Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

August 6 Garden Update

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  • Blackberry harvest is coming to an end, we picked over 500 pounds.  A few bushes are still bearing, but we are trimming out the old growth and tying up the shoots for next year.
  • Doing well with watermelons – we have yellow and red ones.  Both have amazing tastes!
  • Picked enough tomatoes and onions for a batch of sauce
  • Still making pesto dishes from all the basil
  • Made 2 batches of blackberry jam (with Anja and Anna)
  • Most importantly: Chambourcin grapes are ripening!!

Wine Making 2012 Started This Week!

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Exciting things happening this week:  we started 3 “experimental” batches of wine.
 

yeast starting to bubble
in blackberry juice
  • July 28:  our first batch is a plain blackberry, made from frozen berries we picked earlier this season. 
  • July 29:  a small batch of strawberry wine, also from previously frozen berries
  • August 4:  another batch of blackberry, but with this one we are trying for a “Blackberry Merlot” kind of wine, used more berries per gallon and added wood chips already during fermentation.

For all batches, we kept the fruit secured in fermentation bags, which will make it easy to remove before racking into carboys.

We had to make a run for more wine-making supplies like yeast, pectic enzyme, campden tablets etc.,  and ended up buying a fermentation vat for future use.  It was a good deal…and we can always dream big 🙂

Cheese Bread: Our New Favorite

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By accident, we discovered this most delicious bread – first on some hunting website, and then found similar recipes on actual cooking websites as well.  Here is our version:

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup warm water
  • 1 cup small curd cottage cheese (I like the 4% variety)
  • 2 tablespoons butter – cut into small pieces
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3 and 1/4 cup of bread flour
  • 2 and 1/4 teaspoons of bread machine yeast (or dry yeast for regular baking)

Place ingredients in bread machine, use “dough” cycle.  When done, punch down, knead enough to get air bubbles out (add some more flour if dough is too sticky).  Place in greased loaf pan and let rise a bit more.  Preheat oven to 375 degree F.  Bake bread for 25 minutes, until top is lightly browned.  Remove from oven and brush top with melted butter to keep the crust soft.

July 24 Garden Update

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  • Harvested all green beans – they did not do too well this year, so we pulled out plants while harvesting.  We canned 26 quarts of green beans and made a huge pot of ham & bean soup
  • Besides cherry tomatoes, the first “Beef Heart” tomatoes are ripening
  • Melons are doing well with all the rain, picked a cantaloupe (not quite ripe yet)
  • We are up to 467 lbs of picked blackberries!