Happy solstice, the mead is done!

First off a happy summer solstice to all of you. As always, it feels like we're at least a month into summer here by the time the solstice rolls around. I've instituted a new family tradition that we'll celebrate the solstices (and maybe the equinoxes too) with some homemade hooch. Today I think it will be more of our hefeweizen as it's already at its peak and delicious. The hefeweizen was actually our second attempt at liquor making, the first one was the honey mead we started several months ago but just bottled this weekend. The mead was a bit of a learning curve for us as we learned some important lessons in sanitation, and how as it turns out, you should check all of your seals BEFORE you put the mead in the primary fermenter, otherwise you may have to put your hand in the brew to tighten things up. Despite the odds the mead turned out drinkable and not poisonous. We opted for a dry mead rather than a sweet one and this one is definitely dry. I think we left it in the fermenter a little long as it tastes more like a chardonnay that was left on the counter overnight... a hint of vinegar. Hey, I said it was drinkable, not wonderful. We're hoping that some aging will help it get a little better.
22 bottles of La Mano Venenosa Mead

The rest of the tiny farm is being productive as well. The 11 chickens are pitching in laying plenty of eggs in the 105 degree heat. Here's a week's worth:

Not bad considering that a few of these birds are pushing four years old and I'm still getting about 9 eggs a day!

The first blackberry!

This morning I got to pick the first blackberry I had ever grown. I didn't even know you could grow blackberries in Phoenix until I was about 20. Ever since then I had wanted to and when I bought my house I tried (and killed) several blackberry plants and pretty much gave up on it.



Fast forward to about a year ago. My husband and I were riding bikes around the neighborhood on our way to visit the house that had heritage breed turkeys for awhile. No, not legally, but no one complained. You could see the pen from the street and I think a lot of people like made a point to go by that house just to watch the turkeys. Anyway, we stopped at a yard sale a couple doors down. I bought a little birdcage to use as a hospital cage for small birds for $5 and I noticed he had a huge hedge of blackberries. Long story short: we rode our bikes home with a birdcage and a gallon bag of blackberries. He invited us to come back later with a shovel and dig up a few. We did. I planted them. Two out of five survived and I now have blackberries. I recently found out that they grow 'wild' in the irrigation ditch a street over and an awesome neighbor whom I've recently befriended happens to live next to that ditch and brought us 8 or 9 plants of which a few are starting to leaf out. These are not the thornless 25 gallons of berries per plant you see advertised in the catalogs and magazines, they are good old-fashioned very thorny blackberries. It makes them a little rough on the hands, but it also means they're a little rough on predators. I've planted them against the fence to the chicken pen and against where I plan to build a big quail aviary in the fall, so now they can serve two purposes.

A big day indeed.

Solar update, more baby quail, PICS

For those of you that are curious, the electric bill last month was $9.47. Way to go, solar! About $8 of that is administrative fees and taxes, the remainder is from the couple of days before they installed the new meter that credits us with surplus power. After all the math, it seems like it will pay for itself in about 5 years. However my husband and myself are both essentially freelance so the investment in the piece of mind that we have (basically) one less bill to pay every month is worth even more to us.

We had an 80% hatch rate for this last batch of quail. This seems a little low for eggs that didn't have to travel but still very much acceptable. There comes a hard time in nearly every hatch when a quail or two has started pipping out of the shell and for whatever reason gets stuck and doesn't progress. The general rule is to not help the quail, that hatching is a test of fitness and for the sake of future generations you only want to breed the best and healthiest birds. Often birds you help out will be weak or have other problems and die anyway. Every once in awhile though you get a bird that is so close, really seems determined and peeps away at you from half inside the shell as if to beg you for just a tiny bit of help. Honestly from time to time I help one of these birds, I tell myself I really shouldn't, but I can't just let it suffer. An important part of responsible animal husbandry is to not be such a softy, that you really aren't doing the breed as a whole any favors by helping out individuals in this situation. My solution for this is that if there is one that I've helped, to band it and make sure it doesn't get used for breeding.


It takes about 4 to weigh as much as a cherry tomato. :) On to the pics!






Breed responsibly!

Solar is finally completed!

As the title states, after a long wait, lots of red tape and a few dollars, the solar panels are finally hooked up and running. All 5.04 Kw. We had a great time watching the meter run backwards the first couple of days, but then the utility came and replaced it with a digital meter. Like digital slot machines this took away some of the fun and excitement, but the end result is still the same. It's been up and running for about 12 days and here are the statistics courtesy of the inverter box:
30 Kwh of electricity produced today
398 Kwh produced so far
676 lbs of CO2 saved

What would you do to celebrate? We brewed our first beer. With some help from my friend Chloe who is an experienced brewer and a fantastic local brew store (Brewer's Connection in Tempe) we now have 5 gallons of hefeweizen in the primary fermenter. Between that and the 5 gallons of honey mead bubbling in the closet, we should be in good spirits for awhile. :)

The ever-popular banana ice cream

I feel I should repost the banana "Ice cream" recipe for those of you that have either not seen it or for some reason have not gotten around to trying it because maybe you're skeptical that a one-ingredient recipe could be so awesome. Let me assuage your anxiety. It is that awesome. It's vegan to boot so you can serve it to your friends that are always insisting that tofu-based pies are as good as the real thing.

Directions:
Freeze some bananas. If you froze them in the peels let them thaw out just enough that you can easily slice the peels off. (15-20 minutes) Cut into slices. Put in the food processor until it gets to be the consistency of fancy ice-cream. Eat.
For a way more complex version: add a teaspoon of peanut butter in the food processor with the banana slices and then when it's done add chocolate sauce. As my new favorite feedback booth guy at the end of a recent Antiques Roadshow says.... "Champion!"

I realize a picture should be here, but I ate it before I thought to take a picture. Besides, you all know what ice-cream looks like.

More Solar

Looks like Phoenix is scheduled for rain for the entire week. This could have some say in whether or not our solar gets installed. This also means no global sun oven meals, I really can't say enough good things about that product. It heats to 325-350 in basically the same amount of time our indoor oven does. If I really pay attention to moving it with the sun every 30-60 minutes, it will get up to at least 375. I'm not sure how much of a difference ambient temperature makes, but in the summer it will be 60 degrees hotter outside than it is now. While it's not cheap (around $225) it's nice to know that it's made in America with non-sweatshop labor and that a portion of the proceeds go towards providing solar ovens to people that need them in parts of the world with less money.

Mikey- Our utility (APS) is paying $15,120 towards our 5.2 KwH system. If I remember correctly, it's not just a straight $3,000 per kwh, it increases as your system size increases. (I think it was $12,500 for a 4.8 kwh system) Arizona has a crappy buy back policy. They will buy any unused electricity from you at the end of the month at wholesale costs, should you need more than you produce in a given month you buy it from them retail. Alternatively, you can let your unused production roll over to the next month (and every year in April the slate gets wiped clean, so it's a bit of a use it or lose it). The latter is the route we've signed up for.

The solar countdown...

Well, for those of you wondering about the significant lack of posts, I've been extra busy. :) I have 30 kinds of tomatoes started, 10 pepper varieties and two eggplants. Way more than I'll have room for, but it's hard to stop myself. The bigger news is that we're getting solar panels. When I first looked into it I thought it would be I pay for them, they come out and install them and it was all done. I wish. There are many layers of approvals that need to be gotten (the solar company does most of this, but there's still a lot of waiting between each stage of the process) We had to get two 35 foot palm trees removed, which were going to make it too shady (probably two more will have to be pulled out before it's all done) there will have to be significant trenching in the backyard because of how our house is set-up, then more people have to sign off on things.

It seems like a lot of steps just to get solar power, but when it's all done, it should be 110% of our total power usage and because of all the rebates, credits and incentives, it will be about 85% off the sticker price, so we just couldn't refuse. There are nine days until they start installing the actual panels, which is stage one of the home stretch. I'm crossing my fingers that everything goes well.

Pictures to come!