sauerkraut

I finally cracked open our Wild Fermentation book, which is becoming a household favorite and read about making sauerkraut. When I discovered that kraut making basically involves chopping cabbage and adding salt, I knew I needed to try it.

First step- pick the cabbage. Seems like a simple step, but I actually think I could have let this cabbage head get a little larger. I'll keep that in mind for next time. We grew several heads of ruby red cabbage this year.

Second step, chop the cabbage and marvel at the beautiful patterns unfurling in front of you. I chopped the cabbage pretty coarsely. We had sauerkraut made at the Kretschmann's farm this past spring and instead of the finely grated stuff that you get at the grocery store, it was really wide and chunky, which made for a different eating experience.

Step three, toss the chopped cabbage into a large bowl, adding salt as you add more cabbage and stir it all together. In Wild Fermentation, Sandor writes to use 3T of salt per 5 pounds of cabbage.

Dump the chopped cabbage into a container. I used a half gallon jar. We do have a 15 gallon sauerkraut crock from my grandparents, but for my first batch of kraut, that seemed a bit ambitious.

Firmly pack down the cabbage into the container. We ended up adding about half of a green cabbage head from our CSA to fill up the container all of the way.

If you are using a real sauerkraut crock, you just place the sauerkraut board into the crock to cover the kraut. Since we were using a jar, we used a drinking glass to create a seal at the top of the jar. Next, we covered the whole thing with a towel and placed lots of heavy books on top to push the glass down into the jar.

And now we wait.
As an aside, sauerkraut making seems to be in my genes. As I mentioned above, my Pop and Meemaw gave us their old 15 gallon kraut crock. My mom recently told me a story of how Pop made sauerkraut once in the basement and it smelled so bad, which drove my Meemaw a bit batty - she was a very clean person. After the fermentation was complete, there was still a foul odor in the basement. Apparently in the midst of the sauerkraut making process, a rodent had died in their basement and that was what was causing the bad smell. YUCK!

But, no seriously- I remember as a kid coming home and smelling sauerkraut fermenting on the kitchen counter and it does kind of smell like an animal died. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough. Good thing it tastes SO good!

tomatoes!

So far, we've picked over 160 pounds of tomatoes this summer. We've had mostly romas (my personal fave). We've canned a LOT of sauce.

new fences

After many months of waiting, we finally have fences.

We now have a steel fence along the front sidewalk.

In the back, we have a shadow box style cedar fence.




We still need to take out the posts from the old fence.

neck cozy

The cooler weather finally motivated me to finish spinning the above roving into yarn. The roving was hand carded (2.3 oz.) merino, kid mohair, glitz, bamboo 034, which I purchased from the Hobbledehoy Etsy Store.
I checked ravelry for neck cozy patterns and found one called the Dulce Neck Cozy by Fiddle Knits -- I made a couple of changes to the pattern and it just took a couple hours to whip this out.
The yarn is incredibly soft and warm. Bring on fall!

Bye Bye, Carpet

Rebecca has wanted to get rid of the carpet in this house since... oh... before she bought it. A couple weeks ago, we finally felt motivated to action, in large part due to seeing the refinishing work of the folks over at Torley Manor. The plan: tear out the carpet, see exactly what was underneath, and then figure out what to do next. (We love plans that are easily condensed to Step 1: Do something irreversible, and Step 2: Figure out Step 3.) We knew the floor underneath was tongue and groove pine, since we could see its underside from the basement. The condition of the pine, however, was the big unknown. If the floor looked great, we’d sand and polyurethane. If it was unsandable (due to lead or some other gunk), we’d prime and paint. If it was really nasty, we’d probably put some sort of laminate floor on top.

It only took about four hours to go from a fully-furnished and carpeted living room to a room with a bare wooden floor. The newly uncovered floor is pine. We assume it’s the original floor in the house. Most of the floor has never been finished and is in pretty decent shape for being about 120 years old. Around the outside, there’s a few layers of paint, the most recent being brown. After a little research, I learned that the floor probably had a large, rectangular area rug in the middle, where the pine has never been finished.

We knew we could sand and polyurethane the unfinished central area of the floor, but what about the painted border? Could we also sand or strip that paint? Is it lead paint? To find out, I tracked down a lead test kit at a local paint store. (Thanks again to Emma and Q!) These kits contain eight little markers. Each marker has two glass vials inside that you crack open by squeezing the marker. Then, you shake to mix the chemicals and smear the stuff on potentially leaded paint. If it turns red, there’s lead. I decided to test two areas: the brown painted area and the bare wood. Why the bare wood? Well, I didn’t really know for sure that it had never had any finish on it. And I really don’t want lead poisoning. Really. So the test on the bare wood appeared negative. The test on the brown paint looked brown. Well, maybe reddish brown, but maybe just paint brown. I couldn’t tell what the test said about the brown paint. So I tried a third area that had white paint on top. That area tested clearly positive for lead. So we decided to paint the border and try to sand and put a clear finish in the center of the floor.

I'll post more later as the project progresses....

nonstop pickles

thanks, Mother Earth News for the simple recipe.

black eyed susans

The black eyed susans aren't holding back this year. Back in 2007, David and I transplanted a few of these beautiful plants from his backyard at "the mintwood house" to the banner way pre-homestead backyard. Since then, these cheery flowers have multiplied like crazy; we even had enough to transplant then into our new lot and they look great!This was our garden in 2008- notice the small patch of black eyed susans that David and I had transplanted.
Here's David with some freshly picked tomatoes, but notice behind him the HUGE black eyed susan plants! They get fuller every year!
Here are about five other transplanted black eyed susans in our new raised beds. They're taking over the place, which is fine by me! (pay no attention to the weeds)
Dakota really likes these beauties!