Triple Creek Farm, March 1, 2014

I made my way over to Charlottesville and now I have "200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes".  I have been reading and trying to learn the whats, whys and how you proceed to make cheese.  This book also has a section Kefir.  I have been learning about using the whey this week.  I made bread and instead of softening the yeast in warm water, I used warm whey.  The texture of the bread was soft and as bread makers say "it had a good crumb".  I have also learned in the future when I make bread I can use the water I  use to rinse my kefir jars.  I find it interesting the more I learn, the less I waste in the kitchen.  I was using the rinse water for my plants and I shall continue to do this when I am not making bread.

Mr. Bootsie informed me after watching the Cheese Making Class that it all looked quite easy to him.  If you had the recipes, ingredients and tools, he thought we should have lots of cheese.  Maybe he should be the one making the cheese and I should be the one on clean-up detail.  I can only wonder how milking our goats will go,  let alone making cheese.  I am reading the book making my list of ingredients and proper tools to have on hand.  I will be adding to my kitchen staples, as I study more about the process of making cheese I am learning what I have may do the job.  The salad spinner makes a wonderful tool to drain curds, have one plus lots of stainless steel or porcelain colanders and strainers.

Firewood has become an issue.  I press to have lots of wood  racked for the winter, but Mr. Bootsie took the lead this past year, I think he may have learned his lesson.  We located a dead tree and dropped it this week, there is quite a bit of moisture in the tree but maybe it will be ready for blackberry winter in  May, after being split it will dry to where it will produce heat in our stove.  Do not fear, we do have heat other then the wood stove, we just enjoy the heat from the wood stove.  I bet you when the weather is a little warmer, he will be making his rounds finding wood to fill our racks for next winter and not tell me well last year we did not use that much, because we are using every dried stick of wood we have this winter.

The girls are producing in the coop.  We are collecting 8 to 9 eggs a day.  There are 16 layers in the coop and 1 rooster.  We have been getting a duck egg every day but the shell is not right.  I am feeding her oyster shell and egg shells.  She was not able to eat anything from the ground because of the snow for about 2 weeks and I do not know if this could have effected the way she produced the shell on her eggs.  I have been trying to get her chickweed everyday, lots of water and I did see improvement this morning.  The egg had a shell with only 1 soft spot.  This one made it to the house and is in the fridge.  It seems all of the eggs for about 3 weeks have been crushed and I just mixed them into the food for the girls.

Saturday, March 1, 2014, eggs gathered

I have found with the position of the sun, the cold tunnel is now a warm tunnel on sunny days.  I have been working in the tunnel without a coat or jacket, step out to get something I need and it is cold.  I will start adding more plants to the tunnel as soon as the snow is past this coming week.  I am already understanding why, I like to get the little plants outside as soon as possible.

Mr. Bootsie spent this afternoon studying different web sights making his decision which one he is going to use as the plan for my milking stand.  I want him to get this made so I can introduce my ladies to the stand.  I want to make this as easy as possible for the ladies and for me.  They are getting rounder and rounder.  First comes spring and then little goats!!!

I hope each of you are excited about this Spring.  I know it is going to be an adventure here!!!

What are your plans for this Spring, I would love to hear from you.  You may comment here or on Facebook!!!  Another week for me to ask all of you to be careful, someday we will feel the warm days of Spring, maybe in just a few weeks.  Be Safe my friends!!!