December 2011

Hi Everyone! Well as you can all see it is a Jodie month, she has become so cute that we all spend the days watching and enjoying her. She climbed in my cupboard and into the box, We bought her her first pair of shoes and our Friend gave her this very lovely dress. She is washing her face in the next photos and then she decided to help her Dad sort the chainsaw out. She loved it until he started it and then she screamed blood murder, lol. Tristan is starting to get used to being around the kids and is now helping put her to sleep, The last photo is of Jodie picking berries.

 

Aimee found a very large moth.

 

Ok, I love picking berries, I found it so satisfying and was able to make over 50 jars of booysen berry jam, so we now have enough for one jar a week for the year.

Ok who took photos of me picking berries? Think that Aimee is in for a lot of trouble with me.

Sharna is getting in to the thick of it all as she tries to get in the inside for the large juicy berries that she can see. Sarah was a big help holding on to the container for us with all the berries in.  

 

We managed to pick about 4.5kg every time we went down to get.

Here you can see the amount of berries that I was cooking up after every trip.

Some of the bottles of jam that we made, There are Booysen Berry, Gooseberry, Strawberry, and curries carrots.

This is a bottle of sweet Chilli Sauce that take 10 min to make and next morning it is stunning, We can eat it on everything, It is really just to delicious for words.

Sweet Chilli Sauce

1 cup water

1 cup rice vinegar

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons fresh ginger root, minced

1 teaspoon garlic, minced

2 teaspoons hot chilli peppers, minced

2 teaspoons ketchup

4 teaspoons cornstarch

1. Pour water and vinegar into a saucepan, and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir in sugar, ginger, garlic, chilli pepper, and ketchup; simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in corn starch. Remove saucepan from stove to cool. Then transfer to a bowl, cover, and refrigerate until needed.

 

Please everyone try this, it is truly wonderful.

So Mousse had her calf on the 2nd of December. Yes it was a bull. He is very sweet and loves his bottle. We left him with Mommy for the first 24 hours so as to get the milk to produce nicely. The kids have named him T-Shirt and I have named him Chops. Its going be a long 16 months till he is all fat and ready for the pot. Mousse is giving us 8L  of milk in the morning and 8L in the evening, The calf gets 4-6L a day and we get the rest. I have made 3.5L of yogurt and am making 3.5l of cream cheese at the moment. We are very blessed at this moment in time. (Thank You Yahweh)

Jodie is sitting with him wandering what this is!!!!!

Sharna has tort herself how to do Fire Spinning. This was the first time that she has light up and is trying it. she did beautifully and that night she did a show for us, all I can say was WOW she is good. She has also done a show for our friends and on Thursday she is doing a show for about 25 people. All welcome

 

John and I bought a pottery wheel for the kids. Sharna is going to teach the little ones how to make pots and work with clay. I managed to find a clay supplier in PE so I am so happy about that. We are going to try set up a small business for Sharna.

Ok I have been so busy with bottling that I decided to try and make cheese as well as I did not have enough, lol my first attempt was divine, the next batch turned out like feta and was just a yum as the first. Round three went even better than the second but I did not cook it long enough on the double boiler so it was more sticky, but it is better after day 2 of waiting for it to be cut. Ok I will give you all the recipe as it is so easy to make and I wonder why I did not do this years ago.

Easy Longhorn

Heat 12L off milk till the curd and whey have separated, the curd will be thick and chewy.

(if you leave you milk out for about 3 days depending on the heat. Cooler weather it will take longer to go off, you can also heat your milk on the stove to 60 degrees, leave it to cool to 37 degrees, pour it in a bowl with 6 TBSP of lemon juice, put a lid on, wrap it in a sleeping bag and leave it overnight.)

Stir occasionally. Drain and press dry the curd.

Place in a mixing bowl.

Mix 8T butter, 1 ½ tsps baking soda.

Mix very well, the better the mix the nicer the cheese. Let sit for 2 ½ - 3 hours.

Place on double boiler on stove. Add 1 1/3 cups sour cream and 3 level tsps. Salt (add food colouring if desired). Cook until it looks like melted cheese. Turn into butted container. Wait 24 hours, and slice

 

That is how easy peesy it is. It also tasted so much better than bought cheese and it does not have all the nonsense in it.

I have also started to make plum wine. Unfortunately we have to wait a year before we get to try it as the longer it sits the better it is. Here is the recipe for anyone to try.

Plum Wine Recipe

5 lbs / 2,250 grams / 2.25kgs plums

3 lbs / 1,350/ 1.35kgs grams sugar

8 pints / 4.8l water

1 teaspoon citric acid

Wine yeast

Winemaking Method: Plum Wine Recipe - Wine Making Guides

Wash and cut up the fruit and place in a fermentation bucket. Pour over the boiling water and cover bucket and leave for four days. Stir twice daily and then strain on to the sugar, stirring vigorously until all the sugar has dissolved. Add the yeast and cover. Stir regularly for five days and then pour into fermentation bottle, fit airlock and leave to finish fermenting.

When fermentation has ceased, rack the wine into a clean jar and place in a cooler environment and leave for a further few months. Rack again if necessary and leave until the wine is stable and then bottle. This wine can take up to 12 months to mature.

(The wine is stunning just had a taste.)

We visited friends the other day and they had made a raft so they took the kids on it for a spin around there dam.

John bought 5 bee hives and we had a old one so we got a friend to come and help John to transfer the bees from the old hive to the new one. Both Nathan and John got stun on the hands, John did react for the first time and he got a rash all over the body and was very itchy to I was ready to rush him to the hospital if need be, He was fine but my nerves were shot.

Jodie is on a rocking horse that Nathans Dad made, it is a lovely horse and Jodie seemed to enjoy it very much.

  Aimee and Hannah picking lemons so that we can make lemon syrup as the kids have been enjoying it very much as I don't buy juice for the kids so they are very happy to help when I need help getting lemons for the juice.

Ok I have also been making cheese, this is what it looks like after the milk has gone off and I have heated it on the stove to separate the curd and whey, once I have taken the whey out and patted it dry then I put the butter and soda in and that is what is happening in this picture.I am leaving it to stand till I have to put it on the double boiler and finish off the cheese.

I am making around 1.5kgs of cheese every 3 – 4 days. We have just started to make it and we are enjoy giving it away to people to taste so that they can give us there opinions on where to change something are not. So far no complaints.

 

Yesterday we got guys in to slaughter our bull as he got out the other evening and took the caravan on. We decided that it was best to slaughter straight away before he could do anymore damage and it ended costing us money. He was a big boy. John ended having to drive all the way to the other butcher to get the bull cut into 4 as he was to large to hang in there freezer at the butcher in town. So next week I am able to go in and get the meat. Cant wait for my fillet :-) and a full deep freeze again.