Our driveway in the winter. No Foliage colors here
Wow! I haven't posted here since last October. That was before the long winter, the 2nd worst winter in history for the Worcester,MA area. The "Fall Foliage Calendar" effect didn't last long and we settled into a long cold winter. Our outdoor wood furnace burned through over 12 cord of wood to keep us nice & toasty.
Looking up our road
Driveway with the big mound of snow (Loring Glacier)
I was able to use the tractor to plow the driveway, but I had to keep it plugged in if I wanted to start it. It's hard to start a diesel engine in the cold. Even though it was pretty at times.
Finally all the snow melted. The last bit of snow in our yard melted on April 10.
The last bit of the "Loring Glacier"
Today, i was able to get outside and rotor-till the two gardens and getting them ready for planting in May.
In October, the landscape changes drastically around here. It's exciting because of the fall colors but we know that only 30 days from now the leave will all be gone and the skies will be grey as winter starts to take its grip on us. But until then, every day and every errand we make is just like driving through the pages of a Fall Foliage Calendar! On every town road, and around every corner, we are blasted with color! This is one of the reasons we like living in New England..
Looking down our driveway from the garage.
Looking up the driveway from the road
Looking South down the road
Looking North on the road towards town
As the colors get more vivid and the days get shorter, I will post more pictures.
When the plum tomatoes are ripe, its time to make tomato sauce. We have tried numerous different ways to actually get from the whole tomato to the final product of the actual thick tomato sauce. Since I like technology, we opted for the fastest way using the least manual labor. We have been using this method for about 25 years now.
First we pick all the ripe tomatoes. This year we used an heirloom variety call Amish Plum Tomato. They are nice and plump and also good in salads. We also like the size of the plum tomato becuse the fit into the juicer nicely.
Tub of Tomatoes
First we take all the tomatoes, pull off the green stem and float them in a sink full of cold water to clean them. Removing the green stems is optional, sometime we sometimes we do other times we don't. It doesn't seem to make a difference. If we have a huge amount to do, its easier to keep them on as it cuts down the steps and the amount of time required.
We then set up our 40 year old Champion Juicer with the screen attachment. When we juice the tomatoes, the juice falls through the screen and the seeds and skin get pushed out as waste. We save this waste for later.
Our 40 Year Old Champion Juicer
We push the tomaotes, one by one through the juicer. You can see this on this youtube video I posted.
After all the tomatoes are done, we end up sauce and a pile of seed & skin.
Sauce from the juicer
Seeds and Skin as waste from the Juicer
Now we take the seeds and skin and quicky run them through a hand food mill to "squeeze" out the last bit of tomato goodness from them. After once through the hand food mill, we a left with just a small amount of seeds and skin.
Compare this to the previous picture to see the result of the food milling process
Now we cook the pots of reduce the amount of water in the juice to create a nice thick sauce. These two pots cook down to one pot of thick sauce.
Two pots of sauce will reduce to one pot after cooking
When all done, we let the sauce cool and pour into zip lock bags for freezing. We used to season it and make spaghetti sauce, but now we save the seasoning for when we actually need it. We also use as is with no spices for homemade pizza. I will update this entry when I make a pizza with this sauce.
This entire process, from tomato to two pots of sauce took about 1/2 hour. The reducing the watery sauce to a nice consistency takes a little longer, but it just sits on the stove cook while we do other things around the house.
Today the new pullets (baby hens) arrived in the mail. We get them fromReich's Poultry Farmin Marrieta, PA. have gotten them there for years and always have had good results. After the Post office called, and I picked up the chicks, I saw this fox in our front yard eating the plums on the ground. He looked really skinny and scrawny. Not a good sign for the baby chicks. We will have to be very vigilant. No foxes in the hen house for us!
Red Fox in our Front Yard
The coop was all ready for the chicks, so we took them out of the box one-by-one and showed each one where the water is. Hope they all learned today's lesson!
Today we took a ride out to Agway to get some things for the garden. On our way back we stopped at Goerge Hill Orchards to see if it was time for picking blueberries. Well we were in luck, today was the first day for picking and the trees were loaded!
It didn't take us long to pick 6 pints, but it was hot. They were priced at $2.50 a pint. When we got home we discovered that a pint weighs 1 pound. We will investigate if there is a cheaper place.
Today we started butchering the chickens. Just the ones we put in death row last night. The process goes as follows:
Step 1: Get two chickens from death row and place in the killing cones, head first so that their heads stick out the bottom. Grab their head and make two slits right below their ears (above their ears because they are upside down). This will sever the two main arteries and they will bleed out.
Me and two chickens bleeding out in the cones.
Step 2: After they have bled out, we scald them in 142-152 degree water to loosen their feathers. Any warmer and the skin and fat will begin to cook, any cooler and the feathers won't get loose. When the feathers come out without any effort (usually around 1 minute) they are ready for the plucker.
Getting ready to dunk them in the scalder
Chickens in the scalder
Step 3: When the feathers come out easily, place them in the chicken plucker. With the hose running, turn on the chicken plucker and hose the chickens down as they spin. In 30 seconds they will all plucked.
The chicken plucker ready for action
Click on the video below to see the plucker in action.
Step 4: After they have been plucked, we bring them over to our stainless steel table to remove the innards.
Our butchering table
Step 5: After they are all cleaned out, we place them in a cooler filled with cold water to start the cooling down process. After we finished all 10 for today, we bag them in grocery bags and put them in our refrigerator overnight to allow them to cool down and for the rigor mortis process to set in before freezing. They have to rest for a day or else they will not be as tasty.
Today's work
Closeup of chickens
Tomorrow we will do 10 more. This is all the room we have in our refrigerator each day for chickens. If we had another fridge, like we used to have in the garage, we could do more in one shot. Oh well, tomorrow's another day.
Tomorrow the chickens will be eight weeks old. Time to get them butchered. Yesterday, one died from an apparent heart attack, it weighed 6 1/2 pounds, a good weight. Today we were waiting for our friends to return our chicken plucker and it arrived , so tomorrow we can begin.
We captured 10 chickens and placed them in "death row" so they won't eat or drink anything for at least 12 hours to clean out their insides (intestines, crop, etc).
10 chickens on "death Row"
We also got the butchering area ready for the chicken cleaning. This consists
of: the killing cones, the turkey fryers used with 142 degree water to
prep the chickens for plucking, the chicken plucker and the stainless
steel table.
Our Chicken Plucker ready for Action
The killing cones will be nailed up between two trees
We still have all the aprons, gloves, water thermometers, knives , etc from the last time we did this almost 3 years ago. So we are all set for tomorrow. We plan to start with only 10 to see how tired we get and how long it takes us. If the weather hold we should be done by the end of the week.
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