A little slice of strange

No photos for the following snippet, sorry, so you'll have to use your imagination.

Last Saturday was a windy, blustery day. Don and I were taking advantage of the break in the rain to get some outside chores done. I was cleaning the barn and dressed like it (picture muddy boots, ratty sweatpants, old jacket, etc.). Don wasn't working in mud, but he was dressed in his usual daily work clothes and occupied with a small project in the back yard and on our deck.

Below our property is a road leading further into our isolated little valley. There are other homes further on, snaking into the hills.

While we know most of the people in the homes further down the road, we don't know everyone – especially since a couple of properties have only recently sold. (It's worth noting that one of the recently sold properties is a higher-end home with acreage.)

Anyway, it was while he was working on the deck that Don heard voices. He looked down at the road and saw two people, a man and a woman. They looked to be in their 50s and wore high-end casual country clothing. He said the woman had a short and stylish Karen-esque haircut, and the man had distinguished gray temples.

Having strangers in the neighborhood is odd enough. But it goes further. Apparently they were riding identical lemon-yellow e-bikes up the steepish slope, pedaling gently. He overheard a snippet of conversation about the bicycle gears in which the man said, "I'm on two, sometimes three." The woman replied, "I'm on one. It's very hard to keep us even."

Following behind the e-bikes were two matching (as in, bookends matching) pure-white Corgi-esque lap dogs, very furry, just running along behind and presumably having the time of their lives.

Don watched this extraordinary sight until the people turned a corner and disappeared from view. Meanwhile, since I was out working behind the barn, I missed the whole thing.

In describing the scene to me after I got back to the house, he compared it to the exact opposite of what the locals must have thought when the Clampetts rolled into Beverly Hills. What on earth were these sophisticated people doing here? Where they staying in a local B&B? Were they new neighbors, possible living in the luxury home that recently sold?

"They looked like an advertisement for a high-end retirement village," Don said. "Both looked fit and attractive and very put-together. The e-bikes were matching. Those weren't rentals; they owned them."

We concluded that if these people were new neighbors, we wouldn't look down upon them just because they were fit, attractive, and clearly wealthy. We all have our crosses to bear. Theirs just had an electric assist.

But we also agreed it was just a little slice of strange.

Be a rebel

Don found this meme. Very apropos.

Pearl Harbor Day

On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked.

A few years ago, my mother (who was born in 1931 on the bayous of Louisiana) shared an extraordinary story as follows:

In the fall of 1941 my mother started making homemade bread every Saturday. She used yeast on the first recipe, but after that she would save a starter, a piece of dough. Of course we had no refrigeration, so she would just take the starter dough and put it in a bowl in the cabinet. The next week she would use the starter dough to make a fresh batch of bread.

My oldest brother had taken off for something, and he came home with a friend. The boy lived about a mile away from our house, but since we lived along a bayou, we had to cross a prairie to get to his house. He walked in the house and the smell of fresh bread permeated the place. He was wowed, and Mamma broke him off a piece of fresh bread for him to eat.

He had gone to school with us, but like a lot of kids his age he joined the Navy at age 17. He told my mother he was stationed at Pearl Harbor on the Arizona.

This took place on Saturday November 22nd. Thirteen days later he died on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor. His name was William (Bill) Stoddard.

My mother stopped making bread. I was ten years old.

Needless to say, Pearl Harbor didn't just affect Hawaii.

It also affected a tiny little community on the bayous of Louisiana, and a 10-year-old child's memory of a neighbor boy who died for our country.

It was a dark moment in history. We're facing more dark moments in the future as international conflicts rise once more. Let's pray another Pearl Harbor doesn't happen.

The cost of existing

A couple of interesting articles caught my eye this week on the subject of what constitutes a livable income. One is entitled "America’s Feast-or-Famine Reality: When $100,000 Feels Like Poverty," and it's an analysis of a more in-depth discussion called "My Life Is a Lie" by Michael W. Green, which breaks down the "real" definition of America's middle class. (For the second article, skip the top section and scroll down to the heading "How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America." That's where the interesting stuff begins.)

Apparently the definition of poverty in America is wildly outdated; and as a result, so is what defines the middle class. Using "conservative, national-average data," Green argues that a family of four (two working parents, two kids) must earn a minimum of $136,500 per year to qualify as middle class. This is the financial breakdown (read the article for the explanations):

• Childcare: $32,773

• Housing: $23,267

• Food: $14,717

• Transportation: $14,828

• Healthcare: $10,567

• Other essentials: $21,857

• Required net income: $118,009

• Add federal, state, and FICA taxes of roughly $18,500, and you arrive at a required gross income of $136,500. 

Phew.

I would imagine there are vast discrepancies between urban and rural costs for these categories, but they still seems crazy-expensive.

Since the vast majority of us don't make anywhere near $136,500 per year, the author makes some very compelling arguments for why those in true poverty (at or below $35,000/year) do better – because of government assistance programs – than those whose income exceeds the poverty threshold but doesn't reach "middle class" levels. Green terms this position the "Valley of Death" because it's so hard to escape or get ahead.

I strongly urge you to read the entire article – actually, both articles. Then feel free to share where you fall on this financial spectrum.

A dairy day

When you milk a cow, there are some points where things just ... stack up.

Maggie's milk output is decreasing. This is normal. A cow's lactation peaks when her calf is about a month old, and then starts a gradual decline. A couple months ago, I was routinely getting a gallon a day. Right now her calf Stormy is six months old, and Maggie is also pregnant, so both factors are contributing to a decrease in her milk output. Currently I'm getting between one-half and two-thirds of a gallon per day.

That said, sometimes things just ... stack up.

So the other day, I removed everything from our dairy fridge and sorted it out. I started by skimming all the cream. This is an unscientific process consisting of a soup ladle, which I use to ladle out the cream (which rises to the top).

Here's how much cream I get with a gallon of milk.

It's hard to see the cream line, so Don exaggerated the color for easier viewing.

Fresh milk needs to sit for at least 24 hours for the cream to properly rise. The older the milk, the heavier the cream.

Speaking of which, one of the things I was having trouble with is keeping fresh cream whipped. What I mean is, I'd whip cream into whipped cream, but within a couple of hours it would revert back to liquid form (very frustrating). Apparently commercial whipping cream is the really heavy stuff. So I thought: If I skim the really heavy stuff and whip it, will it stay whipped?

So I whipped some heavy cream...

...and it whipped up beautifully.

I put the whipped cream in the fridge. Sure enough, a couple of hours later it had reverted to a liquid state.

So I did a little research. Apparently whipped cream will stay in its whipped state with the addition of a little cornstarch.

So I mixed cornstarch with sugar...

...and whipped another batch of cream. As before, it whipped beautifully.

And as before, it reverted to a liquid state within a few hours. If anyone knows how to keep fresh cream whipped, I'm all ears.

Anyway, the next project was to make another batch of yogurt. I can't tell you how lovely it is to have homemade yogurt whenever I want! I use a Bulgarian yogurt culture, since it can be recultured over and over again.

I start by heating skim milk to about 180F.

Once it hits that temperature, I let it cool back down to between 106F and 113F, at which point I add the culture (in the small jar on the left).

I mix the culture thoroughly into the milk...

...then pour the milk mixture into the Yogotherm to incubate for about 12 hours.

Once the yogurt is cultivated, I scoop it out of the incubator bucket.

This is where I put aside a small jar of yogurt to culture another future batch.

Then I can sweeten and flavor the yogurt. Normally I'll flavor it with peach puree I canned up last year. (In fact, I can peach puree for the exclusive purpose of flavoring yogurt.)

The next dairy task was to make butter from all the cream. My butter churn holds about half a gallon of cream at a time, and I had two gallons of cream to get through. Thus, four churnings.

Cream needs to be at 60F to churn into butter with any reliability. It's also kinda boring, taking anywhere from 20 (not bad) to 60 (groan) minutes to complete. I've learned to churn at my desk and watch YouTube videos during the process.

Here's the newly made butter, still in the churn jar.

This is the paddle, laid aside in a bowl for the moment.

I pour the butter into a colander to drain the buttermilk (which I don't bother to keep)...

...then into a bowl for washing.

To wash butter, add cold water, squish the butter around, then pour off the cloudy water.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Keep repeating until the water no longer gets cloudy.

Then I weigh the butter, because the weight determines how much salt to add.

This is almost three pounds of butter.

A few days after this long day of dairying, I finally got my cheese cultures in the mail, which I ordered from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. (I've ordered from them for years.)

Starter cultures are used to ripen milk during cheesemaking. It's been so many years since I've made cheese, I hadn't realized things had changed a bit in how the cultures are packaged. It used to be I could order a culture, then reculture it in larger amounts. Now, the cultures come in individual packages, with each package meant to service the two gallons of milk necessary to make two pounds of cheese. Each envelope includes five packets of culture. In other words, five packets of culture would make only five batches of cheese.

Ah, but I'm a cheapskate, you see, so I decided to reculture the culture in larger amounts. Here's how I did it.

I started with mesophilic culture, which is used for (among other varieties) cheddar cheese. (Thermophilic culture is used to make mozzarella and other soft cheeses.)

I filled a pot with skim milk. Honestly, I didn't measure how much milk I put in; I think it was about 1.5 gallons or so. It doesn't matter; the single packet of culture can incubate as much as four gallons of milk, so whatever this quantity was, it was plenty.

I started by gently heating the milk to 180F.

Then I let the milk cool to 72F. When it had achieved this temperature, I sprinkled the culture into the milk, mixing it in quickly (I gather the culture shouldn't be exposed to air for any length of time) and covered it with a lid.

The most daunting task was keep the milk warm (ideally 72F) for the 24 hours or so it needed to culture. What I ended up doing was moving the pot of milk into the living room, not far from the wood stove...

...and smothering it in a pile of thick towels.

This seemed to do the trick, for the entire pot cultured into a very thick – almost gelatinous – mixture.

That's the stage where I am now. My next step (and I'll post photos as I get it done) is to spoon this mesophilic culture into ice cube trays and freeze them. I'll end up with an enormous bag of "culture cubes." When it comes time to make cheddar cheese, I'll pop about two cubes of culture into the milk to ripen it.

Cultivated in this manner, I'll have enough starter culture to last for years. In theory the fresh culture packets expire by next August, but as with the Bulgarian yogurt culture, I plan to reculture the cultures as often as needed.

Don is working on a cheese press for me even as we speak. I ordered some fresh rennet at the same time I ordered the starter cultures, so I'm looking forward to getting back into cheesemaking once again.

Cool flash mob

Sorry for the silence, dear readers. Between the Thanksgiving holiday, various tasks around the homestead, and apparently a case of the "blahs" (tired, listless, achy) which might indicate I'm coming down with something, I haven't had the energy to post anything.

So, until I get my act together, please enjoy this outdoor rendition of "Carol of the Bells," modern edition (click HERE).

The colors of November

Around here, October is bright. But while it seems November should be subdued and gloomy, in fact it's quite beautiful. As I told Don, "October is brilliant. November glows." Here are some photos as proof.

In an otherwise cloudy sky...

...a last shaft of sunlight escaped just as the sun set, illuminating a row of trees on the hillside opposite.

The changing color of blackberry leaves contribute to this late-autumn glow.

The leaves transition to yellow and red.

On a distant hillside, where blackberries have taken over vast swathes of land, the leaves are red.

Wild roses also contribute to November's glow.

The rose hips are abundant this year.

Like blackberries, wild roses can take over whole fields.

Water drops amidst the brambles.

Where pine needles meet mossy granite.

The weeping willow in our yard had some bright yellow leaves.

They turned even brighter when the sun came out.

I'm doing some late-season garden cleanup, including trimming back the strawberry runners.

The strawberry leaves, too, contribute to November's glow.

A bit of sunlight broke through the clouds while I was raking leaves.

The sun made the leaves glow.

It made Mr. Darcy glow as well.

This time of year, the leaves have dropped from the wild apple trees, but in many cases the apples are still on the branches.

A sun halo, which by some accounts predicts rain or snow. Accurate (for rain) in this case.

And those are some of the colors of November. A blessed Thanksgiving to all.