It's been a long time ....

Greetings one and all, Margaret and Ken here once again after a very long time. As you probably figured out we have been very busy with our new restaurant and with things at home. We won't tell you everything in this post 'cause that would be way too much reading at one go.

We will however, present a brief overview of our activities upon which we will elaborate in future posts. In addition to the usual activities of gardening, sugaring, wood cutting and such we have also embarked on a few new activities as follows: we have expanded our livestock to include the pigs we spoke of previously, a mare named Belle and a Welsh pony named Daffyd or Dyffed (depends which of us you ask), a female goat named Baby, a buck (goat) named Jake and three rabbits (whom I call Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail). Surpise, surprise, we now have baby rabbits, who'd a thunk! The pigs we acquired are pot bellied pigs named Wilbur and Stewie. Wilbur is a kind of stay at home piggy but Stewie, he's the exploring kind of pig. More on the adventures of Stewie the Intrepid Explorer Pig in a future post. There are new gardening experiences to share and knowledge to pass along as well as a story about Gus, our late lamented male goat (he was an explorer too).

That's all for now. A short post for sure but it is good to be posting again and we have made a commitment to post at least once a week if not more.

Till next week,

Margaret and Ken

Catching up

Catching up 
Wanted to give you a quick update on what we have been doing lately..
We have been very very busy , but good busy. Gardens are mostly all planted with the exception of the larger garden at home , it is a fantastic opportunity to have planting space here at the store and at home. We can use . the space at the store to have a community garden plus teach So I am going to take full advantage for sure. The gardens here are now full of a variety of squashes, peas, onions ,broccoli, cauliflower,peppers, watermelon,cantelope,tomatoes,beans,eggplant and cabbages...haha,,,sheep wont get them at the store ,
At the house we have even a larger variety planted and are excited to show all of you who are attending our event in July what we are growing this year. We will be working on the reading room soon and will keep you updated on how that is coming along. We will also keep you updated on our upcoming cider making weekend ...finally will get a chance to use the cider presses . Should be a ood year. Our fruit trees are looking wonderful this year , so we should get a good yeald of everything from apples to nectarines,plums pears cherries peaches ,,, keep your fingers crossed
See you soon
Margaret and Ken

We're baaack!

Greetings good gentles, it's been a few months since we have posted any updates so we'll try to include everything we've done since January.

JANUARY

Get ready for the sugaring season
Wood (as always)
Livestock (chickens and sheep)

FEBRUARY

Rent a restaurant (yes you read that right)
Get things ready for the restaurant

MARCH

Open the restaurant (called MAGGIE'S)
Make upgrades to the restaurant
Maple sugar (late April)

APRIL

Finish the boiling for maple sugar
Start the spring chores

MAY

More spring chores
The Restaurant

In January Margaret and I spent our time dealing with the livestock, getting wood in for the month and making sure the maple sugar pots and pans were ready for sugaring. I finally got a very sweet little sugar pan made up at a local metal fab shop called VANDEX Inc. I dealt with a chap named Fred who was very helpful and he had a stainless steel sugar pan made up about a week after I ordered it. It is 32" X 18" X 8" and boy does work a treat. I used less fuel to boil the same amount of sap as last year. I also used a couple of the big pots from last year to preheat the sap before it went into the pan. This kept the boil going fairly constantly. It takes about an hour to get the sap to steaming temps and another 30 minutes to full boil. I processed about 750 litres of sap and got 11 litres of syrup. That's a ratio of 68:1 which is not great, however, we did reduce the syrup to a fairly sweet syrup so our actual ratio is more 35:1 which is really good.

Sugaring this year was a little disjointed with us being involved in getting the restaurant ready to open. I will say however, that new pan made all the difference in boiling time with actual time spent firing the pan was only 40 hours instead of the previous 60 or so hours. Time saved,  fuel saved and we have a sweet, somewhat bitter syrup to enjoy over the year.

Till next time (which will be tomorrow), take care
Margaret and Ken

Just a report on the sausages. I brought them to Guelph for the family to taste test and they are nummy...they are drier than store bought but tastier with the thyme and apple. Being pure meat makes them drier, guess adding a bit of fat to the mix might help with this..But over all very nice indeed.

We have spent the morning making sausage . Pork legs were on sale so we took advantage of the opportunity. These sausages are flavored with onion, apple,honey and thyme. They are lovely. It is cold enough outside to freeze them but we will have to eat them before the weather changes again.We will give lots away. Somehow we have to adjust to the weather changes that are happening. We cannot rely on some of the old methods that have worded so well in the past. We used to be able to freeze easily now the weather is not reliable ...what is it like in your area?
We in fact have started to research warm weather area preserving techniques. Odd for us here in Canada huh?

We now have a freezer

We have a freezer....
Now i am sure you are wondering how we have a freezer  while we are living as close to the year 1865 as possible and do not use hydro. Well let me tell you. My beautiful husband has converted a window in the cold room into a freezer box. He took out the window glass and boxed the frame in. He covered the outside end with fine wire mess and screening to keep critters out. On the inside or inside of the cold room he added a door to his box and voilla we now have a freezer.It will of course be temporary , winter only but it will be wonderful to use for the time we can. Mother nature will provide us with the necessary cold free of charge , no hydro. So we can safely say...we now have a freezer,

Part 3 Cooking up the offal...kidney

Kidney....According to Mrs Beeton veal kidney is much more tender and much more preferred than cow. All of her many recipes for this organ gives instruction to remove the core after slicing .This is easy to do . Although I rarely if ever remove the core I will have to do that and see what the difference is . Kidneys are lovely stewed slowly . I do mine, stewing slowly with beef and a variety of vegetables and spices.Heavy on the mushrooms. I also generally add a cup or two of red wine to this stew. After everything is beautifully tender I drain the meat and   thicken  the drippings, I add this back to the meat and put all into a baking dish.Cover with a puff pastry and serve as a beef steak and kidney pie, What do you do with kidneys??