Whew! I thought I had lots to write about as the week drew to a close, and then this Sunday turned out to be as full and eventful as any other day of the week. August is unquestionably among the busiest times of year for me, so this should not come as a surprise, but with the earlier part of summer washed out by endless rains, this August feels more vital than usual to working down my to-do list for the year. Ted here to bring you a taste of ecovillage living from this week.
Produce from our gardens finally started rolling in with noticeable abundance in the past couple weeks. I made tomato, cucumber, and basil salads to my heart’s content and we still dehydrated several rounds of tomatoes and started a gallon jar of pickles fermenting… and we’re not even growing any cucumbers in Ironweed garden this year.
Saturday evening Kirksville-area grower Mark Slaughter dropped by with a truck bed of sweet corn, and upon returning from goat milking in the evening I was glad to see that Sara was already there with a wheelbarrow acquiring a goodly mound of eight dozen or so. There is nothing so wonderful as an unexpected mound of corn sufficient to satisfy the village’s collective desires in August.
I’d expected to help shuck corn first thing Sunday morning, but upon the arrival of Mae with the morning’s goat milk and Alyssa with those pickling cukes, I had to shift my focus to brining the pickles and making cheese, and leave the corn processing in Sara and Kale’s capable hands.
With the kids weaned a month or so ago, we of the goat coop have gotten into a regular take of half a gallon of milk each morning and each evening from our two milking does, Curly Sue and Alice. Workhorse Mae milks every morning, week in and week out, while Rae and I are alternating weeks on the evening shifts. We each take the milk from our respective shifts, so I end up with a good three-and-a-half gallons or more minimum per week, plus some of Mae’s when she has more than she can store. In addition to the couple gallons of cow milk from our local dairy that I’m still getting each week for yogurt making and kitchen use, it sometimes seems that a majority of our fridge space is going to one form or another of dairy product. Don’t get me wrong, this dairy boy is happy as can be! But our kitchen can only consume so much in a week in any one form.
Therefore cheese-making has featured more and more regularly in our kitchen of late. I’ve experimented now and again with making cheese over the years here, and acquired the equipment I need, but never managed until now to make it with any regularity. The steady influx of raw ingredients makes it hard to avoid if I want to preserve the bounty. With work-exchangers Kale and Amy as my milking buddies and Kale my partner in cheese-making, we’ve so far produced a cheddar, some chèvre and another soft cheese, a cow-goat haloumi (a brined style native to Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean), and finally feta.
If you’ve never made cheese, you may be surprised at how minimal are the differences in recipe between one variety and another… a few degrees higher or lower temperature, pressed versus hung to drain… waxed and aged or brined instead. But the source milk does make a notable difference, both in flavor and in how the curd behaves, and the flavor of some styles like feta traditionally made with goat or sheep milk can’t be completely duplicated with cow. As an aspiring cheese maker, I feel blessed to have access to this variety of organic, raw, local milk.
With all the whey produced (each gallon of milk generally produces a pound of cheese and still leaves most of a gallon of whey) we’ve also boiled it to produce ricotta, which still leaves gallons of nutritious whey for feeding our dog, cat, and chickens as well as use in cooking.
The hardest part of breaking into a new skill set like this is just gaining familiarity with the techniques and rough shape of the process. In the case of cheese, there are lots of steps in developing the curd, but lots of resting stages as well; as I gain that familiarity, I am more and more able to integrate other tasks into the time between steps. The next frontier is working on developing aging facilities for hard cheeses. Come fall and spring our root cellar will work nicely with its high humidity and cool temperatures, but it is too warm in high summer, too cold in winter. A small refrigerator running at about 50 degrees may be my solution until the berm on our house is finished and the temperature in the root cellar stays within the appropriate range for more of the year.
Numerous other events kept me busy this week, from erecting a shed addition to serve as a pottery studio, to repairing small plaster cracks and oiling the newly-plastered cob bench in our home and floor in our kitchen, watching baby chicks hatch under one of our hens, and re-capturing a swarm of bees that had escaped my too-crowded hive.
Illly and Rae had two swarms issue from their hive recently, as you may have read in our column, and when the second occurred, Illly and I made a quick trip out to the Dadant factory in eastern Illinois to pick up the more hive bodies and supers and other supplies we each needed. When Dennis alerted them Friday to the swarm erupting from my hive down in our orchard, my fellow bee keepers called me over and also supplied me with the now-built hive bodies I needed to catch them in.
Kale and I suited up in the new bee suits I’d bought, and we went out and successfully caught the swarm. As my first experience in catching a swarm, it could not have gone much more smoothly, and I certainly benefited from having watched the Rae and Illly do it recently. Now I need to get the other supers built so that each of my two hives will have enough expansion room to keep them from wanting to swarm again. No rest!
Sunday the village gathered for a plenary (a consensus meeting of all villagers willing/able to attend, which was our baseline decision-making structure for our first 15 years) to select the slate for our next village council. In recent months the existing council agreed to reduce the size of the council from seven to five members, reflecting both the cost of sustaining the council (councilors are compensated for some of their time) and the village’s current population, holding around 60. With four of the current seven cycling off of their two-year terms, that left two to select to keep the council at five members.
Many considerations go into the choice, from gender balance to longevity of village experience, the ability to bridge between different points of view, facility with a variety of skills important to the functioning of the council, and ability to represent a range of villagers’ standpoints on any given topic. Group discussion in this case suggested that the two slates nominated would both generally meet the village’s and the council’s needs. Ultimately we decided to add Alyssa and I to Dan, Hassan, and Mae, who are at the middle of their 2-year terms. Tereza, Bear, Sara, and Katherine are cycling off and filtering back into their non-councilor village lives with our collective thanks.
Hassan and Danielle returned from most of a month’s trip to Europe, where they met up with also-traveling Ironweed members and Rabbits Stephen and Erica in Erica’s native Torino (Turin), Italy. Their trip included visits to several ecovillages and intentional communities, so kitchen conversation since their return has included some thought-provoking descriptions of how people in other countries and cultures are approaching cooperative living. Wrapping up their time in Scotland, they also noted the weather differences, traveling in short order from cold and windy North Sea exposures to the dog days of our Northeast Missouri summer.
While in a lull between visitor sessions, we are anticipating the Permaculture Design Course being taught at Dancing Rabbit starting the end of August, followed shortly by our annual Open House September 12. Here’s hoping we’ll see you here for one or the other! Meanwhile we hope your summer harvests are abundant and your preparations for the coming turn of seasons successful.
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Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and nonprofit outside Rutledge, in northeast Missouri, focused on demonstrating sustainable living possibilities. Find out more about us by visiting our website, reading our blog, or emailing us.