Krystal is outta town, Ian is drinking beer

Ok,, so no posts in a while because Krystal is out of town..

Today I thought I would put up a post so that we don't lose ALL of our readership.. Lots of news around here, but today I am focusing on one particular thing that I did today that really made my brutal week worth it.

I cracked a fancy bottle of beer.

Alright.  I know what you're thinking..  So what? Beer?  I drink beer all the time!

Well sirs, this isn't any ordinary beer..  Brody -- you will have to excuse my example here, but we're not talking about Miller High Life or PBR.  This is a REAL beer.

You see....   A ways back when I was travelling to the US for business regularly, I developed a taste for sour beers.  At the time, it was a pretty unique thing -- but since, it's developed some popularity.  At the time I brought one single bottle home and shared it with friends.  I'm pretty sure nobody liked it and it was a huge waste of beer.  It was a New Belgium wild ale called "La Folie".  Here was the label at the time (it has since changed design):

Since then, I've been trying to find a similar beer..   It's very hard to describe this beer, but it's a sour cherry flavour, high acidity and makes my mouth water just thinking about it.  It's called "wild ale" because the yeasts and bacteria that develop the flavour are in the wood of the barrels.. They don't really control it the same way they control typical brewers yeast -- this makes the beer a little bit unpredictable and, as a result, more expensive.

Well, we, ahem, I, have been trying to find a similar beer for quite some time.. On our trip round the USA I tried a few, and just wasn't thrilled.  Didn't find anything I really liked as much.  Until today.

Today, I open a nice bottle of Weyerbacher Riserva 2011.  Sounds like a wine doesn't it?  well.. it's certainly priced like a wine at 19 bucks a bottle (473ml).

I'm pretty sure I bought this at a small hole in the wall bottle shop in Charleston South Carolina called the Charleston Beer Exchange where the staff helped me pick it out.  The company that makes the beer says:

Riserva is an American Wild Ale fermented on red raspberries.  Riserva is fermented with a blend of Saccharomyces yeast, Brettanomyces yeast, and lactic acid bacteria that produce funky, sour, and fruity flavors and aromas.  The beer is aged for more than a year in oak barrels with Raspberries, giving the beer a pungent raspberry aroma, a lovely red color and a balancing wood character.  This brew is a beautiful beer both to your eyes and to your taste buds.  The microflora responsible for giving Riserva its character reside in the wood barrels and change somewhat over time depending upon factors such as the age of the barrel and the ambient temperature at which the barrels are stored.  New barrels are rotated into the mix as old barrels are rotated out and as such, Riserva varies somewhat in color and tartness from year to year.  Riserva is much higher in alcohol than its Belgian lambic framboise cousins and is a true treat to experience.

I'll leave it at that.  Please don't disturb me while I drink this bottle and try and remember how it tastes forever.. Not sure I'll get to buy another bottle of beer that costs 19 USD ever again.

Amen.

I'm A Smoker And I'm Not Quitting

Hi everyone.  Ian writing again.

I have a confession.

I'm a smoker, I smoke as often as I can and I don't cheap out either, I like the good stuff.  I didn't start in high school, but I feel like I've been missing out for a while, which is what all of my buddies used to tell me...

Nothing says it's springtime more than that first time you can comfortably smoke outdoors and not freeze your butt off.

I can, with a reasonable amount of certainty, state that I found a way to smoke that doesn't make Krystal angry, in fact, she's been begging me to start smoking since I first mentioned it over the summer.

Over the course of the last few weeks, I've been planning and building an "ugly drum smoker" (read up on google) -- there are lots of other smokers out there, but I wanted a project and this one was a perfect fit.  I'll be writing one day about the build process, but today it's about the smoking process...

It all starts with a coup'la racks 'o ribs.  I choose back ribs when they are on sale...

Then, add some mustard and dry rub, leave them in the fridge all night (photo is of ribs on the way into the fridge)...

Bring them out the next day, 1 hour before cooking starts...

  

Start up the charcoal, add in your wood bits 

(I used mesquite and sugar maple charcoal with mesquite wood bits)

Place it in the drum and let the smoker get up to 225...

Not quite ready...

Put the ribs on, wait 3 hours, wrap them in foil with a little bit of liquid, give them another 2, take off the foil and give them another hour or so...  Make sure the drum stays at 225!  We are ESPECIALLY careful not to leave Krystal in charge -- that's a sure way to have burnt food.  Trust me.

Take them off and let them rest...

Slather on some BBQ sauce and eat-em up....  You've never tasted anything like it.  Krystal even said "This is the best meal you've ever made" and that's saying that everything else I've made is bad.  

Thanks.

Look who's never feeding you again...

Mouth watering?  Now maybe you'll start smoking like the rest of the cool kids.

Muddy, Muddy Feet

We hit a whopping high of 6 degrees C (43 degrees F) this afternoon.  Generally melting snow is very much welcome on the farm; however, it does make for some muddy feet.

Muddy doggie feet that track across the white tiles of the kitchen floor is always a bummer.

Muddy human feet (well, boots) that leave a yucky pile of sludge on the garage floor.  They are even too muddy to be allowed in the mud room!

 Muddy chicken feet from all the scratching and scampering around the chicken run (aka huge muddy puddle out back of the chicken coop).  The chickens have it worst of all because they sink right up to their little chicken knees in the muck.

Luckily the chickens don't seem particularly concerned about having muddy feet - maybe they see it as a spa mud mask for their scaly toes?!  Who knows!

A Nesty Mess

One of Ian's very first handyman projects here on Gael Glen Farm was to build wooden nesting boxes for our hens to lay their eggs in.  Some farmers use large Tupperware plastic containers or milk crates, but Ian knew that nothing was too good for my ladies and built them the Cadillac of all chicken nesting boxes.

 We decided on six nests because we wanted to make sure there was enough room for everyone.  Little did we know at the time that it doesn't matter how many nests you give the hens, they all want to lay in the same one.  Often times five of the nesting boxes will be empty and we will find three hens all crammed into the same nest at the same time!

There are two hens in the right nest -
you can see the head of one and the tail of the other.

The nests open from the front into the chickens' part of the coop and have little flap doors at the back that open into the humans-only part of the coop.  That way squeamish egg collectors don't actually have to go into the area with the chickens to collect the eggs.  This is really good for little kids who are fascinated by the eggs but still a bit scared of the hens (and the biting duck - and rightly so!).

Initially we experimented with lining the bottom of the nests with different materials.  First we tried straw but the hens simply scratched it out.  Then we tried nothing but we got lots of broken eggs from the hens laying their eggs right on the wooden bottom.  Finally, we settled on wood shavings.  The hens scrape some of them out but tend to leave most in the nest which provides both a soft cushion for the eggs to land on and an absorbent layer for any broken egg insides.

Regrettably, the hens just don't seem to value their fancy nests they way we'd like them to and they frequently defile the nesting boxes with broken eggs and chicken poop - creating one nesty mess!  While blocking the nests at nighttime does reduce the amount of mess, it is still necessary to scrape the soiled wood shavings out of the nests on approximately a biweekly basis and replace them with fresh ones.

Nest cleaning tool.

Nice clean nesting boxes lined with fresh wood shavings.

The hens get very confused when you tamper with their nests - especially when you open the back door flaps for an extended period of time.  They love to try and sneak out through the back door and into the forbidden territory of the human part of the coop.

Chicken: "What is going on here?"

Chicken trying to make her escape into forbidden territory through the back door.
Can these ladies ever move when they put their mind to it!

The long and short of it is that clean nests = clean eggs = happy farmer.  So it is all worth it in the end.

The Good Life

There is nothing like the warmth of the midday sun in March.  Charlotte is our sun baby and today was the perfect illustration of her sun loving ways.  We found her enjoying a relaxing morning nap in a pool of delectable sunshine on the living room floor.  If this isn't the good life, I don't know what is.

Cricket Move In Day

There is nothing Avery likes more than a nice fresh cricket.  She eats on average six crickets a day which we purchase in bulk from PetSmart about every two weeks.  In the intermittent period between the crickets arriving at the farm from the pet store and whenever they are selected to be dinner, we house them quite comfortably in a Cricket Keeper.

Crickets in the  pet store bag.

In the summer the Cricket Keeper is kept in the garage and in the winter we keep it in the storage room in the basement.  We always make sure that the Cricket Keeper is decked out with fresh shredded carrots and plenty of Fluker's cricket water - a yellow jelly substance from which the crickets drink.  Crickets can't have liquid water because they will drown in it.

Shredded carrots and cricket water.

The crickets also get lots of broken up egg carton pieces to crawl over.  If they don't have enough surface area they will pile on top of each other and either suffocate or eat one another - they aren't the nicest (or smartest) of creatures.

 They look pretty content in their new digs though.  Oh, the life of a pet store cricket...

Home sweet home - at least for now...

Ian Builds a Nursery

As you may know, we're expecting a baby this spring...lots of babies, in fact.  Baby chickens, baby ducks, baby human...this blog entry isn't about any of those.

This past weekend, Ian got busy building us a nursery for another group of highly anticipated spring babies - our baby garden plants.  This Christmas we received a seed starter kit to begin growing our vegetable plants inside.  This will give us a jump on the Ottawa area growing season and will save us a mitt load of money buying baby plants from Canadian Tire.  Though, I think we already spent an equivalent mitt load buying fancy seeds from Stokes Seed Co. but who's counting?

The indoor plant starter date of April 1st is fast approaching so Ian got down to work designing and building us a lighted platform on which to grow our seeds into baby plants.  He used a sofa table from the basement as the base and then built a functional and attractive wooden frame from which to hang the fluorescent light above the growing table.  The light can be raised as the plants grow so it will always hover just above them.

I am super impressed with Ian's handyman skills and am thrilled with how this plant nursery turned out - all built from scraps of wood that we already had lying around.  We have placed the nursery in the living room behind the chesterfield but in front of our large south-western facing windows so the plants will get some natural light and heat as well as the artificial light.  T-minus 27 days until planting day!

Light raised for bigger plants.

Light lowered for little plants.

Age Defying Treatment for Old Honey

We are almost all sold out of last year's honey crop.  In 2012 our bee hive yielded approximately 35 jars of beautiful, golden yellow honey.  This honey won us third prize in the golden honey category at the Carp Fair.

Before you think our heads swelled winning such a prestigious award, I should disclose that there were only three entries in this category.  However, I don't think it was the quality of our honey that was the issue - our feedback sheet listed our shortcomings as: 1) we didn't fill our jar full enough; 2) our honey was a little light coloured for the "golden" category (perhaps we should have submitted to the "light" category - who knew?!); and 3) there were too many bubbles in our honey - which makes sense since we has just harvested it the day before submitting our entry.

Since we don't pasteurize our honey, we refrigerate it right after processing to reduce the chance that bacteria will grow in it which is the cause of botulism.  However, refrigeration also increases the viscosity of the honey, so it takes longer for the air bubbles to move up through the honey to the top of the jar.

Next year, we will fill our jar fuller, process the honey a few days earlier and leave the jar on the window sill in the sun for a few days (insider advice from a veteran beekeeper) to make it clearer prior to submission to the Fair.  Then we'll see how we do!  How exactly we'll know whether to classify it as "light" or "golden" still alludes us but we'll worry about that when the time comes.  Maybe we'll do a public opinion poll on the blog.

While we have been focused on selling our 2012 yield; Ian and I are still eating our way through our 2011 honey crop.  This honey has been in the fridge for about a year and a half now and had begun to crystalize at the bottom of the jar.

Lucky for us, the honey, while older, is still perfectly edible and delicious, so to get rid of the crystals we simply place the room temperature jar of honey in a small pot of warm water on the stove.

Sure enough, after a few minutes the heat causes the crystals to dissolve back into the liquid honey and it all looks as good as new.  Perfect for tea, oatmeal and toast - yum!

Albert's Burn Treatment Unit

If you attended our nuptials several years ago, you are likely aware of Ian's nasty habit of accidentally burning himself.  On the morning of our wedding ceremony, he made a big home style breakfast using our cast iron frying pan - a great idea until he grabbed the handle of the very heavy, searing hot pan without an oven mitt (blame it on pre-wedding jitters) and scorched his right hand quite badly.  It made for a painful day of hand shaking - if you got a hug instead, now you know why!  Just kidding.

This weekend we were taking homemade pizza out of the oven and Ian (true to form) burned himself in the process.  Luckily this time it wasn't anywhere near as bad as before our wedding and as Ian was running his finger under cold water, I thought back to Brian and Sarah's visit to the farm a few weeks ago.  A year or so ago, we had gifted them with a baby Aloe Vera plant from our very prolific Aloe plant, Albert, who lives in our living room.  Albert was a gift to us from my Grandma from the annual plant sale at her seniors' center.  Albert is huge (the biggest domestic Aloe Vera plant I have ever seen!) and like I mentioned - a very prolific reproducer.  You can see all his babies stuffed into his pot and in all the little pots around him.

Albert and his babies.

During Brian's visit, he mentioned that he uses his Albert offspring (I'm not sure they've given him a proper name) as a burn treatment - a great naturopathic remedy.  So, to deal with Ian's most recent burn mishap I decided to give old Albert a try and see if he was really any good at relieving Ian's pain.  We sliced a leaf off one of Albert's many babies, cut it into a strip and secured the oozing pad of plant leaf to Ian's finger with lots of tape.

Sure enough, the Aloe Vera juices got right to work soothing Ian's burn.  A big thanks to Albert and family for sacrificing a leaf to heal Ian's finger - it blistered but at least the pain is gone!