Festivals, Honey, Books, Raised Beds, and Hiking
Festivals, Honey, Books, Raised Beds, and Hiking (boring title...I know...but I'm too tired to be creative, today).
Hazel is back to looking like Rylee again. BUT OH, MY GOODNESS LOOK AT LITTLE LUKE!! I forgot that although we took his pictures after 6 months old, we never posted them because I didn't blog in 2023. So we get to enjoy them together because I don't remember seeing them!
Right off the bat, I forgot to tell you something from September! Do you all remember when we made that potato tower? (link to video here). Basically, you take a tomato cage and fill it with compost and straw (alternate layers). Each layer, you place 4-6 potato seeds in it. At the end of the season, there's no digging! You just tip the tower over! Well, we clearly didn't watch enough videos. Our's compressed two about two feet of dirt, and we left it there...for like two years. This summer, after helping Pippa and Pap Pap dig the potatoes out of Papa's garden, we decided to tip our tower over and see what grew (we'd seen several potato plants growing this spring). We were excited that we harvested a small mess for one dinner! And yes, they were delicious!
October started out with a lot of work for GravissiMum! Sara and I met up for the first bulk order of books from. her family members and coworkers. We were both able to sign some books while we celebrated with ice cream!
What she didn't hand-deliver, we posted in the mail. Here's a picture of our first bulk mail order! We purchase all the postage online, so all I have to do is put it in our mailbox. No trip to the postoffice necessary! Because they are books, I'm able to ship Media Mail with USPS which gives us tracking AND only costs about $5.
We had a lot of orders at first for the paperback books, and a lot of people wished we had hardback copies. We are still in the process of getting them printed (but I'm waiting for more interest to show up before I make the $700+ investment). In the meantime, we added the stickers and the prayer cards to the website along with some free crossword puzzles and free lesson plans! You can check everything out at gravissimumbooks.com!
We also had a few big projects to do around the farm. The Mercer Count Conservation Office has a "grant" of sorts where they will reimburse up to a certain amount if you spend a certain amount on a list of conservation projects such as: raised bed gardens, compost, beekeeping, and a lot more. We had to spend all the money, AND COMPLETE THE PROJECTS, by September 12th or so. Of course, being as busy as we always are, we had to get everything completed at the very last minute.
We spent some of the funds on beekeeping supplies to help move a few swarms into hive boxes.
The weather had been warm, so these busy were out "bearding" to try and cool the hive down. It was doing so well! Unfortunately, the swarms didn't like the weather, and they abandoned the swarm catchers. Here's the cool comb they drew in the empty space of the swarm catchers. We will cut the comb and frame it up to put in more swarm catchers or in frame boxes for next season.
The other project that we worked on was building two raised bed gardens. You may not remember the rough-sawn lumber we got in Georgia from an oak tree Sam helped to mill (link here:). You may not also remember that we used an entire moving truck JUST to move the lumber, that we then had to move to the back of the barn, that then caught fire, so we then moved it onto a trailer, and then into the front barn....but I do! We used the slightly charred oak boards to make BEAUTIFUL raised bed gardens. Now that we are out of livestock, we are hoping to have more time for gardening.
Another fun (for me) project that I've been working on (or not, depending on how you look at it) is making pear vinegar! We took all the scraps from canning pears in August, and put them into three five gallon buckets then filled the rest of the buckets up with water. Then you wait. For 2-4 weeks. You will get this lovely white goop on the top of the pears forming which is called the Mother Vinegar, and it's basically a colony of yeast fermenting the pear slushie. Once all the pears have sunk to the bottom, it'll be time to strain out all the solids and let the liquids sit for 2-4 more weeks to ferment with access to air.
The first fermentation step is *anaerobic*, meaning you seal the buckets up tightly. We tried using a fancy...actually I don't know what it's called. The weird looking thing on the middle bucket. You are supposed to use it for wine making. Anyway, it didn't seal tight enough, so that bucket is behind the other two buckets on fermenting. The others had their lids snapped or screwed on. Hazel's favorite game was to crawl over and take that thing off and chew on it (don't worry, no yucky stuff in there).
The kids and I joined some Catholic homeschoolers in the nearby-ish area to go to Bernheim Forest to see the Forest Giants. We'd never gone, and OF COURSE it had to be the HOTTEST day of the year (97*F) when we went. It was *very* hot, but we really enjoyed it! We can't wait to take Daddy back.
Other random things around the farm. I almost walked face first into this buddy going into the Peacock Pen to check on everyone. So that was fun.
The kids went fishing in the pond a couple times.
I had two craft festivals. One at the Constitutional Square Festival in Danville (Sept 13th weekend, I believe), and the Harvest Fest at Shakertown (two day festival the next weekend). The Constitutional Square Festival I was pretty bummed about. Usually, I forget to register until like May, which is WAY behind, and so I don't get a good spot. This year, I remembered to register at the end of January, so I was really looking forward to getting a good placement. But, they stuck me in an awful spot in the corner with little traffic and right next to a political campaign tent. Last year we cleared $900 but this year, we barely cleared $300. It was very frustrating, and we aren't sure if it was the placement, the misty/cloudy weather, an overall low turn out for the event, the fact that I have no cloth napkins left (and don't have access to cheap flannel to make more)....or a combination of everything.
The Harvest Fest went much, much better! We made right at $900 even with lower inventory than last year. I sold several books, which I was very excited about, and we ran out of almost all the jelly! Once again, we offered samples this year, and that really works great for boosting jelly sales. I also made some homemade candy which was fun but took FOREVER. Think butter mints, but instead of using peppermint oil, I used caramel apple and pumpkin. They went over well. I think I made 2 batches which turned into 11 bags total. I priced them at $3/bag, and we sold all of them! I also had a *few* extras to use for samples, but a lot of people purchased them without even trying.
When we got home from the Harvest Fest, we found Daddy up by the road cleaning the fencerow. Father Edwin dropped by after and hung out for a few before we headed back to the house.
The kids found a Monarch Butterfly caterpillar along with a parasitized Tobacco Hornworm.
In the scale of the year, I feel like it was a fairly calm month. Or at least the back half after we finished the farm projects and the two festivals.
Cute pictures of the kids!
Rylee gets tickled every time she sees this picture of Hazel Bug where she was pulling her ears out.
I took some cute pictures of Hazel with my book to try and run a Facebook ad. Like $20 spent and 0 customers. Boo.
Oh! I forgot we harvested honey, too. I guess it was a busy month!! I remember having honey on the kitchen floor for like 2 weeks, haha. We got a decent amount of honey, and one of the hives still hadn't capped everything. So we will likely be doing another harvest within the next week. We still have *some* honey left, so reach out if you need some.
I *also* forgot that we made plum jelly to sell at the markets! I made like 12 jars of Spiced Plum Jam and 11 jars of Plum Jam. A few notes to myself for next year: We tried to use Nene's cherry pitter to pit the plum's and it didn't work even though I thawed them first. Not sure if the skins are too thick or if the freezing made them too tough. Either way, we put them in a big soup pot with just enough water to keep them from sticking on the bottom, and I used a potato masher to squish everything down while it simmered until there were no visible whole fruits. I did all of this at Nene's house and ended up transporting a huge soup pan full of pulp/seeds/skin/juice home. Once home, I poured everything into a wire strainer a little at a time and used a spoon to scrape/stir it through. The pulp and juice went below while everything else stayed in the strainer. I had so much that I decided to make a batch of regular plum jam and then mix it up with some "spiced" plum jam. The spiced plum jam was AMAZING, and it sold out super fast! I was bummed because I completely forgot to save some jars for us, so I only have the sample jar for us to eat. So definitely something to remember for next year. I'll post the recipe below.
I tried to make plum butter. It did. not. work. It was super sour, and I even got up every 2 hours in the middle of the night, and tried mixing with some orange juice. In retrospect, I should have added the orange juice sooner. It helped to cut the sour, but then I had to cook longer to get the consistency thicker again. And that overcooked it.
Even though Luke has the attention span of a goldfish (typical 4 year old, am I right?), he can cut extremely well. I think he can cut a better straight line than William!
It must have been a sleepy month!
We put Rylee's hair up in a cute bun, and she had an adorable smile when I showed her her picture. She thought she looked silly.
Spiced Plum Jam
Unfortunately, I can't find the exact recipe I used. SAD DAYYYYY IT WAS SOOO GOOD.
but...I do have the ingredients listed.
I used cinnamon (more), allspice (less), and ginger (less) to flavor. I'll work on finding the recipe. Or I won't remember I couldn't find it until next year, and then I'll research again.
Pax Domini cum spirito tuo temper sit,
Torey, Sam, Rylee, William, Luke, Mena & Hazel
The social madness:
Etsy shop: MinIsland Farm
Youtube: MinIsland Farm
Website: GravissiMum, OFWOODANDEARTH BLOG(for recipes and past blog posts, visit our website)
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