to take the radiator, and the condenser out. We were very frustrated and then we noticed that we could just make out the numbers on the oil filter. We took the number to the parts store, found that it was the wrong filter for my car (thanks a lot to whoever I paid to change my oil for the very last time), and we bought the right tool to get that filter out. Five minutes later changing the oil was done, there really is something to having the right tool for the job.

Sean and I figured that we would go ahead and tackle the rear brakes. We jacked up the back end, used the impact wrench (worth every penny I paid for that tool) to get the rear tires off. The passenger side brake came off and went back together with no problems, although we did peek at the driver’s side brake to see how to put the passenger side back together. The driver’s side brake had a leaking wheel cylinder though, so I ran to the parts store and got a new one. While putting the wheel cylinder back on the super-human strength once again became a problem. I broke a bolt off in the new wheel cylinder. If the super-human strength were not so handy when I need to open pickle bottles I would gladly give the power up! We threw in the towel for the day. I did make one more run to the parts place to get a new bolt and to get tools needed to extract the broken bolt.

We took up the work again on Monday. My friend Paul extracted the bolt for me on Sunday. Even though I wanted to do it myself, I am very grateful for the help. The brakes were finished on Monday and Eric taught Sean and I how to bleed the brakes. The dual pressure switch came a couple days later and I put it on the dryer, connected the dryer to the condenser, and put the whole thing into the car and connected the hoses. The radiator went back in, and all the hoses were connected. We refilled the fluids and then tried to start the car. It all worked! Well the air conditioning still needed to be charged, but it was all back together and working so far.

Dual Pressure Switch

I had purchased the tools to recharge the air conditioning previously and following the instructions and with some help I was able to get the air conditioning all charged up. Here we are a couple weeks later and the air conditioning is still going strong! The mechanic wanted $800 to do the work, I spent about 8 hours and $400 to do the air conditioning, brakes, and an oil change and that included buying some tools and replacement parts.

Would I do it again? You bet I would. Having done it once, I am sure I could do it again faster. It is an experience that paid off in several ways. I got the work done that I needed, my air conditioning works, I saved money and I learned a lesson in self reliance. When I finished I thought of the words of the sage Red Green “If women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy”. I sure feel a lot more handy than I did a couple months ago.

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Pulsator Going Back Together

Unfortunately, when we tried to use the milker this morning the pulsator did not work for some reason. When we bought the milkers I also bought a kit to rebuild a pulsator. So I sat down this evening and following the instructions I took the pulsator apart, cleaned it, replaced the worn out parts, and put the whole thing back together without any extra pieces being left over. It was very interesting to see how the thing was made and put together. After putting it all back together I put the pulsator on the milker, hooked up the vacuum pump and turned it on. It worked! Tarena helped me test it by putting her fingers in the inflations and each time the inflations squeezed she would say “Ow”. “Ow, Ow, Ow, Ow” and we have ourselves a working milker again.

My plan is to rebuild the second pulsator tomorrow, I would have done it tonight but I ran out of Brakleen for cleaning the pulsator parts. We will then have two working milkers, with new rubber, and newly rebuilt pulsators. One milker for regular use and one in reserve in case of breakage or emergency. Now if I can figure out a good backup for the vacuum pump I will be set.

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Vacuum Pump

When we first got our cow we tried milking by hand. Milking by hand was a good experience. Now we know how to milk if there is no power, it is also very easy to clean up since you only have the bucket and the filter to clean. Unfortunately it takes a lot of work to do the milking, and while you are milking there is a lot of ways to get stuff falling into the bucket, like cow hairs, mosquitoes, and cow pie bits. If certain things fall in, it does not matter how many time you filter it you just won’t want to use it, making the whole milking a waste.

We decided this time when the cow freshened that we would get a milker. When the cow did freshen we were not ready to buy the milker, but a neighbor was kind enough to loan us their milker for a while. Having the milker through the winter was great. It did a great job keeping the milk clean, but the milker was difficult for us to clean. Our neighbor has a sink in his barn where they milk and they are able to clean it right out in the barn. We needed to haul water out to the barn to clean it which was a pain. Our neighbor has a wood stove burning in the tack room of the barn where they keep the milker, we had frozen hoses several times which made us start taking all the hoses, bucket, and claw into the house after each milking.

The milking was a fairly long process. A couple buckets would be filled with hot soapy water. The milker bucket, hoses, and claw would be hauled out to the barn. The cow would be hooked up and milked. After milking, the milking bucket would be taken in the house and the milk would be filtered and put in containers. Then the milk bucket and bucket of soapy water would be taken back to the barn. The milker would be washed and the dirty water emptied. The bucket would be rinsed and filled with water again, hauled out to the barn. The milker then would be rinsed and rinse water would be emptied. The wash bucket, milk bucket, hoses and claw would then be hauled back into the house and the filter would be cleaned. The reason everything had to be taken out to the barn is that the vacuum pump is very heavy and would be impossible for one person to get in and out of the house.

Surge Bucket Milker

We are very grateful to our neighbor for loaning us the milker. It let us have good clean milk. It also helped us make decisions as to what we wanted in a milker. We wanted a milker with no long hoses. We wanted a milker that could be cleaned in the house without the use of the vacuum pump. We wanted a milker that was easy to use and easy to carry in and out.

We decided to buy a surge bucket milker. There was a small problem though, production of surge bucket milkers ended in 1999. I started bidding on old, used surge milkers on ebay. By the time I was done bidding I had one mostly working milker (all that was needed was to replace the inflations) and another that needs a few parts worked on. I also bought a small, very portable vacuum pump which will stay in the barn on a shelf Sean and I built for it.

The new milker really sucks! It works really well and milks very quickly. It is easy to get back and forth from the barn. It is easy to clean. It has no long hoses. It keeps the milk clean. We are very pleased with the purchase and would recommend the setup for anyone that has only one or two cows to milk. The surge bucket milker is great.

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Calf

Yesterday was my birthday, and the day started out with a great surprise birthday present. It really was not a total surprise. We have been expecting a calf for several weeks now, and it arrived early in the morning on my birthday.

Being new to animal husbandry we waited longer than we should have before introducing Rose, our dairy shorthorn, to a bull last winter. Our neighbor was very generous and brought his black angus bull over to visit Rose in our field. We kept him here for a couple of months to make sure that there was plenty of time for Rose to become pregnant.

We probably were not as vigilant, or nosy as we should have been. We probably should have calculated the number of days in the pregnancy better than we did. We dried Rose up in the beginning of August to let her build up her strength and fatten up a bit. We were expecting Rose to calve around the last week of September. The September date came and went. We thought she looked plenty fat, but this was our first time doing this so what did we know?

We started getting worried around the middle of October. She was fat but still no calf. We started thinking she might not really be pregnant. We asked our neighbor who owns and runs a dairy to come take a look at Rose. He taught us how to “bump” Rose and Tani and I were able to actually feel the calf! It was pretty neat to learn how to test to see if she was pregnant, and it was a relief to be able to stop wondering if there was going to be a calf.

Here we are a few weeks later with a cute little heifer, and both mother and calf are nice and healthy. We are looking forward to milking again. Fresh milk, home made butter, yogurt and cheese! What a great birthday present.

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Last year we tried pulling up all the plants and bringing them inside. We hung them upside down in the storage room and waited for them to turn red. They did turn red after a while and we were able to use them. This did create some mess with dirt tracked in and tomatoes that fell to the floor and went splat.

This year we opted for going out and picking all the green tomatoes off the vine. There must be ways to use them. Only frying them came to mind, and only because I had heard of it as a title of a movie. After searching the web we have found some ideas that we have never tried and we decided to experiment and see if our family liked any of them.

Fried Green Tomatoes

I decided that we would try the first recipe that I found on the internet. I did a quick Google search and pulled up a recipe from Simply Recipes. The fried green tomatoes were pretty easy to make and we ate them with some spaghetti that we were making for dinner. They turned out to be really good, everybody in the family thought that they were pretty good. Jeremy Gardner was visiting and even he (a disliker of tomatoes) said that they were good.

Green Tomato Salsa

Salsa and Piccalilli

We made two different green tomato salsas. The first salsa we made was a fresh salsa following a recipe that sounded good at recipetips . It was darn good too. Once again Jeremy Gardner said that it was good and was surprised that, as a disliker of tomatoes, he was liking the green tomato experiments so much.

The other salsa we made for canning. We used a recipe that was posted on a garden forum. We bottled the salsa and we sampled the salsa that did not fit in the bottles. It was very mild but tasted pretty good. Sean said that we could blend it up and use it as enchilada sauce on chicken enchiladas, which I think would be really good.

Piccalilli

We also made Piccalilli, which is something that I had never heard of before I ran across a recipe when searching for things to do with green tomatoes. At suite101 there were several ideas of things to make with green tomatoes and one was piccalilli. It turned out to be very tasty. We ate the portion that did not fit in bottles along with some grilled chicken and it was really good. The family thought that it would be good on hot dogs so we will have to try that soon. I was very pleased with the piccalilli, it tasted good and is very nice looking in the bottles too.

Green Tomato Raspberry Jam and Strawberry Jam

This one sounded very interesting and was really easy to make so we just had to try it. This recipe I found at allrecipes and there were a lot of good reviews. I have not tried it yet, but Sean and Tani both said it was pretty good. I’ll have to add a comment when we break open a jar and try it.

Enchilada Sauce

Enchilada Sauce

We were given a recipe from a friend for green enchilada sauce using green tomatoes. This turned out really good and I think I almost single handedly finished off the stuff that did not fit in bottles. I got a plate of corn chips and melted cheddar on them and dipped them in this sauce for lunch one day. It was really tasty! I can’t wait to make enchiladas with this for dinner one night.

We had to give up on trying to make things out of green tomatoes because the tomatoes have now either turned red, or turned black. I did not know that so much could be made with green tomatoes and look forward to trying some new experiments with green tomatoes next fall when the cold cuts the life of our tomato plants short.

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Apples

Through the generosity of some friends we had the opportunity, a few weeks ago, to go and pick apples at an apple orchard. The apples were ripe and beautiful and we did not actually need to pick them off the tree, the apples were just itching to fall off the tree so we did a lot of picking them off the ground. We did try putting ground cloths down on the ground and shaking the trees to get the apples off, which worked really well and we cleared a tree in just a few minutes. Most of the apples came from the ground though and they were wonderful.

Next came the step of preserving the apples. Apples are awesome, there are tons of ways to preserve them. Our first thought was to dry some and to make applesauce. We dried some apples and we made a bunch of applesauce which we like a lot. We especially like eating applesauce with our home grown pork chops. I had never had pork chops and applesauce until, as a kid, I saw Peter Brady imitating Bogart saying “pork chaawpsh, and apple shaush”. I remember asking my mom if we could have that for dinner, and ever since it is hard to eat them separately.

We had a lot more apples and decided that we would make apple butter. I thought that sounded great, I like apples and I like butter so apple butter would be awesome. It is awesome, but let me pass on something I learned. Apple butter has no butter in it. I was shocked! Honey butter has honey in it, but not apple butter. Apparently the term “butter” refers to the thick, soft consistency. Now that I think about it this also explains peanut butter. Besides, I can always butter the bread before putting on the apple butter.

With still more apples left I thought apple jelly would be good. On the rare occasions that I have had breakfast in restaurants I like to put apple jelly on the buttered toast that is brought out with the breakfast. We found a recipe on the internet for apple jelly and decided to give it a try.

With some hot bread, butter, apple butter, apple jelly and applesauce and a little help from Disney’s American Legends our Johnny Appleseed celebration is complete. We can enjoy a show loosely based on the man who was an American legend in his own time, and enjoy the products of the fruit he championed. The family thinks that next year for Johnny Appleseed day we should have apple pie, and apple cake and that we should plant an apple tree. I think Johnny Appleseed would approve of that.

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Spam, Bacon, Sausage and Spam

We bought four weaner pigs today, and according to long-standing tradition (long-standing being three years) we named them Spam, Bacon, Sausage, and Spam. Since we moved here we have raised some pigs each year. We raise a couple pigs for our family and for friends that would like a pig that is raised on a local farm, fed good food and that is treated humanely. This year in addition to the pigs for our family we are raising one for my friend Mike and one for my friend Steve.

When I was young I helped raise rabbits for food. I would raise the rabbits and my dad would do the rest. I don’t remember it being a big deal to me but I suspect that it was hard for my sister and brother. When we started raising animals, here at our little farm, that would eventually be harvested for food we were a little worried about how the kids would handle it and if it would bother them. From that worry we gave the animals names that would make it clear what our intention was and help them not become attached and make it a pet. That worry and a little Monty Python and the pigs got their names, the same names they get each year.

Our first spring here we bought some chickens. We bought some for laying and we bought some that would be good for meat. By the end of the summer it was time to harvest the meat birds and so I got twine, the axe and the log stump and went out behind the barn with the birds and told the girls to stay away. Their curiosity was to much for them though and I finally had to give in and let them see. A week or so later we were eating chicken for dinner and the girls asked if this was our chicken, and we told them that is was not one of ours and they responded with an “Awwwwwwww” of disappointment. We have not been as worried about them becoming too attached to the non pets since then.

As I have mentioned in other posts, our garden has a large amount of clay soil in it. In an attempt to help our garden soil Sean and I built a pen out of pallets in our garden area. We are hoping that as the pigs root it the garden area that we are experimenting with they will till the area really well, eat all the grass and weed roots, spread compost about and also fertilize the area. If the experiment works well we will be able to move the pen to expand the garden next year. I am excited to see if this idea works.

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