(almost) Wordless Wednesday: Mid-May

Mouth open (3  baby robins in the garden shed.)

Eyes closed.

Iris bud.

Rog's concrete work for pond int hte  silo foundation.

Pesto pizza on the patio...

with our first taste of homemade raspberry mead from our honey and our berries. Yum!

The Volunteer  Tomatoes performing at Daniels in Kasson last weekend.

A Swarm of Beekeepers

Thursday was the last meeting of the year for the SE MN Beekeepers Association - a traditional pizza party. Members also bring a dish to pass made with honey.

Since I had such gorgeous greens growing in the high tunnel, I made a spinach salad with honey-mustard dressing. Everything but the roasted pepitas and pomegranate seeds in the salad and the mayonnaise and lemon juice in the dressing came from our farm!  (It was so pretty and delicious, I made it again the next day.)

After feasting on pizza, salads and many scrumptious honey desserts, there was a brief meeting and presentation ("Cooking with Honey") followed by a honey-tasting session, where we could sample each others' honey crop, and a seed exchange.  I  came home with a bunch of native prairie wildflower seeds I intend to sow tomorrow.

One of the members, Fant,  shared a sample of cherry blossom honey he purchased in Tokyo  - this precious little jar of honey cost $50 (and tasted great, I might add.)  We also got to try some exotic malaleuka honey from New Zealand.

It was Ed's last meeting serving as president of the club.  Everyone appreciates his energy and enthusiasm as well as his expertise.  Ed brought his refractometer to test the water content of honey, so I tested mine.  It had a  bit more moisture than is ideal, perhaps because of the wet summer we had. Too much moisture can affect the storage  quality of raw honey; it could ferment. We are keeping the bulk of our honey in the freezer, so that should not be an issue.  Plus, half  of our honey will be made into mead - we want it to ferment!

Sister Marlys and Sister Alice, the beekeepers at Assisi Heights, allowed me to snap their photo. They are two pretty amazing women!

All of the beekeepers are so  generous sharing their knowledge - and among the 50 or so members there was a wealth of knowledge. My resolution for next year is to participate in this club more regularly.

When I got home from the bee meeting, Rog had just finished bottling his first batch of raspberry mead made with our honey and our raspberries.  It has to age for a year, but we taste-tested the leftover bit that didn't fit in the bottles and it was yummy and it is a spectacular magenta color.  It promises to be marvelous mead!

Thanks, bees. (Thanks, Rog.)

Since the last full moon...

According to my digital camera, I took this photo of the beautiful moonrise over our yard on August 15th --but the lunar phase calendar says the full moon wasn't scheduled until August 24th, so I don't know what is going on with that. But, in looking through photos from the past couple weeks, I  noticed that we have been working pretty hard and have accomplished a lot of projects that haven't made it to a blog post. Since this blog is serving as our Squash Blossom Farm journal,  here are some blogworthy accomplishments since our last full-looking moon:

When Cadence left for Mexico, besides  having to milk the cow solo, I also had to deal with all the milk.  Meaning, I had to learn to make cheese!   I have now made Monterey Jack,  traditional cheddar, manchego and gouda.  Here is my second wheel of lovely gouda, just out of the press. (All those little round bumps are where the cheese tried to press through the holes in the mold where the whey drains.) At this point, the cheese is air dried for a week or so before being  waxed.

Here I am waxing my very first wheel of cheese, Monterey Jack.  The wheels have gotten a bit prettier since this first one. 

We used up the last of Cadence's fresh  mozzarella and some of her awesome parmesan on a yummy pizza featuring Rog's sourdough crust and tomato sauce, veggies, garlic and herbs from our garden. Other than the pepperoni, which we purchased at the Farmers Market,  all the ingredients for this pizza came from our farm.

On one of our evening walks, we harvested the wild elderberries growing along the road and Rog made elderberry wine.  After simmering the berries to make juice, he pressed them through the chinoise with the wooden pestle to remove the skins and seeds. (That chinoise has been one of my most rewarding thrift store finds!  )

The wine is now fermenting. It will be ready to bottle in about a month, ready to drink in about 7 months.

Rog helped me deal with our cow's relentless milk supply by making yogurt.  Now that we have let LaFonda go dry, this will be our last gallon of yogurt from our own cow until next spring. We have been enjoying a bowl of it every morning with nectarines, raspberries, walnuts and a drizzle of honey--a concoction that a friend titled "Bucolic Breakfast of Bliss."

It's tomato season.  Last year I planted 100 tomato plants and had to deal with 1000 pounds of tomatoes. I learned my lesson and only planted 50 plants this year. 

However, because of burgeoning life demands, I did not get the tomatoes properly staked this  summer, so they are sprawling wantonly all over the place. It has been so rainy that most of the fruit has split, some tomatoes have virtually exploded. And then there is the slug infestation.  Long story short, the turkeys and chickens are feasting on the half of the tomato crop that is split and slug-nibbled and I have many fewer to preserve this year. Nevertheless,  I have roasted and frozen quite a few tomatoes--with plenty more batches yet to go.

Finally, after trying many less-than-satisfactory approaches, I have successfully raised two crops of micro-greens - pea shoots and sunflower shoots.  They are mighty tasty! This is an experiment to potentially expand my little sprout operation. Stay tuned to find out how it goes...