Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

Fall Garden Maintenance

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For the past few weeks we have been concentrating on getting all plants ready for the winter.  Each weekend, we get a little more done and the farm looks a bit more cleaned up.

The blackberry rows are an arduous task, we can only work a few hours on this at a time, so it is taking a while.  We not only trim the stems, but control how many stems per bush we want to keep – selecting the strongest and making sure none of the branches shade out other stems.  Then we manually pull the weeds around the bush, just within weed-whip range.  All the trimmings are dropped between the rows.  Eventually, Jeff will run the bush hog through each row, which pretty much destroys even the thickest bramble branch.  Then we will run the weed-whip along the rows to clean up the final weeds.



BEFORE
AFTER

This weekend, Tina finished the final weeding and rototilling on the “Jam Garden”, and planted a few more red raspberries (they were on super clearance at Lowes).  This garden now has 3 rows of blueberries, 2 rows of strawberries, and one mixed row of black and red raspberries, plus one gooseberry bush and two black currant bushes.

Spices and Herbs

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Managed to get one more good cutting of herbs today, before starting to weed the herb garden:

  • 2 huge bunches of peppermint
  • 2 bunches of thyme
  • 1 big bunch of rosemary
  • 1 bunch of oregano
  • 1 big bunch of sage
Fresh herbs hung up to dry in the kitchen

We also made a batch of spiced apple wine – the recipe called for cloves, broken up cinnamon sticks and shredded ginger root.  Can’t wait to see how this will turn out – may we’ll have it ready for next year’s Thanksgiving holiday.  In the meantime, I am making do with mulled hot cider – actually sipping it right now and it is delicious!

Birthday Party in the Barn

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Our grandson Toben turned 3 today! And fortunately for us, his birthday party took place in our barn.

Rachel arrived with a complete birthday party in a crate!  Favors, decorations and games galore.  All we had to do was clean up the barn to get ready.

This ended up to be a family pig roast as well  – no use not utilizing our pig roaster, and Zach and Rachel got half a pig for roasting.  We had lots of potatoes, corn and rolls with jelly, as well as cakes, muffins and jigglers.

Overall, we had about 40 people, including a dozen kids – all under the age of 4.    Caleb brought over his hay wagon, with some hay bales, and took all the kids and some parents for a ride around the farm. 

Gracie brought a pinata – which we hung up outside of the barn.  None of the small children were able to break the pinata, though not for lack of trying.  It took Lars to break it open 🙂

Other games included “pin the tail on the donkey”, and “go fish” – with quite an elaborate set-up.  And the of course there was birthday cake, balloons, presents and treats for everyone.  What a fun day!

Birthday Cake
“Go Fish” setup

Making Apple Cider

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There are just a few simple steps to making apple cider:

1.  Start with 50 bushels of mixed apples from a local orchard – second grade/juice grade (meaning they are smaller, not very uniform, but clean and worm free)

2.  Invite your entire family for a weekend of “fun”

3.  Clean and sterilize the cider press and connect it to the motor

4.  Clean all food grade buckets and barrels (our assortment ranges from 1 gallon jugs, to 5, 10 and 20 gallon buckets)

5.  Clean all saved plastic jugs – juice containers, soda bottles and even carboys…as long as they have lids, for keeping cider.

6.  Set up an “assembly-line” for efficient work flow, including the following stations:

  • Getting apples off wagon into 5 gallon buckets (removing leaves if necessary or sorting out the occasional rotten apple) – this involves eventual crawling into the large bin to reach the bottom apples
  • Carrying the 5 gallon buckets of apples over to the press
  • Dumping apples into the hopper for shredding (requires a tall person)
  • Supervisor to ensure that shredded apples don’t overflow the baskets and moving baskets toward the press mechanism
  • Running the (manual) press after apples have been shredded (can be same person who also dumps the apples)
  • Catching the pressed cider into suitable containers and then dumping those into larger storage containers
  • Water hose, pressure washer and final cleanup station is also a good idea.

Fresh cider only keeps about a week in the refrigerator, at least we never tried to keep it longer. What we can’t drink or give away, we can, using 2 quart jars.  The sediment will settle to the bottom, and when we drink it later in the winter, we just carefully pour out the clear juice.  This also works great for making mulled cider all winter long!  We also use some of the cider for making apple wine.

 
With everything set up, 50 bushels of apples can be pressed
 into cider – using a 100 year old cider press rigged with
an electric motor – in a day.
 

Shed Roof Progress

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Start of project on Saturday

Despite the weather forecast, we did not get any rain until late on Sunday afternoon, so we were able to work more on our shed roof.  Over the last 2 weeks, we finished putting up the long roof pieces on both sides, so now we were ready for the finish trim and the roof cap.  This turned out to be more time consuming than the big pieces. We worked on Saturday for a few hours, and then again on Sunday (it got a lot colder and we had to take a break just to warm up again).



Attaching brackets for roof cap

Individual brackets had to be screwed onto the top of each of the 44 roof pieces – to attach the cap to.  Jeff had been cutting and trimming these throughout the week and he pre-drilled each pieces with 3 holes. 

Two pieces of specially formed metal had to be screwed along the angles edges, forming the front trim – the bottom piece had to screwed on, the top piece got pop-riveted.  We were able to finish the road side trim up along both edges, and attached the first section of the roof cap before it started raining. 



Holding piece of edge trim in place
Attaching trim at the peak

Finished half of the roof!
Posted in DIY