Fermentation experiment, cheese making, chicks...

As promised, here's the follow-up post on my carrot experiment.

I found a recipe on fermented dilly carrots I thought sounded good.  Here's the link. Dilly carrots   I cleaned & sliced up 2 pounds of carrots.   I added the dill, garlic and brine.  Not difficult by any means.  The jars are now sitting in an out of the way, dark place.

Dilly carrots with pickle puck & pickle pipe in use.

A friend shared the name of a local dairy farmer who sells raw milk.  Hurray!  Andy Birdsell has been a dairy farmer most of his life. Joshua & I took a trip over to his place & got 3 gallons of milk.  $12.  Not bad for raw milk.  Friend Gena Stout took 3 half-gallons jugs, leaving me with 3.  So, I made some creme cheese.

I like making cheese.  It's not difficult & it tastes great.  I know I've discussed making cheese before.  I've discussed making Feta and Ricotta.  Here's some images from yesterday's session.

Bringing the milk up to temperature

The required culture

Here's how the curds looked after setting at room temperature for 12 hours

Suspending the curd to drain the whey

While the curd is draining, I had to decide what I wanted to make with the whey.  I usually use it to bake bread.  I wanted to make something different.  So today I chose to bake a cake.  I found the recipe on Pinterest. Farmhouse buttermilk cake recipe   King Arthur Flour is one of my favorites brands. I can always find that special item I'm looking for in their catalog.  And I buy their flour for my regular use.

I substituted whey for buttermilk.  Otherwise, this is the recipe I used.

Friends Karna & Gena & I have been dyeing lately.  Mostly indigo dyeing & shibori for them, hand-dyed skeins for me.  Gena will be making a presentation on natural dyeing for the Master Gardeners.  We had a good time taking pictures & dyeing skeins for that event.

Skeins just out of the dye pot are green. 

Skeins turn blue with exposure to oxygen

Indigo & cochinal dye pot

Our source materials

 Three weeks ago, I set the incubator up. I loaded in 30 eggs.  Over the past few days, chicks have been hatching out.  There are 10 little fluff balls running around in the brooder.