Chocolate Cheesecake Frozen (goat milk) Yogurt

With all the excess milk around the place, I decided to make yogurt last week.

My first step was to culture a jar of milk. I used a couple tablespoons of plain Chobani greek style yogurt. I didn't heat the milk up, adding culture to already warm milk has been giving me more of a cheese like product.

Then I let it sit on the counter for the day. I don't have a yogurt maker or even a heat pad, and wanted to try a colder incubation temperature. I let it set until I could see yogurt globs and whey starting to separate.

Then, I let it sit in the refrigerator for a few days. I tend to get busy and forget stuff, but this didn't need immediate attending to.

When I had time, I filtered as much whey as I could get out of the yogurt with a milk filter.

After a week in the refrigerator, I decided it tasted perfect. Because I don't use any thickeners, it was kind of a runny concoction. I'll have to experiment with thickening agents soon.

Yesterday afternoon, I decided it would be better as frozen yogurt. Why not!?

I added a bunch of chocolate syrup to the yogurt and shook it well. It turned brown, with some white specks in it. The white specks were the cream that I couldn't get when I skimmed it off before yogurt making. And, it was delicious cultured cream, like a very mild cream cheese. Perfect with chocolate!!

After mixing in the chocolate real well, I put the whole jar in the freezer with the lid on loosely. I took it out of the freezer every few hours and shook it up, then returned it to the freezer.

This morning after finishing the chores, I checked on it.

It had frozen to a beautiful not quite solid, not quite creamy consistency. The white cream chunks were still intact and visible in the mixture. I dipped in a spoon, and tasted my handiwork. It's amazing tasting!! It is very rich though, and I couldn't eat very much of it.

So here's the recipe, for anyone who cares to try this.

One quart goat milk, raw

Two tablespoons plain yogurt

Chocolate syrup to taste



Take chilled milk from refrigerator and skim whatever cream has separated off the top. No need to be diligent about this step, the resulting cultured cream cheese actually compliments this frozen treat. Eat the cream, or save it and add to the yogurt right before freezing it.

pour about a cup of milk into a glass. Add two tablespoons plain yogurt (I used Chobani brand).

Stir well until yogurt has dissolved and no chunks remain. Dump this mixture back into the container of milk.

Put lid on jar loosely, do not tighten. Let it sit on your counter until you see some definite yogurt action happening. I let mine incubate about 8 hours, but you may need more or less time.

Return to refrigerator when you feel your mixture is yogurt and not milk. Ignore the whey that is starting to separate out. Whey is an almost clear liquid, a by-product of Greek yogurt. It won't harm anything.

Let it chill in the refrigerator for....idk? Three, four days maybe.

Strain your whey off, to the best of your ability. Use muslin cloth, cheesecloth, pantyhose (my favorite so far!), milk filters, coffee filters, whatever will strain the liquid out and not the solids. Cheesemaking and dairy products should be fun, not a chore with exact temperatures to attain and special equipment to spend money on. Use what you've got, and have fun!!

Anyway, is your whey strained off yet? I tend to be an impatient soul, and not all the whey drained out of mine. That is OK, just do what you can and put it back in the refrigerator when you're tired of straining.
Try to make sure you don't strain ALL the whey off, you want yogurt consistency and not yogurt cheese.

After another 4 days, or two weeks or whatever you choose, remove the yogurt from refrigerator. It should still have a more mild taste and not be punch you in the face tangy.

Add chocolate syrup, a bunch of it. Taste the mixture, is it chocolatey enough? If not, add lots more. If so, add just a little bit more and mix the syrup in well. Add cream and mix in at this stage, if you saved your skimmings.

Put it in the freezer, container and all. Keep the lid loose so the liquid expansion doesn't crack the jar.

Let it freeze, it takes quite awhile. Every 4 hours or so if possible take the jar out and shake its contents. Don't forget to tighten your lid first!

When it's frozen, it is done. Enjoy!

Cordwood Shed Build, Part 2

The shed project is coming along very slowly, but some definite progress has been made. This is a heck of a lot of work, compared with conventional shed building!

In my last shed related post, I was preparing poles for the loft in the shed. We'll continue where I left off.

I finished prepping and sanding the poles, then covered them with roofing tar and let them set out overnight. I saved the ends of the poles to cut up for the wall.

Then I dug out holes directly underneath where my loft corners are, using a plumb bob. I backfilled the holes to get the posts set to exactly the right height and set straight, with the loft above them level.
Then I used cement and packed it into the holes tightly for stability.

I had cut notches into the posts before setting them in their holes. The shelf of the notches support the loft framing.

These are my very first notches of any kind, and were cut myself (yep....a girl did this!). Using an old handsaw with the broken handle held together with Gorilla tape was not the least bit helpful... but now the job is done, and it looks 'rustic'. Hand hewn for sure.

I purposefully left the lip of the 2x6 the posts support proud of the pole, as sort of a reminder of where the edge of the loft is while I am up there.

Nice and level on the lip of the 2x6. The side edges of the loft have been set level too, but the level and my eye disagree. It looks crooked to me somehow!

A better look at the new, smaller loft.

Here are before and after photos of the loft renovation.

The section I cut out of the loft fit almost perfectly within the poles on one end. It's not siding, but why not? The framing was almost perfect for this temporary wall! have definite plans to expand this wall out later, but am trying not to get too far ahead of myself on this.

The gap at the bottom will be fixed with cinder blocks and pinned into the ground with rebar, then filled with cement. Just like the foundation of my two cordwood walls are done, but for this wall also.

Then I used the last part of a bag of mortar that was open, and made some small progress on the cordwood wall. My pointing skills need definite help!

Notice the cracks that developed already in the mortar at the bottom where I started the wall this last week. Definitely not going to do cordwood again, at this point.

My mortar mix may need to be fine tuned, instead of mixing my own mortar I have been buying it bagged and adding wet sawdust. I am torn on whether to go through the bother of mixing my own for 16' of total wall I have planned with this buildng method.

Log cabin style next? Stockade walls? I have plenty of small posts already cut and drying, and some nice size knobcone timbers, and an Alaska sawmill that is one heck of a workout to mill logs with.  We will see!

That's about it for shed progress this week.
I have a table saw available and set up at the site for use now, and plan on cutting more wood pieces to length before working on this more. Tomorrow I have another project to do some work on and I will return to this labor of love next week!

To be continued, of course.

Hardscrabble Products September 2016

We don't have much off the farm this month. The garden is doing poorly for the most part.

Chicken:
We still have a couple of extra broilers in the freezer. Price is $5 per lb for pasture raised chickens. Whole or parts available.

Goat milk:

I have one milk share available this summer. Contact me for details, this will supply you with around a gallon a week.

I do sometimes have misc milk available for soap or feeding animals, cheesemaking, ect. Supplied by the quart, courtesy of Opal. Ask about supply beforehand, also willing to barter for farm eggs and produce.

Culinary and medicinal herbs:

I have fresh rosemary this month in large quantity.

Golden Lemon thyme available in small quantities.

Lemon balm available in quantity.

Aloe vera available in small quantities.

Echinacea flower available in small quantity. Flowers are dry.

Herb prices vary and are sold by the oz.

Contact me for pricing or availability any time.
Hardscrabblehomestead@gmail.com

Hand Cut Posts

So I decided I needed some extra supports for the loft in the shed, and have tenative ideas about pulling half of the loft out in favor of lighting and a ceiling fan sometime in the future. It would give the structure a less claustrophobic, hobbit hole kind of feeling and open up some needed headspace.

It would also reduce my total square footage, not that the loft space is very big to begin with. We will see, but the supports are needed whether or not part of the loft gets cut out.

Off to find some support beams.

Here, we have rough lengths from a standing dead knobcone pine that was cut down several months ago.

This is what the poles look like when I drag them out of the woods.

I cut all the pine cones, branches and rough cut limb ends down with a handsaw. I strip the bark off with my pocket knife.

Pine beetle damage underneath the bark. This is what killed the tree.

All peeled, bucked, cleaned and sanded with rough grit sandpaper.

I finished one post this morning and am more than halfway done with the second post. When I am finished, these will be cut to length and then the ends will be sliced up to be put into the walls.

Cordwood Shed Build, part 1

A few months back, I decided I needed a hay shed. So I grabbed some warped 4x6s from the scrap lumber pile and drove them into the ground. They weren't square what with the poles warping and my lack of carpentry skill...but hey, it's just for hay! 

Then I added loft framing, and roof rafters. Here is the framing on the shed almost complete.

By this time I had started thinking,
"hey this thing is pretty cool, wonder if I could enclose it for a studio?"

Uh-oh, sounds like I've just talked myself into a lot of extra work.... and I'm STILL going to need a hay shed one of these days!

I added plywood to the loft area first.

Then I added plywood for the roof sheathing.

I used rolled roofing to cover the shed.  Then I sawed off all the ends that stuck out from the loft framing.

The ladder makes the roof looked bowed, but it is not. The ladder is pushing down on the roofing overlap.

Scrap lumber to cut down to size for the walls.

I used cinder blocks with rebar driven into them for wall foundation. I am using this Cordwood method for just two walls for now, to see if this is a good building idea or not.

Cement added to the middle of the cinder blocks and around the rebar anchors.

At this point, I realized that these walls aren't going to be square. Buy hey, no cordwood wall is ever perfectly straight!

The next step was to mortar all the cinder blocks together at the ends. I tried to be careful but my masonry skills just are NOT up to par. Anyone who tells you cordwood masonry takes no skill, is a liar!

Two and a half rods of cut down rebar, eleven cinder blocks, two and a half bags of concrete (mixed and poured by hand), and about half a bag of mortar went into two small wall foundations.


This wall is totally gonna look like a girl built it...... because guess what, she did!

When the foundation was finished, I used the extra mortar mixed in with about 20% wet sawdust and filled in a small part on the base of the smaller wall. I am still waiting on more scrap lumber ends and 6 inch cordwood rounds!

My frank opinion of this building method, so far, is not that great. This is a lot of heavy lifting, lots of mortar and concrete to mix, there's a ton of bending and stooping involved, and more time consuming than I thought imaginable. This is a LOT of work to put up a wall!!

The economic savings aren't very big, but hopefully this will insulate sufficiently so I won't have to insulate and finish the inside of the walls. If nothing else, it sure looks cool...

To be continued --

Wiring Schematics for Main Solar system

Before I forget-- For anyone wanting to try the DIY solar approach, I have found our original wiring schematics. This is old and beat up, we had it hanging on the wall by the charge controller for a very long time before taking it down. The size of the wiring you use and distance between your components make a big difference, so here is how to do it "to code".

If there are any questions, feel free to email us! We 'll do our best to help.

Hardscrabble's Main Solar System

I'm posting about our solar systems today, so everyone can see where our electricity comes from and how easy it is to set up yourself.

First we have the solar panels. These are sets of (3) 275-watt panels wired in series. There are two sets of panels (6 total) powering the main system. That gives us around 1,150 watts of peak power coming in.

All panel wiring comes to an emergency shut off box before going in to the charge controller.

The panel wires come in to the charge controller, which moniters how much power is coming into the system and adjusts everything accordingly. This component is crucial, it keeps your batteries from getting overcharged and tells you how much power you are producing. It is also programmable to do a whole lot of other cool stuff, like equalizing your battery bank.

From the charge controller, the power goes back outside to the batteries. Here, you see (2) 6volt T-105 golf cart batteries. They are wired in series to give us 12volt of power.

In addition to the solar system wiring, there is an auxillary 12v pump and DC lights wired to the batteries.

From the batteries, we have wires coming into the back of our inverter. The wiring used is the size of battery cables and can be difficult to work with. From the front of the inverter there is a power squid. There is space at the back of the inverter to run your own house wiring from it, if you so choose. No way I was ripping out the walls here to do that, though!

This setup allows us to charge phones, run lights, charge the cordless drill, run a fan, watch movies, ect. It isn't big enough to power a vaccum or the air conditioner or power tools.

For everything the solar system can't handle, there is the generator. This one is a Harbor Freight special, and has been amazingly faithful considering its source. She just got a spark plug change last weekend and is still running strong.

The generator only gets regular use for the air conditioning in summer. Less regular uses for it are the vaccum (we have hardwood floors so mostly just sweep it), charging batteries during long winter storms, running the table saw (or Skilsaw...or the Sawzall, you get the idea.)