Maine

[buckabucka]

Is it more difficult to make hard cheeses? I imagine it must be. DH has recently been avoiding dairy, but he finds that goat's milk cheese does not bother him as much. I can get soft goat cheese locally. Once and a while we'll go down to Trader Joe's and stock up on a wide variety of harder cheeses that are from goat and/or sheep's milk. They are delicious, but I never find anything like in central Maine.

Every year I order 210 pounds of blueberries. The order is for four families, but I admit our family of 2 takes 110 pounds. I make some jam, and then we both put 1/3 cup or so of the berries on our cereal/oatmeal every single day. We make blueberry cake periodically for DH's elderly dad, and occasionally a pie. We actually ran out this year.

This year, our blueberries are sprayed with Imidan and perhaps malathion. Kind of a bummer, but I guess the fruit flies are particularly bad this year. Hopefully, the healthful qualities of the berries will offset whatever evils lurk in these sprays. DH looked them up and the insecticides are at least water-soluble, so maybe they rinse off some. :/

 

[superchemicalgirl]

We made a couple of hard cheeses in the class. It's a bit more work to do things with the curd, and then you've got to wax it and let it ferment and hope you did it right. I think I could do it on my own, but I'd have to purchase a lot more supplies than I have now, and my goat isn't even pregnant, let alone lactating, so I think I'll hold off for now.

I'm sure once I find myself faced with about a gallon of milk a day, I'll be making a ton of cheese. Goat mozzarella for everyone!

 

[MustardTiger]

Hallo!

One mother visit over and now a mother in law visit in two weeks. It has been a crazy time. My mom is a machine. She helped us weed the entire vegie garden AND weeded all of my perennial gardens. it was a feat! It sounds like everyone is struggling with their gardens this year. It makes me feel less foolish.

Over the lat two weeks I have made about 20 quart jars of pickles and about 10 dilly beans. Needless to say my northern pickling cukes from Johnnys did very very well and are still going gang busters. Same with the purple pole beans and the green bush beans. I have a few grapefruit sizes pumpkins coming along too.

My peppers are odd this year. They grew nice and big but only the jalapenos flowered. The red/green bell peppers are nowhere to be see and only tiny flower buds. I've never had problems getting peppers to grow before so we will see.

My turkeys are still marauding. unless they are blow your mind delicious, I don't think I will raise them here again. They destroyed too much and have made a huge mess around the coop. I do like them but I would want a whole separate house for them far far away from my flowers!

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Hallo!

One mother visit over and now a mother in law visit in two weeks. It has been a crazy time. My mom is a machine. She helped us weed the entire vegie garden AND weeded all of my perennial gardens. it was a feat! It sounds like everyone is struggling with their gardens this year. It makes me feel less foolish.

Over the lat two weeks I have made about 20 quart jars of pickles and about 10 dilly beans. Needless to say my northern pickling cukes from Johnnys did very very well and are still going gang busters. Same with the purple pole beans and the green bush beans. I have a few grapefruit sizes pumpkins coming along too.

My peppers are odd this year. They grew nice and big but only the jalapenos flowered. The red/green bell peppers are nowhere to be see and only tiny flower buds. I've never had problems getting peppers to grow before so we will see.

My turkeys are still marauding. unless they are blow your mind delicious, I don't think I will raise them here again. They destroyed too much and have made a huge mess around the coop. I do like them but I would want a whole separate house for them far far away from my flowers!

Sounds like a crazy time.

I haven't found my turkeys to be any more destructive than the chickens. There's not anything growing in their run, they have long since destroyed it, so maybe that's the difference? They turkeys fly out every day, but I dont really see them destroying things. We haven't processed any of ours, yet, but I'm hoping they're blow-our-mind-delicious.

 

[lazy gardener]

Widget: So sorry for the loss of your beautiful dog. Also, you have my sympathy re: your horse's allergies. That has to be frustrating, not to mention the expense.




Dow Girl: Congrats on your EE eggs. I can't see from the picture... what color are they? Did you say they were from the same girl, or 2 different ones. How many EE did you get? I'm really enjoying my 3 EE, and find that their productivity is much higher than I expected... at least at this point in their laying cycle. This week, the girls averaged 89% with a couple of dbl. yolkers thrown in for good measure.

 

[hoppy]

for anyone going to the basket show tomorrow sunday aug 4th spread the word:
contacted Jerry Phillips about the times. Registration is from 8 to 10. Judging starts at 11 am. Pass the word!

 

[MustardTiger]

The chickens here never used to do much in the flower beds. They hung out in the shade but didnt dust bathe in there or eat anything. This year the turkeys taught them bad habits - squished my bleeding heart plant, destroyed some lilies and ate my sweet peas as they grew in. They dust bathed so much that they nearly unearthed all the peony roots! I came home to find my mom swearing a blue streak at the turkeys beacuse they wouldn't leave her alone while she weeded!

 

[superchemicalgirl]

That's funny. Were they picking at her? My goats do that. One will pull down my shorts or pull up on my underwear if they can see it. They'll eat my gloves, my hair, my buttons, my shoes... it's exasperating, they're lucky they are so cute.


I was out on the porch last week reading a book when Caramel decided she was going to jump on my back and eat my hair. I managed to snap a picture of the action before kicking her off and locking her back up. Bad Goat:

 

[Widget]

Let the birds out to free range today and they were very helpful when I was cleaning the front porch and emptying grain into the various trash cans. I had chickens and turkeys getting into everything.

It got worse when I was weighing the grain and supplements for the horse. I had one tetra tint pullet who kept trying to get on the scale to get at the bowl of grain. As soon as I picked up one bird and gently threw it off the porch another would be right there to take its place. So I gave up for a bit and decided to mow the lawn. That was when I had a Golden Comet pullet trying to trip me. Now I really like having friendly birds but this was a bit too much. Took me twice as long to get everything done. Yet I still gave them the cull blueberries after I was through getting the 10 lbs of berries I bought today ready for the freezer.

 

[hoppy]

darn lightening struck the phone lines last night and fried my phones and modem. got the modem replaced but not the phones yet. searched all over belfast, note to anyone looking for phones there,forget it. heading the big city at some point to get one. thankfully my neighbors loaned me theirs for now.