Book Giveaway!

This week, I'm teaming up with Permies.com to giveaway four paperback copies of my How To Bake Without Baking Powder.

Between now and Friday, you can enter to win your very own copy. The "rules" are simple:

1. Sign-in or sign-up for Permies.com
2. Sign up for their Daily-ish email.
3. Head on over to Permies cooking forum with your questions, answers, and ideas on the concept of baking without baking powder. All new posts in the forum count as one entry. More posts means more entries! (And a secret: quality counts. An interesting question or informative post counts more towards winning than a "me too" or "I agree" post.)

Permies will announce the winners sometime on Saturday. Watch the Daily-ish for the announcement.

So, come on over to Permies! I'd love to chat with you about the many alternatives for baking without baking powder.

Book Giveaway! © January 2022 

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Planting Pawpaws & Persimmons

One of the winter projects on my list is working on my forest garden. I have a fairly good list of what I'm planting—for which a blog post is in the making—but I specifically wanted to mention the pawpaws, because they and the persimmons are the only trees I'm planting from seed. Everything else is saplings. 

The seeds were sent to me by fellow homesteaders (thank you Dino and Terri!) who have pawpaws on their place. Because the seeds lose 20% viability within three days, they sent me whole fruits.

Within the fruit, the seeds are in sacs, which must be removed. For good germination, they must be kept from drying out and need a damp cold place for 70-100 days. This winter, they would have gotten that in the ground, but I never know what kind of winters we'll get. So, I put them in a damp paper towel in a baggie in the fridge. Last week, I got them out to plant.

I got about 22 seeds from the fruits, so I chose two places to plant them. They love shade, so one spot was at the far end of my forest garden.

The other place was at the bottom of our property. 

This is the one area where few pines have dropped, so it's a very nice spot to visit.

In addition to the pawpaws, they sent me some persimmons!

These, I planted whole throughout our entire woods. Each fruit contains several seeds, so we'll see what happens!

Earlier this year, I started transplanting pecan saplings into our woods, but these are the first trees I've planted from seed. It will take years to reap the results, but even so, getting them planted feels like an priceless investment. 

Planting Pawpaws & Persimmons © Jan. 2022 

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Experiments in Preserving Milk Kefir Grains

Every year I seem to hit a bit of a dry spell in terms of milk. This year I hoped to change that by breeding Sky for a fall kidding. While that was a success, she was never trained to the milk stand and is absolutely terrified of it. So it's been slow to get her used to being milked. I think in part, this is because she's an older doe. My experience with the younger ones is that they may not like it at first, but they adapt pretty quickly because, well, food. Sky is much more leery. 

One of the reasons I want year around milk is for our kefir. It's an important part of our diet, and also, kefir grains are alive and need to be nurtured. That means a regular supply of milk. When we have no homegrown supply of milk, I have to buy it, just to keep my kefir grains alive. This year, I decided to experiment in preserving milk kefir grains. If I can do that, I won't have to worry about buying milk. 

My first experiment was to dehydrate some grains. Kefir multiplies, so extra grains are pretty easy to come by.

The first step was to wash freshly harvested grians.

Here's what they look like after a thorough rinsing.

Then I spread them out to dry. The humidity is fairly low in our
house because of wood heat, so the conditions were good for this.

Most directions say to coat the dried grains with powdered milk.
This, I didn't have, so I wrapped them in a baggy & then in a paper bag.

Once we have milk again in the spring, I'll see how well they kept! Folks who've done this tell me they'll keep frozen for 4 to 6 months.

For my next experiment, I decided to try freezing some in milk.

I froze the jar, then lidded it, and am storing it in the freezer in a paper bag.

I'm still keeping some going with boughten milk, so I'll still have have some in case my experiments fail. Hopefully, I'll have success!

I'm curious if any of you have preserved kefir grains and how well it worked. Any tips would be welcome.

Experiments in Preserving Milk Kefir Grains 

© Jan 2022 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com