Author: Re-Farmer

Making Chokecherry Vinegar

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The original recipe for this can be found here.

I adjusted the original recipe for my quantity of chokecherries.

Chokecherry Vinegar20180802.washing.chokecherries
Soaking time: 24 hours
First boil: 5 minutes
Second boil: 2 minutes

5 cups chokecherries
1 2/3 cups vinegar
1 2/3 cups water
sugar

Wash and mash the berries.  Place them in a glass bowl (I mashed the washed berries in the bowl).

Combine vinegar and water.  Pour over the mashed berries.

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Vinegar and water solution poured over mashed chokecherries.

Let stand for 24 hours.

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Chokecherry and vinegar mix, after 24 hours.

Place in a large saucepan and slowly bring to a boil.

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Make sure to use a large enough pot to give the chokecherry mixture room to expand as it boils.

Boil for 5 minutes.

Strain through jelly bag.  Do not squeeze.

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I placed a moistened jelly roll bag into a large measuring cup.  Layers of cheese cloth can be used instead.

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I used an elastic band to close up the bag and hang it over the measuring cup.

Measure 1 cup of sugar for each cup of juice.

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I got just under 3 cups of liquid from the 5 cups of berries.

Combine chokecherry liquid and sugar into a large saucepan.  Bring to a boil and boil for 2 minutes.

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While boiling the berry liquid with the sugar, I could really smell the vinegar!

After boiling for 2 minutes, allow to settle.

Bottle, let cool, and refrigerate for up to 6 months.

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I sterilized a quart jar and a small pitcher with a liquid tight seal to store the chokecherry vinegar.  The pitcher will be a gift for my mother.

To use: put ice in a glass.  Add 2-4 tablespoons of chokecherry vinegar.  Fill with water, club soda, ginger ale or sparkling water.

Enjoy!

The Re-Farmer

Morning Rays

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I visited the beach after dropping my daughter off at work today.  It was so beautiful!

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After the storms last night, the lake is very calm this morning.

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Though I am far from a morning person, I enjoy driving my daughter for her early shifts and being able to visit the beach this early.  I hung around, taking photos, playing Pokemon Go, and looking for interesting rocks, for about half an hour.  By 8:30 a.m., the beach was already getting crowded.  There were even people playing beach volleyball!  Well, it’s Saturday on a long weekend, so I guess that’s to be expected.  Especially a festival weekend.  There’s an annual festival held on the first weekend of August in town that has been going on for the last 80+ years here.  I remember going to it as a child and teen, and it seemed to get smaller and smaller every year.  By the time I moved away, I honestly wondered how much longer it would continue.  Trends changed over the years, though, the the town wisely took advantage of them, and incorporated a viking village with re-enactors (turns out there’s a whole community of re-enactors that travel from festival to festival across Canada), complete with mock battles.  It’s become quite huge.

Which means we’ll be avoiding it, as much as possible! LOL

As early as it still was, I headed home faster than usual because of the growing crowds, where I found another ray of sunshine waiting for me.

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Teeny Tabby is so adorable!

The Re-Farmer

Midnight Light Show

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We had a storm sweep through last night – lots of rain and lightning, but oddly, no wind.

These two photos were taken .04 seconds apart.

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My older daughter and I went into the sun room to watch, and there were many times when the yard was suddenly bright as day!

I tried to take video as well, and have one that I will upload later.  It’s a lot darker than what we were actually seeing, but still shows how much lightning we were getting.

I did a walk around the yard before driving my younger daughter to work, and was amazed by the complete lack of downed branches.  Usually, any stiff wind will at least send willow branches flying.  Not a one!

Which I am grateful for.  This morning, I learned that a tornado touched down to the south of us, and at least one home was torn from its foundation.

We have much to be thankful for here.  The brunt of storms always seems to pass our area by.

The Re-Farmer

Update: I have since learned that the tornado touched down to the northwest of us, on the other side of another lake.  One person was found dead next to his destroyed home. :-(

Hey, Your Barn Door’s Open

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Heading out early to drive my daughter to work, we found this…

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A bit of a surprise.  We must have had some wind last night, for both of them to be open.  One of the doors is kept closed from the inside by a piece of wood that pivots, and uses the upper door frame to hold the door closed.  It isn’t used as often, so it’s a lot stiffer than the two on the other door (one to close it from the outside, the other to close it from the inside), which are much looser.

Sadly, my first thought was not that it was opened by the wind, but that someone had gone in.  Nothing inside seems to have changed, that I can tell, so it must have been the wind.

Early this afternoon, I got a phone call from my mom and ended up going over to visit her.

She had apples for me.

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Someone had left several boxes of apples at the senior’s centre she lives in (things like that happen fairly regularly, with different kinds of produce), so she took some home.  She’d already cooked down a whole bunch into apple sauce and realized she had taken more than she could use for herself.  So she wanted me to take them.

Now I have to figure out what to do with them, myself. :-D

I’m thinking of making jelly.  I’ve never made jelly before.

I don’t actually like jelly, but the rest of the family enjoys jams and jellies. :-)

I could also break out the juicer.

Nah.  It’s a pain in the butt to clean.  I’ll leave that for when we start harvesting our own apples.

It would probably be easier to make apple butter with them.

Time to look through my recipes. :-D

Whatever I do with them, it will wait until tomorrow at the earliest, since I will be finishing off the chokecherry vinegar I started last night.

The Re-Farmer

Gathering Chokecherries

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This evening, I headed over to pick some chokecherries.

When I got there, I found far fewer than I expected to!

The birds are well fed. :-D

Which works out.  They eat the stuff I can’t reach, and I pick the stuff they have a harder time getting to.

The chokecherry trees along the north fence line are in between lilacs.  As I came closer, I couldn’t help but notice a lot of white powder all over their leaves.

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It’s dust from cars going by on the gravel road!  This is what falls on the leaves on the south side of the bushes – the north side much be just covered!

It made for some rather dusty berries, too.

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This is all I got from the two trees along the north fence line, and even a bit from the one tree by my mother’s raspberry bushes, on the south side of the garden area.

After giving them a couple of rinses in the bucket, I cleaned out the leaves, twigs and stems, then gave them a couple more washes.

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As I write this, they are soaking in our ice cold well water to get the last of the floaty bits off.

Tomorrow, I will go over the recipes I found and decide what to do with them.  After I measure how much I have.  Definitely small batch preserving on this one.

I found this link with several recipes for different methods of chokecherry preserves.  It calls for 10 cups of chokecherries to make a juice, which is then used in most of the other recipes.  I definitely don’t have 10 cups.   I do have enough for the chokecherry vinegar recipe, though.  In fact, I could start that tonight and finish it tomorrow night.

I think that’s what I will do. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Found another one…

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While walking around the back of the house, I found this…

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Another burnt branch, in the same place I’ve found all the other ones.

And we didn’t even have particularly strong winds lately!

Looking above, I can’t even really tell which of the dead branches up there lost a piece and hit the power line.  :-(

The Re-Farmer

New toys!

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One of the … fun… things about this old house has been the screaming bathroom fan.

Every time we turned it on, it would slowly start, making a whining, grinding, screaming noise, until it got up to speed.  Then the noise would stop and it would be the nice, rather quiet fan it was supposed to be.  Quieter than the newer fans we had in all three bathrooms of our old place (oh, for a second bathroom! LOL), in fact.

Well, it finally just up and died.

It was installed in the 70’s, so it’s had a good, long life! :-D

So my darling husband ordered a new fan.

Not just any, ordinary fan, of course.

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This baby also has a heat light built in.  Which should be quite nice in the winter!

Now, we’ve never installed anything like this, so I’m hoping my older brother will be able to give us a hand.  He’s worked with the wiring in this house for many years, and is familiar with this house more than any other living person.  I would much rather take advantage of his knowledge while we’re still so new here.

Along with the fan, a couple of other toys came in.  Including this, for me.

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It’s for when I’m out clearing the bush.

I can’t think of what I’d use it for with the work I’m doing right now, but…

Gosh, that’s pretty.

There was also hunting knives.

Six of them.

I’m not sure why there are six of them.  I’ll have to ask my husband when I get a chance.

(I just caught him on the way by; they’re not specifically hunting knives.  They’re intended to be used as throwing knives. LOL  Much larger ones than the ones I’m used to!!)

On the thought of finding things out, I sent photos of the new gate we built yesterday to my brother.  I also told him about the fence line I ended up pulling out along the tree line.

He tells me that the old fence line was likely more than 40 years old!

I have no memory of a fence line there, though I remember other things from that area.  I guess my thoughts that this fence was added after the trees were planted was backwards.  The current fence would be the one added more recently, to protect the trees from cattle, and the original fence is the one that was allowed to collapse and get buried in the thatch.

He also guesses that the old gate we replaced was about 20 years old.  So I’m probably right in that the posts and barbed wire pile I found off to the side were from the older gate.

There is going to be a lot of stuff like this we’ll be finding, fixing or replacing, over the next few years!

Though I would really, really prefer to be spending our pennies on getting a second bathroom installed. :-D

The Re-Farmer