Since we ordered SO many things for this year, and expanded how much space we were gardening in, I decided to go over groups of things in separate posts, in no particular order and spread over the next few days.
Let’s take a look at how our garlic, onions and shallots went.
Let’s start with the garlic, since hard neck garlic is a fall planted crop, and our garlic for next year is already in the ground.
We are growing the same three varieties as we did last year, each in one pound bags. We had considered doubling how many we are growing, but decided against it at the last minute. If we grew the number of onions and garlic we use throughout the year, we would probably fill most of the beds and not have room for anything else!
Overall, the garlic did rather well. They were all smaller than they should have been, but that’s true of just about everything we grew, mostly due to weather conditions. We much prefer the flavour of these hard neck varieties over the soft neck garlic that is available in the grocery stores. We especially enjoyed having garlic scapes to harvest, making this a dual crop. These are a big win, and I can see us growing this year after year. Hopefully, we will have better growing conditions for next year’s garden, and will have large bulbs that are worth saving to plant in the fall. Otherwise, we are more than happy to buy these from Veseys.
The onions and shallots were a much bigger challange.
The varieties we got as seeds were:
Red Baron (a bunching onion) Norstar Onion (a yellow bunching onion noted as good for storage) Conservor Organic Shallot
Plus we ordered Red Carmen Onion as sets, which did not get shipped until our zone was ready for spring planting. All of these were from Veseys.
The seed onions and shallots were started indoors, using our aquariums as mini greenhouses to protect them from the cats. The smaller tank had problems right away, as the cats could still reach down to the growing trays and very determinedly destroyed them. Also, there was very little air circulation with the lid, and the soil started to mold. We eventually found a window screen we could use as a lid, but it was too late for the shallots.
For the Red Baron onions, we use the flats from egg trays to start them in, which turned out to be a bad choice. The carboard just sucked the moisture out of the growing medium and we ended up losing the seedlings.
The Norstar, in peat pellets and repurposed K-cups, did much better and we were able to transplant them. We used extra seeds to try growing more, using red Solo cups to start them in. The Red Baron onions sprouted, but that’s about it. We transplanted them anyhow, but they didn’t take, though I did find a single one when I redid the tomato bed, so I planted it right back again.
I ended up buying onion and shallot sets, later in the spring. Between those, the surviving Norstar seedlings and the Red Carmen sets, we found ourselves with a decent onion harvest that we are still enjoying now, though we quickly ran out of shallots. We also harvested green onion tops, freezing some and dehydrating others.
Of course, like everything else affected by the drought and heat, the onions and shallots did not reach their full potential in size, but they did quite well and are very delicious.
Final Analysis
Onions and Shallots: For all the struggles we had, ultimately, we did well with onions. While sets are easier, I’ve decided to go with seeds for next year’s garden. There is more choice in variety, and you can get a lot more seeds in a packet than sets in a bag. Especially with the shallots.
I have since bought more onion seeds. We will be trying the Conservor Shallots and Red Baron bunching onions again. For a yellow bulb onion, this time we will be trying a type called Oneida, again because it was noted as good for storage. We will also be growing a red onion, but I will be trying a different variety, with a very different shape, from another company.
The problem will be with starting them indoors. They need to be started very early, in our zone, with people in my gardening groups starting them as early as January! The big aquarium is currently holding house plants to protect them from the cats that keep wanting to dig in the soil, so we’re going to have to figure something out.
Over time, we plan to have a plolytunnel and maybe even a greenhouse. That will solve some of our problems, when it comes to starting seeds and protecting them from the cats, but it will be some time before we reach that point. Until then, we will just have to made do with what we have, and find the space we need to start all those seeds! When it comes to long term storage of bulb onions and shallots, we want to be growing a lot more that we did this year. Something we will build up to, as we expand our garden.
Hard neck Garlic: These are just a win, all around. It was the first time we got to try scapes, and we all love them. They are also really easy and low maintenance. Being able to plant outdoors in the fall is a major advantage. The bulbs certainly could have been bigger, but there was no loss when it came to flavour. Over time, we will be increasing how much garlic we plant, too.
Since we ordered SO many things for this year, and expanded how much space we were gardening in, I decided to go over groups of things in separate posts, in no particular order and spread over the next few days.
To start, let’s take a look at our peas and beans.
I had wanted to order a three bush bean collection, but they were out of stock, so I ordered different coloured beans to make my own collection. These were the Lewis bean (green), Golden Rod bean (yellow) and the Royal Burgundy bean, all from Veseys.
Also from Veseys, I ordered the Dalvay pea (a green pea), while ordering the King Tut Purple Pea (purple pods, green peas), from Baker Creek.
These were planted in new beds that were little more than layers of organic material and new garden soil, directly on the ground. Which means that, right from the beginning, we knew it would be rough growing for them.
Then the drought hit.
Then the deer and groundhogs showed up.
The grasshoppers seemed to leave them alone, though.
In spite of all that, the bush beans did remarkably well. The yellow bean plants were the most stunted in growth, but they were the first producers, and even produced a second crop later in the season. The green beans did quite well, both the plants and the yield, but it was the purple beans that were the most amazing. They handled the drought conditions the best, with the plants growing the strongest and densest of all, even with a few deer nibbles along the way, while producing a steady amount of beans right up until they finally got killed by frost.
Between all three varieties, we not only had enough for fresh eating, but were even able to freeze a few bags of them, too. I had hoped to have enough to do some canning, and if we had had an average year for rainfall and temperatures, I have no doubt these hardy and prolific beans would have just exploded in growth and yield, even with the relatively poor soil conditions, and we would have had plenty to make it worth breaking out the canning equipment.
We will not, however, be growing these again next year, though I would certainly grow them again in the future. For 2022, we will be growing pole beans, and possibly drying beans as well.
I would definitely recommend these varieties of bush beans from Veseys, though.
Then there were the peas.
They did not do well this year at all, but we did have some surprises.
The King Tut peas from Baker Creek were just a small package with barely enough seeds to fill one trellised row. The Dalvay peas from Veseys, on the other hand, were packaged by weight, and there was a lot of them! We planted enough to fill two double rows with trellises, and had lots left over.
The peas all started out well enough. The Dalvay peas had some gaps in germination that I later planted with more peas, but there were no extra seeds to do the same with the King Tut peas.
Then things turned for the worse.
With all our watering, I don’t know if the drought was the main problem. Peas don’t like to be over watered, and they don’t like heat. I don’t think I watered them too much, and it was likely the excessive heat that did them in.
Then the Dalvay peas basically disappeared, withered away. The King Tut peas got a bit bigger before they dried up.
When we saw signs of critter damage in the gardens, I set up a trail cam to confirm what critters were doing the damage. I did catch deer, but it was a groundhog I saw among the peas, so it wasn’t just the heat that was killing off our green peas! They didn’t seem to go for the purple peas, though.
In spite of looking so dead, the purple peas kept trying to produce, and I even had a few pods to taste while doing my morning rounds, and a few that I let dry on the vine to collect for seeds. I think I have maybe 6 of 7 seeds. Given the growing conditions, I doubt they tasted the way they were supposed, so I’ll just say they tasted just fine and leave it at that.
I will not be buying the King Tut peas again for next year, but I do want to try them again, and hopefully the few seeds I saved will germinated. If they are still available, I wouldn’t mind getting fresh seeds again in a year or two and trying again.
As for the Dalvay peas, I had so many left over that, when temperatures finally cooled down, I interplanted them with all the varieties of corn, for their nitrogen fixing qualities. They did a lot better than the first planting, and I even got to pick a few pods before they were killed off by the first, very late, frost.
I think these would be worth growing again, though I plan to try other varieties. It was just a terrible year for peas, so there will be no way to do a proper comparison.
Final analysis:
Bush beans: did surprisingly well under terrible growing conditions. Though we will be trying pole beans in next year’s garden, all three bush bean varieties are well worth growing again. Especially the Royal Burgundy. As we develop more garden space in the future, we will likely be growing both pole and bush bean varieties.
Peas: did not do well at all. The drought and heat (and groundhog!) were just too much for them. I’d be willing to try both varieties again in the future. For our upcoming growing year, we will be buying other varieties to try.
With snow on the ground and temperatures dropping, this is the perfect time to look at how our gardens did this past year, compare it to the year before where we can, re-examine our goals, make some adjustments, and use that information to plan on what we will do next year.
Because we went from a pretty small garden the year before, to a much larger – and spread out – garden this year, I will go through things in more detail in later posts. For now, I just want to do an overview.
When we first moved out here, we worked out a multi-year plan. The first summer would focus on clearing and cleaning up the inner yard. The second year, we’d continue working on cleaning up the spruce grove and start working on the outer yard while maintaining what we cleaned up in the inner yard. The outer yard, we figured would take another 2 or 3 years.
With this plan, we would have been ready to start gardening around year five. Which would have made it next summer. Instead, we started our first small (ish) gardens in 2020. We had a few beds in the old garden area, and planted in the newly uncovered, soft soil found under the old wood pile. We were not very ready for gardening at all, but really – if we only ever did things when we are “ready” to do them, nothing would ever get done! ;-)
This past year, we kept our main goals, and added some new ones. The main goals have stayed the same. Ultimately, we want to be as self-sufficient as possible. That means growing as much of our own food as we can, in quantities sufficient to store or preserve enough food to last us through to the next garden season. So, not just through the winter, but until we can start harvesting fresh food from our garden again. (Animals will be part of the picture, too, but for now I will focus on plants.)
While we certainly didn’t meet that goal this year (nor did we expect to, yet), we did make progress. And I must say, I love being in a position to start working on a meal, realizing we’re out of onions or garlic in the kitchen, and simply popping into the root cellar to grab a bunch.
We didn’t plant anywhere near enough onions for our needs, but that’s part of figuring things out!
When it comes to planting things, whether it is our garden or trees or bushes, we try to meet multiple goals. In our long term goals, we want to have fruit and nut trees. Mid term includes certain types of berry bushes. Growing vegetables are part of our short term goals, simply because they are mostly annuals.
After being here a few years, we have identified gaps in the shelter belt we need to fill, as well as the need to increase privacy screening and dust protection from the surprisingly busy main gravel road that runs past one side of the property. With the aim of meeting multiple goals, any trees or bushes we plant will be chosen not only to meet those needs, but also provide food – and if they can provide enough for ourselves and for birds and wildlife, that’s just bonus. Soil testing has also helped us focus on what we can reasonably expect to grow here at all.
In trying to meet these multiple goals, we did things that would normally be gardening no-nos, like planting as far from the house as we could, and still be in the yard, breaking new ground that will later have things planted permanently. Choosing what to grow was based on things like short growing seasons, high yields and long term storage capabilities.
One thing we have is the luxury of space. That means that we have room to experiment and try new things to see how they do in our zone and growing conditions.
Some things, of course, end up being completely out of our control. Drought conditions being the main issue we had to deal with, this past summer. A plague of grasshoppers certainly didn’t help, either. Then there was the critter damage. That combination of things, plus the far-flung garden beds, made things considerably more difficult than it should have been.
Looking at things from a very broad perspective, though, we had more success than failure. Under the conditions we had, that’s pretty amazing!
I will talk about more specific things later but, in general, here is how we hope to progress next year, which will help us decide where our monthly “seed” budget will go.
The main thing we really need to focus on is trees. These can take years before they will start producing fruits or nuts, so we need to get those going as soon as we can. We’ve identified areas where we can plant things that will need more protection from the elements, and we’re looking at varieties that can handle our climate zone, as well as our nutrient depleted soil. Some of the varieties of nut trees we want to get cannot be planted in the inner yard, though, so we will still have to hold off on those until we can prepare areas in the outer yard. The renter is planning to rebuild the fence around the outer yard, and if he is able to do that next year, that means his cows won’t be able to get through anymore. We won’t have to worry about cows damaging seedlings; just deer! We will also be able to start taking out some of the old fencing around the inner yard, which will make it easier to tend to anything we plant in the outer yard.
We do not have the funds to get everything at once, so we have to focus on getting what will provide the most benefit in the shortest time frame. We will be able to get a few of the slower growing/producing trees, little by little, but will need to focus on faster growing/producing trees and bushes first, even though logically, it’s the trees that need the most time to mature that we should be getting first.
With that in mind, we will be ordering shelter belt berry bushes as soon as we can. Unfortunately, the varieties we had decided on are currently not available, but they might be available for ordering in December or January. Our first layer of “defense” will be to plant Bison Berry (if we can get them) along the East property line, to create a privacy screen. Sea Buckthorn is another one we are looking at, for another area, and we’re also looking at the Rugosa Rose. These will not only provide privacy screens, but will act as dust protection and deer barriers. The berry bushes are also nitrogen fixers. Once mature, they are supposed to be very prolific producers. What we don’t use ourselves will provide food for birds and other wildlife. The Rugosa Rose produces unusually large hips, and the flowers are also edible. (This will be on top of the wild roses we already have growing here.) These are more short to mid term items, as they should be able to start producing in just a few years. It will also take a few years for them to get big enough to form privacy and dust screens, and probably longer before they are dense enough to be a barrier to deer.
For long term, we are looking to order a bunch of Korean Pine Nut trees, if they are available. They require shade for their first few years, and we have the perfect spot to plant a row of them, though they will still need extra shade (and deer!) protection, at first. They are hardy to zone 2, and with 3 yr old saplings, it will still be at least 7 years before they start producing pine nuts. These will be the first nut trees we plan to get.
In the row of crab apple trees that we currently have, we will need to get rid of most of them, due to disease. I’m hoping we can save two of them that produce the best fruit. Crab apples are good for pollinating other apple varieties, so it’ll be important to keep at least a couple of healthy and strong trees.
What we are currently looking at are different cold-hardy apple varieties. I hope to get at least a couple varieties ordered this winter. We are looking for apples that are good for fresh eating, good for storage, and suitable for making cider, as well. Over time, we will be adding pears and plums as well, with the same requirements. These are more mid to long term goal plantings. They will need several years before they start producing, but nowhere near as long as the nut trees we are looking at. Once they do start producing, they are prolific, so we shouldn’t need a lot of trees to meet our needs.
Speaking of prolific, I found a source for a cold hardy variety of ever bearing, white mulberry that we plan to get. A single tree should be enough to provide for our needs, with plenty to spare for the birds as well. I even found a source for zone 3 paw paws! Given the rarity of those, I think we will put a priority of ordering them before they are sold out. Which means that is likely where our upcoming seed budget will be spent.
For short term, we need to start on our raspberries. This past year, the bushes my mother had planted did not produce at all, and the new ones we planted had to struggle with deer damage as well as the drought. We want to get several varieties of raspberries, in different colours and maturity rates. We all love raspberries, so the goal is to eventually have quite a lot of them.
We have found several bushes that appear to be black currants. There are two fairly large bushes, but they are completely shaded and barely productive. I plan to transplant those into sunny areas. I’m also looking to pick up some gooseberry and/or josta berry bushes as well, though probably not for 2022. We shall see.
The main focus with all of these is that they are perennial and, once established, should provide food for many years, so the sooner we can get them growing, the better.
For short term food growing, our original plans have changed a bit. Where the main garden area is, we will be building high raised beds to replace the current low beds, using logs from dead spruces in the spruce grove. Now that I have a chain saw that works, we should be able to clear the dead trees out much more quickly, and have logs cut to size ready and waiting to build high raised beds in the fall. Clearing out those dead trees will open up the spruce grove a lot. While we will be planting more spruces in the spruce grove (there are many little spruces we can transplant from elsewhere), we will also plant food producing trees that can use the extra protection the spruces provide.
The high raised beds we will be building in the main garden area will also serve multiple purposes. A primary one is accessibility, so we can continue to garden even as we get older and more broken. Filling them hugelkultur style should reduce how much water they need, even as high as they will be. This garden area has some shade issues, due to the tall trees my parents planted along the south side, and the beds will be high enough that they should even get more sun.
We will need a LOT more garden space to grow food in the quantities we need, however, and for that, we will be making garden beds in the outer yard, where they will get full sun, too. We won’t have enough dead spruces to use as materials for high raised beds there, as well as the main garden beds, but hopefully by the time we need to build them, we’ll have the funds to buy materials.
Looking at our long term plans, however, we are going to need to expand beyond growing vegetables for ourselves, too. We plan to get a hand mill. Among things I want to grow will be varieties of corn that can be ground into flour, and even different varieties of grains. I am hoping to at least get seeds this year, even if we can’t plant them right away.
As we start to include animals, I want to be able to grow as much of their food, as well as our own, as possible, which means forage crops. I’m even looking at plants that we can use to make our own sugar or syrup (yes, sugar maples are on our list, but there are other possibilities, too).
While some of these things may not be started this year, or even next year, we can still keep the plans in mind as we work on things this coming summer, to prepare. There is a rather massive amount of clean up needed in the outer yard, to have room for all this, as well as for the larger trees we intend to plant. Especially since some of those trees will need to be planted a minimum 30 feet apart, or cannot be planted near food crops because of the chemicals their roots release. Between that and the extra space needed between the raised beds, for accessibility purposes, things will be very spread out.
This past summer was a very difficult growing year. While I will go over specific things later, in general, I consider it a successful year. Remarkably successful, under the circumstances! Even some of our failures where still successes, since we had multiple purposes in mind. Some things we will do again, others will be dropped, if only temporarily, and new things will be tried. We learned a lot in the process, too, making everything a step forward to our ultimate goals.
What a contented expression, as Rolando Moon enjoys her spot in the sun after breakfast!
I was able to do a head count this morning, and all 20 are accounted for! I even got to pet a few of them, as they rushed into the kibble house, including the Distinguished Guest.
The heated water bowl was almost completely empty when I got to it. A bit of frost on the inside showed that it is functioning properly, and shutting itself off when it’s not needed. This time, I filled it completely, rather than dividing the water between all the containers, so they will have liquid water for longer. Later today, I’ll come back out with more warm water and knock the ice out of the other containers, and maybe switch to using a couple for kibble, instead. There is more need to spread out the kibble than the water.
We got a fairly steep drop in the temperatures today. Yesterday, we actually reached 2C/36F, very briefly, which was a few degrees warmer than forecast. This morning, we are at -14C/7F, with a wind chill of -25C/-13F! Tonight, we are supposed to reach a low of -20C/-4F, but the wind chill is supposed to reach -29C/-20F. Which isn’t too bad for this time of year. The weird part is that on Saturday – just three days from now – we are supposed to reach -1C/30F, or possibly even 3C/37F, depending on which weather service I look at!
The outside cats have plenty of food, water and shelter, including the heated cat house, so they will be fine, either way. The younglings will learn from experienced cats like Rolando Moon, and enjoy their sheltered sun spots while they can!
Yesterday, my daughter and I opened up the cats’ house and set up the extension cord I found that is safe to use in there. The heated water bowl had been knocked over again, by the time we got out there, which meant the cats had no liquid water available. They hovered around us the entire time we worked, then when everything was set up and the bowls refilled, they came running! They were so thirsty. I made sure to put water in all the bowls, so more could get at water at the same time.
Then I topped up the kibble trays and even more cats came running! I counted 19. Only Ghost Baby was unseen.
Not this morning!
I counted 20 furry butts this morning! All are accounted for.
Also, the heated water bowl had just an inch or two of water in it when I came out this morning, and no ice. Awesome!
I decided to leave the chimney insert where it was. The cats like to climb up and sit on it, plus the little ones can even go inside it for extra shelter, if necessary.
While doing the rest of my rounds, I noticed deer tracks all over the yards around the house. In some areas, it seems they are checking out the different crab apple, and even the plum trees. There is no fruit on any of them for the deer to find, this winter.
They are even digging into the compost pile. I would not have expected them to try and eat the potato plants in there! Do deer normally try to eat things in the nightshade family???
You can see from the tracks that they’re walking right through the half-finished low raised bed. That one was left with a trench down the middle, where we will add more compostable scraps before the bed gets finished in the spring. That’s where most of the frost damaged aloe vera plants ended up, though there are kitchen scraps in it, too. The deer are not digging in this bed, though. Just walking through it! The garlic beds, at least, are being left alone.
I had an unfortunate surprise, though. While looking at the deer tracks in the trees at the south fence along the spruce grove, I saw them going past the little cedar tree we’d found, and the remains of the mulberry tree we’d planted in the spring (only for it to get killed by that one cold night in May that is also why we had no crab apples, plums, chokecherries or Saskatoons this year). I’d asked my mother about the cedar tree, and she knew nothing about it, so I don’t know who planted it there or when, but it had clearly been there at least few years longer than we have been living here.
This year, for some reason, the deer decided to eat it. The twigs and branches are completely stripped. Not only that, but it looks like they even ate the remains of the mulberry tree! We had left it alone, so it was still in between support stakes, but the deer still managed to get at it.
Even the pile of bush bean plants in the garden that was waiting to be buried in garden plots next spring has been dug into more. There doesn’t seem to be much left at all.
We’ve had such a long, mild fall and, even with the one blizzard we’ve had, things have still been very mild and there’s not a tremendous amount of snow, by any means. This early in the winter, there is still lots of food available for the deer that is easy for them to get at. We haven’t see the deer in our yard, just their tracks, but we do see them along the roads or the occasional trial cam file, and they are still quite plump and hearty looking.
So why are they acting like they are starving? And going for things like the cedar, which they completely ignored for years?
I suppose it’s possible the cedar will still survive and regrow in the spring, but it seems so strange that they would have gone for it now.
One thing is for sure. When we finally do start planting our fruit and nut trees and berry bushes, we’re going to have to make sure they are well protected from the deer!
Also, it gives us even more incentive to plant forage trees, beyond the outer yard, so the deer will have less reason to come after trees closer to the house.
I was happy to find a small package waiting for me at the post office, today. Our replacement seeds from Veseys had come in!
Ginger REALLY wanted to be in the picture! :-D
You can read about our first seed order for 2022, and why we chose what we did, in this post.
This image from the Veseys website is what the mature Winter Sweet squash is supposed to look like. I am really happy with Veseys, and their excellent customer service when we found we got a patty pan squash by mistake.
We will be placing another order at the end of the month or beginning of December. For the next few months, seed orders are part of our budget. With what I’m seeing at various sites right now, I think I will be making a point of ordering seed potatoes from the one place I’ve found where they actually have some in stock again. Everywhere else I’ve looked, potatoes are still marked as sold out. There are a couple of Canadian seed sites and nurseries we’ve never ordered from before that I want to try this year. We really need to be ordering fruit and nut trees and berry bushes this year, as those can take years before they start producing.
The girls and I will have to set ourselves down, go over our plans, see if anything needs to be changed, and make some decisions. :-)
My husband was able to bring food and water to the cats this morning. He found the heated water bowl had been knocked over again, even with the improved set up. Which means, of course, it is unplugged again. It’s just too close to the entrance of the cats’ house.
When I headed out later and went to put bird seed out, I found this handsome bird watching me!
Tuxedo Mask has such owl eyes, too! :-D
It’s rare, but he does sometimes let us touch him. More often, if I hold my hand out for him to sniff, he tentatively bats at it, instead. :-D This morning, however, I had a lovely surprise. Chadicous (I think) kept flopping onto the snow in front of my feet while I was trying to move around, pausing to pet Agnoos and Nutmeg. I’d reach out to Chadicous and he’d move away a few inches, before flopping on the ground again.
Then I got him!
Before he had a chance to move, I was able to start skritching his ears. Not only did he stay and let me keep skritching for a while, but he was actually purring!!!
Yes, progress!
As I continued my rounds, I went into the garage and did some digging. I found the extension cords we use to plug in our van, and the old one that used to be inside my mother’s car, to plug in the block heater, battery warmer and trickle charger, set up under the hood. Her old one got replaced because it was damaged, but I half remembered having an extra.
I was right. Not only did we have an extra cord that was only 8 ft long (still longer than I need, but better than the next size up we have, which is 30 feet!), but I could see no damage to it at all. I brought it to the house and asked my husband to check it for me while I finished my rounds, and he tested it out, too. It’s one of those that has a light in the female end to show if there is power on or not. It is in perfect working order, and has no damage.
Which means we have a suitable, safe extension cord we can set up inside the cats’ house, long enough that I can run it along the frame, away from the straw bedding and any gnawing teeth, up to the entry. We will then be able to reach the plug through the opening, instead of having to lift the roof every time. When my daughter and I opened the cat house to plug in the water bowl yesterday, I discovered it moving away from the wall near the hinge on one side. That roof is very heavy, and the shelter is pretty old. One of the pieces of wood in the frame had split, right near the corner. After we were done, I added a couple of screws from the outside to stabilize it. When we open it again today, I’ll give it another look and see if I should add more.
Once that’s done, we will no longer have to keep the heated water bowl so close to the entry, and can have it directly the ground.
Well, here it is! The final product in trying to make my mother’s baking soda cheese.
Did it work?
Well… sort of.
First of all, this is not at all like what I remember my mother’s cheese looked like. That was a semi-hard cheese that could be sliced. This… is not. It’s more like a cream cheese in texture, but it wants to crumble more than spread. It can, however, be spread.
As for the taste… I have a really hard time describing it. It’s a young cheese so, of course, the flavour is very mild. Which means it would lend itself very well to the addition of herbs and spices and other flavours. As it is now, with just salt, there is a sort of tanginess to it that I can’t put my finger on. It somehow manages to be both mild and bold tasting, at the same time!
All four of us have had a taste, and we do have a consensus.
It’s very good. Delicious, even.
In fact, as I write this, I’m enjoying it on a slice of oatmeal bread, with a cup of Irish Breakfast tea.
What I should probably do is take some to my mother, so she can try it and tell me how it compares to what she made. After all, I only ever saw the finished product once, and that was many years ago. Based on my memory of it, I did not succeed in recreating it. However, the finished product is very good.
With the cost of milk these days, compared to a container of Boursin cheese at the grocery store, we’re not really saving any money by making it ourselves. If I were to compare to the cost of a block of plain cream cheese, we’d be losing money by making it ourselves.
Is it worth making again?
Absolutely. And we will, probably in larger quantities.
It may not be as I remember my mother’s soda cheese looked like (I can’t compare the taste too much, since hers had been flavoured with caraway seeds), but that’s just more reason to keep trying!
The Overview
Okay, so let’s look at why it might not have turned out like my mothers. What differences were there?
First up, quantity of milk. I’m now convinced that my original notes, which said “about 5 gallons” of milk was accurate. My parents still had a few cows at the time I visited and saw this cheese, and it was just the two of them, so they would have had a LOT of excess milk.
Second, she used raw, skim milk. My parents always ran the milk through the separator. While I’m sure they must have done it once in a while, I don’t remember my parents ever setting aside whole milk. Until it finally closed, my parents sold their cream to a local creamery for a bit of extra cash (though they sometimes took payment in butter!). Skim milk was for home use. Cream was for selling. I used the type of milk we usually buy; homo milk (3%). We never, ever buy skim, because we all find it incredibly disgusting. So what I made has a higher fat content than hers would have, plus our milk was pasteurized and homogenized. Hers would not have been.
Other differences include my hanging the cheese to drain, when my mother had just set it aside; my curds may have been drier than hers. She melted her curds in a frying pan before pouring it into a mold. Chances are, the frying pan she used was cast iron. If so, that too would have made a difference. She would have made hers in the summer, when the milk would have soured much more quickly. Even the natural yeasts in the air might have made a difference, and while my mother would have ensured everything was clean, she could not have sanitized things to the extent that home cheese makers can, now. The salt I used also would have been different. She would have used ordinary table salt, which would be iodized. I used non-iodized coarse salt that had been run through a coffee grinder to powder it.
There’s also the fact that she may not even remember some details, or had not thought to mention some because, to her, they were just so obvious she couldn’t imagine them not being done.
There are so many little things that could have made a difference, but until I actually take some to my mother to try, I don’t even know just how different ours is from hers! For all I know, I could be remembering her cheese completely wrong, or the cheese I remember is not the one she remembered and gave me her instructions for. We could have been talking about two different cheeses completely, and not known it.
I guess that’s just how it can be. I’ve had an interest in recreating ancient recipes for many, many years, and this sort of reminds me of that. When the ancient recipes were written down, they weren’t at all like modern recipes. Often, they were little more than a list of ingredients, with no or few quantities. The writer assumed the reader would already know the details. My mother just used what she had, in the quantities she had, done in the ways she knew.
I’m just fortunate I can still actually ask her for details, even if she can’t always remember them.
There’s always a little something, when I do my morning rounds! :-D
My husband had been able to take care of the cats earlier, so when I got out, I just have to put out feed for the birds (and deer). By the time I came out, however, I found the new heated water bowl had been knocked over. There had to have been some sort of altercation at the entry of the cats’ house, because even the brick supports around it had gone flying, and the power cord to the bowl had been pulled out.
Not only was the new bowl empty, but the water in the other bowls was frozen solid!
Something better had to be found.
I quickly went to feed the birds, thinking about it, and noticed the chimney liners along the side of the house. Since cleaning up the pile behind the house, we’ve been using these to hold the insulation that gets put around the house every winter.
They were just the right size and shape. Was there one we could spare?
Not on that side of the house, so I came back around and looked at the ones along the back of the house. We have other things set up against the house to help keep the insulation from being blown away, so I was able to find one that looked like we could spare.
It’s the perfect size and shape!
The bowl is so big, I added bricks as spacers between it and the shelter. The cats immediately were all over it, until I refilled the other water bowls, too. They were very thirsty!
We will have to plug the bowl back in later, once there are two people available. With the snow accumulation, the counterweight doesn’t quite reach the ground, so one person has to hold up the roof while the other does what needs to be done, inside. When we do our monthly shop, we’ll pick up a short, appropriate extension cord that can be safely used, so we can at least not have to worry about the cord being unplugged. Not too short, though. I want to run it along the frame of the shelter, just under the roof, so there will be no issue with the cats knocking it about, and no critters chewing on it.
Thanks to my daughter digging out more paths, I was able to get at the back of the garage and the outhouse. To clear access to the outhouse, my daughter had to break up that fallen piece of tree. It was warm enough to no longer be quite frozen to the ground, but that’s as far as it’s going to be moved until, most likely, spring.
When switching out the memory card in the trail cam by the new sign, I noticed these tracks. Something had walked towards the corner, stopped, then turned around. At first, I thought they were foot prints, they were so big. That didn’t seem likely, given the piles of snow from the plow. Not even our vandal is that dedicated to causing problems! The question was, did whatever made it go far enough to trigger the motion sensor on the trail cam?
The answer is, yes!
Would you look at that majestic beauty!!
While doing my rounds and seeing deer tracks, I had been noticing some hoof prints much larger than the others. I’d say, we’ve captured the beast that made them! And what a handsome fella he is!
I’m pretty sure we’ve been seeing this same buck visiting our place since we moved here. If it is, this would be the fifth winter of visits from him. :-)
After sitting overnight, tucked away in the oven, it was time to take out the cheese and do the final steps.
This is what it looks like this morning, after stirring.
It… looks like dry cottage cheese.
The next instructions were:
Add salt to taste, if desired. Add colour if desired. Add herbs/spices, if desired.
For this first attempt, I am only adding salt.
If you look closely, you can see the salt on the curds in front of the spoon. My mother would have just plain table salt, since that’s what she would have had. I stole some of the powdered salt my daughters use in the popcorn pot. It’s just coarse salt that has been run through a coffee grinder, so it can be added to the oil that popcorn is popped in, and actually stick to the popcorn as it pops. That got very thoroughly mixed in while I started the next step.
Put to frying pan on low heat, in batches, and heat. Mix while heating.
The more the curd got mixed, the more dough-like it got in consistency.
Then, it actually started to melt!
I know that’s what my mother said, but I still felt surprised by it!
I even had to change spoons. By this stage, the texture was a bit like cake batter.
When melted completely, pour into form.
I didn’t know how long it needed to be stirred, but my mom said to pour it, so I just kept going.
Just look at this! It really did get to a pour-able consistency, unlike any other cheese I’ve ever worked with! At this stage, it was like well stirred sour cream in consistency.
I then poured it into a loaf pan I’d scalded and had ready. This level if what 1 gallon of milk was reduced to.
Leave to rest until cool. When cool, ready to slice.
This is the stage we are at now. I covered the loaf pan with a narrow wooden cutting board I have. I considered covering it with plastic wrap, but I wasn’t sure I wanted the condensation build up, and the board would keep the dust off while also allowing a bit of air.
I’m hoping that, as it cools, it shrinks a bit, so it’ll be easier to remove from the loaf pan.
I did taste it after pouring it into the mold (I admit it. I licked the spoon!). The salt definitely improves the otherwise bland flavour. There is another flavour in there that I just can’t identify or describe. I’m hoping after we do a taste test, later, someone in the household will be able to describe it!
The Re-Farmer 