How Dry I Am...

So this is the plum wine - after being removed (or "racked" as those in the know, know) with a siphon hose, from the 2 big 5 gallon crocks - in all its murky glory in a 6 gallon carboy and 1 gallon glass bottle.  Yes, that's right, 7 gallons.  But when I get done with it all (in about 6 months apparently) there will probably only be about 6 gallons (which apparently translates to about 24 bottles of wine - jackpot!!!!).  

The racking process was, how should I word this, horrible.  I was not a happy camper.  There are many recipes online and in books for fruit wines and some tell you to use a nylon bag to hold the pulpy goods while it is all fermenting away - and some do not.  Let me tell you friends - use the freaking bag.  I will never ever ever make fruit wine without a bag ever again.  There was a ton of freaking pulp and skin action and it was really hard to get it out and I think I oxidized my wine about as much as you possibly can - which is not good - but I had no choice, unless I wanted to eat plum wine as one might eat a bowl of apple sauce.  

So the fun times took place yesterday - and the multiple hour-long process wiped out the miniscule amount of energy I had - due to 3 or 4 days or 100+ degree temps - so for most of the day I laid in the RV watching old horror movies.  

I checked on the goods today and this is what they look like...

Oh how did that little guy get in there...too freaking cute.  

There they are.  So you can see that the mucky muck is settling - there are layers of settle - or settlement or what have you.  So basically what I am going to try to do is let this settle out for about a week and then rack it to another container to get some of that sludge (or lees, as they like to call it) off the bottom and then I plan on following the rest of the directions from this website.  This store is in Hillsboro and is the one I have been getting all my paraphernalia and advise from.  So it seems to me - from doing a hydrometer reading (which was something like .995, or thereabouts) - that I am ready to move onto one of the steps they guy has - of adding the juice from some additional plums to give the whole thing more flavor and body.  Right now the wine tastes and smells alcoholy - and is completely dry.  If I just left it the way it is it would be pretty bland, i think.  

Here is a photo of the utensil aftermath.  I fashioned my own giant funnel from a gallon milk jug - that was Baron's brilliant idea - what a genius!  I was running around like a wiped out loser and really needed the help.

Ok - that's about it for now - even though I would love to write more someday about the cute shorts I've made myself recently - and the fact that I haven't washed my hair with shampoo or soap or anything like that for about 3 months.  But I must go and post more items on eBay.  Etsy's been a little slow lately - but I have faith.  

Two 5-gallon Crocks of Wine on the Wall, Two 5-gallon Crocks of Wine....

So, my Saturday plans took a very early change in direction when I got a call from my neighbor around 9am.  She wanted me to come over and pick the excess of plums, gooseberries, lettuce and rhubarb from her garden.  I had orignally set off to complete some dismembered Homey key rings I had been working on when I got the call and drove on over.  I was told, about the plum picking,  to take as many as I wanted - not to be shy (I was not) and was told later to just take them all (thank god I did not). As it is, I wound up leaveing with well over 32 pounds.  The top photo was taken after I had already removed 8 pounds of plums.  The basket had been almost full when I finished picking - and that ain't no skippin' through the woods basket there.  So I decided that what I would do, since I am living in an RV at the moment and doing most of my cooking with either a rice cooker or a crock pot and have no way of canning or baking anything, that making wine would be the logical thing to do.  

No, I have never made wine before.  

No, I do not have a clean place to do it.  

No, I do not have one place to work where there is running water AND ample storage space.  

No, I do not have any wine making equipment.  

No, I have never been to a wine making store.  

And yes, most of my kitchen equipment is still packed.

So here's what went down...

1) I washed and pitted the plums into a small, one ounce container onto a 1# postal scale to get an idea of what one pound of plums was like and then squashed the plums into a larger container that held 4 pounds.  

2) I cleaned a 5 gallon crock (outside with the hose and some dish soap) and sterilized it (bleach - ackkkk!) and set it up in the basement of the house - which stays btwn 50-70 degrees in the summer - and ran the 4# container out to the crock till there was 16# of squashed plums in there.  16 pounds seemed like a good amount for the 5 gallon crock - which was about a third filled by now.

3)  I realized that I had at least 16 more pounds of plums left in the basket!!!!  

4)  I washed another 5 gallon crock and set it up next to the first one and ran another 4 of the 4 # containers of squashed plums out to the second crock.   Now I had two 5 gallon crocks with 16 pounds of plum mush sitting in my basement.

My freak out was not over.  I had to then go to my local wine making store and get some campden tablets to kill any pathogens or wild yeasts on the plums, and the wine yeast.  I got the Red Star Pasteur Red (85 cents) and a Vintner's Harvest VR21  (2.95) yeasts - both of which are supposed to be good for plum wine.  At some point I will compare the two yeasts in a blow by blow yeast-off and discuss the yeast-on-yeast action that took place, but for now I am going to focus on my freak out.  So I came home and put the campden tablets and some boiling water in with the plums and covered it all up.  Then I spent hours online looking at wine making websites and recipes.  I had originally planned on using the recipe from The Alaskan Bootlegger's Bible by Leon W. Kania, and for the most part, I am  - but after all the research I decided to reduce the sugar way way down.  So we'll see what happens.  

So what I have is:

16# of plums in each crock

around 3 gallons of water in each crock 

5 # of sugar in each crock

and each crock has a different yeast 

 I started both of the yeasts in the RV and let them sit overnight after feeding them with sugar water and lemon juice a few times and added both of them to the crocks today.  The temp in the basement has been around 70 all day and so far I have stirred the crust down twice!  The crust is this thick hard sponge-like mass that forms on the surface.  It's really interesting!  Soon I will be writing about the gooseberry, blackberry and rhubarb wines I will be making!  

Clothesline of the Gods

After much plotting and planning and thinking and procrastinating and wishing and hoping and then not really caring but then caring a lot again and still more procrastinating - I finally strung 2 clotheslines today!  I screwed some hooks and eyes and whatnot into a few trees and strung some bright blue plastic coated clothesline wire stuff and then proceeded to use it.  I am pretty excited about it.  I don't particularly like hand washing clothes but since we have no washer at the moment I'd much rather spend the time doing it by hand than driving into Forest Grove
and doing it at a laundromat.  My grand plan is to do my laundry at the mat once a month and the rest of the month to do a hand job, as it were.  In this photo you can see the porch outside my office.  There is a bridge (that's what all those boards are) going from this higher area to the second floor of the house.  Below this is the car port and the main entrance to the house.  If you look really closely you can see my unmentionables dangling from a line inside the covered porch area.  I'm glad I got all this done early cause it was freaking hot today.  The chickens were fine though.  No broken necks or hen on hen action thank god.  Ok - must go.  I am very close to finishing the book "I'm Down" by Mishna Wolff (I'm not in league with the publisher - I actually checked it out from the library) and I totally love it.  I just love disgruntled childhood/crazy parent memoirs.  Czech it out if you can.

Chicken with a Broken Neck?????

MMMMk.  This is the second time this has happened.  Last week during a head splitting heat wave (I'm not a fan of any temp over 78 degrees), we noticed that one of our roosters, Little Pappy, was drooping.  And was being harassed by the other roosters.  There are diseases that make a chicken head droop.  I know this because last summer another rooster, Elvis, was displaying the exact same symptoms.  Droopy head, poor balance, hiding in a corner, etc, etc, etc.  We looked online and called area vets (don't even bother) and eventually contacted the local extension service and found out that it sounded like a broken neck.  You may be asking, as we were, how a chicken could be alive with a broken neck.  Well, I still don't have the answer.  This is the second time this has happened and I still don't understand it.  The rooster with the formerly broken neck called Elvis is fine now.  If you push up on his neck you can tell it's not quite right - but he runs around all over and has his way with the ladies and eats and lives a chicken life.  We are hoping the same will happen with Little Pappy.  He seems to be getting better (the incident happened about 5 days ago), but he seems to be more afraid of us touching and feeding him than Elvis was.  Anywho...not much else to report.  I'm adding more antique photos to my Etsy store and some old figurines to my eBay account.  I'm planning on making spaghetti with meat sauce in my rice cooker tonight.  Along with a tomato, feta, red bell pepper, basil, balsamic, oil salad.  Sorry no photo - I don't want to have a pic of my roosters with broken necks.  It's not nice to see.


UPDATE 10/20/10
I just happened to notice today that this post is my most hit-upon post of all time - so I thought I'd follow through with a bit of info.  Little Pappy is doing fine.  Unfortunately this "broken neck" thing has happened 5 times in the last 3 years (to both roosters and hens).  I don't know why it happens or if their necks are even really broken or just sprained - but all of them healed fine.  Whenever it would happen we would isolate the chicken so that they did not get pecked to death (it happens - chickens are pretty cruel) and just let them sit in a small cage for a few days.  They won't really want to move much at all.  Throughout the day we try and give them a bit of water with a syringe (or a plastic bag with the very tip of the corner cut off - sort of like a make shift pastry bag) and I usually set out some yoghurt or something really soft for them to eat when they are able to.  They do seem to pretty much heal on their own.  Anyway - that's about it.  And sorry Lulu that I never responded to your post.  I just noticed it today!

2nd UPDATE 10/5/11
Oh!  I just realized (two years later) another pretty key element in the healing process that we did - I can't believe I forgot!  We would always give them a little bit of liquid baby vitamins in the water that we would give them in the dropper.  I can't find the brand name at the moment - but they are very easy to find - at any drug store - and you just need to make sure you get the version without iron.  I would give them just a few drops in the water and it helps - esp if they are not able to eat.  You can also give it to them in a chicken waterer - but you would probably want to use a whole dropper full and change it out every day.  And yogurt or kefir is really good to give them just so they have lots of beneficial stuff going for them during this down time.

3rd UPDATE 8/2/12
I have another post on helping a goose with an injured neck here.