This weekend we were very fortunate to meet up with Darlene and Bill, the owners of Hunters Valley Winery in Perry county….just over the mountain and a little to the east of us. They were very gracious to spend a few hours explaining their winemaking, grapegrowing and history of their winery. They have been doing this for 27 years! and recently expanded to a larger winery and tasting room facility and also added a pavilion for weddings in the vineyard. We learned so much from them and really appreciated their hospitality and willingness to share their knowledge.
We also tasted some of their wines and took home a bottle of their Berry Mountain Red blended wine, which is delicious!
Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm
Overwintering Geraniums
This year, I am digging up as many of the geraniums as I can fit onto two large tables in the barn and I will let them overwinter there. So far, I dug out about 50 plants, carefully getting as many roots as possible. Each plant is trimmed back so that only a few stems with leaves remain, and then placed in a flowerpot with potting soil. Our barn will be rather cold, but I hope they will make it. I have kept potted geraniums in my cellar before (which also gets rather cold), but it has very little light and I ended up with very spindly looking plants. I also tried shaking off all the soil from the plant and placing them in brown paper bags to overwinter in the cellar – letting the plant go completely dormant. Some of those actually do come back to life, if I remember to plant them early enough. I found that keeping potted geraniums in a cool spot with light seems to work best for me.
“Sandy” Barn Damage
The massive hurricane, properly called “Sandy”, left our part of Pennsylvania relatively unscathed. We were truly very, very lucky, especially when compared to the devastation the storm brought to the coastline, just a few hours east of us in New Jersey and New York.
We had some issues with our power, it was off most of the night on Monday. We played Monopoly with oil lamps and candles and then we all slept in the living room, as we had the back-up gas heater running. The electricity came back on around 7, just in time for everyone to take a shower, and then it was back off by midmorning.
We had some trees uprooted (just small ones in the fence row), and a lot of small and mid-sized branches all over the place. The only real damage was to the back of our barn, where about 20 boards got torn off, and the vent on the very top of the barn got knocked out as well. Everything that was stored on that side got rather wet, but it was mostly our unused stainless steel tanks and stacks of lumber – so it could have been worse.
The damage was toward the top of the barn, so we had to get some help to get this one fixed. Our friend Mike, who happens to run a construction business, managed to squeeze us into his schedule today. He brought scaffolding and ladders – and not only replaced all the boards, but re-nailed all the existing boards as well. Lars climbed up on the scaffolding as well – Jeff stayed on the ground, cutting boards to length.
Preparing for “Frankenstorm”
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| Buttermilk Rye, Cottage Cheese, Plain White & Dinner Rolls |
It’s too early to tell how bad this storm will actually be, but we did make some preparations, just in case the worst case scenario plays out.
It is important to remember that we live in southcentral PA, where even a hint of a snowflake triggers a massive run on the bread and milk aisles in the grocery store. So with “Sandy” slowly moving up the east coast, there was no bread to be had by Saturday, which was not such a bad deal, because I got to bake all day Sunday and call it “storm preparations”.
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| Bottled Water in the Barn |
In addition to baking bread and different apple cakes, we did fill up a number of our unused 5 gallon carboys with drinking water and stored those in our barn. We have rain barrels under our downspouts to catch water (great for flushing toilets) and we do have a well stocked canned food cellar and freezers.
We also re-organized our canned fruit, (which really had to be done anyhow) in case our cellar floods. All the full jars are moved to the top shelves, so the bottom shelves only hold empty jars, which can easily be washed and cleaned.
We moved all our outside furniture into the barn, got firewood closer to the house, emptied the rain gauge, hooked up a large propane tank to the gas grill and got gas for our cars. And we finally moved Oliver, the tortoise, inside.
Now, the phones are charging, flashlights are ready, the laundry and dishes are done…and I have time to post on our blog. Outside, the wind has definitely picked up, its starting to rain harder and the temperature has dropped quite a bit. Just be safe everyone!!
Jeff’s Chicken Corn Soup for a Crowd
A long time ago, Jeff asked an old farmer’s wife how to make chicken corn soup. She looked at him as if he was daft, and then told him to cook chicken with corn – duh. Jeff has expanded on those basic ingredients and over the years learned to make pretty decent soup. Last week, his own mother asked him for his chicken corn soup recipe, so I thought it may be time to write it down for everyone:
Jeff’s Chicken Corn Soup
(makes 5 gallons)
Ingredients:
- 20 lbs chicken pieces (we use thighs and breasts)
- 4 lbs onions
- 1 bag celery
- 1/2 stick of butter (or 1/4 cup vegetable oil)
- 1 Tablespoon ground pepper
- 1/4 cup of salt
- 1/4 cup of chicken bouillon powder
- 3 gallon bags of frozen corn
- additional seasoning to taste
Using a 22 quart pressure cooker – with the drain tray for jars placed in the bottom – add the 20 lbs of meat and 1 gallon water (the drain plate prevents the meat from burning). Cook the chicken at 10 pounds of pressure for 20 minutes. This pretty much “destroys” the meat.
Pour meat through colander, catching the broth in a bowl. Pour all the broth back into the pot. Let the meat cool enough to handle, then debone it and add it back to the pot.
Coarsely chop the onions and celery and simmer in a separate large pot, with some butter or oil (just enough to get the onions started to make juice, about 1/4 cup or so). Simmer for 20 minutes, until soft. Optional: we use our salsa screen for the food mill and run the onion/celery mixture through this, which removed all the strings from the celery, and leaves “no chunks”. The onion/celery mixture makes another gallon of creamy liquid, which we add to the broth. For “chunky” soup, the food mill step can be skipped, just add the mixture to the broth.
Add pepper, salt and bouillon. At this point, the pot will be less than half full. Add the corn until the kernels are level with the liquid. Bring back to a full boil.
We then let the soup sit several hours (actually over night). By the next morning, the corn will have soaked up all the liquid. Add more water to again just cover the corn. Reheat the soup, adjust seasoning (with pepper, salt and bouillon powder) and simmer for several hours. (We simmer it all day and serve it in the evening.)
This is the soup Jeff originally made for a wedding with over 100 guests, for which we had doubled the above recipe.
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| We freeze left-overs in 1 gallon containers |
