Farming Z's

It's amazing how often I'm tempted to post nothing but Z's such as Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  Everyone tells you that farming is tiring, but you don't really know tired until you've put in a 15 or 20 hour day and then done it again and again and again as you try to get an important project done or have animal emergencies.  But I'm having such a good time and I am sleeping better than I ever did as a city slicker. Speaking of sleeping...Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

What do you do with bad fruit?

Previous to today, when fruit went bad (or at least was on the edge of going bad and too squishy to eat), I would either throw the fruit to our animals or the compost.  Who wants to eat an apricot that has the consistency of pudding?  Yuck.

Well, while it's great to feed fruit to your animals, there is another use that can save on the edge fruit.  Make Apricot Jam!  We have had two amazing woofers from France staying with us and today one of them taught me how to make jam.  So easy and I'd never learned before!

Really all you do is cut up the apricots, put sugar in with them, about 800g to every 1000g of apricots (and if you're not using weights to cook you really need to start).  Leave them overnight for the sugar to work its magic and then boil them the next day for 45 minutes (a low boil).  Eventually the apricots fall apart and it starts looking like jelly.  Pour it into clean jars, turn them over so the heat seals them and voila!  Apricot jam.  So easy!!!

Pumpkins!

Well, not exactly pumpkins, but pumpkin sprouts.  We finally got the seeds in the ground and they're starting to grow.  Now as long as we can keep them away from all the pests, we will have a gazillion pumpkins come this halloween.

We plant pumpkins in a unique way.  Most people plant pumpkins on a mound like this.

We actually plant ours in a deep hole (pic to come if I can remember).  Planting on a mound is great in wet areas because it gets the plant roots away from water.  If roots get too wet, they will die.  However, we live in the desert.

In the desert, you struggle with getting enough water to your plant.  Planting seeds in a hole means the water is directed straight to the roots, less water runs off and therefore less water is used.  Also, being in a hole blocks the plant from the harsh desert winds and the harsh desert sun (yes, we have too much sunlight as well-if you're from a cold/wet area you probably can't even believe that's possible).

Visit us at

www.flipflopranch.com

White peacocks

I'm so excited we finally got white peacocks.  They're gorgeous!  Or they will be.  Right now they're just little babies and look kinduv like chickens.

But they will soon look like angels.

Visit us at

www.flipflopranch.com

Happy Fourth (third) of July!

Here in the tiny town of Lucerne Valley, we actually celebrate the third of July.  Why?  I have no idea actually, but the fireworks are always on the third.  I guess we just have to do everything different.  My family hates crowds so the cool thing is that we can see the fireworks from the farm.  Granted they're very small and it takes about a half a minute for the boom to get to us after we see the firework, but every year we bring chairs and popcorn out to the vineyard and watch the fireworks from about ten miles away.  I guess we just have to do everything different...

Avoiding plastic-Bowl coverings

Here's a simple way to avoid using plastic.  We just put foil over our bowls.  We also have a permanent marker on hand to write down what is in the bowl and what the date is.  That way we don't have to look in every bowl to find the butter.  Here's a cool little thing I found online about the dos and don'ts of using aluminum:

• Do line baking pans with aluminum foil. This will make cleanup of anything from brownies to oil-drizzled roasted vegetables a snap. Food can stick to it, however, so you may want to coat regular foil with vegetable cooking spray or use a new sheet with each batch. Cookies will spread out a bit more, brown more on the bottom, and come out a bit crisper when baked on foil than on parchment, says Reynolds Kitchens tester Pat Schweitzer, so use foil for things like Belgian lace cookies and parchment for more substantial varieties.
   
• Don't use foil to line the bottom of the oven to catch spills and drips. It will cause food to heat unevenly and, over time, can damage the oven, says Mary Ellen Camire, Ph.D., a product-development expert for the nonprofit Institute of Food Technologists. You're better off wiping up messes after each use, when the oven has cooled but before the spill has hardened.
   
• Do use heavy-duty foil as a protective shield for poultry. To keep a chicken or turkey breast juicy and prevent the skin from burning before the rest of the bird has cooked (dark meat, which is higher in fat, cooks more slowly than white), cover it loosely with foil for the first couple of hours of cooking.
   
• Don't use foil in a microwave oven. The electromagnetic waves pass through glass, paper, and ceramic, which don't overheat in the cooking process (they often feel hot after zapping because the food is still cooking inside). But aluminum deflects the waves, causing food to cook unevenly and possibly damaging the oven.
   
• Do use foil to contain the odors of smelly foods before they go into the refrigerator or freezer. While high-quality plastic wrap works well, says Harold McGee, a food scientist and the author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (Scribner, $40, amazon.com), foil wrapped with an airtight seal (press down hard on the creases) is even better because it's basically impermeable to odors and moisture. That airtightness means food well wrapped in foil is less prone to freezer burn, says Camire.
   
• Don't use foil to store foods that are high in acids. This means tart fruits and dishes made with vinegar, tomatoes, or tomato sauce. After a few days in foil, the acids in lasagna, for example, interact with the aluminum and erode the foil, says McGee. Small amounts of aluminum can then migrate into the food, creating both pinprick holes in the wrap and a metallic taste in the lasagna. Also, white spots (actually aluminum salts) can form on these foods when their acidity reacts with the aluminum. Theoretically you can cut these spots away; they're not harmful. But they are certainly not appetizing either, so stick to plastic storage for the acidic goods.

Taking the Beth Terry Plastic Challenge

Plastic.  It is everywhere.  It fills the oceans and covers the desert.  Take a look at videos like this:

Plus, plastic has been shown to leach all sorts of chemicals that we end up drinking or eating.  And on top of all that, we make plastic out of oil and shouldn't we be conserving since there's only so much?

Point is that I have always tried to decrease the amount of plastic I use.  I ran across Beth Terry's website years ago and was inspired to make many changes to decrease my and my family's use of plastic.   It's extra tricky when you consider that there's also a farm to run.  It's SO hard to get plastic-free farm stuff, especially on a farmer's budget.  

Recently, I ran across Beth Terry's website again and she has a Plastic Challenge where she challenges us to decrease (and document) our use of plastic.  I thought this would be a fun thing to do so I'm going to blog about it.  Week 1 is just collecting all plastic trash to see how much is used in a normal week.  Sounds easy enough.