Rhubarb Wine II: The Settling

As I previously mentioned on Google Plus (here) I'm making rhubarb wine based on the recipe I found here.   The must went in sweet and slightly syrupy, and I was afraid I was making sugar water.   I siphoned off the liquid today, getting a faceful of alcohol and yeast odors, and just over a gallon of pale, cloudy yellow wine.

It's strong, like a good dry Pinot Grigio, but only with a hint of rhubarb.   I worry that the grape concentrate and sugar are basically overwhelming the rhubarb.   We'll see in another few weeks or so when secondary fermentation completes and it clears.

I might do some campden tablets + juice (strawberry?) to give it some sugar and color.

Put up the first of the frozen kale

Snipped the stems (and fed them to the goats), chopped it into 2" sections, boiled for 2 minutes then dumped into an ice bath.   Spun them dry in my salad spinner, then laid them out on a cookie sheet in the freezer overnight.   The next morning, they all went into a 1 gallon ziplock.   Sucked the air out and sealed it.    This is probably 3 servings right here.   I think I have about 60 more servings in the garden.   Kale's easy to grow (just water it, give it a dusting of diatomaceous earth for bugs) and nutritious.   It's more of an add-on, I wouldn't eat it plain, but added to soups, bean dishes and as a side dish it's excellent.   Plus, since I grew it, no pesticides.

Foster Earth Day Cleanup, part 2

The results are in:

We did about 275 people and we disposed of 20,407 pounds of household hazardous waste, included was 9 thermostats and  15 pounds of mercury, 150 pounds of bulbs, 75 pounds of CFLs and 15 pounds of sharps.  Also this number does not include any paint disposed of under the Paintcare program (probably another 12,000 pounds)!

It cost the town nothing - but the RI Resource Recovery Corp spent almost $15000 to run this.

Thanks residents of Foster!

Natural garden pest control

As the garden is under siege from leaf miners, potato beetles and slugs, and the apples are under attack from tent and gypsy moth caterpillars, I've decided to get into natural pest control methods.

Slugs were the most interesting.   They were doing a number on my strawberries, and last year devoured my cucumber seedlings in 1 night.   I read that you can leave a board on the ground, and they'll crawl under it.   Then you simply pick up the board and get rid of the slugs.   Since it takes > 1 day for a slug to grow, if you do this daily after a few days you've knocked down the lion's share of the slugs.   In dry weather I had no luck, only crickets seemed interested in hiding under the board.   After yesterday's rain, however, I went out and saw this on the bottom of the board:

 

I figured I'd let the circle of life complete, so I brought the board up to the chix.   Oddly, they weren't terribly interested.   But after I put some scratch on the board, they came racing over.

Later I went back up and almost all the slugs were gone, so I think they got the idea.

The apple trees are getting devoured by tent caterpillars, and today I saw them on the poplars as well.  So I busted out the Neem oil, mixed up a gallon and sprayed everything that I could reach.

I did the plants in the garden as well; eggplant, squash/zucchini, pumpkin, potatoes, hot peppers and strawberries.   I skipped the onions, garlic and carrots since they seemed immune.  So, I either killed the plants, or in a few days when the bugs eat the plants, they'll drop dead.   But, it's better than spraying poison.

I'm also going to put Tanglefoot on as a way to keep the trees safe from the caterpillars.