Posted on 10/28/2011 5:05:33 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. We had our first frost last Friday but the weather has been beautiful ever since. I have been gathering leaves and other yard waste to add to my compost pile, which has grown nicely over the last few weeks and it is heating up and cooking nicely.
I hope all your Fall gardens prosper.
If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. Our Freeper community is full of gardeners, each with varying interests and skill levels from Master Gardener to novice.
If the SHTF, a few of us in the gardening group could colonize and live very good lives with all of the talents that we possess.
I say go for both the chickens AND rabbits. Why choose when you don't have to?????
Take care, girl. Good hearing from you!
You, too! I’m excited now! :)
I wish I were Superwoman, but I'm just an aging country girl with more interests than I know what to do with!
I am brewing a Belgian Trappist Ale right now, how can I go wrong with a beer brewed by Monks for hundreds of years?
Mead is also called honeywine and is very easy to make. Just use some good spring water, honey and yeast. Mead can take some time to develop and age properly. It can ferment out to a good high alcohol content 7-21 percent, like a wine. It can take 4 to 12 months before it is ready. Some brewers let it age for years. I talked to a guy on a beer/wine forum, he made 5 gallons of a cherry infused mead when his son was born a few years ago and plans to open the first bottles and taste one or two with him on his 21st birthday. Now that is some dedicated planing and wait time!
The type of yeast you use is not that important in making a mead. You can even use Fleischmann’s yeast, (same stuff you use for bread making). But most serious mead brewers use yeasts specifically used in wine or champagne making. The yeasts impart flavor and the bread yeast may not be a flavor you want in a Mead.
Yeah I know - more than you wanted to know!
Shoot! I add shoulder pads to my outfits in the hopes that my hips won’t look so large! I never thought of it as providing protection against bee stings, but that’s what I’ll call it from now on! LOL
I wanto to see a picture of you in your bee suit. I’ll bet you look magnificent, as well as fearsome.
Re herbs - agreed! Plant some perennial herbs like oregano and chives - they will practically grow themselves; you’ll only have to keep up with them so they don’t spread too much. Mint - ONLY grow in buried containers or they will take over everything and they are impossible to eliminate. They’re currently the bane of my existence on the best gardening side of our house, thanks to the previous owner who planted a ton on purpose (can’t understand why). Same with lemon balm and bee balm - avoid it!
Annuals - basil is fantastic - and easy - in containers, rosemary too, and dill, while an annual in some places, will actually overwinter in colder, snowy climates. I’m in NE OH and my dill comes back, parsley too. Currently we have 2 kinds of oregano, 2 kinds of parsley, chives and dill that come back each year.
Invest in a cheap dryer and enjoy fresh herbs all year long - fresh dried herbs are so much more flavorful and aromatic than store-bought. Like so many other home grown things, there simply is no comparison. Cilantro, though, loses basically all smell and flavor unless used fresh.
Starting with herbs when you are just starting out builds great confidence. For several years I did nothing but tomatoes and herbs, a great foundation. Added four 4x4 raised beds this year with mixed results - a great learning experience. And that’s the thing - no matter how you succeed or fail, you learn so much, which means it’s a success regardless.
That was very interesting! I will search for an appropriate yeast and try to make some mead. When we do a hive removal from homes, we have to take out every bit of honeycomb. If the hive is well established, there will be combs of fresher, light honey, and then older stores which are darker. The honey is edible, just not exceptional quality. Sounds perfect for mead, but I will check that in my bee books as well. To this point, I’ve skipped the chapters on winemaking.
The quote below comes from the web site that I have been using for my beer supplies. And describes what Mead should taste like.
“Most people expect a honey sweet, syrupy drink better suited for pancakes and not the light, dry clean flavor of fine white wine. This should be no surprise. It is not by accident that grape wine tastes so much like mead. Grape wine tastes like mead and not the other way around. There was a time when all wine was made of honey and the grape version was unknown.”
Just a little info on the yeast you might look for:
Brand - Wyeast - http://www.wyeastlab.com/he_m_productinformation.cfm
Note they recommend a Yeast Nutrient Blend to supply the proper nutrients in Mead so the yeast can thrive and do its job.
Can I suggest keeping a couple of meat rabbits first, before branching into angoras? I looked into angoras too, but decided the wool was too finicky for me. Not to say you wouldn’t do great, but there’s a learning curve with any animal, and it might be prudent to start out with a less expensive breed in case anything goes wrong.
Not even!
The Mrs bought me a brewing kit for my past birthday. So far, we've brewed a Pale Ale, and I'm currently experimenting with a raisin wine recipe.
Thanks! I’m really going to look into this further, and I appreciate the info.
I am going to have to do all of Marks fall honey harvest, which is about 9 hives. He says that there should be almost 30 gallons of honey. Lots of sticky work, but yummy!
Do you know how much a gallon of honey weighs? Most Meads recipes I have seen use 12 lbs of honey and enough spring water to bring the total volume up to 5 gallon for the ferment. Of course you can brew lesser amounts.
Boy, a fig infused Mead is sounding good the more I think about it.
Fig infused does sound delicious. BTW, I bought 2 Brown Turkey fig trees late last week and got them planted yesterday. Once in the ground, they measured about 4' tall.
I posted earlier that my butterbeans were done, but I went out there this afternoon to find quite a few that will be ready in 3-4 days. Maybe another bushel. I've also picked the pods that have dried on the plants over the season, and I'll vacuum seal the dried beans in jars and treat them just like any other dried pea or bean. Need to take a sample to the elevator so that they can check the moisture content before I jar them.
We’ll add Mark to our prayer list for a swift and successful recovery.
Would you mind sharing the Green Tomato cake recipe. I’ve not seen one before. Thank you.
When you remove the hives from a home or barn, how do you remove all of the honey? We had a fellow remove a huge hive from our house a couple of years ago. The outside wall is 15 inches from the inside wall. Those bees had a comb about 18 inches across and about the same long I don’t know how thick. Plus there were a couple of smaller ones. He used a vaccum to get most of the bees. Luckily the hive was in the laundry room wall and when the bees became angry, they really swarmed into the closed off laundry room. He then removed all of the hives and even a bit of honey that dropped out. It was an amazintg operation. I noticed the bees in the roof had the hives curled under the 4x6s.
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