The Cob Oven: Step Two
22 June 2017 • Cob Oven, Make
Not going to lie, it was pretty hard to get through the sod. But I just kept going. Then I hit a layer of straight up rocks. Gah. But I kept going! Wouldn't you know it I dug a 3 foot hole in just about 2 hours! I'm still bragging about it. As someone who has never dug a large hole before I must say it was very satisfying. Then I tamped down the bottom of the hole as much as I could, and filled it with a small layer of drainage rock. Then I just tossed in a bunch of rubble and filled in the holes/gaps with smaller drainage rock until I got close to the top. (I ran out of small rocks so that's not what it's supposed to look like. Work in progress!)
When Dave got home, well, let's just say he was very surprised and impressed (yep, still bragging!).
We've had a few people ask why we're digging down for a cob oven. You don't necessarily have to. Some people build them right on the ground. But, by digging down and filling it with rock it helps with drainage and insulation. We are making an oven so the more heat it can retain the better.
Next steps:
- Brick and mortar up the brick base
- Get some more drainage rock to fill the base
This project has been so satisfying. I have absolutely no building experience and I'm both really surprised and pumped by how I'm doing this lol. You just start and figure out the next step as it happens :)
P.S In case you're wondering, I was sore as hell the next day.
Broody Hens
21 June 2017 • Chickens
Well we've run into our first major snag with the hens. They've gone broody!
Broody pretty much means that they stop laying eggs because they want to hatch some baby chicks. So they pluck out their belly feathers (for skin to egg contact), sit in the nesting box ALL DAY AND NIGHT, and generally turn into little grumps. At first we noticed Nellie wouldn't leave the nesting box and would try to peck us whenever we went near her. She would even do this weird growly thing. So obviously we automatically assumed the worst; "oh man what if there is an egg stuck in her?! Do we call a vet? Can you call a vet for a chicken?!" Then someone in the urban hens community gently pointed out that she was probably just broody.
Which she was.
No big deal.
But then Rosa wouldn't leave the nesting box and then Frida wouldn't either. So three of our four hens are currently not laying eggs. *grumble* To make sure they eat and drink we'll kick everyone out of the coop for the majority of the day, or else they would literally just sit in the nesting box and not leave.
Apparently this will last around 21 days before they snap out of it, or you can take matters into your own hands and try to "persuade" them out of it. We looked into those methods of persuasion but most of them seemed kinda mean. One particular method said to keep the hen separated in a grate bottomed cage and have a fan blowing on her at all times. The idea was to make her so uncomfortable that she forgets how broody she is. Mean right?! So for the meantime we are (somewhat embarrassingly) buying our eggs until they snap out of it.
Note to others:
Some chicken breeds are more prone to "broodiness" than others. Such as bantam varieties. Like Nellie and Rosa...
I Made Kombucha!
16 June 2017 • Fermenting, kombucha, Make
Have you had kombucha before? I think the first time I tried it I was a little weirded out by it. I mean, fermented tea? But lately I've been really getting into it! Surprisingly though made from tea, it doesn't taste like tea. More tangy and fizzy and it's SO good for you. The downside of kombucha is that it's pretty expensive to buy. About $4-5 a serving. Pretty pricey! So (as per usual) I decided to try making my own.
Well, I looked into it. Then I realized why some people are really weirded out by kombucha. One word: SCOBY. Don't google it. Just don't! It's really gross. But it's the key to making kombucha! The scoby is pretty much a goopy little colony for yeast and good bacteria that changes sweetened tea to fizzy tangy kombucha.
So I got over the whole scoby thing and found that a friend on Instagram (thanks Faith!) had a scoby she could give me. Like most things I've been getting into the past while (hello quilting, cob ovens, chickens, babies etc) it seemed a little overwhelming when I first read about it. But one night after the kids went to bed, I watched a few youtube videos and just dove in.
Turns out kombucha is the easiest thing to make. SO EASY. If you have a scoby, can wash your hands, and brew tea you can make kombucha. After I let it ferment (read: sit in the pantry undisturbed) for a week, I scooped out my scoby, which had grown another goopy layer (yum!), and put it in a jar with some of the fermented tea. I can use it again for the next round of kombucha making. I decided to flavour mine and took the extra step of adding some fruit and letting it ferment for another 2 days to build the flavour a bit more and add more carbonation (the bacteria feeds off the sugar in the added fruit and produces gas aka carbonation). After that, I just popped it in the fridge to stop the fermentation and wait for us to drink it!
Yum! For my first batch I just used some good ole Yorkshire Gold black tea that I had in the pantry already and after I divided the kombucha up I added blueberries, ginger, and mango to them. Not gonna lie, I was a bit nervous to drink it. Fermenting is kinda just a fancy was of saying edible mold (right?!) and it's hard to get used to consuming something that you've left out for a week with a bacteria blob floating in there. But what do you know, it's really quite good! Even Iris loves it! Score!
Since originally writing this post 2 weeks ago, I accidentally dropped my entire batch of kombucha (scoby and all) on the kitchen floor. BAH! So I had to start all over with new scobies in a new container. I ended up getting a large ceramic crock-type one with a spigot so now I'm making kombucha on tap pretty much. It's great.
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