I've been gardening for most of my life and have been a devoted fan of organic gardening the whole time. It just makes so much more sense to work in harmony with Mother Nature than to fight her. Besides which it is better for the planet and better for our bodies. Here you can see what I'm planting and harvesting, with gardening hints and resources thrown in for good measure.
Welcome to Farmer Friday, a recap of the past week here on my little farm. Egg production is still down due to a majority of the flock being senior ladies that quit as soon as it gets hot. Waiting to see how many pick back up when it cools off and who needs to meet some dumplings.
Salting the cheese curd
Some clabber cheese
I made cheese this week, experimenting with clabber. That is the technique of filtering warm raw milk into a clean jar and capping it lightly. You leave it out on the counter to begin to sour or clabber. I started with 8 ounces then the next day poured it into a quart jar and added more warm fresh from the goat milk. The day after I added that to about 2 1/2 gallons of milk, some fresh, some from the fridge. Warmed it up and let it sit about an hour, then warmed it up to 90F and added some rennet. After draining and salting the curd I pressed it in molds overnight. It's very much like some Queso Fresco I've had.
Soap in the freezer makes it easier to unmold
I've made several batches of Goat Milk Soap this week.
Goat Milk Soap with Lavender essential oil
I also finished cutting bars of soap made earlier in the month. My soap is super fatted and can be a little sticky when first unmolded so I let it sit to firm up then begin cutting individual bars. Altogether it has to sit and cure 6-8 weeks after making. That is so the bars harden up and don't melt away when you use them.
Making Goat Milk Lotion with Prickly Pear juice
I made some Goat Milk Lotion with prickly pear cactus juice. Prickly pear is supposed to have healing properties similar to aloe vera.
Sonoran Desert or Colorado River Toad
I have quite a few poisonous toads hanging around. So far Digger has not tried to eat one, just barks at them.
Some peaches from Nida's Peach
I had to pick the peaches, even though they are not soft ripe yet, the birds and squirrels were just too much.
Harvest 8/30
All ready to go to the Globe-Miami Farmers Market
This week's harvest included cucuzzi gourd, tomatoes and Japanese eggplant.
Tithonia aka Mexican Sunflower
A lot of other things went on this week, yard clean up continues, the triplets broke their mineral feeder and I had to fix that.The cucuzzi gourds are taking over the trellis by the house and trying to expand their territory while the pumpkins in the back garden are trying to take over the world. Even more things in the video!
So yesterday was a very busy and pretty productive day. I didn't have to be anywhere else so I was able to stay home and focus on things I needed to get done. There is still a huge long list of things to do but I was able to cross some off yesterday.
I made goat milk soap and lotion. I gave the prickly pear juice a final straining and made some prickly pear lemonade. I set a pot of cheese and just before bed got the curds salted, drained and put into the molds and the press. Oh yea and I fixed the mineral feeder that the triplets broke a couple days ago.
I love the color of fresh prickly pear fruit, although it does fade under light and heat. Here I've cheated and bought a natural brand of lemonade, basically like what I would make from scratch, lemon juice, water, sugar and mixed it 50-50 with the prickly pear juice. Totally delicious.
Prickly pear is supposed to have healing properties similar to aloe vera so I used it to make Goat Milk Soap, Lotion and Sugar Scrub.
Welcome to Harvest Monday! This is a blog hop that I used to participate in regularly and I'm trying to get back in the swing of things here. You can see more participating blogs here; Harvest Monday
This past week I harvested about 24 pounds of prickly pear cactus fruit.
Cucuzzi gourd
Thanks to the Hollar Homestead over on YouTube for showing this new vegetable. So I knew what it was when I saw the seeds. It does however look like it might take over the world!
Eggs and bird pecked peaches
I don't think I counted the peaches, just tasted the better parts of them. They are firm ripe but not yet super sweet and juicy. However I am battling the squirrels and birds for them! The peaches are from a seedling tree I call Nida's Peach after the lady I bought it from. See more of that tree here.
Not sure what the round egg plant is, the others are Japanese in different colors
Ready to go to the Farmers Market
Not a huge haul this week, the tomatoes are petering out because it was so hot in June and July they couldn't set fruit. There are some more cherry tomatoes out there because they always come through.
So this weeks totals are;
Prickly Pear 22 pounds
Eggplant 2 pounds 8.5 ounces
Tomatoes 2 pounds 8 ounces
Zucchini 3 pounds
Cucuzzi 8 ounces
Eggs 51
Milk almost 9.5 gallons
Hopefully I'll manage to keep up this week. Enjoy the blog hop and I'll see you next time.
This week I realized that the prickly pear near my house were ripe so I picked about 10-12 pounds one day and about that much another day. The second batch is in the freezer waiting to be processed and there are more getting ripe.
processing prickly pear fruit
Since I'm not saving the skins or pulp (just don't have time to deal with extra projects!) I freeze them whole, then let them thaw and mash with a potatoe masher. I strain the juice through layers of cheese cloth at least three times, to get all the little glochids, the tiny hair like thorns, out of the juice.
New Goat Milk Products, lotion and sugar scrub with prickly pear
My research says that prickly pear has healing properties similar to aloe vera
different kinds of eggplant
This week's tomato harvest was negligible but the eggplants are coming on strong.
That is the 4th diamondback this summer
Watch this video and see what Freya Cat does to that snake!
Double rainbow Friday evening
Haven't gotten a lot of rain lately but the sunsets and rainbows have been beautiful
There's more from the week in this video.
Have a great weekend and stay tuned for a Harvest Monday post!!
This is the first time I've grown cucuzzi, an edible Italian gourd. It has an interesting flavor, firm, crunchy, the slightest hint of cucumber. But the plant is more rampant than I thought and is beginning to take over the garden!
Poor Bambi! Her jaw was all swollen up the other day. At first I thought maybe she had a bad tooth or something happened with her mouth, but she was eating and drinking fine. So I think what happened was she got stung by a wasp or bee, there have been a lot of them around the water buckets lately.
And now most of the swelling is gone, just a little hard knot right on her jaw. I think it will be gone in a few more days.
Well that was an adrenaline rush at oh gods thirty in the morning. I will tolerate chill rattlers out at the edges of the yard, but not close to the house or where I’m walking all day.
Miss Teresa kindly came over and caught the snake easily. She will release it elsewhere. Hopefully I don't have any more around. This one is smaller than the one that I saw in my garden recently. That one was quite large. I blasted it with the hose and have not seen it since. I blasted this one this morning and it just seemed to make it mad, it would not leave the area.
Some tomatoes still coming in but still a lot of grasshopper and fruit fly damage. The Japanese eggplants are starting to take off and a little trickle of chilies.
The wildlife in AZ likes to come inside to visit.
Lemon Spice Jalapeno
Poor Bambi her jaw was swollen; since it didn't seem to slow down her eating or drinking I think she got stung by a bee or wasp. Her tongue is out here because I just put out minerals and she is licking them up.
Just a little bit of this week around here.. Sometimes I can't remember everything that happened!
Where have I been? Oh boy! I have been soooo busy this year! I can't even cram the highlights into one post! I have filmed a lot of things around here and they are posted over on my YouTube channel but I will give you a few ideas here.
I started over 500 vegetable and herb seedlings to sell
Digger Dog is still naughty, digging giant holes and breaking fences.
Esmarelda had triplet doelings! April 5, 2024
Learning to make different kinds of cheese.
Growing vegetables for the farmers market
Making Goat Milk Soap
Dealing with the wildlife and herding them back outside.
So that is just a tiny bit of what's been going on around here. I am going to try to post here more often, but no guarantees!
