As promised ~ Yogurt

Now that you have used the cream for some yummy butter, what do you do with the rest of the milk? You can drink it or make something else yummy. I chose to make yogurt with the rest of these two gallons + a little more. I wanted a full gallon of milk to start with. 

 Yogurt can be made with the whole milk also. I just feel like I get more bang for my buck if I can make more with the gallon. 

Raw milk > butter & yogurt

We have been blessed to have too much milk lately! We are also getting our milk from a Jersey instead of the Holstein.
Milk from Jersey's has so, so much cream! Too much cream to just shake back into the milk.
That means butter making.
Too much milk to drink means more yogurt and cheese.
The easiest thing to do is make butter from the cream and use the rest of the milk for yogurt.

When life gives you lemons....

When life gives you lemons.....wait, that won't happen..

We are in Indiana, in February, in nearly arctic conditions..

So... how about this?

A Funny Looking Bread

Gluten is found in the endosperm of grass type plants. These plants include wheat, rye, spelt, etc.. any grain that you can use alone to bake bread that rises has gluten in it. The gluten fibers trap the carbon dioxide bubbles formed when the yeast and sugars work. They are like the rubber in a balloon, trapping the gasses and "inflating" as the bread rises.  Straight wheat gluten is added to baked goods to get a high rise.

I have had many, many people ask me at markets for non-gluten bread. Up until this point, I have resisted going down that path. 

Some of you with gluten allergies have more of a wheat allergy and can tolerate spelt as an alternative. Spelt is sort of a cousin to wheat. Spelt, I can do! I just take my whole wheat recipe and substitute spelt and it works well. 


This winter, I have been experimenting with both sourdough and gluten-free breads. 
I have had more success with sourdough. Really, I have tried more often with sourdough.  

I have a friend who is on a very restricted diet and yet she orders my honey-whole wheat bread on a regular basis for her family, so I try gluten free for her.
Some work out fairly well and some are best left for the chickens to eat! One in particular which was corn based - blech!

But, I am a bread snob! So, maybe it was supposed to taste that way. If it was, then I have a new, deeper level of sympathy for my non-gluten friends. It may even be pity!

After that long intro, let me show you my latest attempt. 

Working Girls

Well, it didn't take long for the girls to realize that they should start working. (see previous post)

“I have had, in my time, memorable meals of scrambled eggs with fresh truffles, scrambled eggs with caviar and other glamorous things, but to me, there are few things as magnificent as scrambled eggs, pure and simple, perfectly cooked and perfectly seasoned.”
James Beard, 'On Food' (1974)

Chickens :: specifically, old hens and young roosters...

When hens get old and stop doing what they are fed to do, what is a girl to do? When too many roosters are making the young hens a bit nervous, what to do?


Well, off with their heads!


It sounds harsh I know, but it is reality on the farm. If you don't want the dirty details, you may want to skip this next part. 

Hubby and sons do the gross stuff outside. As soon as we had children old enough to help, I bowed out of that job as gracefully and quickly as I could.  My children have been raised knowing exactly where their food comes from and generally help in the procurement of such food. They know that good food comes from hard work, plain and simple. 


Back to the abundant rooster and lazy hen problem. My husband has an utter disdain for animals that eat and don't "put out". So, he decided Saturday afternoon that we would butcher some chickens. 
I tried to warn the hens, but they refused to lay. 
It didn't take them long to butcher, skin, and ice down about fifteen of the fowl. It is extremely important to cool your meat completely. We ice ours down at least overnight.

The process of cooking and preserving the meat is really straightforward and somewhat satisfying. I chose to bake some of the chickens and boil the others. I like the dark, rich broth I get when I bake the chickens but I like to get it all done at once, so I fill my biggest roaster and my biggest cookers with chickens and start the cooking. "A chicken in every pot..", literally.  


Even if you don't farm and butcher your own meat, this part may help you to eat healthier. Stock up on meat like you do dry beans, pasta and rice. Preserve meat like you do tomatoes, corn, and green beans.



If you have boneless chicken you can skip the cooking part. Just stick your meat in a jar, season if you like, and process. Our chickens have bones, it helps them walk!


The meat is easier to pick off the bone if it cools just enough to handle but not cold. For some reason when it gets completely cold it becomes difficult to remove from the bone. 


You should remove all jewelry before you begin this part because the only real way to separate the meat and bone is to use your hands. Yep! You need to use your hands. Even then a few bones will make it into your jars. It's inevitable, I don't know how it happens but it always does. I just tell people lucky enough to find a bone while eating some delicious dish that this is how they know it's real. You never find bones in chicken nuggets!

Be prepared, your hands will smell like chicken. If you are married to a farmer, he won't mind too much because you don't mind too much when he comes in smelling like the barn. It's just part of life. You might even wake up in the middle of the night and wonder why your bed smells like chicken! If you aren't married to a farmer, you might want to try lemon juice or working together so you both smell chickeny. Sort of like when you are out on a date and one of you has onions - not a good idea, you should both eat onions. 


After you have all of the chicken meat separated from the bone, chop it up if you like a uniform look. I don't bother. Put it in big buckets, bags or other container that can be sealed up and put it in the refrigerator. 

Mix the broth from all of your pots together. Then put it in a refrigerator or outside if it's cold enough and you can keep animals out of it. You want to thoroughly cool the broth so the fat floats to the top and hardens. In the morning, take a spoon and lift the cold fat from the top of the broth.

A side note here, if you are freezing the meat and broth you can skip this step. If you are canning, as I do, you will want to get as much of the fat off as you can. The fat is the most likely part to go rancid after canning. 

Why can instead of freeze? Personally, I like to see what I have available, it's already thawed out, it takes no energy to store after it's canned, and I have more shelf space than freezer space.

In the morning, stuff your jars with the meat and then cover that meat with broth. You can estimate one quart jar for every chicken. It takes a long time to process meat, so don't fill all the jars at once or they will be hanging out with nothing to do but get warm. Yuck! 

 

I have to recommend pressure canning meat. Most people say it isn't safe to water bath meat or low acid foods. I will admit that until two years ago when a freezer died and I had hundreds of pounds of meat to process, I didn't own a pressure canner. I canned everything with a plain old water bath canner. Yikes! Meat, beans, everything you shouldn't can that way we did. Processing time is three hours at a full rolling boil, but you didn't hear it from me. 
Follow your pressure canner directions. Mine is 11 pounds of pressure for 90 minutes for quarts of meat and 11 pounds of pressure for 25 minutes for quarts of broth. 
 

Now, back to the extra broth you will have. Put it back on the stove and reduce it until you have a nice rich stock. You can throw some garlic, onion, celery, carrot, herbs, whatever strikes your fancy into the pot too, or you can just keep it plain. 
Then can or freeze it. Easy.


Since I don't like to run canners half full, I also canned some ham stock, northern beans, kidney beans, and ham-potato soup. I did the soup just for fun. It held up really well, so I think it will be a good option when I make a huge pot of soup and we don't eat it. Leftovers are always better when they don't come the next day. 


The northern beans had been soaked overnight earlier in the week, the kidney beans were dry. 


The fruits of our labor:

canned chicken and chicken stock

ham broth, ham & potato soup, kidney beans, great northern beans, chicken

And one hen is wiser! 

A New Year

So, it seems I have a tendency to think about blogging in January! 

I could say I will make it a New Year's resolution to blog on a regular basis, or at least more frequently, but I would probably break it within a month. I do realize that the blogs I enjoy reading  post regularly. Some post daily! I wonder if they really have a regular life outside of the keyboard? Of course they do or they wouldn't have anything to blog about!  Maybe, they have a large group of people reading their writings and feel obligated to crank them out. Nevertheless, I will try to do better and that is as much of a resolution as I will make.

I have been baking bread for many more winter customers this year. It keeps me busy one day a week, sometimes two. 

Saturday I was able to bake two hundred eighty biscotti  for a friend's wedding! Yes, that was 280! She will be serving Double Almond with lemon zest, almond paste, and toasted almonds, Cherry-Vanilla with dried cherries and vanilla bean, and Mocha which is made with Old Crown's finely ground espresso beans and a lots of chocolate. Mmmm! Maybe, she will get 279 and I will have one with my morning coffee.

Winter

For those of you wondering, "Yes!", I am still baking bread and I still have honey available.
The normal winter baking day is Wednesday. If Wednesday doesn't work for you, just give me a call or send me an e-mail and we can make arrangements.
Spelt, Honey-Whole Wheat, and Vanilla-Raisin seem to be the most requested winter breads. They are all organic of course.
A fresh loaf of bread and a thick bowl of soup make a great meal during these cold, snowy days of winter.

Today's Special:

The special of the day will be "The Great Pumpkin Swirl". MMMM...it smells so good!! This bread is organic and whole grain; no white flour at all! It also contains organic pumpkin, spices, and walnuts, it's like a pumpkin pie in bread form.
Salomon Farm tonight 4 pm - 7 pm.

Honey!!

The guys are finally getting around to extracting the honey this weekend! Just in the nick of time, too. I am down to about 60# of honey. I will be posting pictures of the frame gathering process and the extraction process. It is quite messy, yet quite fascinating.

Winter bread orders

The Farmer's market season is quickly coming to a close. October 14 is the last date for the Salomon Farm Organic Market. For those of you who have been asking about how to get bread in the winter, I am going to continue selling by order only. You will need to pre-order bread, either weekly or monthly. It looks like Wednesday is the day preferred by the CSA members who buy bread when they pick up their CSA's. Pick-ups for bread and honey will be made at my house at this point, although there is some talk of one CSA person picking up the entire lot and transporting it to the CSA pick-up site.
Many of you have asked about focaccia in the winter. Unfortunately, the best feta-pesto focaccia is made fresh and is seasonal. Roasted red-pepper will still be available, yum!!
Organic Vanilla-Raisin, Spelt and Organic Honey Whole Wheat breads are available year round. Fall favorites include Pumpkin Swirl and Garlic Parmesean. Send me an e-mail and we can discuss ordering and varieties. eicher10@verizon.net, just make sure to put bread or farm market in the subject line so I don't delete you!!

Schedule

This week the organic whole wheat and honey bread will also be available at the General Store in Grabill during Grabill Days!

July 22

I will not be at market this week. I will be watching my boys show their goats at the 4-H fair. They have a 6:00 pm show.

July 15 - Salomon

I arrived with over 60# of honey and 81 loaves of bread. I managed to sell everything except two orders that I was holding for people, who never showed up to get them. One was pre-paid!! Hopefully, they will call today. If they don't, we will just have to eat it.

Rain

I went to the Auburn Farmer's Market this morning. By 8:00am, I was in the midst of a terrific thunderstorm!! We need the rain so I shouldn't complain. Now it's 10:00am and the rain has stopped. Do I go back and set up for another hour or do I stay home and unload? This is my conundrum.

Another amazingly busy, successful night at Salomon Farm Organic Market!

Salomon Farm

Wow!! I sold 45 loaves in 44 minutes this past Wednesday!! This is a new record for me. I am wondering how much bread will be enough. If I had baked 50 loaves would I have leftovers? How about 70 loaves? How early should I get up and start baking?
Praising the Lord that I have a market for bread. He always increases bread and honey sales when Allan's construction work slows down! Why are we suprised?
"I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread."Psalm 37:24-26
This is my mantra, if you will, in tough times. This is the key to the success of the bakery.

Grain to bread

Whole grain with all it's goodness intact.

The grain ground into flour.

Shaped and rising loaves.

The finished product.

Organic vanilla bean in honey. It's great in tea!

Busking

Ben played with the honey bears, pretending they were soldiers, I think.

Getting paid for practicing makes it more fun!

Look at that great posture.

My little busker.

Busk: to entertain in a public venue for tips

Welcome

Welcome to the Hive & Hearth. This blog will mainly be about the farm, and baking and selling at the farm market. Currently, I am selling at the Auburn Farm Market on Saturday mornings. The market is held on the West side of the courthouse square and runs from approximately 7:00am to 11:30am. Some mornings I am there earlier and I leave as soon as I sell out of bread. Last year that was around 10:00am! This year I have more competition and have been staying around until closer to 11:00. I sort of liked being the only bread and honey vendor. I am also selling at Salomon Farm Organic Farm Market on Wednesdays from 4:00pm to 7:00pm. This is an all organic market (as the name implies). It is held in the old barn at Salomon Park on Dupont Rd, Fort Wayne. I have been out of bread by 5:30 each week! If you need bread, come early or e-mail me and I will save some for you.
On July 3, I will be trying a new venue. Downtown Fort Wayne has started a market on Friday afternoon from 3:00pm to 8:00pm on Main St. I can't do Friday and then do Saturday in Auburn, but since that Saturday is the fourth of July, there will not be a market in Auburn.