Ever wonder about that phrase? Wonder no more.
Bottling bucket, spigot, siphons, bottles, and caps, all washed and ready to be sanitized Saturday. Also known as: bottling day.
Before bottling, though, there are a number of other things that have to be done, primarily outside. Unlike our neighbors to the north, it’s going to be rather balmy here for the next week or so, with temps in the mid to upper 70s. Winter in Florida. Have to love it.
Almost.
As I mentioned the other day, I started a batch of beer. It took a few hours for the yeasties to get their gobble on, but when they did, the airlock was bubbling away.
All the crap around the neck is where the foam went pretty high in the carboy. It settled into percolation quite nicely, seen in the foamy activity at the top.
Yesterday, things slowed down a bit, and today, they’ve slowed down a lot – an indication that the yeast has done its business and belched out alcohol from the sugars it ate.
The foaming is almost completely stopped, and there is just the occasional bubble hitting the airlock. Sniffing the top of the airlock, you can smell the alcohol quite clearly. On Friday, I’ll wash and sanitize the bottling bucket, bottles, and caps, then transfer this into the bucket (with the priming sugar). Saturday: bottling time. Once bottled, we’ll store the beer away for a few weeks to age. I suspect there may be a tasting of fresh beer here at the ranch. In the name of research, of course.
First you clean.
Then you put together your ingredients, get the mix into the carboy, pitch your yeast, put the airlock on, and wait for it to ferment.
It didn’t do much, at first. I was hanging out, checking on it now and again, to see if it would start bubbling away, but finally gave up and went to bed. At about 3 AM, I woke up to the smell of malty bread, and figured the little beasties were doing their magic. After a few days, the action should calm down, and we’ll move the brew into the bottling bucket.
Why brew your own beer? Why not? I can’t drink it, of course, since the radiation treatments did the tango on my mouth, but others can (and hopefully they won’t be poisoned by some stray bacteria missed during the sanitation or that sneaks in during the process).
We have four monarch butterfly chrysalides hanging in the front planting area near the walkway. We had not actually seen the various caterpillars that were munching on the butterfly bush form their cozy little homes, but one day, there they were. Had four, that is: two butterflies emerged from theirs, and two remain, no doubt hibernating against the cold weather.
One of the newly emerged butterflies we found on the driveway on Thursday while Getting Things Done here at the ranch. It was still damp from its chrysalis, and I plucked it off the driveway to keep it from getting stomped by a wayward foot. It is a thing of beauty to hold such a creature, truly.
My sister and mom cleaned more stuff out of the garage today, toting it to the barn and arranging it. They also moved a bunch of dirt, a handful of pallets, and moved a triple stack of large stone pavers from one place to another. I was very impressed by their industry.
What was I doing? My “helper” (my nephew) and I were reconfiguring some of the 4×4 frames up in the front garden into 4×20 frames. Well, mostly, I was doing this, and my nephew was playing with the drill, or playing with the dog, or escaping to ride his tractor around the yard while yelling questions or commentary to me. Three – almost four – year olds do have short attention spans, much like the dogs, so it isn’t anything out of the ordinary, and he’s cute so there’s that. Having his “help” tends to slow down whatever is going on, but it’s good to have him around at this age, and enjoy him before he turns into a sullen teenager who would rather die than be caught hanging out with family.
In the end, the other team got much more done than we (I) did, but I did finish off that reconfiguration. One more down, and that’s good.
A check on the flats showed that the oregano has germinated quite nicely, and at least one of the stevia seeds has as well. Progress.
A sputtering, timid spit of rain is our net result from what began with such promise last night. Just a trace of the wet stuff, not enough to even register on the weather station’s gauge. The huge blob of clouds blew apart before reaching us. Since we have not as yet dug the trench to run irrigation back to the orchard area, that means wrangling hoses for me tomorrow in order to get the trees watered before they keel over from dehydration. On the plus side, no rain means I’m not hauling the four new servers to the NOC in a downpour.
Thanks for the question, Ben! Of course I have mighty big plans for the coming year – but don’t we all? I decided this coming year needs to be much better planned than last, so I took the time to figure out how much plantable space I have: 2680 square feet in the frames that are not used by things that won’t be moved (asparagus and strawberries). This does not include any of the other berries or fruit/nut trees. In addition, I currently have a number of frames tied up in garlic production, and those will not be available until at least May at the very earliest.
I have planned much of the same things for 2012 as we’ve had in years past: tomatoes, both sweet and hot peppers, onions, peas, snap beans, dry beans, brussels, cabbage, lots of herbs, broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cukes, okra, summer squash, zucchini, peanuts, tobacco, corn, winter squashes, melons, beets, spinach, leeks, lettuce, pumpkins, and many, many flowers (and clover) for the bees.
Now, having said that, I tried to stick to fewer varieties of tomatoes this year, but couldn’t resist a sampling of them to see what we can get to grow around here. The Cherokee Purples were doing well until the worm invasion, but we got a grand total of zero from the late plantings before I let them go in the freeze last night. The peppers performed quite admirably, and I am mostly staying with the same varieties. For the bells, I’ve selected Revolution to replace Fat N Sassy as the big blocky bell. I’ve also added pepperoncini peppers to the hot pepper mix, for pickling.
Average last front here is the second week of March, although a couple of years ago we had a freak freeze the first week of April. That’s the only time that’s happened in all the time I can recall, so the plan is to get things started this month and put them out around mid-March (coincidentally, the same time as my birthday, and I can’t imagine a better gift to myself than to be grubbing around in the dirt). The first rounds of tomatoes will be in this group, along with the first rounds of broccoli and cauliflower. Sow things like peas and cukes directly, along with lettuces. When the determinate tomatoes have finished their output, which would be June/July for most, pull those and replace with okra, since okra doesn’t care about how hot it will be. Put in the dry beans, as they’re fine in the heat. In August, restart flats in the barn with the second round of tomatoes. In September, restart flats with another round of the brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, brussels). By now, we should be able to check in on the bees and see how much production they’ve had for the season, and harvest a bit from them. Late September/early October, plant out the flats. Later in October, plant next year’s garlic. End of the year: final harvest and cleanup. Throughout the year, successive flower planting for the bees, so there will always be something in flower for them.
That’s the goal. How closely I manage to stick to it is something we’ll have to see as we go along. The most exciting part of the year, to me, will be getting the bees to help out with pollination and seeing if we can begin harvesting some honey. And it would be nice to get a tomato or two, something we haven’t been able to do since the first year we had a garden here, due to various circumstances.
The 2011 season has finally come to an end. Tonight and over the next couple of nights, we’ll be seeing hard freezes here in the country, so I went out late this afternoon and picked the remainder of the peppers, and cut some herbs in the event the plants can’t stand the chill.
The garlic will stay out through the winter and spring, and be fine bedded down with hay for the duration.
This is the main garlic area, and there are more frames off in the distance as well. It’s looking quite healthy, and planting it earlier in October seems to have paid off, with good growth prior to the onset of real winter, such as it is around here.
The final harvest from last year’s garden, although I’m hoping the herbs will pull themselves through.
Rosemary, oregano, marjoram, thyme, shelling peas, and a bunch of peppers. The oregano has already been picked, dried, and put away. The marjoram is currently drying after several rinses to get rid of the dirt – no crunchiness allowed. That will be next to be pulled and dried, followed by the rosemary. The only issue with pulling herbs is that the rosemary is so very strong my hands smell like pine trees now, even after several washes.
In a bit, it will be time to head out and turn on the taps at the remote areas where we have lines run to avoid any nasty surprises in the morning. I’m so happy that our really cold weather tends to be very brief in duration. I’m not a fan.
Bad blogger, bad! No posting on a regular basis, what is wrong with you?
Nothing wrong, just incredibly busy around here. Our season has lasted well into the winter, and we’re still harvesting peppers. The tomatoes that showed some promise going into fall succumbed to massive worm damage, so once again this year, like last, no tomatoes (although for wildly different reasons, given that last year it was a cancer of a different sort).
There’s a monarch butterfly chrysalis attached to the upended cooler by my garage, which is right near the butterfly bush I planted for the other monarch caterpillars that graced us with their presence before moving on to whatever secret place they chose to attach themselves. I’m hoping to capture it as it emerges, whenever that happens to be, and I have the plant cam set up on it.
My dreams have been invaded by images of paintings I’ve never seen hanging in galleries I’ve never visited (or heard of). My subconscious is probably trying to tell me something.
My puppy had to have the top part of one of his (non weight-bearing) toes amputated because he tore the nailbed right away from the bone on a ball-fetching excursion. It’s sad to me that he was in pain, but good that he’ll heal just fine and he’ll be right back to his duties.
The bees have been ordered, and should ship to us in May. We’ll be able to put these things to good use.
Most of this will be gone from the new barn when spring arrives, as they’ll be set up as homes for the three packages of bees (and queens) we’ll be receiving. Everyone is pretty excited about this, including me, and I’m looking forward to spring even more than usual.
Seeds for the new year were ordered and have arrived (mostly), and the next two weeks will be seed starting time in the small barn, under the lights – which I need to rerig for the pulley system I came up with to make things easier to wrangle under them. As with years past, we’ll be attempting a good variety of tomatoes to see what we like, or is we can just get any to maturity and get a harvest. This year will be better planned than previous years, to be sure.
The garlic went into the frames in late October, and is doing wonderfully thus far. By my estimate, I planted out over 2000 individual cloves this year, which will give us plenty to use and some to save as seed for next year’s planting season, I expect. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to sell some as well, since this is not the usual garlic found in grocery stores.
Here’s hoping the new year will be better than the previous years. Be sage, be happy.