Dear Garden Diary

Things are still slow as we wait for the sun to make a more permanent appearance in our sky. I planted some more seeds inside on 4/12/11. I started some kale, pumpkins, butternut squash, melons and cucumbers. So far only one kale came up... hello seeds, germinate! I also planted some parsley and Lemon balm into the herb garden on the same day (bought from 7 Dees and FM respectively.) The basil, onions and celery are doing well. I think the lettuce will just have to be direct planted outside.
Joe turned over some grass in the Chicken Garden where I plan on planting all my bush beans this year. I cleaned out some pots that were grass filled and planted some beets and spinach. Hopefully they didn't get rained out. But whatever! I was just jumping the gun cause I am so excited for fresh garden veggies that I can't wait!
In sad news our fig tree didn't make it through the winter. It was dead at the top from frost bite maybe (although it was supposed to be cold hardy to 0 degrees and I think 11 was our lowest this year.) We are thinking about getting a new one. Our cherry tree made it through which is awesome. I can't wait to start getting harvests from it!
One thing that is really producing are the chickens. We get anywhere from 2-4 eggs daily now. It was over whelming at first but I think we have gotten more accustomed to eating way more eggs. Last night we made a vanilla ice cream using 7 of them. Well 7 yolks anyway. I am freezing the whites and once I add 5 more I will make an angel food cake. I have been trying to bake more bread too which has been helpful. This week I am also making eggs au gratin to serve over a salad dressed with homemade dressing that involves eggs. 8 eggs total will go into that meal!

I can't wait for warm sunny weather and to have that brown plot of land in my front yard be bright green again. I really want to plant before for I am too big to even think about bending over!

Batch 1- Sierra Nevada.

We just started enjoying our first batch of beer. When we bought our brewing kit we choose from a list of clones (home brews based on mass brewed beer.) We thought Sierra Nevada would fit both our tastes and since the saleswoman knew we were beginners... easy. Well it was a bit more complicated than we should have started out with. The batch it self hit some snags and we learned lots of lessons.

Here is my brief synopsis of beer making.

Steep grains for about 20-30 mins at water about 155 degrees. Remove the grains and add malts and fermentables. While those boil for a while you add hops at different intervals (60 mins- bitterness / flavor / aromatics.) After an hour you immediately cool the beer and throw in some yeast. Let it do it's thing for 7 days. Then you transfer to a bucket with a spigot at the bottom and add some sugar (which carbonates the beer). Bottle, cap, wait.. enjoy!

We were supposed to add another step to the Sierra Nevada which is to move the beer to a secondary fermenter (a glass carboy or 6 gallon bucket) and add some more hops and let it ferment again for another 7-10 days. We didn't do this because we didn't own a second fermenter at the time... something one would think the sales lady would have mentioned. Regardless.. we just skipped that step and bottled as instructed.

Reactions- It tasted pretty good! Nothing like a Sierra Nevada though. It started as overly carbonated which means we should fill the bottles up more. The more air left in bottles the more carbonated it will be. As it ages this problem seems to be going away. I enjoy this batch with a lemon.

Besides our fascination with making things ourselves instead of buying them prepacked we are also brewing beer to save money. In the end our six packs should cost us under 4 dollars. Currently we pay anywhere from 6.99-7.99 p/6pack and around 4.19 for our favorite beers that only come in 22oz bottles. So far we spent 176.62 on equipment. The cost of the ingredients for our first batch was 40.49. If we had bought that batch in 6 packs at the grocery store we would have spent- 67.91 leaving us 149.20 in the hole.

Coming up- Power Pack Porter and I dream of Harvest Mondays.