Bottling the Applejack

We bottled the last of the applejack made from bought apples and it's
going fast, but we are fermenting twenty+ gallons of cider from our own
pears: Tart and sweet Asian pears and Seckel pears. We spike it with
mango juice. It is our special reserve, and it is not going to leave the
homestead.

Chicoletta 2019

 Here they are, our home ground favorites:

This will press your cheese

  Before we got deeply into cider making we bought this little antique press to experiment with, and NOW we have a larger press  (you can see the bucket on the floor beside the other) and we intend to use the old one as a CHEESE press ...  having learned that the pressed- pulp wheels of waste that result from cider pressing are called "cheeses".  Following up on that clue, we learned that one can just as well press cheese as apples or pears or grapes with a  regular cider press; and that is what we are going to do, inspired by our love of all things that ferment and get better with age, by our love of cheese in particular, and lately by a post from the wonderful word woman  Nancy Vieira Couto's blog: http://www.nancyvieiracouto.com/blog/eating-with-the-ancestors-curds-and-whey
which is like a virtual kitchen with actual cheese  in  it. .... and which we be impressing into our Food-themed, upcoming issue of the Metaphysical Times magazine.
   Besides enabling us to smell the cheese, we learn from Nancy that  the process of cheese making removes the lacstose, which all goes into the whey. That means that cheese is just right for the non-ideological, lactoses intolerant.  We here at Dog's Plot are extremely tolerant, so send us your whey and we will figure out what to do with it.  Also accepting separated gluten, which we use in large amounts to add chew and to bind the mostly whole grain flours we use in or pasta, crackers, bread, and pizza dough,  We like it sour.
   

Supplicating Mantis

This Mantis prayed that I would let he'rm into the shed for the winter.  So I let herm in. Not much for Herm to eat in there: lesser used tools and , it seems, an occasional cat who has ... left some scat.  Scat is what you call it when you are tracking game in the woods.  I think I know who the cat is, the most feral "Stranger", as we call him, who is often as not around,  but whom we seldom see.

Supplicating Mantis

This Mantis prayed that I would let he'rm into the shed for the winter.  So I let herm in. Not much for Herm to eat in there: lesser used tools and , it seems, an occasional cat who has ... left some scat.  Scat is what you call it when you are tracking game in the woods.  I think I know who the cat is, the most feral "Stranger", as we call him, who is often as not around,  but whom we seldom see.