Tag: cheese making

  • More Wet Stuff

    Our region is under water.  The forecasts have flood warnings, many roads closed, schools today had a 2 hour late start due to the flooding.  The morning dawned beautiful, but the afternoon brought more heavy rain.  You would think that in the mountains that flooding wouldn’t really be a problem, but the rivers and creeks are over their banks, fishing camps and river front yards are under water.

    I turned the chooks out this morning to free range and graze on the new grass and emerging bugs.  When daughter and granddaughter came back from taking grandson to the bus stop, the dogs all slipped out.  Lately they have seemed to leave them alone when dogs and chickens were sharing the yard.  For some reason, I looked out to check on them and found our two chasing the chickens and daughter’s Golden Retriever eating one.  I don’t know who actually caught the bird, but I do know that we now have a problem.  The dogs and the chickens aren’t going to be able to be out at the same time again.  One of the dogs realized that opening through the electric fence that had a rope across it wouldn’t hurt them and barged right through.  This required me to move the fence around to create a new opening, narrower and on a different side of the fence.

    I had planned on culling a few of the hens later in the summer, but didn’t plan on sharing them with the dogs.  After today’s stress, we only got 4 eggs.  Maybe the one they killed was the one laying weird eggs.  I guess we will see in a day or two.

    Since the weather wasn’t good to be out and about much, I made Mozzarella and lasagna noodles and made a homemade vegetarian lasagna for dinner.  I love being able to make the cheese and noodles at home.  I noticed at the Farmers’ Market on Saturday, that I could get raw cow and goat milk for a donation, perhaps I will try raw milk Mozzarella or yogurt.

  • Pizza from scratch

    Today was girls day out while Mountaingdad and Grandson watched a movie.  We ventured to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get a lidded glass jar for compost as the newest canine addition to the house puts his feet on the counter when no one is watching and steals from the compost bin.  We also needed a broad strainer spoon to make cheese and a cake pan to make grandson’s birthday cake next weekend, then off to the natural food store and grocery.  During our outing, we decided that tonight would be an excellent night for homemade pizza and we were going to have a cheese making session to make Mozzarella.

    This cheese lesson was without the son that gave me the first lesson and was a lesson for daughter.

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    A pound of delicious cheese.  Then we made dough for two pizzas.  Cooked down a pint of my homemade pasta sauce for the pizza sauce, chopped red onion, some of the frozen green pepper strips from last summer’s garden, some chopped garlic, cooked a couple of Italian sausages and assembled them for dinner.

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    One was special for the adults, the second with just sausage, sauce and cheese for the kids.

    We still have a few more ounces of our cheese, so we will look for another dish to have in a day or two to enjoy the rest of our success.

    In a day or two, we will have a soap making lesson, after making a batch of laundry detergent today, the soap supply is low and after all, it does take several weeks to cure.

    Lovin’ life on our mountain farm and having part of our family here.