Cheese, maple syrup, butter and piglets!

 

 

Lots to catch up on, quite a bit has happened since I last posted!

 

 

Ok lets start with my 1st attempt at making homemade mozzarella cheese.

 

I used 2 gallons whole milk (that I always get from the local farm store)

I used 1 whole tablet of junket. You dissolve in water and add to milk after it is heated from anywhere to 88-90 degrees F

Here is what it looked like after the 2 gallons went in.

Here is where we made the curds.

This is our end product. It did not go as well as I had hoped. We wanted to make it with natural products not citric acid (not that a junket rennet tablet is natural??) Not sure on that one. I could not find how to make curds without citric acid. We were watching you tube videos and asking friends and looking up blogs and forums and so on and basically this is patch work quilt of things we patched together. Not a successful first try. :( I am not going to give the full recipe till I can master it myself.

Left over whey from mozz cheese. We let it sit out overnight covered. Then boiled it and let it cool till I could put my hand in the water and took out the curds and put in a cheese towel and it said to let it drip overnight again. I wanted to use it for dinner that night to make ravioli so I squeezed it to death in my cheese towel and it did just fine.

Here is what it ended up as and it was wonderful! I loved making ricotta cheese it was so easy!

 

 

Now to the Maple Syrup.

The PVC taps did not end up working so we ordered a 4 pack of metal spiels and since the PVC was larger then the spiel Mr. Smith actually flipped the spiels for those 2 backwards and it is working! We just put the elbow of the PVC tube to the back end of the spiel and it is doing beautiful! The one with the Gatorade jug is the spiel in the right way and we didn't order the buckets with the spiels so we had to improvise. We did not have enough money to order those as well and when you are working on little money, you just make the best of what you have! :)

Things got interesting at the end. Here is the 21 gallons of sap we collected.....ok maybe they are empty now...but they were all full! LOL

Here is where we started. Outside. Bad idea that day it started to get so windy and then drop in temp so fast and add snow on top of that! The wind ended up blowing the flame out so we moved it into our shed.

We forgot to defrost! HA HA  HA HA I know....it took longer because of this....but I honestly did not think of it till we were about ready to boil! So I ended up using my crock pot to heat up a lot of the milk jugs to get it liquid again.

Here is 1/2 way through.

Here is adding the last liquid we had before the last HUGE ice chunk.

Here is what it looked like when we finally got it inside to finish it up.

We do not have a vent so we covered it and it actually heated up much faster and boiled down pretty quick.

At the end!

Well we ended up boiling it down too far! LOL Oh well! Its like a caramel sauce here.

Here we made maple cream! You just let the syrup cool for like an hour and then stir for 1/2 and hour and this is what you get! Sooooo good! A little too sweet for me....but the kids LOVE it! Cannot believe that something that has NOTHING added to it can be soooo sweet! Its insane!

 

Started boiling down frozen sap at 12:30pm on February 17, 2013. There is 21 gallons total of sap that we need to boil down. Tapped trees on January 25^th. Had a week of bitter cold weather, so we got nothing and we ran into problems with the PVC taps and switched to the metal spiels. 5 quarts frozen and 2 quarts non went into the pot at 12:30 we have been slowly adding the sap that is defrosted in as we get it as long as the pot stays at a boil. Otherwise no point to trying to boil it down! It is snowing a lot and quite windy. At 2:00pm we had to move it into our shed because it kept being blown out by the wind. The wind is going at 20-30mph right now….makes me want to rethink boiling down today…..but don’t have a choice! I can see why they made sugar houses now! LOL We are using propane for this season since we won’t be getting a huge amount of sap since we only have 4 taps. We plan to over the summer make an evaporator and build something outside for it…but after today we may have to rethink that! We are also planning on tapping every maple, birch or walnut tree on our property next season and we have an old fridge that was given to us that was for a keg. We have never used it and hopefully if it still works we can put a food grade drum in there to add our daily sap from all the trees and then just boil down every Sunday when Mr. Smith is home and we can baby sit it together and watch all the kiddos! LOL We also plan to use buckets…not sure on the the size yet but at least 2 gallons so I can limit my time to 2 times a day to checking on the sap. Need to think of how I am going to transport the sap as I go from tree to tree. Maybe I can find an old 4 wheeler! Ooo that would be nice J There is a lot going on our little farm right now. We started incubating eggs again and have 27 in the incubator right now. Crossing my fingers most are fertilized and going to hatch! We put a camera up in our farrowing pen to keep an eye on our pregnant gilt so we can see when she is nesting and giving birth so we ca run up there and help her out! Its already saving me a lot of leg work from running up and down the hill all the time…..freaking out that she is giving birth and I am not there to make sure everything goes ok. Heat lamps and LOTS and LOTS of straw are in there. Just waiting on her…not a huge fan of the waiting game!

January 29^th 2 inches in a 2 liter soda bottle

January 30^th filled 2 liter soda bottle….which is 2 quarts or a ½ gallon

After weirdly cold weather and trouble with spiels

February 10^th 2 liter soda bottle

February 12^th up to 8 gallons and 1 qt in the freezer

February 13^th 12 gallons 2 qts

February 14^th 15 gallons

February 15^th 19 gallons

February 16^th 20 gallons 2 qts

February 17^th 21 gallons and BOIL DOWN

10:30pm we stopped the process (10 hours into the boil down)

7am 2/18/13 we started it again

8:00pm we added the last of the frozen sap (a huge chunk of ice that just would NOT defrost!)

8:30pm propane ran out so we will start again in the morning when we switch tanks. 14 hours that day plus the 10 the previous day is 23 hours so far and not done!

9am we put the sap back on….we got a little side tracked Petunia our pregnant sow gave birth early this morning!

1:30 we brought the sap inside it could fit into a big pot in here….we do not have ventilation in our house and it worries me a little with the droplets that were forming on the ceiling in the shed we moved into. Tasted it already and it is sweet! Have my candy thermometer already in to get to our temp of 220 degrees.

4pm we hit 220 degrees F and we are now putting into quart jars, 6 hours that day...for a total of 30 hours for the boil down.

We got 1 quart and 1 pint of syrup….I think we boiled it down too far it was like caramel. So it is going to be an awesome candy or syrup for ice cream. Out of the pint I already made maple butter and oh my goodness it is beyond good! It is less in calories and fat then sugar and its ALL NATURAL! Plus it has so many vitamins and nutrients its crazy! I cannot believe something sooooo good comes from the inside of a tree! It has been too cold to get anything from out maple trees, which I guess is somewhat of a blessing because we had enough on our plate with the boil down and the birthing of the piglets.

 

 

Now to Butter!

Here is a quart of heavy cream from the local farm store.

It made close to 1lb of butter plus 1/3 of a quart of buttermilk!

Thinking of adding a little of maple cream to a small amount of butter! YUM YUM Maple butter!

 

 

 

PIGGIES!

Here is our pregnant sow about 1 week before birth.

Here is what I saw when I got to the barn. Mr.Smith was already up there with Mr. Heyer.

Close up!!! They are soooo cute! Do not like to be snuggled though! I tried! HA HA HA

In labor after giving birth to the 1st 2.

Mr. Heyer catching #3.

Here they are running around under the heat lamp! Oh it was so neat!

Here they are nursing and Mr. Smith trying to get the runt (we named him Pita) to drink. He was not interested. Mr. Smith ended up taking him inside and nursing him from the bottle. He perked up and is a great addition to the bunch! So feisty! There are 5 total and it seems all are boys!

 

Petunia our pregnant sow was nesting all day on 2/18/2013 she was breathing heavy, not eating, restless and at 5am she had her first piglet. We had gotten a camera to put into the farrowing pen and watched her 24/7 till we knew she was close. We had a motion detector on that beeped when she would move so it kept us up for 2 nights and when we knew she was close Mr. Smith stayed up all night to watch her and he got to deliver the 1st 2 piglets with Mr. Heyer and before I could get out there! Mr. Heyer walked away to stretch his legs for a moment and there was another that came out and I got to catch it and clean it off. It was one of the most glorious feelings you can have. Almost as glorious as when you have your own child! :D There was 9 altogether 4 were so healthy that we knew they were fine and there was a runt that at first we thought wasn’t going to make it. He wasn’t energetic or trying to eat so Mr. Smith took him inside warmed him up and bottle fed him. He perked up and is definitely acting like his brothers now. We did have 4 still borns that look like they never fully developed and were only 1-2 months along. So it’s a mixed emotion kind of day. Lost some, but there are now 5 healthy baby pigs on the farm! Piggy is also starting to show again and is due April 4^th…we think….its hard to tell sometimes. She went into heat around there but we did not see Hammy the boar service her. We will see.



Something I am realizing more and more as I get further and further into this homesteading is take baby steps. Don’t try to do everything all at once the old fashioned way. Like the maple syrup. I really wanted to do it over a wood fire to be cheaper and to more self sufficient, but after we got into the process with the propane I realized that I needed to get the hang of just boiling it down the easier way before I made things more difficult on myself. It was my first time boiling down so while I am learning how to do that, why make it harder on myself and possibly set myself up to fail? That would discourage me and make me want to walk away from doing it the rest of the season!

Something else I have heard is that we are living a “crunchy” or new age hippie lifestyle. While that may be true because we are coming one more with life and the earth and I like to respect all living things like trees, plants, animals and bugs…it is more because I value what God has made for us and I see the beauty of his work. He has made those pesky ants and those gosh darn annoying wasps and he did it for a reason. So, I do not mess with them and let them go on their way unless they will harm my family. We also home school, try to eat all locally organic foods we cannot grow ourselves, cloth diaper, and try to use products that are naturally made or that I can learn to make myself with things that are grown on our property. I like to be in tune with nature and the more simple things in life and enjoy the beauty God has given us everywhere! So, if that makes us crunchy or a hippie then so be it…..I like to call it homesteading or living in God’s beauty…or better yet….being a Smith! LOL

When we first started this journey is was because we needed to save money and we wanted to continue to have more children (which is where God was first telling us to go, add to out family) Then after we learned to grow a garden, we were told to get chickens, then later on pigs and then to breed all of them….to be self sufficient and to save money….as we kept going along we fell more and more in love with this journey and know it’s the path God has for us. We will continue to do this journey for as long as He tells us to. Who knows what is in the future for us. I am hoping more land and cows and more animals and Mr. Smith staying home full time with us….but I guess we shall see where this takes us J

Ok I think that is it. Sorry if there is a little bit of repetitiveness in this post I was trying to write down things as they happened so I would remember...brain is a little slow right now! 20 weeks into pregnancy with Smith baby #6 and the ultrasound shows it to be another girl! I know as I keep getting further along that I will forget things more and more, so please bear with me! :D Well We are approaching planting season and this weekend we are going to start with the planting the seeds in the seed starter stuff we have to get a jump start on the season....here we go on season 2013!!! SO excited!

Maple sap & baby chicks

We have been collecting sap from our sugar maple tree for almost 2 weeks now. The first week was a horrible cold spell so we got nothing. This past week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday temperatures were above freezing (Wednesday actually made it up to 60 degrees!) So we got quite a bit in 3 days. We filled a 2 liter soda bottle, a gallon milk jug, and a 2 quart gatorade bottle. (We are up cycling as well!) Then Friday it just made it to 32 degrees and nothing was flowing. Mr. Smith and I are talking about tapping the other side and possibly another maple at the very front of our yard. It has poison ivy crawling up (that we have been trying to get rid of for quite a while) so just need to make sure we get a clear spot. I put all 3 bottles in the freezer to save for when we get more sap. I would like to do 1 big batch for an all day event. I will mark a day on my calender when I can baby sit the sap outside. So, I can say we have successfully tapped a maple tree, we shall see if we are just as successful in making syrup. :)

We were also given 46 baby chicks last night. White Leghorn, straight run...so they are a mix of males and females. They are about 6 days old now. There is a nearby school that does hatching for a science project and couldn't find anyone to take the last bunch. Of course we said YES! That would just get us closer to making money on our little homestead!

Petunia, our pregnant sow, is looking quite plump and is laying down more....so we are in the last couple of weeks in her pregnancy. We will be checking on her a little more frequently and try to make her as comfortable as possible so she doesn't stress out and have them early. Excited to have so many babies on the farm again so far. Cannot wait till mid February and there will be more!

Speaking of pregnancy I am about 1/2 way through mine with Smith kid #6 and the baby has eaten my brain! I totally forgot that when you make your own mozzarella cheese you need rennet! So, I have not gotten to make our own mozzarella cheese as of now, but Mr. Smith will be picking up some today and I hope to make our own cheese either today or tomorrow. My energy goes fast through out the day, so it may end up being tomorrow.

I will update again soon, hopefully after we boil down sap so we can have more pictures!

Finally some pictures! YAY!

 

Some of these pictures are a little old, but I wanted to catch up a little.

 

Here is Miss Piggy while pregnant. You can see her belly sagging really low. The pigs are huge now!

Here is the zucchini bread I made with honey.

I only had some left in a bottle which ended up being 1/4 cup so then I had to use sugar for the rest. When using honey put 1/4 tsp baking powder into the mixture to lower the acidity from the honey, lower the temperature of the oven by 25 degrees and put the water in last to make sure the consistency of the whole mixture for the bread isn't too wet. Add as needed then.

Here is the recipe with sugar:

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup ground zucchini

2 eggs

1/3 cup water

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

 

Directions:

Combine all dry ingredients (sugar, flour, soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg)

Add zucchini, vegetable oil, water, and eggs

mix until just combined.

grease 9x5 loaf pan

Bake at 350 degrees for 60 minutes.

 

Here is the recipe with honey:

1 cup honey

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup ground zucchini

2 eggs

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup water (only if needed....and only add as much as needed, do not add too much)

 

Directions:

Mix all dry ingredients.

add honey, oil, eggs, zucchini

mix until just combined and see if its too dry or slightly dry add a little water.

grease 9x5 loaf pan

Pour in and bake at 325 degrees for 60 minutes.

 

My husband and I actually enjoyed the bread with the honey. It made it a little more moist and gave a nice little tang. The honey will add a slight flavor to it. I enjoyed it....but to each their own! :)

Sorry the kids ate so much by the time I got the picture taken...that's all that was left! Its a huge staple here. We eat it for snack all the time!

Here is our maple tree tap.

It is a small flexible pvc pipe.

Here we used a washed out 2 liter soda bottle to collect the sap. Try to keep a southern location on the tree for tapping. More sunlight gets there and helps the sap to move faster up the tree. We could do 3 taps on this tree, but this is our first time so we only did one till we start to get the hang and then we may add another, but do not over tap the tree. You will kill it. The sap is the trees food and the sap moves up the tree as the days get warmer to help the tree bloom.

Here is the final product. Another rock to squish the bottle into the tree a bit so it won't blow away or the barn cats or the dog won't knock it over. We also put tin foil around the top of the bottle to keep dirt, bark or the occasional bug out of the sap. Do not want to be eating bugs! LOL The end of January is normally the best time to tap the tree. We need below freezing nights and above freezing days to get a good amount of sap. Our temps of this week have been crazy cold. Like 0 degrees at night or 2 degrees and 19 during the day. So, that means no sap. :( Saturday and Sunday and all next week is supposed to be better....guess we will see! Excited! Cannot remember the last time I had pure maple syrup!

Here is the final product of the soap I made a month or 2 ago. This still needs to be diluted with 1/2 water. I was given 2 bottles of small bottles of laundry soap, so I have been using those and still have not gotten to this tub! I will get there and let you know how clean my clothes are!

Over the summer with our corn I made corn chowder. I got to use my immersion blender for the first time here. I love that blender. Surprisingly it was not a big hit with my kids. I did not keep the recipe, sorry. No point in making them eat it. They love corn straight on the cob...how can you argue with that?? LOL

 

Ok, well that's all the pictures I could find. Hopefully I will keep having this good luck and be able to post more as we continue on our adventure!

 

On another note, the husband and I are talking about getting more and more into what we can grow and we cannot grow coffee beans up here, so we are looking into tea. There is supposed to be a Chinese tea that can grow up here. We shall see if I can find one and if we like it! Then we can use honey and cream to sweeten it. Which is where we want to go!

 

Thanks for being patient with me as I fought to get a few pictures up!

The Smiths

Maple Syrup

I am getting really frustrated....tried 3 different times to get pictures on here. I am so not tech savvy! LOL

Well my husband and I have decided it is time to try to make our own maple syrup. We have plenty of trees to do it and Mr. Smith is out there installing the spout now. I will take pictures of the completed task! (If I can get them later on ERRRRRRrrr.)

We have also been really really trying to cook only with things we grow/raise/collect around here. There are not much foraging options right around here...but I am hoping to explore more when it gets warmer to see if we ca get lucky. This past week we have done just that. Deer pot roast, Chicken pot pie, Ham & Potato soup, Stuffed cabbage, homemade pizza pockets, hamburgers and french fries. They were all amazing, now as of right now not all of the ingredients were grown here....but they can be and we hope to explore more of this seasonal cook what we grow kind of lifestyle that we have been working towards. Well one more thing we are going to be trying is using less granulated sugar and using more natural ingredients that we can collect. Like the maple syrup and honey.

I am looking into getting into the local beekeepers association around here to see what it all involves and my main concern...how often I will get stung! LOL We will not be getting bees this year, but I am hoping for 2014! Baby steps!

Lastly we are hoping and praying we can build and successfully use a solar oven this summer. Our electric bill is overwhelming and we need to cut it back...we are still also looking into hand washing our clothes.

Well that is all for now. Going to see if Mr. Smith is successfully tapping our maple tree!

Something new

Sorry again for no pictures I will get some up very soon, promise!
Well I made homemade laundry soap for the first time last week and it was easier and so much cheaper then buying store bought soap. I actually got it from the Duggars. I bought a 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot and it filled the whole thing and is pretty thick. Its concentrated which is also nice. You are supposed to get 2 5 gallon buckets worth after diluting it. Which is good for us because we go through so much! Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
1 bar of soap
4 cups HOT tap water
1 cup washing soda
1/2 cup borax

Directions:
1. Grate bar of soap and add to sauce pan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is fully melted.
2. Fill a 5 gallon bucket 1/2 full with HOT tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and borax. Stir until dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot tap water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.
3. Stir, fill a used, clean laundry soap container 1/2 full with soap concentrate and fill the rest of the way with water. Shake before each use, it will gel.

I have a small bit of store bought to get through yet before I use this, but if the Duggar family uses it for all their laundry and have no problems then I am sure we will be just fine as well. I will let you all know when I get to using it how the laundry turns out.

On another note we were talking about letting our chickens be true free range chickens. We haven't done it before because of our dog Diesel. Well one of the newer roosters we were going to be butchering next weekend got out and I just let him go to see what happens...he has a better chance of defending himself then a hen right now. Well that was about 4 days ago and today when I went to go feed the animals, there he was to greet me! He has been roosting in a shed by the chicken coop! Diesel was out with me when I was feeding and he wouldn't go anywhere near the rooster! Super excited! Planning on maybe letting another newer rooster out to just make sure before I let the hens out.

We also have a nice plan going for what we are doing for the season coming up. We are expanding again and it looks like it time to make a new shelter for the pigs. A wooden barn in not a good idea with 3 HUGE pigs.....they are destroying it and we are doing more maintenance work on it then we can keep up with some weeks. So, we are talking about building a concrete one for them.

Alright time to go, hope you all had a good New Year!
Happy 2013!
The Smiths.

Getting into Winter

Well our Fall crops were no good and I am a little disappointed. :( It is what it is. We just have to wait till Spring and we try all over again.

Miss Piggy seems to be in better spirits now since its been about 6 weeks and she is now back in with Hammy our boar. Last time I saw her go into heat was around the beginning of December...so very shortly she should be coming into heat again. We are just counting from the day we put Miss Piggy back in with Hammy as the "service" date.....just to be safe. Petunia our other gilt that we think is pregnant is hiding inside the barn and the only time I get a peek at her is when I get to feed her and even then she hides a little. So, I haven't seen much of her to definitely confirm she is pregnant! LOL

We also butchered a few of the roosters we hatched over the summer and they were pretty tiny....so we are talking about switching the whole flock to Plymouth Rock Chickens. We have a few and butchered them around the same time and they were meatier. Our oldest gals are done laying as well....so we need to make the flock smaller since we are just on straight feed now anyways. It looks like after the Holidays we will be putting those girls into the freezer.

There is talk about what we want to do next season as well as far as the garden goes....there is even talk about trying wheat! I am pretty excited! We are going to separate the pumpkins and corn. The corn strangled the pumpkins and we didn't get any this past season. :( We are also planting the corn all at once and a larger field more together on the other side of the property.

The tomatoes we canned are still holding up and doing great. We have gone through quite a bit....but we might actually make it till we get fresh tomatoes again! That would be wonderful! Its what we are working towards.

Many many meals have been made with just the fruit of our labor and its a wonderful feeling. I wish for everyone out there that you could try this. It is one of the most exhausting and rewarding feelings...other then parenthood! HA HA HA HA

Happy Holidays

The Smiths

Mid season growth of the garden

 

Found an old post that I never got to finish....buisness of homesteading with 5 young children around! LOL