Still busy: Field clean up, hair cuts, and more fermentation.

Shiela has been working on getting things growing in the greenhouse, and when it is not raining, she had been working on taking out the last little bits of plastic. We have all the irrigation tape out and have only two beds of plastic mulch left, and then we can put our fields to bed for the winter. The window of fall planting only has a few weeks left, and it is looking like we will get all of our stuff in. Hooray! We might even get our saffron crocuses planted!

Yesterday I finally took the time to get the address for Locks of Love. I love growing and harvesting so much that I even grow and "harvest" my hair. In case you aren't familiar with Locks of Love, it is a non-profit organization that uses donated human hair to make wigs for children who have lost their hair to disease or treatments like chemotherapy. They need at least 10 inches of hair in order to do whatever to make a wig, and it takes six pony tails to make one wig. I watched the video on how to cut and package the ponytail on the Locks of Love website. Then I handed Shiela a pair of scissors. Ethan was ready with his scissors in case we needed some back up. Now, I am 12" of hair lighter and feel like I have helped someone just a little...

The other thing I am working on besides trying to get our fields ready for winter is fermenting the leftovers from our season. I tried to lactoferment hot peppers, but I forgot to add salt and a white yeast mold grew thickly on the top before I could say "whoops." I will have to try again. I have a bunch of cabbage ready to be turned into saurkraut. I got it at the farmer's market when they still had an organic produce vendor. (Our cabbages still haven't headed. I am quite convinced that they don't like growing under plastic. In future years, we will grow them the old fashioned way, and mulch them with straw.) We made a batch of kimchee with the unclaimed chinese cabbages and those itty bitty garlics that we are always left with. I fermented it on my counter for as long as I could stand it. The smell became very strong, as it bubbled out of its wide mouthed jar and all over the flat casserole that I placed the jar in as an afterthought - good idea. The smell actually woke me up in the middle of the night. I understand why it is traditional to bury that stuff... Tastes good though. Our experiments with mead making are progressing at mead making pace (slowly) and I am not sure that any of the three batches will turn out drinkable. The samples that we have tried thus far have had an odd metallic taste, and we think that the iron in our water (I used our well water.) is the main culprit. Time will tell. My first attempt at ginger beer was going well for a while. I was expecting some major fermention with the "bug" and it just never happened. I think the ambient temperature in our house was just too low. I will try that again too. Luckily I only had about $2 invested in it. I feel like my fermentation trials are teetering on the brink of success. I want to get good enough at it to preserve foods without using all the water and heat that is needed in canning. I will keep trying things and report updates as they come.