Early Spring

An early spring means lots of happy bugs, and that the lazy fucking farmer can't be lazy, but rather have to run around like a busy bee getting seeds in the ground. But really, one can not complain about warm nights this time of year.

Cathedral of vegetables

The snow wrecked the polytunnel in the winter, squeezing it flat.
Then the winds ripped open the plastic, and when the thaw came the whole thing was under water.

I really really want a proper greenhouse, with lots of space and an insulated area where I can keep the heat on and give baby plants a head start.

Alas, what I did have this spring was a heap of plastic and bits of rusty, broken rods floating about in icy slush.

Happily for me, I also have an axe, birch trees sprouting everywhere, gaffa tape, leftover string from the hay bales and a strong husband who take orders well.

Tadaa! All ready for plants:

Now, if I could get hold of some suitable sheets and some spare time (hah!) I could make more polytunnels and cover the farm in tiny little houses for worshipping the gods of growing things...

Early crops

This year, I've mostly been growing chickens.

Mead batch 3

A cellar filled with bottles of mead is quite essential for the good life.
Chilled in summer evenings, mulled on cold skiing trips and a barrel for the party -there are few occasions which are not improved by mead.

I'll probably never start up my own micro brewery, but making your own booze is a fun and useful hobby.

Currently my third batch of mead is gurgling away happily under my kitchen table, and it smells absolutely delicious. I've made some changes from the previous two that I hope will pay off. Most importantly I've substituted the cheap honey from the supermarket with light summerhoney from a local beefarmer. The taste of the honey is definitely what is most prominent in mead, so it makes sense not to skimp on this. 

Secondly, I've used apples instead of apple juice. I'd love to say that there were a lot of sound reasoning behind this, but mostly it's just an idea that fresh apples from the supermarket are slightly more historically correct than cheap juice from the supermarket. Oh, and I also used apples in the starter. Theoretically, wild yeast on the appleskin would make a yeast culture on its own, but I chickened out and used some dry wine yeast also. I pathetically comfort myself thinking that people in the past would probably treasure a good yeast culture, taking as few risks as possible with the precious honey.
I'm ridiculously excited about this one, I'll be very disappointed if it goes wrong.
I suppose I ought to write down everything I do with it for further reference. 

First step was to create a starter. Wine yeast, water, a spoon of sugar and an apple cored and chopped all went into an old waterbottle. I gave it a good shake and left it there over night, to make sure that the yeast have started it's blessed process of turning sugars into alcohol.

Next day we made the must:

1 kg of apples cored and chopped up.

3 kg of honey (This is quite a bit I think, but I so love the honey taste)

1 kg cane sugar (a bit extravagant perhaps)

enough water to reach the 12 litre mark in the bucket.

I do not bother to boil the water (We have our own well of quite "soft" water, and I've never had problems with it before) except what went over the apples (they are not organic, bummer, so I do not trust them 100%) and I heated some in a kettle to stir out the honey. The lovely woman who taught me to make mead told me that it's important that the honey is not heated above 70 Centigrades as that will spoil some of the flavour, and I stick to that rather than take any chances.

We now had a mixture that taste absolutely divine. Especially mixed with good rum. I have on later occasions made some honey & apple infusions. Nom.

We actually drank a bit of it while waiting for the must to cool down.

After several cups of honey/apple/rum, we eventually gave up on it ever cooling down to room temperature and went to bed.

Next morning, when the must had finally reached a yeast friendly room temperature, we poured in the starter and gave the fermenting bucket a good shake.

Giving it a good shake was something I continued to do the next 4 days. At this stage the yeast needs oxygen to thrive.

Now, after three weeks the bubbling have slowed down. I should probably rack it to secondary fermentation soonish. And it taste good even though the alcohol is a quite prominent. Alas, I've done a little bummer. I totally forgot that halving the batch would mean that my 20 litre glass carboy will only be half full, i.e. half full of air. 

So I can take my chances on that working out, or take my chances on doing the secondary fermentation in plastic bottles. I'm leaning towards the second option, mostly because it will leave my last carboy free for some rhubarb wine making in spring...

Update 06.03: Racked the must to two five litre PET plastic bottles that I put in the cellar. The alcohol content is about 15%, and apart from the prominent alcohol and a faint hint of yeast it taste quite good: The taste of the honey is fairly unchanged, just less sweet. The tart taste (and smell) of apple is also rather prominent, which at this stage I'm pleased with. I'm guessing that this mead will be slightly on the sweet side (even though I hope the level of alcohol will still rise a tiny bit), so some tartness won't go amiss. And if the previous batches are anything to go by the honey will dominate as the mead age and mellows.

Mornings...

The enjoyment of my wonderful pick-me-up-in-the-morning smoothie is somewhat marred by the sudden realization that it looks like cat vomit.

It taste good though, and it wakes me up, so I'll write down what I put in it:

1 old banana
1 orange, and some orange juice
A generous slice of ginger
Chilipowder
Cinnamon

Close your eyes, and enjoy with a cup of coffee.

I'll label this as nom, despite what it looks like.

Procrastination

Why is it so difficult to keep up regular blog updates (or for that matter answering mail)?

Some of the answer might be this:

Anything that have to compete with my happy frolicking around in the woods with my dogs have a tendency to not happen.