Our New Herd

Its official...we are now part of Sunny Knoll Eco Farm's cowshare program! 

We picked up our first three gallons of milk today and had a BLAST out at the farm!  Sarah, the farmer, says the waitlist for her program is three times the level she has available, therefore we feel VERY fortunate to have gotten in when we did.  All her cows are A2 cleared, you can read information about them here:  http://sunnyknollecofarm.com/guernsey-cows/  or check out the book The Devil in the Milk by Keith Woodford (http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Milk-Illness-Health-Politics/dp/1603581022). 

I wanted three gallons of milk so I could make my own yogurt, butter, cheese, buttermilk...blah blah blah and then Sarah informed me that if I ever don't feel like performing those tasks, she will be my personal chef and I can pay her to do them!  LOL!  Its like she KNOWS me.  So on my lazy weeks I will pay a small fee for a gallon of our milk to be made into delicious cheese (ate a whole wedge of it on the way home from her house!) and yogurt.  Life is good.  Hardly any reason to go to a grocers at this point.

Below are some silly pictures from the farm.  Bruce loved it there playing with Valerie, Sarah's 3 year old daughter, and learning all about farm life.  He can't wait to go back next week.  My idol worship of Sarah made me incapable of intelligent conversation, gotta get over that!

Piglets, chickens, hogs, cows, turkeys...truly an amazing place. 

Rooster

The hogs (the picture of the piglets didn't come out, boo hoo)

Aris, my love

Ruthann sleeping

Ruthann and Buttercup

The Fruit Flies Made Me

I bought 25 pounds of Honey Crisp apples for $30...three days ago with the intention of canning up some homemade applesauce.  (http://www.mackintoshfruitfarm.com/index.html) But life and laziness got the best of me and I hadn't gotten around to it immediately.  Then the fruit flies appeared.  Not only did they pester me, the kids and my hubby but they were getting in to my sourdough starter and driving the cats crazy!  So finally, today, they forced me to start canning. 

So I weighted out 12 lbs of apples

Peeled, cored and cut em up

Boiled them until soft

Processed them in a food mill until relatively smooth (i love juicy bits of apple in my applesauce)

Heated them with a splash of lemon and a cup of sugar, not too much as Honey Crisps are so sour sweet already, it so not necessary to add much. 

Heated up the jars and lids and transferred the applesauce in several messy globs to them.  Lidded and banded em and put em in the water bath canner to seal. 

And this is the result:  Four f'ing quarts.  That won't even last us a month!  I do have another 12 lbs to send through the process tomorrow (one more night with those damn fruit flies!) but still it'll only be 8 quarts which won't last us 2 months!  I wouldn't be complaining because I love to can, but its the fruit flies that made me do it!  My consolation is that LOTS of fruit flies were harmed during this process, lots.

Now off to do the dishes and rest up to do it all over again tomorrow.  Canning is hard work.