Busy day on the homestead

Thursday Dec 23rd

Having 1.5 Gallons of raw milk in the fridge, I decided to skim the cream off the top and make butter...

Churning cream to butter

Finished butter (spoon for scale)

I pulled out a load from Betty. 

1 tray of 18 farm eggs, 1 tray of lemon peel, 2 trays with 1 Liter of raw milk on each.

Egg load

I also had over 60 eggs on standby and so I prepped 3 trays (18 eggs per tray) and 1 tray of crushed egg shells which I feed back to the chickens to return the calcium to them. This load will go in first thing in the morning.

While I was waiting for the butter to finish, I figured I'd start a quick loaf of bread.

Voila, soft, chewy and delicious

My ever faithful assistant was at the ready to clean up any mess

Brad found a great deal on chicken breast and turkeys at Superstore yesterday. I threw the chicken in a crockpot with chicken broth, garlic, salt & pepper and put them in the oven for an hour and 15 min.

First load of 7 chicken breasts

Added a second load of 8 chicken breasts for a total of 15

I then split the breasts to thin them slightly (with Brad's help) and put them on 3 trays to feed to Betty along with 1 tray of the chicken broth I cooked it all in (waste not want not). 

I had time to kill while waiting on the second batch of chicken breast so I made some Lemon & Lavender body lotion. 

Once cooled

1 for my Mother

1 for Brad's Mother

1 for me

To be perfectly clear, this is not a normal day around here. It was a day when I had no need to leave the house and so I was able to get some stuff done. 

Tomorrow -- ordinary laundry day.... 

But Saturday...

Merry Christmas one and all!!

Making bread with homemade yeast

My bread machine arrived a couple of days ago.

We had been nursing a starter (yeast) like a 2 day old baby. Very odd I agree, but it sure worked.

3/4C Flour and 1/2C Water in a jar, mixed so that no dry flour remains - wrap paper towel over jar opening with elastic and coddled in warmth (ie wrapped in a tea towel and cuddled over a movie) eventually creates bubbles in the yeast. You can cap it with a lid and refrigerate for up to a week before using half and re-feeding. Just warm it up to room temperature before using.

I have since learned to double this recipe as my bread recipe required all of this starter and your only meant to use half at a time and then 'feed' it another dose as above (ie 3/4C + 1/2C) to keep it going...

The new machine

First loaf kneading (dual action blades in this bad boy)

Rising...

No comment...

Upside down it came out pretty good, right?!

Right side up the top had fallen.. must have shut the door too hard not thinking....

Still fluffy and delicious though.

Tried it again yesterday and...

Nice one! Just made sure not to shut the RV door hard and it held - mostly.

For a hell of a good laugh I highly recommend David's video on YouTube here: Cruising the Cut recently posted of his bread making attempt -- which had me in hysterics this am.... perhaps its the typical british humour but I loved it. Anyway, I do hope you get a laugh from it as I did.