On Thursday I finished with the gardens, notes, and photos around noon, just before my helper friend arrived. The first thing we did was get the tarp up to the house and on the clothesline. I was hoping the coming rain would wash it off, but it didn’t really. My son will have to spray it down and get the mud off.
He had unloaded the next to last bag of wood on Wednesday so my brother brought the last one up on Thursday morning. That’s why we were doing the tarp; it was no longer covering wood.
My son got the last bag unloaded but not stacked in the afternoon.
Once that tarp was done, my helper friend and I set about inventorying the Tonka garage with all the amendments. That took about half an hour. Boy am I glad I have him to heft those 50# bags!
Once everything was back inside the shed, we headed to the cool cellar. We inventoried the amendments that are stored inside, all the light fixtures, the heating pads, controllers and timers, and sorted and inventoried the T5 bulbs.
We guesstimated how many bags of seed starting mix I had as there’s about 3 or 4 years worth. Then we checked the trays for cracks and counted the covers.
So I now have a very good idea of what I have and can be prepared for the spring season.
One thing I had been wanting to do was start sauerkraut. So we took the first head of cabbage in the row in the Big garden and peeled off the buggy leaves. I knew there was a cantaloupe in the Small garden so I went to check on it. As usual, someone had gotten there ahead of me, so this is what I got.
I weighed the peeled cabbage and it was 5.32 lbs. We have a brand of raw sauerkraut here made by Real Pickles that I really love. I looked online to see if anyone had replicated the recipe, but didn’t see anything.
So I got out my copy of Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation and we made his savory seed sauerkraut. I had seen reference in a couple places about bruising or grinding the seeds, so we used the mortar and pestle to do that. My helper friend did an excellent job of thinly slicing that big cabbage.
We had to toss the cabbage with the ingredients, so I got out my biggest bowl and we slowly put layer after layer in, sprinkling ingredients on each one. Then he tossed the whole thing really well.
He started packing the gallon jar, pounding each layer firmly but not hard. By the time he had it ¾ full, there was liquid halfway up the jar.
We sat down for a while, getting up to pound the cabbage every 5 – 10 minutes. In 45 minutes or so, there was fluid above the cabbage so we put the jar weights in to keep it submerged, covered it and put it in the pantry where it’s somewhat cooler.
I made a zucchini ravioli for supper as I was so exhausted.
When I went to bed there was a partial orange moon in the southern sky.
On Friday my helper friend is here at 8AM and we plan to process the green beans. I also want to figure out somewhere to hang the garlic on the second floor in hopes it will cure better. I’m sure there are other jobs we will get done.