Red-cedar Christmas trees

  We are working at clearing an overgrown pasture and it has a lot of red-cedars growing in it that look to be a good size to use for Christmas trees this year.  If you're not familiar with what red-cedars look like, here is a link with some pictures.  Red-cedars smell very nice.  We have decorated red-cedar Christmas trees multiple times and they are the traditional tree in our area for those who would go cut their own instead of buying a tree from the mountains.  These trees were never sprayed.  And they have been growing in the open which means they are their natural form, not pruned to be shaped like perfect cones (for better or worse, depending on what look you want.)

 

 

Photos of the week

There was a lot of preserving happening here this week, especially of peppers.  We love roasted peppers.  Here are some roasted corno di toro, ready for freezing or canning.

We butchered our old hens this week, canning the meat and broth.

The neighbors delivered loads of broom sedge mulch for the gardens.  It's hard to get a perspective from the picture but these are huge: 6 feet tall and 5 feet wide.  We use mulch in the garden to suppress weeds, conserve moisture and add organic matter.

Black snake in the late turnip patch?  No, just the soaker hose.  We haven't gotten any rain since Hurricane Helene so we're keeping the sprinklers and soaker hoses going in the fall crops.

Here is just one of the fun varieties of lettuce that grew from lettuce breeder Frank Morton's lettuce mix.

 

Photos of the week

 

Sweet potatoes all boxed up and curing

Peanuts for roasting drying in the sun

Acorns for the pigs drying in the sun

7.5 lbs

Chestnuts

   We've enjoyed chestnuts ever since a friend with a tree let us gather some from his yard, and every year we enjoy them more and more.  But we're still figuring out some of the details of how best to store and prepare chestnuts for roasting (and boiling, although we mostly prefer them roasted.  We also eat a raw chestnut now and then, but we mostly roast them.)  We did an experiment this evening with different methods of scoring chestnuts, and we also compared roasted chestnuts that had been in refrigeration for a few weeks to roasted chestnuts that were just collected.

  We definitely preferred the cured chestnuts to the freshly harvested.  Chestnuts sweeten with proper storage (in the refrigerator but protected from drying out too much), and they also shrink away from the shell just a little.  The chestnuts that we've had curing for the longest have been in the fridge for about a month, and we didn't notice any signs of any of them going bad.  (There's always a small percentage that have imperfections when we collect them, but no more had started to go bad.)  We can't remember exactly, but we think we kept them in the fridge for 2-3 months the last time we had a good crop (2019?).  That's probably close to the limit of how long they'll keep in the fridge.  It seems the flavor continues to improve at least through about 3 weeks, although that may vary some with the temperature and humidity of your refrigerator.  For longer term storage, we roast them just like we would to eat them and then freeze them.

  In order to prevent the nuts from exploding in the oven when we roast them and in order to facilitate peeling the shell off afterwards, we score the shells.  We tried a couple new-to-us scoring methods today that seemed to work better than using a knife like we used to do.  One method was to make a hole in the shell with a small nail and a hammer.  That seemed to be enough to keep the steam from exploding the chestnuts in the oven, and we were able to crack most of the chestnuts by hand after they were roasted, and the remainder cracked easily enough with a regular hand held nut cracker (like for walnuts, hazelnuts, etc.)  We only tried that with chestnuts that had been in the fridge for a few weeks, though, and we're not sure if it would work with fresh chestnuts, but it was a very easy method and worked very well with the nuts we roasted today.  The other method we tried was to use scissors.  That also worked very well, and unlike the nail and hammer, it's a method we've seen other people recommend as well.

  The scissor method can be seen in this video at about the 1:24 mark.  If you watch the rest of the video, beware that he uses globalist-industrial measurement units -- we'd recommend roasting the chestnuts at around 375-400F, which is what his recommendation converts to -- and we don't bother with wrapping our chestnuts in a towel after taking them out of the oven, as our chestnuts seem to peel very easily without that extra step.  They do seem to peel a little easier while still warm than after completely cooling down, but either way works well enough.  Also be aware that chestnuts will become slightly squishy with storage, which with a fresh nut and improperly stored nut might be an indication of a bad nut, but it's exactly what we look to happen with properly cured chestnuts.

Photos of the week

 

Making pickled banana peppers and jalapeno relish.

We've been harvesting dry field peas for seed and winter eating.

The acorns are falling, a favorite food of our hogs.  Did you know they spit out the shells, though?!

Snacking peppers

 

Aji dulce peppers

 

Spice peppers

 

Photos of the week

The sweet potato field

The new growth leaves of one variety are purple

Do you know what these are?  Peanut flowers.  Once they flower, they will push into the ground and start forming into a peanut.

The white bag on the pepper plant is one of our first efforts to isolate pepper flowers to save seed in our production field.  Normally, to save seed, we grow one variety in a distant field to isolate it.  With bags, we're hoping we can isolate many varieties in the same place.  The goal is to exclude insects that might pollinate the pepper flowers.  Once we see a pepper has formed, we take the bag off and mark the pepper then let it completely mature.

 

Corno di toro

 

Pimento pepper

 

Jimmy Nordello frying pepper

 

Nick's peas

We call these Nick's since the seed came to us from Eric's great-uncle Nick.  They are small but shell pretty easily.

Wheat harvest

We grow two varieties of wheat.  One is an heirloom soft wheat called Red May.  We use this softwheat for biscuits and pancakes.  We also grow a modern hard wheat called NuEast.  It was developed by NC State as a hard wheat adapted to the SE.  We use it for yeast breads.

We use an International 82 combine that we pull behind our tractor.

The combine cuts the wheat and threshes it.  The next step is to run it through our hand crank fanning mill to get the rest of the chaff out.  We then store it in sealing buckets that we've frozen.

 

Bee swarm in the water box

  When we went to turn the irrigation on earlier this week, we found a cluster of bees.  A swarm had taken up residence on the underside of the lid to our water box.

As can be seen they'd already built a bit of comb.  We put the lid of the water box on top of a hive with frames in it so the bees will move into the bee box.

Garlic granules

   Simply add this dehydrated garlic to anything that will cook for awhile or grind into garlic powder.

Photo tour of the farm

  Most of these photos are old photos already on our blog, but they're all here together for a broader look at our farm.

Corn made into hominy, ground, pressed, and cooked on the griddle into tortillas.

Cracking black walnuts

Our favorite summer pea variety.  Our original seed source was Eric's great uncle in Harnett County.

A sampling of different summer pea varieties we grow.

In the background are our first attempt at storing hay in old-fashioned haystacks and our little corn crib.

Moveable shade for the goats made out of bamboo.

 

 

One of our (Nora's) first aged goats milk cheeses.  We were very happy with it.

Leaf mold to be used for potting mix once finished

One of our farm visitors helping us hang up onions to dry.

Our now 16 and 18 year olds milking the cow.

One of our farm visitors milking the cow.

Skimming milk to make butter.

Butter

Cheese press

A quick hive inspection on a warm winter day.

Making candles with our beeswax.

Pawpaws

Hardy kiwis (smaller, smooth skinned/not fuzzy, delicious)

Kaki X American persimmon tree

Kaki persimmon

Threshing black beans

Winnowing black beans

A photo from soon after we planted our first apple trees, well over 10 years ago.

Jersey steaks

Making hardwood charcoal in our outdoor water stove

Just some of the seeds we saved one year.

Onion seed

Onion seed after threshing

Nursery bed prepared for planting onion seed in the late fall.  We set onion plants out in the garden the following spring.

Mama hen

The first litter of piglets born on our farm

A neighbor friend helping us scald and butcher a hog

Cold frame

Young goat roasted with spring onions, butter and garlic, asparagus, fried grit cakes and lettuce salad.

 

The seed cleaner we use mostly for cleaning (sifting, scalping, and winnowing the remaining chaff and weed seeds out of) our wheat.

Our favorite salad - dried figs, goat cheese,  and lightly toasted pecans.

Fresh wild-harvested winter oyster mushrooms

A weekly CSA share

Cultivated shitake mushrooms

Frying sweet potato chips

Persimmons from a wild tree on our farm

Persimmon pulp

Canned and dried food

Digging a trench to lay a drain tile through the middle of the garden beside our house.

Saving seeds from the tomato variety we grow more of than any other, an extra meaty variety.

Tortillas with a mix of different varieties of dried peas (similar to black-eyed peas), with canned pork, goat cheese, with fresh cilantro and onions, roasted red peppers from the freezer, fresh Swiss chard on the side, cow's milk to drink...

 

Bamboo shoots

Getting ready to install the water stove and making an extra large split bamboo basket for storing acorns.

Bedding the different varieties of sweet potatoes we grow

Harvesting potatoes

Sampling sweet potatoes.  Sweet potatoes are one of our favorite crops to grow and to eat.

With some protection on the coldest winter nights we're able to grow outstanding quality citrus with hardly any other trouble.

The inside of our pea sheller, which we use for dry peas and beans

Fermenting peppers for hot sauce

Reunion with former WWOOF farm stay visitors

Harvesting peanuts

Splitting basket splints from white oak

Harvesting tulip-poplar bark for siding