How to Make Yogurt

For high quality, cheap yogurt you cannot beat making  your own.  A quart of yogurt can cost as much as four dollars, you can spend that much on a gallon of organic milk and make FOUR quarts of organic yogurt for the same price as one quart store-bought.

It’s really easy and you do not need a “yogurt maker.”  In fact, my yogurt got better once I quit using the stupid thing.

Do not try this with goat’s milk.  For whatever reason, goat’s milk makes a very runny yogurt, you need a different recipe for that.

Here is what you need:

1. Pot (to boil milk)

2. Pot (to boil water to sanitize jars, utensils)

3. Mason Jars (glass with metal lids so they can be sanitized in boiling water)

4. Thermometer

5. Metal mesh colander

6. Metal stirring utensil (I use a table knife)

7. Tablespoon (preferably metal, since plastic does not like to be boiled…)

8. Yogurt starter (I use my favorite type of PLAIN yogurt as the starter.  I prefer Stoneyfield or Brown Cow, but it is totally up to your taste preference.  You can buy official yogurt starter pills, but I have never done it that way.  If you are using raw milk, you may want to use the pills.)

9. Optional: One of those mason jar grabbers, it makes it a lot easier to sanitize.

10. A cooler, like the kind you would use to bring on a picnic.

11. A lot of dish towels.

Utensils

——————————————————————————————————————–

I make 6-8 quarts of yogurt at a time (one quart = 4 cups, one gallon = 4 quarts).  So my instructions will be set to make 6 quarts.  They keep for at least 45 days unopened.

Step One:

Heat 1.5 gallons of milk to the boiling point.  Careful, it will boil over and make a big mess if you don’t catch it right as it reaches the boiling point.

1. Heat milk to 212F

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step Two:

(Optional, do this for better results)  Sanitize mason jars and other equipment.  I boil the jars in my large canning pot, but if you have a dishwasher with a sanitize cycle, this should work as well.  I also boil the thermometer, stirring utensil, mesh colander, and tablespoon by dipping them briefly in boiling water.

2. Sanitize

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step Three:

Let hot milk cool down to about 120F.

Step Four:

Put two tablespoons of yogurt in each quart sized mason jar.

Jars ready for warm milk.

 

 

 

 

 

Step Five:

Pour warm milk into jars, through the colander.  I place the colander on top of each jar and pour.  This removes any “skin” formed on the milk from boiling it.

Step Six:

Put on lids.  Wrap each jar in a dish towel.

Step Seven:

Place all mason jars in a cooler.  Add two mason jars filled with very hot water.  These jars keep the milk warm.  I cover all the jars with an additional towel to help insulate.  The goal is to keep the milk at about 120F for the whole time it cultures.

Cooler ready for the milk. It has two jars of very hot water.

 

 

 

 

 

Step Eight:

Leave milk to culture for four hours.  If you prefer your yogurt to have a more sour taste, you can leave it in for a couple more hours.

All ready to culture for four hours.

 

 

 

 

 

Step Nine:

Remove from cooler, immediately place in fridge.  Eat and enjoy!  I like to add fruit or fruit syrups for sweet treats and to make flavored yogurt.

Our Thanksgiving Tree

With Ida almost 2.5 years old, I’m really starting to feel the urge to start our own family holiday traditions.  The type that I always wanted to have as a kid, but didn’t have the courage to get my family to start.  So now, in my own little (but growing!) family we are planting the seeds of meaningful tradition.  Or at least attempting too!

This year we have started the tradition of a Thanksgiving Tree.  Combo of practicing gratitude and arts and crafts… Can’t get better than that!

Ida, Alden and I went for a walk to find the perfect branch.  I had my heart set on Madrona, since the bark is so pretty.  We found a little one about three feet long, with lots of little branches to hang our “thank yous” on.

Then the whole family (well, Alden napped the whole time) sat at the table and made two sided ornaments.  One side a collage of pictures we felt represented us this year and the other our list of things we are thankful for.

Here are the results!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Spilled Baking Soda…

Letting Ida play with the contents of the kitchen cupboards allows for chunks of less interrupted cooking time.  Of course there is clean-up involved afterwards.

Today, the cupboard play ended when I turned around to Ida emptying the contents of a box of baking soda.  Reluctantly, I swept it up and prepared to throw it in the garbage.  Right before I dumped it, it occurred to me that Ida could have a lot of fun playing with it.

So I put the baking soda in a flat pan, filled two sippy cups (minus the spill preventers thingy) with vinegar.  I put a couple drops of food coloring in each one, just for excitement.

I showed her how to make bubbles with it, handed her the sippy cups and a spoon and she had a blast!

Ida making bubbles with soda and colored vinegar.

Making Ida Shoes

What to do with a child who will not wear hard soled shoes?!  At almost 2.5 years, Ida still refuses to wear shoes unless they have a soft sole.  As in, won’t even stand up in them, she just sits on the floor crying her eyes out sobbing, “No, no, no.”  It seems like a silly battle to fight, so she wears soft soled shoes. 

Ida in her homemade shoes.

These are hard to come by at an affordable price.  There are plenty of second-hand hard soled shoes, but the soft ones wear out quickly and kids as old as she do not usually wear them.

I have solved this problem by making her shoes myself.  I have a wonderful old Belvedere sewing machine that can sew through multiple layers of canvas, jeans, and leather (also fingers, but that is another story…). 

I buy old leather pants at thrift stores, rarely paying more than $15 for a pair of pants.  Pants are better than jackets because they are cheaper and have more usable material.

Leather purses make wonderful soles, they are thicker than pants and she has yet to wear through soles made with purse leather.  She out grows them first.

Leather Shoes

I use a jeans sewing needle on my machine and regular thread. 

I include a fleece liner for the entire shoe, to keep her little feet warm.  I use fleece because it dries quickly, and unfortunately leather is not waterproof and Washington tends to be wet 10 out of 12 months.

I put little cat faces on her latest pair. I glued them on with spray elmers.  I embroidered the face with embroidery thread. 

Kitty Faces

I make entirely cloth shoes with the same pattern for slippers.  The pattern is pretty easy to adjust up as she grows.  I am thinking about making myself a pair!

Abalone buttons from an old sweater.

Winter Chicks?!

I should have paid more attention when Ryan told me we had a broody hen in the shed.  However, it was the end of October… what hen gets broody then?!  From late winter through summer I vigilantly kick hens off of nests when we do not want chicks: fall/winter is my break from want-to-be mama hens!

This weekend, with visions of omelets dancing in my head, I went to raid the eggs from the shed.  That silly hen was still out there andshe had a whole stash of eggs!  I picked her up and carried her to the coop, putting her down next to the water.  She looked slightly stunned, not surprising since broody hens eat and drink very little.  I then took all but two of the eggs.  I leave a few eggs in the nest to keep the hens laying in that spot. It decreases the amount of time I spend hunting for hidden nests.  “Easter Egg Hunts” are one of the joys of truly free-range chickens.

My Babies

I took the eggs inside to make scrambled eggs.  My two year old, Ida, considers it her sacred duty to stir the eggs, so she perched on a chair, ready with her fork and bowl.  The first egg I cracked in was bloody with a dime sized baby chick.  Ida looked at me: “Dirty, dirty” She stated.  I agreed and poured it in the compost.  I cracked a second.  Same thing.  After the third egg, I realized all the eggs were going to have tiny baby chicks.  I could either dump the eggs or allow our hen to have winter babies.

With babies of my own, I couldn’t bring myself to let these tiny ones die (Even though we eat fertilized eggs daily!).  So I brought the eggs back outside to the shed and put them in the nest.  The want-to-be-mama hen was by the coop sipping water.  Did I disturb her too much?  Would she go back to the nest?

After breakfast, I loaded Alden in the Moby Wrap and took Ida by the hand.  We quietly snuck out to the shed, peered into the soft straw pile behind the bales of hay.  There she was, glaring at me with a beady eye.  “It’s okay, Mama Hen.  I’ll leave you along this time.”  She ruffled her feathers at me and ignored my comment.  She’d had enough of me for one day.

Broody Hen

So now, I get to figure out how to keep a batch of new chicks alive in the cold of November.  Once they hatch, where will I keep mama and chicks?  They have to be kept separate from the other chickens, because the other chickens are free range.  This means they run around the farm with lots of cats.  I’m not convinced that Mama Hens will be able to keep the cats away.  I guess I better dig out my heat lamps!

The Rarely Seen!

Yesterday, my husband, Ryan, was out on our property and saw a very cute little critter that some people don’t even know lives in our area.

Weasel near our house.

<—————-

It’s a little fuzzy, I know, I’m impressed he got a photo at all! It is a weasel, either the long or short tailed. Here is a better photo:

Weasel Fun Fact: They stuff the fur of their prey into the walls of their den. This makes for a warm and cozy nest.

Here is another critter that lives around here that few people know about: The Mountain Beaver, the most ancient of rodents…let me guess you’re picturing this:

Here is what they actually look like:

The only reason I have even heard of the little critter is because I found one of their skulls in the woods and a knowledgeable friend identified it: “Ahhh, yes, you found a mountain beaver skull!” Now, since she is from the east coast, and I, “Born and Raised Here,” and never had heard of such a creature, I figured she was telling Tall Tales. So, I, ever suspicious said: “Let’s look that up on Wikipedia.” And I’ll be darned, but these critters do exist!

Here is what the skull looked like before I sat on it (another story, involves the Darn Cats).

Mountain Beaver Fun Facts:

Mountain Beavers are only twelve to twenty inches long. They like moist forest areas and dig long burrows with multiple caverns, including ones for storing food and using the bathroom! And like rabbits, they exhibit corophagy: they eat their poop the first time around. The second time through it come out as a hard pellet that they do not eat. Mountain Beavers do not urinate. One of the parasites of the Mountain Beaver is the largest know flea!

So next time your tromping around the woods and notice some burrows in a damp spot, you’ll know what it is!

Chicken Dog?

 

Yes, chicken dog. As in a sheep dog for chickens. Brilliant, isn’t it! Well, just in case you’re not convinced, let me explain.

Fireweed Farm will bemoving to its permanent location this winter. We will be converting ten acres of stumps and young alders into pasture (Want to help?  Please?). We will be grazing a dairy cow, one or two beeves, and a horse. One of the best ways to keep pasture and animals healthy is to rotate chickens behind the grazers.  The chickens eat all the yummies in the cow patties and horse poops, this cuts down on internal parasites and spreads the manure. When this occurs, the animals will feed where they pooped in three months or less. (If  you are unfamiliar with grass feeders, they
are very reluctant to eat grass growing from the spot they have previously pooped.)

My goal is to rotate my flock behind the grazing animals, there are two problems with this.  The first is predation, the second is in chicken nature.  Chickens do not like to stray far from their “home base” or chicken coop where they feel safe.  This is a particularly strong urge when the birds have experienced predation.

To solve these problems I want to get a chicken dog.  A dog trained to herd the chickens to the appropriate area of pasture and deter  predators (eagles, coyotes, cougars, hawks, raccoons, weasels…).

I admit, I have never heard of such a dog.  I have no clue how to train one, either.  Our dog, Elise is an excellent guard dog.  One worried cluck sends her on a high alert and she runs the perimeter barking and growling at any and every imaginary (or real) threat.   Great for the chickens, but bad, very bad, for my napping babies.

If you have heard of such a creature, please let me know!

One more pic of Elise… and our rodent control

Coyote Attack… good, brave Rooster

 

 

Well, Mr. Coyote came by for a visit and lucky for us, got the feather half of our Buff Orpington Rooster.  This brave rooster is constantly on the look out for predators and protects his hens with vigor.  The cost, it seems is a tail.  It will grow back.

He seems quite oblivious to its absence, still strutting and preening about with the ladies…

Showing off for the ladies

Baby Chicks!

 

Chicks exploring

We have 16 new critters added to the farm! In about 4 months they will be providing us with lots of yummy eggs. We added 14 Rhode Island Reds and 2 Buff Orpingtons.

Now, I had wanted one of my hens to get broody and hatch her own, but alas, this did not occur. One buff orpington became broody, but it lasted less than 48 hours. So either I need chicks to hatch REALLY fast, or better hen mamas!

I’ll keep trying, but for now the chicks are coming from Cennex in Chimacum.

The flock greets the new chicks curiously.

The gawky stage

Teenage chickens

April 2 and Easter Weekend!

Hello all,

Happy Easter and Good Friday. Due to snow, heavy rains, and high gusts, the egg stand was absent this friday (actually I just didn’t have the motivation with wet cold weather and a baby who needed nap!). I’m sorry to all those who braved the weather for eggs. The egg stand will be in place on Saturday April 3.

A word to the wise about hard boiling fresh eggs: DON’T DO IT!!! Eggs less than 10 (or so) days old still have the membrane connected to the shell. When you hard boil them, it will be VERY difficult to peel. All the eggs I sell are less than 6 days old. If you don’t mind losing a lot of the white, go ahead and hard boil.

If you would like a fun idea for natural dyes, check out how my sister dyes easter eggs.

So… how long do eggs last, anyways? Eggs are good for 5 weeks if refrigerated. Three weeks at room temperature. These are approximate, as are most things in the natural world.

Our hens are feeling bedraggled and confused after this mornings snow. However, afternoon sunshine is perking them up. Happily, the molt is almost done and egg laying is up.

One hen had the misfortune of being locked out of the coop last friday night. In a bit of misguided desperation, she roosted under our yurt. About 12 inches off the ground. At 4 am, terrified clucking and bucking and flapping of feathers roused our whole family from sleep. My husband quickly let our ferocious guard dog out in hopes that she would free the chicken from what was surely the jaws of a coyote (the early coyote gets the hen). Elise (dog) in her pursuit of the coyote managed to knock down an entire fence line.

However, at 4 am, with a crying baby I don’t care too much about what happened to the chicken, so it wasn’t until the morning that I checked. I found her, minus a mouth full of feathers strutting around the yard. Elise got some extra treats for being a hero.

Have a wonderful Easter!