Old Woolen Mill

This old woolen mill sits on the west side of Bloomfield, Indiana just before Main St. crosses the river. It was built in 1922 and operated until the mid 1960s. They made oval woven rugs and blankets for the military.

I did a bit of research to find out what the name of the company was, but only ever found it referred to as 'the old woolen mill on the west side of town'.

Somehow, I doubt that was it's name when it was built.

It was a salvage/building supply store for a long time after the woolen mill closed, but even that closed completely a few years ago. There were plans to turn it into condos, but that never happened.

It's a lovely building. I was in it when it was a salvage store and I loved the feel of the old place. All those wonderful windows.

If I were rich, I'd open it again as a woolen mill, full of hand looms by the windows. It would be a great place to weave.

Blackberry Jelly

I only make one kind of real jelly.   Blackberry jelly.

We have acres of wild blackberries - some of them are probably the wild brambles instead of actual blackberries.   Some years they're small and bitter and sour.   This year they're larger - even in the heat and drought.  They're also sweeter.   We wonder if it has something to do with the bees?  Or maybe the mild winter?   Or maybe the long easy spring?   At any rate, they're delicious this year and it's a pleasure to make jelly with them.

I start out by picking as many berries as we can in a morning without expiring from the heat, humidity and ticks.   We're pretty tired out when we get done.   As soon as we recover, this is how it goes:

1.  Wash the berries and pick out the grass seeds, leaves, stems, bugs, etc.

2.  Put the berries in a big pot with a few cups of water and cook them until they're boiling a bit.   They'll turn red.

3.  Line a big colander or chinois with cheescloth.  Set the colander/chinois over a big pot to catch the juice.

4.  Ladle the berries into the cheesecloth.

5.  Use a spoon to press the juice out of the mash or gather the corners of the cloth and roll them up to squeeze as much juice as you can out.

6.  Discard the mash.  Chickens love it.

7.  Save the juice.   You can can it as is to use later, or use it now to make syrup or jelly.

Blackberry Syrup

• Blackberry juice
• Sugar [1/2 as much sugar as blackberry juice]

Measure the juice into a pot.   You'll need half as much sugar as juice.   Add the sugar to the juice and bring to boil.   Ladle into jars and process for canning, 10 minutes for pints.


Blackberry Jelly

• 4 cups blackberry juice
• 3 Tablespoons Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin
• 2 cups sugar

Mix the juice and pectin in a large pot.   Bring to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugar.  Stir well and bring back to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.   Boil hard for 1 minute.   Ladle into jars and process 10 minutes for canning.  Yield 2.5 pints.

Note:  I like jelly with a soft gel.  I don't like to carve my jelly out of the jar.  I like it to wiggle.  Like jell-o.   This Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin gives a great soft gel.   Their recipe calls for a rounded 1/3 of a cup of the pectin, but so far I've found that 3 Tablespoons gives a great reliable gel with everything except strawberries, which needed the full rounded 1/3 cup and then gelled great.

Beaver Pond

Not far down the road from us is a big mucky, swampy, buggy, wet beaver marsh and pond.

Here's a tree they were trying to take down.  Our neighbor put a stop to it by cutting down the tree himself.   It's big.

Really big.

Imagine how long it would take to chew a tree down.   I get a headache just thinking about it.

And just look at how close he got to felling it.

Did you know that female beavers are just as big and sometimes bigger than the males?

Beavers keep growing their whole lives.   They live to be around 24 years old and can weigh 55 lbs.   I don't know about you, but I'd be a little intimidated if I met a 55 lb creature that could chew down trees.

The truth is, in all these years, I've only seen the lodge, the chewed trees and the pond, never the beavers.   I'm kind of glad now.

The lodge is way back behind that ginormous swamp rose at the back of the marsh in the pic.

A two acre swamp rose smells really wonderful.  Just so know you.  

Black Raspberry Jam - Low Sugar

We have a few patches of black raspberries on our place.   They like dappled shade and mostly hang out at the edges of the woods.   The berries are small and the canes are thorny.   It's hot, sticky, ticky work gathering them, but oh, so worth it.  With them we make one of the easiest jams ever.  Only four ingredients.  

This jam is the taste of hot summer days, bird song and country breezes.  


Black Raspberry Jam

• 4 cups black raspberries
• 2 cups water
• 4 Tablespoons Dutch Jell All Natural Lite Pectin
• 2 cups sugar

Mix the raspberries, water and pectin in a large pot.   Bring to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugar.  Stir well and bring back to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.   Boil hard for 1 minute.   Ladle into jars and process 10 minutes for canning.  Yield 2.5 pints.


Note:  We tried this jam with vanilla, but decided that the vanilla only detracted from the wonderful flavor of this fruit.  Leave the berries plain.


For more recipes as easy as this one, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  Every purchase goes a long way toward supporting the blog.   Thank you!

Bees Like Sumac

We have good land for sumac.  [Great wiki article on all the varieties of sumac here.] 
Most of the sumac we have is rhus glabra - smooth sumac.   It makes great 'lemonade'.  I've experimented a lot with it.  Read about it here.

Last year we noticed a new patch of sumac that was a little shorter, a little different.  It turned out to be staghorn sumac, rhus typhinus.  The staghorn sumac is blooming right now and the bees are all over it. 

All. Over. It.

This is good!  This means that we've got something to continue the nectar flow for the bees through the summer.   I'm hoping that when the smooth sumac blooms, the bees will be all over it, too.   It will bloom later.   I'll keep you posted.  I've heard that sumac honey is dark and reddish.    When we did our last inspection, I found a little patch of dark red honey on one frame.   I'm thinking it was sumac.  

The nectar flow is the time of year when plants are blooming and producing a lot of nectar for the bees to turn into honey.   The biggest flow is in the spring when the trees are blooming.   Then it slows down in a lot of places.  Most places make honey in the spring, then harvest it, then let the bees build up their own honey stores through the rest of the year to get them through the winter. 

At our place here, we have a lot of honey locusts, tulip trees, and autumn olive.   Then there's a short lull until we have our acres of wild blackberries bloom.  Then a short lull until the white sweet clover and staghorn sumac bloom.   Then, hopefully, the smooth sumac.  Then the goldenrod.   

This means that our little area right here might be pretty ideal for a steady long flow from spring until fall.   Who knew??  I'm watching the bees carefully to see what plants they're working.  

Fruit

Whenever possible I use fresh, local fruit for my jams.

But the truth is, sometimes you just can't get the fresh fruit you need, when you need it.

Like, in December.

Unless you live in New Zealand.   Which I don't.  And if I did, I couldn't get fresh local fruit in July.  So I'd still be stuck. 

I live in Indiana and there are no fresh local fruits in December.   Except maybe apples, but even they have been off the tree for a while.  Plus, it's hard to make blueberry jam with apples. 

Also, sometimes crops fail.  Like this year our local blueberry people lost the entire crop to a late freeze.  

So I have a choice:

1.   I can whine a lot and go without.  No blueberry jams this year.
2.   I can go to Sam's and buy frozen blueberries.   Which helps support another farmer who might live in California.   Or Tennessee.    And allows us to fill our freezer with blueberries and make blueberry jam whenever I get the urge.   Like in December.

I love having options.

After careful consideration, we decided that option 2 was definitely the way to go.

This month at Sam's we've seen frozen mango, mixed fruit, mixed berries, blueberries, etc.    I'm going to buy a bunch of whatever looks tasty when I see them because you never know when they'll disappear.  

Since I have done enough peeling and pitting of fruit lately to last me for a while, those frozen sliced mangoes are looking pretty darned appealing.   Mango jam is definitely on the list. 

I'll be starting blueberry jams soon.  This year, they'll be made with frozen berries from the store.

They'll still be fabulous.

Spiky Corn

When corn gets too dry, its leaves curl in and point straight up.

Spiky corn is a bad thing.

We have way too much spiky corn around here.    Last weekend, I saw fields full of spiky corn turning gray.

Corn is not supposed to be gray.   It's supposed to be green, green, green, with leaves that droop gracefully down at the ends. 

We need rain.

Purple Milkweed

We have fields full of the regular milkweed, but once in a while a new milkweed shows up.   This one popped up just off the road at the entrance to one of our pastures.

It's pink.  Really pink.

K2 saw it and came straight to me, took me by the arm and said, 'You have to come see this flower.   What is it?'

She was excited because it was pink.   And not just any pink.   A pink even I could love.

This is Asclepias purpurescens.

And it is gorgeous, isn't it.

It's the first milkweed of the year to bloom. Later on, we'll have Asclepias tuberosa [the orange ones] and Asclepias incarnata  [the tall beige ones].

We have a few other ones, too, but I don't know anything about them.   When I did a search on the USDA database, I found this page.

Who knew there were that many milkweeds?   Clearly, I need to study up!

Ticks

We have a lot of ticks here.

A lot.

Seriously.   A LOT.

We've been picking berries all over the place.   Which means walking through a lot of long grass.  And when I got back to the house last time, I was covered with ticks.

It's just part of being out here.   We're used to them.

I pulled a few off my pants on my hand so I could show you what they look like.   Click on the pic to biggify.

Those tiny deer ticks are the size of a pin head.

The dog tick in the center looks like it has a white patch but it doesn't.   They're really shiny and that white is a reflection.  They're brown with grey patterns on them.

The lone star tick has a white dot in the center of its back.

They're all pretty small.   And very good at hiding.   And biting.  In all the wrong places.

I tell my kids to pay attention to their tickles and itches.  Ticks tickle when they walk on you.   A tick bite will start to itch pretty quickly after it latches on.   If you always check your itches, then you'll be able to pull it off before it is attached long enough to give you something. 

A tick has to be attached for 48 hours to give you Lyme Disease.    That's plenty of time to find an itch and take the tick off. 

You don't have to do anything special to get the tick off, just grab it and tug.  [Despite loads of urban legends to the contrary.]  You can use tweezers for the tiny ones, but 99% of the time you can just use your fingernails.

You can spray yourself with bug spray, but remember that if it kills the ticks, it'll kill you, too.    We much prefer just paying attention to tickles and itches and then taking a tick off if one happens to bite.  

Berries

We've been watching the berries ripen.   The black raspberries are on now and the brambles will be ready very soon.  The raspberries usually have a two week head start on the brambles.  Then there's an overlap of a week or so and the brambles take over. 

Our brambles are a smaller wild version of blackberries.   The blackberries in the store are huge and glossy and black.   Ours are about half that size and seedy, but they make really fabulous jelly and syrup.   It's worth the time to juice them and take the seeds out.  

We must have two different kinds because one ripens a couple of weeks before the other.  The shape of the berries is a bit different, too.   It's possible that the later one is a real blackberry.    I"ll have to look it up.

Tulip Tree Scale

Last year I noticed big shiny patches under some of our trees.   The shiny patches turned black and I figured it was some sort of blight.    I did a search and came up with nothing.   Over the winter, many of our small tulip trees died.  This year, it is widespread enough in the Midwest that it hit the news.

The blight is  Toumeyella liriodendri, Tulip poplar scale.

You may notice big dark wet looking patches along the roads under some trees.   If you walk on those patches they'll sound sticky.  

They are sticky.   It's honeydew, excreted in little droplets from the bodies of the scale insect. 

The honeydew looks like rain falling from the tree if you look at it from the right angle in the sunshine.  The lower leaves look very shiny.    Any cars parked under those trees will have little sticky dots all over them. 

In Indiana, black sooty mold feeds on the honeydew and it's common to see lower leaves, and the grass and plants under an infected tree turn black with this stuff. 

The scale is not new.   There are dozens of kinds of scale. [Who knew?]   It's all over the place all the time.   It spreads on birds, which is why it's everywhere in the first place.  The question is what allowed it get out of control? 

Turns out our mild winter didn't kill a lot of it and the dry weather has stressed and weakened the trees, which means there's more of it around and the trees aren't fighting it the way they usually do.

What can be done about it?    You can treat the trees with Neem oil or some other dormant oil, but that gets pricey and you'd need to be careful of all the other things that live on and around the tree. 

You can also make sure your trees are well watered and fertilized so that they're in a strong healthy condition.   The scale may get to them, but not kill them.   That's what we're going to do with the trees around the house. 

We will lose more of our trees in the woods.  Even the huge tulips look pretty bad.   There's not a lot we can do except pray for rain.

Firewood will be cheap for the next few years.  

Where Does the Wax Come From?

Bees excrete wax from their abdomens.  It comes off in scales.   This is what they use to build comb with. 

New wax is white, so new comb is white.   It gets yellower and darker as the bees track pollen and propolis all over it.   

Old comb gets quite brown because they've used it again and again and have tracked stuff all over it. 

Peach Pie Filling

Last year I made peach pie filling in a jar.   The kind that all I had to do was open it up and pour it in a pie crust and bake.  

I love that kind.

It was delicious.  Here's the link.

So this year, I decided to make some more with our peach bounty.

Only I wanted to do something a little different than just nutmeg.

So I added some red raspberries and vanilla.

Raptures.

I made a big batch so I'd have several bottles.    I'm so glad I did.

Peach Raspberry Vanilla Pie Filling

• 16 cups chopped peaches
• 2 cups raspberries
• 4 Tablespoons lemon juice
• 4 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup corn starch
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 4 Tablespoons vanilla

Mix it all together and bring to a boil.   It'll get clear when the corn starch does it's thing.   Yield 4 quarts.  Process for canning 20 minutes.

Note:   The cornstarch will do just fine in this pie filling for 6 months.   After that it starts to separate a bit.   Make sure you keep these at the front of the cupboard so you remember to use them first.

Bon apetit!     [Is that how you spell that?]

Hay

It's hay season.    Most folks around here do round bales because they last better in our damp climate, but there are some who still do small rectangular bales.

It's a pleasure to see an old tractor pulling a wagon loaded to the sky with small bales.  We passed this place way out in Owen County, just as they were bringing the wagons in.

This place had two wagons full, hauled on a hot and dusty day.    Haying is hard work, done on the hottest and driest days of summer.

The first cut was early this year.   Hopefully we'll have enough rain to get two more big cuts this season. 

It's very likely that this tractor has been in use for decades.   Things were built to last, way back when.

The farmer has been in use for decades, too.  I especially appreciate the jeans, T-shirt and cap.   This is the official uniform of Midwestern farmers. God bless them.

[K2 got these pics as we were driving by.  I'm so glad she did.]

Daylilies

We have these all over Indiana.   They are a native Hemerocalis, commonly called daylilies, but I grew up calling them Tiger Lilies.   Maybe it was misinformation, maybe it was just a northern Indiana thing.   Any of the rest of you call them Tiger Lilies?

When I was growing up, there was a big one of these back behind the barn, growing through the crack in the old concrete pad where they used to bring the cows through to the milking stands at the bottom of the barn, way back when the farm was doing the dairy thing - long before we owned what little was left of the farm.  

That lily grew cheek by jowl along with a black raspberry bush and the lilies bloomed just before the black raspberries ripened.   The pair will forever in my mind be linked to the hot days of real summer.  Summer after school let out for the year. 

They're blooming here great guns right now, great drifts of them along the roadsides.    They spread easily and transplant brilliantly.   I have a nice patch out my dining room windows in front of the deck.   They are tall and lanky.   Most of the wild ones around here are 4 feet tall or more.

We also have a whole bunch of other daylily hybrids in our gardens.   I love them because they have a long season and because they come in such a huge variety of colors and forms. 

The deer love them, too.   Love. Them.   Love to come up and eat the buds just before they bloom.

Which is why we have a dog. 

As pretty and sophisticated as they are, none of the hybrids will ever have the exuberance of a half acre of these orange beauties hanging out at the side of the road, though.   Plus, the wild ones match the street signs. 

I love that.

Peach Raspberry Vanilla Jam

In addition to all the spiced peach jams I made, I wanted something with a little less ping.

I wanted pink instead of ping. 

There are a couple of ways to make peach jam pink.

1.  You can leave the skins on when you cook it, but my kids hate the whole fruit skin thing.  [And I totally roll my eyes whenever it comes up because they Really. Care. Mom.]  So I'd have to get the skins out, or run the whole thing through a sieve, but that seemed like a lot of extra work.   I don't need more work.

2.  You can add food coloring.    Nope.   I don't think so.

3.  You can add red raspberries.  Oh. Yes.

We went with #3.   It's pink AND it combines two lovely flavors.

And then we added vanilla.

Because I totally heart vanilla. 

I might have said that before.

And this is how it went:

Peach Raspberry Vanilla Jam

• 3 cups peaches
• 2 cups red raspberries
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/3 cup Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin  OR  3 Tablespoons Ball Low Sugar Pectin
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 Tablespoons vanilla.

Mix the peaches, raspberries, lemon juice and pectin in a large pot.   Bring to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugar and vanilla.  Stir well and bring back to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.   Boil hard for 1 minute.   Ladle into jars and process 10 minutes for canning.  Yield 3 pints.

Note:  You can easily make vanilla extract yourself.   Try it. You'll never go back.

Corn Crib

Every once in a while, on a back road, you'll see one of these old corn cribs hanging out in a field, not far from a barn.  [The barn in this case was a pile of rubber.....uh....rubble...oops.  Typo.]

I think they are charming.  [The corncribs, not the typos.  Typos are just irritating.]

Charming, I tell you.

I've always wanted one for a gazebo.    The guy who lived near where my parents used to live had one and my dad asked him if I could have it [He wasn't doing anything with it] but he said no.

So I still don't have one.

Which is probably a pretty good thing, because I don't know where exactly I'd put it if I had it.   But if someone suddenly gave one to me, I bet I could find a place pretty darn quick.

Ya know?

Wouldn't it be all cute with twinkle lights and some chairs with cushions and a table for fizzy water?  

And honeysuckle and a clematis or two climbing up the sides? 

Spiced Peaches, Part 3: Peach Maple Cardamom Jam

This is the third installment of Not Your Grandma's Spiced Peaches.

This Peach Maple Cardamom Jam is one of those rare creations in life where the whole is much, much more incredible than the sum of the parts - even if those parts are pretty darned amazing to start with.
   
Food of the Gods.

Plus!  I didn't use white sugar - only our homemade maple syrup.   Bonus points!  

This is a jam that is fabulous on biscuits, but would be phenomenal as a filling in cakes or as an ice cream topping when you want something that's a bit more exotic than plain peach.

Peach Maple Cardamom Jam

• 3 cups chopped peaches
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/3 cup Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin  [or  3 Tablespoons Ball Low Sugar Pectin]
• 1 1/2 cups maple syrup
• 1/4 tsp cardamom

Mix the peaches lemon juice and pectin in a large pot.   Bring to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Boil hard for 1 minute.    Add maple syrup and cardamom.  Stir well and bring back to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.   Boil hard for 1 minute.   Ladle into jars and process 10 minutes for canning.  Yield 3 pints. 

Note:  I picked up the Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin at my local Amish store [Freedom Country Store in Freedom, Indiana].   I like that it comes in bulk.   It gels very well - almost too well.   I'm going to use it with other fruit and let you know how I feel about it later in the season.

A New Queen

We got a new queen from Graham's Bee Works in Morgantown, Indiana.    Rumor has it that they have good genetics and we were happy to get a queen at short notice.   She was already mated and determined to be a good layer.

We killed the old queen on a Tuesday, the drove up and got the new queen first thing on Wednesday.   I installed her as soon as I got home.  

Queens come in a nice little cage.   They usually have some attendant bees with them.   The white stuff on the left is candy.   

There are little corks on both ends of the cage.    You can direct release her if you take out the cork on the right.   Or you can take the cork out on the candy end and let the bees already in the hive eat the candy until they free her.    It takes a couple of days to eat the candy out and by that time they're used to her. 

It had been 16 hours since I took the old queen out, and by then the bees knew she was gone.   We figured they'd be happy to get another one.   Just to be on the safe side, though I opened the cage on the candy end to give them plenty of time to get used to her before she got out.

I put her upside down across the frames in the hive.

The bees took immediate interest, but did not cluster madly around her or act hostile.   This is a good thing. 

Then I put another box on top of her with the frames taken out in that section since her box stuck up some.  

Then I put the inner cover on.  Then the jar feeder on top of that with a super around it.  Then the top cover. 


And then we waited.





On Sunday [4 days later]  we inspected and discovered that she had not been let out yet.   A lot of the candy had been eaten but not enough to free her.

So we let her out.

And she promptly flew away.

...

[I'll just let that sink in for a minute.]

...

Yeah.   We were stunned. 

We watched her orient around the hive [flying in circles a few times around the hive] and then she was gone. 

The good news was that she did orient.   Bees do that so they can find their way back home.   We hoped that she wanted to come back.  

Why did she fly?    Possibly, she wanted to mate again.   Maybe she just wanted some air.   Who knows. 

We did a quick inspection of the rest of that hive and found about 24 queen cups including three capped queen cells.    This means that the hive was well on its way to making their own new queen.  

Even if the new queen never came back, they'd probably be just fine.    It would take three weeks for them to have a laying queen, but at least they'd have one.  

If the new queen did come back, then at the next inspection we'd hopefully find her and we'd find eggs. 

In the meantime, we decided to put a frame of eggs in from the other hive.   That would keep the bees busy raising brood and give them a little boost if the other queen didn't come back and they had to wait until their own new queen was ready. 

***

Flash forward to our next inspection 6 days later.  

We opened the hive and it was the quietest it had ever been.  This was significant because it was always a noisy hive.   Queenless hives often are very loud.  It's called a 'queenless roar'.    As new beeks, we didn't know whether the bees were loud because they didn't like the queen or because it was hot.   

At any rate, this time the bees were quiet.   We were hopeful that this was because it was finally a queenright hive. 

One of the first frames we saw looked like this.


Those bump outs at the bottom edge are queen cells.  

The arrow is pointing to a queen cell we found with a larva in it.  

This means that they're still interested in making a queen. 


Hmmm.  





We looked through the rest of the frames and did find a queen.

A queen!

Yay!    Pause for celebration!

We also found some eggs

We did the math and the queen we found had to be the one we got from Graham's.   She came back. 

We found only one of the previous three capped queen cells and it was in tatters.    The other two were already completely gone.  

We're curious to see what happens to the queen cell in the previous pic.   Will they cap her? 

We'll inspect again in a week and let you know. 

Our other hive is booming!   They have 15 frames with comb and they're drawing new like crazy.    There is always a traffic jam at the entrance to the hive.   They've gone through a quart of syrup every two days for the past week.     Thank heaven they're doing so well.   They provided two frames of eggs for the weaker hive during the queen drama. 

Spiced Peaches, Part 2: Peach Chai Jam

Welcome to the second installment of Not Your Grandma's Spiced Peaches.

I've been wanting to use my Chai brew in jam for a while, and peaches were first on my list to use it with.  I figured it would be a nice variation of the traditional spiced peaches.    I was so right. 

It was so good, that now I'm thinking I might try it with plums. 

Also, I might try it with blueberries.

In fact, I might try it with everything.  

Peach Chai Jam has a mellower and more complicated flavor than the typical clove and cinnamon spiced peaches that I'm used to.  This jam is definitely one we're going to put on the 'Must Have in the Pantry' list.


Peach Chai Jam

• 4 cups peaches
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 cup Robin's Caffeine Free Chai Brew
• 3 Tablespoons Ball Low Sugar Pectin
• 2 cups sugar

Mix the peaches lemon juice, chai brew and pectin in a large pot.   Bring to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugar.  Stir well and bring back to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.   Boil hard for 1 minute.   Ladle into jars and process 10 minutes for canning.  Yield 3 pints

Note:  The Chai Brew is just the spicy base that I use to make chai.  Follow the link above to the recipe.   Don't add the milk to the jam, just the concentrated spicy brew.   And yes, you can leave the sugar out.

Cows in Grass

Some cows just look smart.  



See the one in the middle? 

I think she was plotting something. 

She did not appreciate it when I hollered, 'Moooo' so she'd look at us while K2 took the picture. 

Neither did K2.

Not Your Grandma's Spiced Peaches, Part 1: Ginger Peach Jam

It's peach season here.

For the past couple of years we've had access to the peaches on a friend's tree.  This means that we spend days and days peeling and pitting peaches.

And then we spend months and months enjoying peaches in smoothies, pies, jams, etc.

God bless generous friends with peach trees!  Thank you!!

With all those peaches, I decided to do some experimenting with spices in my peach jams this year and I came up with some really great recipes.

Really.  Great.

As in - the finished products are likely to cause you to break out in the singing of spontaneous Halleluias.  I'm totally not kidding.   

These are not your grandma's spiced peaches.

This is what I made:

• Ginger Peach Jam
• Peach Chai Jam
• Peach Maple Cardamom Jam

So, over the next few days, I'll give you the details.

The delicious, mouth-watering, halleluia inspiring details.  

I'll start here with the simplest of the spiced jams.  Ginger Peach Jam is made with chopped candied ginger.  If you make the candied ginger yourself, then you can use your ginger sugar for this jam.    It's really good!   So good, that you just might consider trying to make some.

Ginger Peach Jam

• 4 cups peaches
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/3 cup Dutch Jell All Natural Lite Pectin OR 3 Tablespoons Ball Low Sugar Pectin
• 1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger
• 1 cup ginger sugar
• 1 cup white sugar

Mix the peaches lemon juice and pectin in a large pot.   Bring to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Boil hard for 1 minute.    Add sugars and ginger.  Stir well and bring back to hard rolling boil, stirring constantly.   Boil hard for 1 minute.   Ladle into jars and process 10 minutes for canning.  Yield ~3 pints

Note:  If you don't make your own crystallized ginger, try to get it from a bulk store and then make sure you collect about a cup's worth of the sugar that falls off the ginger and collects in the bottom of the bin.   If you don't have access to ginger sugar, don't worry about it.   Use 2 cups of plain white sugar.  It'll still be great.

Cherry Clafouti

Annual Repost --

Since true clafoutis are always made with cherries, calling this a cherry clafouti is redundant.   Sorry about that.   I did it to differentiate between this clafouti and the one I made before with rhubarb.  Only that one was really a flaugnarde, not a clafouti, since it wasn't made with cherries.  

As we learned before, true clafoutis are made with unpitted cherries because the pit imparts a distinctive flavor.   I wanted to find out if that is true.  So I actually went out in search of black cherries.    And I found them.    They weren't fabulous, but they were the right kind.    And they were on sale.   Perfect!

Remember how clafouti is a glorified flan/pancake thing?    With the rhubarb one, I had to pour a layer of batter in the bottom and bake it first, but with the cherries, you don't have to do that.  And since we weren't even pitting the cherries, all I had to do was put the cherries in then pour the batter over them then bake it.   Too easy.

Seriously.    It was too easy.   So I did some looking around at variations and made it a teensy bit more complicated.    I added real vanilla from a vanilla bean.    I heart vanilla.   You knew that.

This is what I made.    It was fabulous.   Totally worth leaving the pits in.   I'll never do pitless clafouti again. 

Robin's Clafouti

• 10 inch tart dish
• butter to rub your dish with
• 1 to 1 1/2 lb black cherries, stems off, pits in.  Yes, in.  
• 3 T flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 4 eggs  [You can get by with 3 if you have to.]
• 2 cups milk
• 1 vanilla bean

Heat oven to 350.   Butter the tart dish well.  Arrange cherries in the bottom of the dish.   Don't pack them in, leave some spaces for the batter to get around them all.  In a small bowl, mix flour, salt and sugar.  Set aside.  In a bigger bowl, mix eggs and milk.  Cut vanilla bean longways and scrape out the insides into the egg mixture.  Gradually stir the flour mix into the egg mixture.   Pour batter over cherries.   Bake at 350 until set and golden.  About 60 minutes. 

Clafouti is traditionally served at room temp.     It's great that way.    It was also great cold, right out of the fridge for breakfast.

Red Clover

Red clover isn't really red.   It's pink.

K2 loves it.

It smells good.   It's pretty.  

See how there's a lighter green section in the center of the leaves?   I think that's neat. 

Right now a lot of the lower leaves are sort of gray looking from powdery mildew.   

Rumor has it that powdery mildew is caused by too damp conditions, but really it's caused by dry stress, which can be aggravated by heat.   Which is what we had here.   Which is why they've got powdery mildew.  

Check This Out

Etsy has a new About page feature.   It's cool!    Go check out my new About page on Etsy.

Tell me what you think.

Country Auto

On our way to Spencer, via the back roads, we pass Country Auto.   It's an auto parts place way out in the middle of nowhere.

I love the middle of nowhere.

It's got a charm all its own.

And they have cars that fly.

Every time we pass it, the kids want to know how on earth they got it up there.   I want to know who was the last person to drive it.   Who was the person who bought it new?   When did it have it's last oil change?     Where was it the day Kennedy was shot?  

Inquiring minds want to know. 

Big Daisy

Remember when I told you I had a big daisy that had volunteered in the path next to one of the veg beds?

It got big this year.  

Really big.    [There's another, not so exuberant, just behind it.]  

I think it likes me.

How to Kill a Queen

[Warning:  This post unapologetically discusses the premeditated killing of an insect and contains quite a bit of gallows humor.   Just saying.]

So, the queen in our Flower Lang wasn't laying right.  

At all.

We suspected a problem during this inspection, and then the next inspection confirmed it.   She's a really bad layer.   I watched her for a while with a magnifying glass and noticed that she went into the cell to lay, but didn't let go of the egg and it came back up with her.   No eggs were getting in the cells.

This is problematic. 

The eggs are supposed to be in the bottom of the cell.   All neat and tidy and regular.  

That's the queen's job.  It's the only job she has.   The Only.  Job.

Bummer.  

When a queen isn't doing her job, she jeopardizes the whole hive.   They'll all be dead in just a few weeks. 

This means that a bad queen has to be killed and replaced.   I double checked with the Beemaster Forum and they confirmed.    We had to pinch the queen.

Drat.

There is no queen killing service, that I know of.   I mean, I'm sure that if I had connections to the underworld, I could probably hire someone to kill a queen, but not this kind of queen.

It's the kind of thing, a beekeeper just has to do for herself. 

Double drat.

And it all brings up the question of just how one goes about killing a queen.    When experienced beekeepers call it 'pinching the queen', they mean it literally.

Eew.

I just didn't see myself pinching my queen. 

So we considered other options.   But first we had to find her and get her out of the hive as soon as we could so that the bees would either start making a new queen or be accepting of one we put in there for them. 

This means going to the hive, opening it up and searching every frame until you find her.   

The sun was low in the sky when we got home that day and by the time we found her the sun had gone down behind the trees and the bees were getting a little antsy to get us the heck out of the hive.  

We finally found her and Eric got her in the little handy dandy queen catcher.   He handed it to me and in the transfer it opened and she got out and promptly fell to the bottom of the hive, where she skittered under the frames and high tailed to the back of the hive.  

Like any sane queen would do if threatened with imminent kidnapping.  

Not that I'm anthropomorphizing or anything.

So we had to search through the frames again to find her.   And we did, on the very last frame in the box, sort of festooning with the other bees.    And we got her again and this time were very careful to keep the blasted thing shut tight. 

And we closed things up, and headed to the house, where I was unable to put off her offing any more.

I hemmed and hawed.    Which surprised me a bit, because I've killed my share of bugs, let me tell you.   And moles.   And mice.  And possums.  In cold blood. [OK, not the possum.  It wasn't actually dead.]  I"m thinking I was kind of bonded to this dumb bee. 

I considered my options.

Pinching was definitely out.  

No freaking way.

We considered stepping on her.   Kind of a variation on the pinching theme.    Messy.

One of the guys on the forum said to drop her in a jar of water and then run away.     This appealed to the girly girl in me.    A lot.    Turns out it's really slow though.   You can only do this if you don't mind watching for a while or if, indeed, you run away. 

We also considered hanging.

We considered swords at dawn.

We considered poison.   

We considered arson.

In the end, I opted for the squishing.   But I chose a really nice shoe.