Farmer Friday

Can you see the Diamondback? Look for the little black & white striped tail in the circle of light

Yowza; Saturday morning I'm just bopping along, a little earlier than usual because I need to get a bunch of stuff done and get to the Globe-Miami Farmers Market. My headlamp was dimming and I was thinking that I had just replaced the batteries, but it's OK, it's almost full light now. Except in the big chicken house. That doesn't have window space to the rising sun in summer and the other side is covered in 70% shade cloth to cut the heat.  So it's still pretty dark in there. I step into a smaller compartment to drop feed in a feed and turn around to go out and it feels like I'm stepping on a chicken. Not an uncommon thing to happen, they are always getting under my feet. So I'm trying to shuffle my feet to get off the "chicken" and get my head tipped down far enough to shine my headlamp on my feet when I see the writhing of the snake.... Snake zoomed one way and I jumped the other.  I hoped it was one of the King snakes I saw earlier in the summer but nope, a Diamondback. Fortunately it slipped under the wall and stayed there until I could get away. And after the market I went and bought a new headlamp; 1000 lumens. It's almost as bright as daylight.

Gotcha!

On Sunday I went out a bit later than normal and was extra cautious. The new headlamp helped me spot it's hiding place, which was probably exactly where it had been on Saturday. My new friend Teresa came over and it had moved to another part of the hen house but Teresa was able to spot it and catch it. She relocated it far away.

drowning in milk

I made a batch of cheese on Sunday morning.

The never ending pen mucking. 

Monday was pen mucking. Never ending pen mucking.

Dried onions and fermented pickles

I dried some onions and fermented some onion and cucumber pickles

first blue egg

applesauce in the making

Tuesday and Wednesday I salvaged apples that I had bought at the store from the mark down bin as well as some brought to me by a friend. Made apple chips, applesauce, apple cider vinegar.

Stayed up late Thursday getting another batch of cheese into the press

I've been experimenting with cheese making using 'clabber' and sometimes commercial cultured buttermilk. Most have turned out well. A couple have gone to the chickens.

Mocha ice cream on it's way

When I pulled out the milk to make cheese I was able to skim off a little cream from each jar. Plus I had some in the freezer. So I thawed out the frozen cream and this morning experimented with making mocha ice cream. It was very yummy. 

Again this week the cucuzzi were the biggest harvest

mixed peppers

There were a few peppers, cayenne,  Lemon Spice jalapeno, shishito

I set up to ferment most of them into pickled peppers

I'm working on a video / blog post about making all the apple stuff, hopefully it will be out by next week. Thanks for stopping by. Don't forget to come along for Harvest Monday where I will document this week's harvests.