Another Bread Fail?

 ...Or at least call it a less-than-optimal rise.  I baked another 100% whole wheat loaf, this time with Red Fife wheat, which is (so far) my favorite.  Here's the result:

It's not exactly a failed loaf; it's just more dense than normal. The comparison loaf is 100% white flour, which is always very fluffy. The rare 100% whole wheat splitting top crust was nowhere to be seen.  Still, I have had worse experiences.

 I think in this case the flour may have been slightly too hydrated, and the stones of my grinder may have snuck apart on me and may need adjustment again.  That was a main factor behind the epic Emmer disaster. The other factor was over-hydration, and the two may go together.  Under-ground wheat = less water needed for making the sponge.  If one does not adjust for that, it's a soggy, grainy mess that doesn't rise.  I'll try again, but will go back to 50% for a while in the meantime.

Apricot Sludge

 The title may not be very appetizing.  However, it's a reasonable way to characterize what I found when I recently opened a jar of apricots that were canned a few years ago. Would 'Viscous Apricot Syrup' be any better?

I've written before about canning apricots.  It's a pretty straightforward process.  And I have written before about the storage life of canned food.  It's more than a year.

These apricots were canned in the summer of 2016, so were about four years old when opened.  As you can see, they're a little darker than when fresh, but the flavor was fine.  What may or may not be easy to see is that the syrup has turned into more of a gel:

I assume this is the action of the pectin, present at varying levels in many or most fruits.  There are no problems with quality, either of the syrup or of the fruit itself.  I don't know how long canned fruit is good for, but it seems to stretch at least four years.  As I've noted before, as well, I've opened four-year-old jars of peach preserves, too, and found them to be fine.  One exception is some sugar-free peach preserves I made with Whey Low one time; I didn't write about the effort at the time, but I followed my normal process, except substituting Whey Low for sugar.  The Whey Low, after about three years, had granulated, making the preserves somewhat disturbingly crunchy (although the flavor was okay).

I haven't seen this same gelling process with pears, which have more pectin, but I don't have any that have been canned for as long as the apricots.  The same thing may happen with them, as well, if they are on the shelf for a couple more years.

Patching Clothes, Three Years Later

 Almost three years ago I wrote about a pair of jeans that had a tear in the knee that I fixed.  Here's how the patch looks now:

As you can see, it's still holding up pretty well, despite some additional fuzziness as the surrounding areas fray a bit because they weren't completely stitched down.  The jeans accumulated another small tear this last summer, which was easily secured without a patch:

Other than that, they're still going strong.  They get worn and washed almost weekly, so they have about 150 additional washings at this point.  If a garment is too badly worn or torn, it might not be worth saving.  However, an evaluation is called for--being able to keep things in service longer is well worth the relatively small amount of effort it takes (sometimes).

 

Fall Color Variations

 Here are just a couple of fall pictures.  The autumn color here hasn't been that good this year; a lot of leaves were blown down by storms and the trees are turning late.  The hickories and red maples in the woods are pretty nice, but the poplars were largely barren already.

I think both of these are sassafras seedlings.  The first one is what I have assumed to be the more typical color, yellow:

Nearby, on the other side of the driveway is this:

Doing a Google image search reveals that orange sassafras is common, but most of what I have seen has been yellow...or maybe that's just what I have looked for (see, for another example, the first picture in this post).  More interesting is that I don't see any adult sassafras trees around, but these are within about 20 feet of each other and may have originated from the same parent.

Otherwise, this fall in Georgia has been pretty disappointing.  Many leaves dropped while green.  Now in late November, many trees are bare, while others are just turning.  Some oaks are still mostly green.  It has been odd.

 

Building the Chicken Tractor, Random Notes

 In no particular order:

A ripped 2x2 (i.e., a 2x4 cut in half lengthwise) is going to be 1.75" x 1.5".   If the side vertical supports are not positioned so that the widths match (i.e., the 2x2 has to be turned so that it is aligned with the base and top frame) then attaching the diagonal braces may be difficult. If this is remembered only after the vertical supports are all in place, shims may be needed in places.

I did build another one for a second brood.  I incorporated several design modifications, some of which worked well.  One that I think will be a big improvement is diagonal bracing in the corners of the top. Shown below is the top laid on top of the tractor before the addition of the side and roof panels.

 

 

 

I added metal angle braces to the top corners of the first tractor, but they weren't very effective in fixing the movement.

Also somewhat visible in the picture above is the framework for the lowered nest boxes.  I used an additional horizontal bar to anchor the top of the vertical supports around the next boxes, but in retrospect, I could have just made the verticals longer to reach the top bar.  That certainly would have been easier. However, the added horizontal support provides an anchor point for the roofing panel material that needs to be added above the boxes...otherwise, it'd just be sharp metal.  It would probably not injure the chickens but might injure me when pulling the boxes out.

Because the nest boxes are lower, there is more of a gap at the top.  To prevent chickens from jumping in when I have the boxes closed off from access (as I will this time until they are about ready to start laying), I put in side and front curtains to limit the space to about what it would have been if the boxes had been as high as called for in the plans.

Here's a view from the front: I don't think it's as crooked as it looks in the picture; it's just due to the angle of the shot (though the perch is definitely crooked--by design).

I also made the tractor bidirectional by adding holes to the front wheel blocks for wheels if needed.  Instead of metal eye hooks, I just threaded the rope through them for pulling.  I expect to seldom switch the wheels, but it would be nice to have the ability if needed.  It's much easier to pull the tractor than push it.  Wheels at each end, though, probably would not work very well.  The five inch lawnmower wheels provide very little ground clearance.  On rough ground the back sill plate scrapes.  Trying to roll on four wheels wouldn't help that and would actually make it worse.

 

Those are the primary additional design changes, along with using galvanized or stainless hardware throughout (not for the screws; those are standard coated torx-head deck screws, but for the hinges and hasps).

 

Update:  This hasn't been as successful as hoped: See this post.

 

 

More on Old Beans

 A few years ago I discussed ways to deal with old pinto beans (and other dry beans).  I mentioned that pressure cooking them for 15 minutes seemed to work (the manual for my cooker suggests 3-6 minutes for pinto beans, so 15 is a substantial increase in cooking time).  I had some more very old beans (vintage 2011, not stored in an oxygen-free environment) in the pantry that I decided to try to prepare.

A new pinto bean is at the top for comparison.  When I soaked the beans overnight, they did swell substantially, so that was a good sign.  I poured off the water and pressure cooked them together with granulated garlic, dried minced onion, and some salt pork (rather than bacon, of which I did not have any thawed).  This was the result:

They're still quite dark, and hadn't absorbed as much of the cooking water as anticipated (compare to the results from a previous effort):

This time, the beans were also a bit al dente. Longer cooking time may have helped.  Possibly 20 minutes?  Aside from the firmness, they tasted fine.  The nutritional content might have been lacking in some categories.

I don't really have much information on beans stored in a light- and oxygen-free container.  They are probably better.  Cyrus Larson, et al. at  BYU tested vacuum-packed dry beans aged up to 32 years and found that they were at least edible.

Black Walnut Harvest

 It's black walnut time.  I haven't improved my process much over what I have discussed before.  It's still a multi-step, somewhat slow process. I have gotten faster: a full 5-gallon bucket can be processed in 30-40 minutes.

The first step is to gather them; shown above are some walnuts that had been on the ground no more than about four days.  They soon start to turn black, as noted previously; the hull rapidly breaks down.  That's what it's designed to do.  The hull contains a hefty dose of juglone to suppress nearby vegetation, thus giving the nut the best chance to sprout and grow.

When the hull is black and soft, it can still be removed, though it gets a little more difficult.  If it dries down around the nut, as sometimes happens, it's extremely hard to remove, as discussed before.

Hammering the hulls off is messy and slow.  I'm still nowhere as fast as Rbeckism.  He spent about 5 seconds per walnut; I average a more (maybe 10 seconds), although speed is improving.

Once the majority of the hulls are knocked off:

 

I swirl them in water a few times to get them something approaching clean.

 

 

 

 

I'm not going for works of art; these are clean enough.  I've noticed over the years that walnuts are vulnerable to mold when the unhulled nuts are stored in buckets and when they are wet (as in the picture above) after hulling.  They need to be dried relatively quickly, and will retain moisture for a time. Shown above are nuts immediately after washing; below are several boxes of nuts, with the middle three boxes nearly dry.

 

One caveat, as noted previously:  the hulls stain.  If there are no husk flies, the juice from the hulls is a dark yellow, but it causes dark brown stains.  The left glove above is the one that holds the hulls while I knock them off with the hammer; it's badly stained.  Somewhere along the way, I got a small leak in my left glove, which led to my hand getting some stain on it.

This isn't entirely surprising.  The ridges on the nuts are very sharp.  One probably nicked a little hole in one of the fingers, even though the gloves are very thick.

 I'm still in the midst of the harvest.  In mid-October, my tree is at peak nut drop (curiously, the other tree didn't produce any nuts this year--which is fine...the one that has a bumper crop is the best tree for nut quality).

 To some degree, hulling is the easy part.  Next comes cracking...