Homemade Granola

One of the ways we've cut costs recently is to eliminate breakfast cereal.  Instead, I make a big batch of pancakes or muffins that will last anywhere from 2-4 days.  However, sometimes it's nice to have a bowl of something with milk while you're sitting at breakfast.

An easy homemade cereal to make is granola...and it can be varied to your heart's content.  This recipe is adapted from the Hallelujah Acres Cookbook.  Where I've substituted flax seeds, they had called for shredded coconut, which I never have on hand because I don't care for it.  My whole family loves this!

Granola
Ingredients
4 cups rolled oats (you can use whole or quick)
1 cup crushed almonds
1/2 cup whole grain flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 cup flax seeds
1 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup wheat germ or wheat bran
1 cup pumpkin seeds
1 cup honey, molasses or maple syrup (I use honey)
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.  Combine all dry ingredients, grinding the pumpkin and sunflower seeds to a finer texture beforehand if you wish (I don't).  Mix in the honey and vanilla and stir until the dry ingredients have been moistened.  Some will clump together, which is fine. 


It's easy to recruit help for this one!

Ready to spread onto trays.

Spread evenly on non-stick cookie sheets and bake for 40-60 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes.  How thinly you spread the granola and the oven itself will both affect baking time.  The granola should be browned slightly when done.  Cool on cookie sheets and store in an airtight container.  It should keep for several days, if it lasts that long!



Spread evenly and bake.  I have to use two racks, placed as close to the center of the oven as possible, to fit all three sheets.  I also rotate the sheets when it's time to stir.



Enjoy!

Note: You can also dehydrate this if you have a dehydrator.  In addition, feel free to experiment with ingredients.  The nuts and seeds can be varied to suit your taste or whatever you have on hand.  For instance, pecans or walnuts would be fine substitutes for almonds...or if you're simply short on these, either increase the amount of oats or decrease the amount of honey.  You can also mix in some raisins, dried cranberries, or other dried fruit for a bit more sweetness.

The (Wanna-Be) Farmers Must Be Crazy: Foraging Hay

This past summer the local newspaper did an article on us since they found it somewhat newsworthy that we bought this house and land back into the family and are trying to live more sustainably.  Of course, they wanted some quotes for the article, so they called a couple farmers we know in the area.  We suspected as much, but apparently the talk amongst the old-timers down at the corner store goes something like: "[Byron's] crazy for fooling with the farm now...They don't want  no cow!  They don't want no chickens!"  That's according to Mr. Woodward, a long-time farmer in the area who was friends with the Greens and is excited to see what we're doing here...he's even offered to help us choose a milk cow when the time comes.  I don't think Mr. Woodward thinks we're nuts, but I have a feeling he's been fielding some opinions from others in the area.  So with that reputation in mind, a few weeks ago Byron decided to forage hay.

We actually don't live in a dusty little corner of the county; we're a way back from the road but are still visible to passers-by.  So when Mr. Woodward's grandson cut the field by our house for hay, there were piles of the stuff still out there even after he baled it.  Well, when Byron saw that, he got about as excited about the loose hay as I did about the Autumn Berries.  He chose to make this a pre-dinner family adventure, which of course is right around the time when everyone else in the area is driving home from work.  The four of us were out there conspicuously raking hay into piles, and then Byron got a hold of Melvin's trailer.  Since we don't have the right hitch on our van, we pushed it around by hand to collect the hay.  Then we pushed it all the way back to the barn.  Twice.  I felt like I'd been zapped back to the 1930s.  All we were missing was an emaciated cow on a picket line.

There were waves.  There were honks.  And I bet there was much gossip up at the corner store.  But to Byron's credit, I think we got about one round bale's worth of hay out of it.  And those things aren't cheap.

See those little lumps?  That's the hay we raked.

Byron piled the hay onto a tarp...

...gathered it up...

...and hauled it into the loft.  Did I mention he hates ladders?

Charlie got to catch the tarp, and he promptly buried himself under it.  A father and son tug-of-war ensued.

Byron and his harvest of loose hay.

Behind this mound of hay are the twenty-some neat, easy-to-handle bales that Melvin gave us for helping him.  But I suppose to a cow (and in the end, to us), it's all good.

Green Acres Weekend Update

Though I'm really enjoying using this blog as a creative outlet and as a forum for some dialogue on sustainable living and other topics, I sometimes get overwhelmed with all my post ideas.  When I first started it, I was afraid I wouldn't have enough to write about, and the opposite is true.  For someone who's a social introvert, I can't seem to shut up in writing.

So Byron suggested I do one post that briefly covers some of the goings-on during the week.  I don't know yet if this will be a weekly sort of post since I have problems with consistency and organization in general, but here is the first Green Acres Weekend Update.  And by the way, how do you like the SNL shout-out in the title?  I actually haven't watched the show since the early to mid-1990s, so I'm not sure what triggered the memory.  Party on, Wayne.  Party on, Garth.

I wrote recently about planting our berry rows.  This week Byron got all the cedar posts installed; we're using cedar because several trees on the property had been knocked down before we moved in, and they're rot-resistant.  In fact, we've heard that setting them in concrete can actually promote rot in cedar because the concrete absorbs water and lets it sit there, whereas water will eventually evaporate or drain from the ground.  We have yet to assemble the cross-pieces or wire, but I don't exactly expect the berries to undergo any sort of growth spurt in the coming months.

Byron dug holes over 2 1/2' deep.  Charlie was the self-imposed yardstick.

The old timers around here say that when you take dirt out of a hole, you have to put it all back.  In order to do that, you shovel in a little bit of dirt, then compress it.  Repeat.  Again.  And again.  Etc.

Byron is using a digging bar our friend Melvin gave him to compress the dirt.

This is the blackberry row.  We had some blueberry bushes we transplanted from Other House, so we planted them at the ends of the rows in hopes that they will finally do well here.  We haven't had much luck with blueberries, but we're hoping the more acidic soil here keeps them happy.

Another thing Byron did this week was provide us with venison!  He hasn't hunted in years; in fact, prior to this the last deer he "got" was with our van.  Byron used to be an avid hunter and he's still a great shot.  That being said, we're thankful for this provision.  It's always a little disconcerting to be this close to your food, as I mentioned a while back with our chicken slaughter experience.  And I had the honors of cutting up the meat: tenderloin steaks and ground burger.  We added a couple pounds of bacon to the burger since venison is so lean and will fall apart if you try to cook it in any sort of patty.  Byron read that the rule of thumb is about one pound of bacon to nine pounds of venison, though I think we ended up with a slightly bigger ratio than that.

Is there some sort of unwritten rule that hunters don't smile???

This is so random, but I was excited enough about my little discovery to take a photo: my Kitchenaid Pro handled kneading four loaves' worth of whole wheat bread dough...which is 12 cups of flour!  It didn't overheat!  It didn't chew up the dough and spit it back at me!  Maybe I should write a review on Amazon to show all those HATERS what a Kitchenaid Pro can do!

Happy Kichenaid Pro = happy home baker.

Finally, Byron has almost completed re-installing the heart pine flooring in the parlor!  We will still have to sand it down and Waterlox (a tung oil wood sealer) it since we prefer a natural finish to a dark stain, but it is so nice to say goodbye to at least some of the plywood!  (And yes, I still have to mud the drywall.  Sigh.)

So that's out Green Acres Weekend Update.  Oh, and I'm surviving tin whistle, but only because my sister-in-law, Dawn the Music Doctor, helped me - the Music Moron - out the other week.  She also poked her head into my classroom this week and gave me some pointers as I was attempting to teach six little girls to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in unison.  Sorry, no MP3 downloads available right now.  I know you're disappointed.

Don't Cry Over Spilt Milk

Recently I decided to start buying milk from a local farm that gets its milk from a small creamery.  The decision was made after I drank a glass of (organic) milk we'd been getting from the grocery store.  Like most milk, it's bottled in plastic, which I could taste when I drank it.  All I could think about was that whatever was leeching into the milk from the plastic was going into my children's bodies.  So even though the milk from the farm is a bit more expensive, I decided to make the switch.

The milk we've been getting is bottled in glass, for which you have to pay a deposit, and I get the non-homogenized milk.  There are several advantages here.  First, the glass is re-used.  Even though we were recycling the plastic jugs, I would think there's less processing involved in just sterilizing a glass bottle versus putting a plastic jug through the entire recycling process.

Second, the milk I get is not homogenized.  That means there's good old fashioned cream on the top, which I scoop out and substitute for oil in baking.  Homogenization began as an attempt to make all milk the SAME for each consumer, but there's more to it than meets the eye...or the gut.  There are studies that show that homogenization can lead to leaky gut syndrome, and though I've been drinking homogenized milk for most of my life, it's always nice to cut out another health risk.

Finally, I'm supporting a local farm.  Granted, they get their milk from a separate creamery, but I'm still putting money directly back into my community and the milk isn't getting shipped from across the country.  And less fuel = happier environment.

All that being said, we seem to be having problems getting this milk into our stomachs.  Last week, the kids spilled entire glasses of milk three times, and I admit, I got frustrated...especially by accident #3.  But this morning beat all.

Byron gets up shortly before I do to get ready for work, and Charlie - the true early bird of the family - usually follows.  By the time I got up this morning, Byron was almost ready to walk out the door.  Then I opened the fridge.

Sometime between then and the time Byron had gotten himself breakfast, an entire, full bottle of milk had burst in the fridge due to mysterious overcooling.  That particular bottle had been placed right next to the cooling vent, which for some reason decided the refrigerator compartment was the freezer.  Milk was splattered on each tray, over the sides, into the drawers, and onto all the food in the fridge, including the venison that was cooling (happily, it was covered).  Byron gently reminded me not to panic before he had to leave, as little blue eyes were watching me. 

During the hour it took me to clean out the fridge and dispose of the shattered glass, I thought a lot about how I react to difficult situations.  Lately, it hasn't been so pretty.  But as there was nothing I could do to reverse the situation, I tried thinking of the bright side (not something that comes naturally to me).  This hadn't happened at night, for one.  The fridge had gotten colder, which is much better than it shutting down completely and all our food spoiling.  And only one bottle had burst, not the other two that had been sitting right next to it.

I'm still not sure what's wrong with the fridge, but I'm at least going to give the coils a good cleaning today to see if that helps (it hasn't shut off at all this morning, despite turning the temperature down).  It may need a new thermostat.  It may be on its way out.  But I'm going to try to remember the good in this relatively little episode of spilt milk.

The Berry Rows

This fall we transplanted some raspberry plants from Other House (hey, we still own it, and we left plenty for Mystery Buyer), some black raspberry plants growing wild at my in-laws' place, and some wild blackberry plants from our property here.  All three are very hardy and simple to transplant and ours seem very happy in their new homes.  Our hope is that the cultivated blackberries will be sweeter than they are in the wild, too. We tilled two rows that are about 40' long and about 8' apart (wide enough to cut the grass in between), with the idea that next spring we'll expand them to run all the way to the edge of our property.  We have over 150' feet more to go, on each row, and plan on planting a row of grapes as well.  Yeah, we dream big.  And I guess we're pretty serious about this sustainable living thing.

Byron tilled the rows and we promptly raked in mounds of well-composted horse manure Byron got from a colleague at work.  Note that cow manure is usually the excrement of choice for gardening, since cows have those handy double stomachs that help break down weed seeds, but horse manure composted as well as this stuff was will work, too.

Byron used a rotor tiller to dig the rows while Charlie contemplated the cosmos.

The beginnings of our berry rows.

When transplanting the berries, pick a plant that still has leaves on it; you don't want a spent cane that bore fruit and looks dead.  Dig a circle around the plant, at least a foot around the main cane.  Now, I have to admit that I had a tough time with this one.  Since the blackberries I dug up were in the wild, they were surrounded by weeds and wirery vines that gyred and gimbled in the wabe (forgine me, but every time I work in the soil I think of "Jabberwocky" and I have no idea why), so I had to do my best to get all the small, hairy roots that extended out from the main root.  Berry roots are typically pretty shallow (about 6"), so happily I didn't have to dig too deeply.  Once a plant was dug out I placed it, with as much of the dirt it had been growing in as possible, in a pot.

Transplanted blackberry, before I cut it down.

After digging out the plants, I trimmed the canes down to about 6"-8".  They may not bear fruit next summer, but this will help them grow stronger in the long term.

The transplants will look like sticks when you trim them, but that's normal!  I did this with the raspberries, too.

Not all transplants will have one neat root...this one had three runners!

The blackberries I transplanted about 6' apart; the raspberries and black raspberries, 3'-4'.

To transplant: dig hole.  Place plant & its dirt in hole.  Cover.  Water.

To provide insulation from the impending frost, I mulched around each transplant with pine needles from the woods, leaving a bit of space around the cane.  Byron is also in the process of making a trellising system for them by making posts from fallen cedars (surely as a result of last winter's Snowpacolypse).  He cut posts about 8' tall and dug holes about 2' deep, leaving 6' of the post exposed.  These were placed at either end of the rows, making them about 40' apart.  We'll see how that works; it may be that we need to add another post in between.  He'll also add a cross brace on each post and run wire above the rows to trellis the canes.

The berry rows.

'Tis the Season for Apple Butter

I love apple butter...on pancakes, on toast, on muffins, and straight from the jar.  I've gotten some as gifts before in those cute, decorative mason jars that you see all over the place at country stores but never buy because they're just too darn expensive.  At least I never do, because I always think it's something I'll make myself someday...and sometimes, I actually do.  Here's an easy apple butter recipe for your crock pot that will make your house smell unbelievable.  Neighbors will get a whiff from miles away and come flocking to your door.  Since you'll want to keep this delicious apple butter either for yourself or to give away as Christmas gifts, smile sweetly and hand off this recipe to them.  Then lock your door.

Crock Pot Apple Butter

Based on the recipe from the PickYourOwn website

Ingredients

6 quarts applesauce (homemade is best)

2 - 2 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cloves

Equipment
pint canning jars
crock pot (the quantities in this recipe are for a 4-quart crock)
boiling water canner and instructions

Directions
1.  Make applesauce!  This is the easy step.  Slice and cook down the apples (minus the cores) in some water, then either press through a food mill or puree in a blender (I go for option #2).  Leave the skins on.  See?  That's pretty easy.  Approximately 44 medium apples will make six quarts.  And use sweet apples...no Granny Smiths!  Save those for pie.

I used a combination of Stayman (above) and Enterprise.

2.  Pour 3 1/2- 4 quarts of applesauce in your crock pot, along with the spices and 1 1/2 cups sugar.  Set it on medium heat if your crock pot allows.  My pot only has high and low settings; I've tried both and the high works best for me.  How long you let it cook will depend on the power of your crock pot, how thick you like it, and if you stir it occasionally.  I do this first step overnight. 

3. Prop the lid up with two knives and let it cook for 6-12 hours.

Put the lid over the knives...this method allows some steam to escape.

4.  When the applebutter has cooked down to about half its original quantity, add two more quarts of applesauce and the rest of the sugar (or add sugar to taste).  Set on high and let the flavors combine for a couple hours, stirring occasionally.  I leave the lid off for this step; you may want to use a spatter guard if your crock pot tends to get really hot.  The finished applebutter shouldn't be too runny; you should be able to scoop some onto a spoon without it dripping everywhere.  If you let it get too thick, add a bit of apple juice and blend it in.

Apple butter ready to be canned.

5.  The next step is to can the applebutter; this recipe yields about 7 1/2 pints...so I process seven pints and put the extra bit in the fridge to enjoy right away.  If your apple butter isn't boiling, you'll want to bring it to a boil by placing it in a pot on the stove and carefully boiling it before you place it into your sterilized jars. 

6. Process pints of apple butter for 10 minutes using the boiling water method.  Be sure to adjust time for jar size and altitude, according to your canner manufacturer's instructions.

7.  Never canned before?  Click here for my post on canning.  It references the PickYourOwn website's canning instructions, which are thorough and well illustrated.

8.  Consume apple butter.  If you can spare some, it makes convenient, delicious, and inexpensive holiday gifts!

Nine Lives? Let's Hope

About a month ago, a little cat showed up on our front porch.  She's since adopted us.  We didn't want a cat, but we couldn't resist...we even shelled out money to get her spayed and get shots.  She's seriously one of the sweetest little creatures I've ever encountered.

Which begged the question, "Why would someone get rid of her?"  Byron and I guessed she had been dumped off on our street, since she was obviously used to being around humans.  Well, last week we found out why someone may not have wanted her.

Friskies had a seizure.

It began right after we'd put the kids to bed.  We were keeping her in the house for a few days after her surgery, so she had, in typical Friskies fashion, followed us upstairs.  Byron called her to come downstairs, and she started to scurry toward the stairs, which was strange.  She may be sweet, but she's still a cat and cats don't usually come when you call unless bribed with food.  She then stopped by our door and began convulsing.  I called Byron in a panic.

Our combined thoughts were the she was either choking or having a seizure (Byron actually had a student a few years ago who had a seizure in class).  In any case, after we got her out onto the front porch, we both tried sticking a finger in her mouth; we found out a couple bandaids later that cats don't swallow their tongues during seizures.  But as she sat afterwards, her breathing shallow and her eyes glazed, we were convinced she was either going to die or be brain damaged.  In either case, I really wasn't ready to have that "Do cats go to heaven?" discussion  with Akea.  Seriously.  She had spent at least half an hour that afternoon drilling me on the eternity of God and the Trinity, and my brain still hurt.  Besides, I had become rather fond of Friskies and I wasn't ready to say goodbye to her either.

We were literally overjoyed to see her back to her normal self the next morning.  When we had gone to bed the night before, she had been almost catatonic and very unresponsive.  Apparently cats can be in this state for anywhere from one to twenty-four hours after a seizure.  She slept most of the next day, I and made some phone calls and did some research on possible causes.

Some cats are born with this condition, and others get it from environmental causes, such as head trauma or eating something they shouldn't.  It's relatively rare in cats as compared to dogs, and vets recommend a series of blood tests to determine the cause...and sometimes, even after dozens of tests and hundreds of dollars, the cause remains elusive.  It's also possible that cats can get seizures as a result of the rabies vaccine, so I called the clinic.  They said she would have reacted within an hour of the vaccine, so that was a no-go.

Possible remedies to seizures are a variety of medications that have ill side effects on vital organs, such as the liver.  That seems rather counter-productive to me.  The solution that Byron and I came up with is to keep her inside at night, so if she does have a seizure in the wee hours, she at least won't be prey to foxes, opossums, and the spattering of other potential predators that may roam the woods behind our house.  I grudgingly bought a littler box and pooper scooper.  We had a talk with the kids and told them we were going to be thankful for whatever time we had with Friskies. 

But cats have nine lives, right?  Here's to hoping that the nine lives myth is true!

Girl's best friend!