As The Butter Churns

Yep, that's right, this post is all about making home made butter! I make my butter without all the fancy bells and whistles. That means I don't have a cream separator or a butter churn. All I use is a sun tea jug, the one with the spigot on the bottom, and a quart sized canning jar. I set my milk in the fridge so the cream will rise to the top and use the spigot to drain off the milk for drinking and cooking. I let the cream set in the fridge for 3 or 4 days. Then I set it out on the counter to come to room temperature and fill the canning jar about half way with cream. Just shake the jar back and forth. It only takes around 5 minutes for heavy cream and around 12 minutes for light cream to form butter. I drain off most of the buttermilk and set the butter in a bowl in the fridge to cool. Cooling it makes it easier to work with as it is pretty soft when it's room temperature. When it cools enough that it becomes a bit stiff, I can fold it over and press the rest of the buttermilk off the butter.

So, there you have it! Fresh butter without the chemical preservatives added into commercial products. You can salt it to your liking as you fold the buttermilk off of it and use it immediately if you choose.

how the garden grows...

Look at how the container garden is growing! Tangerine says the pepper flowers smell good! The cucumbers have tons of tiny fruits all over the place and are flowering like mad. The Earth Tones Dent corn has all sprouted in their tires and are growing nicely. Too bad the beautiful, delicate pink flowers got washed out in the picture taking, the potatoes are all decked out. Even the pumpkins have flowers all over them.


On the farm front... Alltel wireless has decided that the roaming fees to the closest tower to me are too expensive so they have canceled my contract and will terminate my internet connection on the 10th of June. There are not may options I can afford available in this very rural area and the land line option is even out. So, after June 10th, I'm not too sure what I'm going to do. I could go with verizon wireless, but they have a 5GB a month cap and I can use that up in just a few days. I just can not get a break.


I did make the first step in establishing a "trading post" here tho. I reached out and made my first trade. I traded one of the many roosters I have running around here that has not found his way into a cook pot for something I could use, I traded him for some sugar. It's a start. I'm also working on trading a couple rabbits for some home made wine. I'm not a drinker so I figure i can either trade the wine with someone else or cook with it. Either way, it works for me ;)

Not much else is happening around here. I should have cut some hay yesterday but did not have the fuel money to get after it so we're just going to have to wait for the next round of rain to go thru ( every day next week) and see how the budget looks next week.....

Rainy Days are good For...

Playing in the kitchen! At least for me anyway, it's one time I get to play in the kitchen undisturbed.

Well, I ran out of vege oil in the pantry. I always thought I had too much in there but it turned out to be only around 8 months worth. Now I'm out and I must find another bread recipe that is as easy as my Hillbilly Housewife recipe and tastes as good. I found a group of recipes over at the Chickens in the Road blog So far, I made the apple butter coffee cake and the Grandma Bread version of cinnamon bread. Both were outstanding and I will make them several more times. I did figure out that I made the frost for the coffee cake a little too runny since it all melted off and baked on the cookie sheet. next time I will wait for half way thru and then add the frost and I'll mix it less runny too, LOL.

Other than that, it's just business as usual, same old stuff, watching the garden grow and feeding the critters.......

Update and New babies

Spring has disappeared here and all of the sudden it's 85 degrees. We haven't quite dried out from the last round of rain but we tilled yesterday and mudded some beans, peas and melons in. I got the pumpkins I sprouted in the house planted in the tire and all that's left is a few small odds and ends still to get started.

6 ducklings, hatched I think on Friday or late Thursday. Momma has brought them to the root cellar/pond and they are loving it. I watched her for close to a half hour yesterday, trying to call them all out of the pool. She had to go in and round them up because they weren't leaving. I got a good giggle from it.

I messed around a bit pulling tiny weeds from the container plantings and noticed I have a few tiny tomatoes growing and a ton of baby cucumbers! Guess it was my hand pollination or maybe it just got warm enough for the bees to do their job. At this point, I'm not much caring, either way I've got produce coming on! None too soon, pickings are getting a little slim for supper here.

Update on the small farm disasters front, still working on trying to stop the leaks from the hot water tank. We now have a mystery leak we can not locate. Nothing has been done about pulling it completely out since i can't do it myself and I'm not getting any help with it. The daughters truck is still not fixed. Apparently Ford had some idiots in charge when they designed the fuel system for the 93 step side pickup dual tank system. Something as simple as just dropping the back tank with the hole in it and eliminating the tank switcher has turned into a nightmare of T'd fuel lines( all solid and braided hose) with no connections. Seems it's all one piece from the motor to the tanks and inter connected to both tanks at once. The lawn mower keeps flying apart and we're still $300 away from covering the parts. Oh well, we'll get there one of these days. The big truck is still hanging in there with the bearing, hopefully it will hold up until we can replace the spindle... At least we managed to get everything together for the daughters nursing class that starts on Monday. Guess I'll be driving her in that junk jeep for a while..........