One More Ice Sculpture

I almost missed this one as it was farther down the road from the rest. This one is an American flag, soldiers' boots, helmet and gun.

Ice Sculptures

The little town of Kiel, WI has an ice sculpture contest every year hosted by the local businesses. Here are some pictures of some of the sculptures. Enjoy...



























Ok this is not an ice sculpture, but these chick in a shop window remind us of spring coming!

Winter Wonder Land

Fence and baling twin with frost.

Trees with frost-so beautiful pictures just don't do them justice.


Snow drifts are so fun to look at.
This goat decided that hay is a very nice hat/scarf.

Beautiful sunrise this morning!

Feta Cheese!

I made some Feta Cheese this week. I used the recipe from http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/easyfetacheese.htm as well as one in a cheese book, "Home Cheese Making". They are pretty much the same, but the one in the book says to add the mesophilic starter an hour before adding the rennet and that is what I did. The one in the book also said to stir the curds for 20 min. (after the rennet was in for an hour.) I did not stire the curds for 20 min.-the one online did not say to stir for 20 min.

I did make one mistake. I was making it at night and then forgot to put it into a cheese cloth to drain the whey after the rennet was in for an hour-I left it in all night. Oops. So far cheese making seems pretty forgiving. (I did have one batch where the recipe was weird and called for an egg that I made and it was AWFUL-the chickens however had a feast.)

Here the Feta is in an olive oil, salt and oregano/basil brine. I did end up dumping most the olive oil brine out and adding a salt water brine as the cheese was not salty enough and had a very strong olive oil taste as I used extra virgin olive oil. That did the trick. The cheese tastes almost as good as some imported Greek goat Feta. (This is Jersey cow Feta.)
Here is the Feta after I drained it on paper towels.

Cheesecake

I made some Chevre cheese, but it didn't turn out quite right. The recipe is easy you heat 1 gallon of milk to 86* and add the culture then let set at 72* for 12 hours. You then drain the cheese through a cheese cloth and let hang (in the cloth) for 6-12 hours.

Here is what I did- I followed the recipe, but the culture was about 3 years old, from when I had dairy goats, but I still used it. Then I put the milk/culture in a warm water bath by the wood burning stove as our house is way colder than 72*! The milk did not seem ready after 12 hours so I ended up letting it sit for about 30 hours (when it finally looked ready.) I let it hang for 2 days as the whey was still dripping. Oh and chevre is usually made with goats milk so that could make a difference too. The cheese tasted sort of like strong sour cream and was kind of in between sour cream and cream cheese.

I decided to make a cheese cake and it was yummy! (My mom also put some of the cheese into some clam chowder soup that she made and that was good too!)

Turkeys

Trio of Bourbon Red turkeys 1 tom and 2 hens for sale-$65 or can sell individually for $25 each. The tom is ready and has been mating the hens so they should have babies in the spring. SOLD


Bourbon Red turkeys are a rare, heritage breed. Heritage turkeys eat 50% of their diet from foraging and have very juicy meat. Heritage breeds have more dark meat than modern breeds and self mate (modern ones get A.I.'ed.) All of our hens went broody and raised poults.
Here is a link to learn more about the breed

Sheep shots

Adult ewes and rams