Autumn - Hot Cocoa

Hot cocoa made the easiest 20 minutes of parenting I've done in quite some time.  

A Visit From Anne and Granddaddy

Living closer to home (wherever that may be) has its benefits including more frequent visits with family.  We get to have weekly family dinner nights with the Ring crowd, and this weekend my parents drove up for a visit.  We enjoyed a trip to the Saturday farmers' market where we got peaches, scuppernongs, cabbage, prosciutto, and a spaghetti squash.  

Owen and Caedmon enjoyed sushi - twice.  

 We used Caedmon'd nap time for some projects.

 Zoos and Anne bonded in the sun.

 It was a nice way to spend the first days of autumn.

This Moment

This moment:  A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. ~ http://soulemama.com/

Unschool

Physical Education

Farming (complete with a home made "hay" ride)

Art and the Art of Sharing

Storytelling and Art

Math (ancient numerals)

From the Garden

Sssssssnake

This weekend, we found a little visitor in our shed.  In fact, I reached behind our freezer to move something and noticed a coiled-up patterned something back there where I had my hand.  Once we pulled the freezer out from the wall and Abram got her out, we were able to determine 1) that s/he was not any of the poisonous snakes found in this area and later 2) that s/he was a black rat snake.  

 It's nice to have critters around to eat the pests, but we decided to relocate this particular one out of our shed and over to a stone pile near the old well.  I hope she will find lots of rodents to eat over there.

Rainy Day

Rainy day:

cornstarch modeling dough (a GF salt dough)

 egg drop soup (our eggs and chicken stock, made by Mama and Owen)

 water color

 paper lantern

 

a walk in the rain (to collect eggs and a little wading in our "swamp" for Owen - no pictures)

 black bean soup with more chicken stock and nitrate-free bacon from The Hamery

 building with brothers

Chicken and Dumplin's

This week we got more greens from the garden.  Here we have mustard greens served with home-made chicken and dumplings made with stock and meat from our chickens.  I have still not found a great GF dumpling recipe.  Abram and Owen really liked this one, and I agree it was good.  I'd really like one that is a bit lighter but that still sticks together.  These are pretty dense, but quite tasty.

Dumplings
2 eggs
1 c. GF flour (I use King Arthur GF flour)
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 c. milk (I used almond milk)
1/2 t. salt
2 T. parsley, chopped

Cook chicken/make stock.  Remove meat from bones.  Add veggies and herbs (I used onions and carrots along with rosemary and thyme.  I often use celery but didn't have any.)  Cook until veggies are tender.
Mix dumplings.  Drop teaspoonfuls into boiling stock with veggies.  Cook 10 minutes.  Add cooked chicken back into pot and salt to taste.

She Did It Again

Our little friend has done it again.  She has made another egg sack.  There should be lots and lots of garden spiders next year, and hopefully some of them will grace our back door and our garden.  

Thank you, pretty lady!

Unschool

Reading

 Handwork

Harvest - Early September

tomatoes, peppers, and our first turnip greens of the fall

Concordia Mera

We've been making wine from kits for a few years now, and one of the big things we've noticed is the variability from bottle to bottle of wines.  In our experience with beer, you get a good batch or not so great batch, but bottles from the same batch are pretty much identical.  

I have worked professionally doing cell culture;  I am really, really careful with our wine and beer making.  We are super careful with our bottle cleaning and sanitizing procedures.  We have tried a variety of corks including natural cork and plastic.  Nothing has seemed to solve to bottle variability problem.  We've even noticed the problem with home made wines from other homes - not just out own.    

Abram did a bit of poking around on the internet and decided that our problem was likely sugar/alcohol content that was slightly low allowing for undesirable growth of "bugs" after bottling.  

Our solution was to start from grape juice and yeast (the main ingredients found in any kit).  There are two ways of achieving the desired starting gravity SG (related to the concentration of sugars);  you can dilute grape juice to the right SG or you can add sugar (known as chapitalization).  

We ordered enough Concord grape juice from a growers co-op in Massachusetts to make about 10 gallons of wine so that we could try both processes.  The first batch had just grape juice, water, and yeast.  We diluted the grape juice to an SG of 1.090.  The second batch had water, grape juice, sugar, and yeast.  We diluted the grape juice to approximately the right volume, then added simple syrup until the SG reached 1.090.  

Today, almost two months after we started it, we bottled it.

We like to taste it at each stage just to see what it is like.  Usually, wines are not drinkable even at bottling, but this one was.  We noted a big difference between the fermentation time of the two batches (chapitalized went much faster and did not achieve quite as low a final gravity, FG).  Batch #1 was much better at this stage (and at racking about a month ago) than batch #2 (chapitalized).  We suspect a difference in other factors besides sugars.

To some of the bottles we added a bit of oak, stripped and baked at 425 F for 15 minutes.

Here's batch #2.

And here are all four sets of wine (non-chapitalized with and without oak and chapitalized with and without oak)- 51 bottles in all.

All gone.

Time to rest and reset,

and play a bit after all that hard work.

We'll let you know how it tastes after a bit of aging.