Normal Farm Day

Not much exciting happened on the farm today.
I did get one of the two twin buckling goats wethered this afternoon. The twin that is genetically horned. I will hold off on wethering his brother who is polled (genetically hornless) for another week to see if anyone wants him as a buck first.
I did have a frustration moment today after I rounded up one of the turkey hens and put her into the new turkey enclosure I put together yesterday. It wasn't five minutes later that she was by my side again in the poultry house. See apparently wasn't happy about being locked up with the Tom and ripped a hole in the bird netting covering the pen in order to get out. Now I have to fix the netting. Grumble.
It is Thursday, so around here, that means homemade pizza for dinner. But it is not the pizza that causes me to mention dinner but that the Cherry-Lemon soda was pulled out of the fridge for its first taste test.... it passed with flying colors! I love that it has three ingredients: 100% fruit juice, lemon juice and yeast. Definitely a do-again.

Yesterday I made up two 1-gallon batches of soda. The first was a Cherry-Lemon and the second was a Lemon-Lime. By this morning the Cherry-Lemon bottles were already firm from the production of carbonation but I let them go all day and finally put them in the fridge at 10 pm tonight. There were bubbles visible in the bottles so they should be nice and fizzy in a few days.

The acid in the Lemon-Lime soda hinders the yeast from working as well so it can 6-8 days for the bottles to firm up.

My afternoon project was to work on the turkey pen. Our Narragansett Tom turkey that we got last fall had become quite violent over the winter so I had penned him up in our old goat buck pen that has a four foot fence around it. It kept him in all winter but around March he learned to fly over it. I put some six foot dog kennel panels along the front fence line where he paced and that was successful at keeping him in the pen until a few weeks ago when he began fly over the six foot panels as well.

So, today I added more kennel panels to form a 10x20 pen attached to the back of the old buck barn. I then stretched bird netting over the panels. We will see if that is successful in keeping him in. The sad part is the girls are now blocked out of the pen as well so will not be able to go in with him to breed (something they had been doing on their own). I need to decide if I am going to pen the two hens up with him all the time of just for short "visits".

Smooth Fig Jam

Neil and I were out early this morning digging (with the post hole digger on the tractor) holes for new trees. We planted six tulip poplar trees that Neil had dug up from his parents place a few days ago. I have been keeping them in the greenhouse but they were beginning to wilt so needed to get in the ground. We planted them along the driveway to provide shade for the cars and eventually the house.

Food preserved today:
Low-sugar Smooth Fig Jam, water bath canned - 12 half-pints

I made.this particular recipe with the idea of using them later for homemade fig newton cookies. I used a combination of two recipes "Smooth Fig Jam" and "Low-Sugar Fig-Ginger Jam" both found in The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves by Linda Ziedrich.


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Today's food preservation:
Bread & Butter Pickles, cucumber - 4 quarts
Bread & Butter Pickles, summer squash - 2 quarts
Okra, pressure canned - 2 pints
Pickled Banana Peppers, water bath canned - 1 pint
Szechwan Green Bean Pickles - refrigerator - 1 quart
Pesto, freezer - two 1/3 pints

Today's food preservation:
Green Beans, pressure canned - 3 quarts

Today's food preservation:
Orka, pressure canned - 3 pints

Today's food preservation:
Tomato sauce, water bath canned - 4 pints