Checking in with bees

 There are a few flowers left in the fall for bees to forage. This was earlier in October.

But they are beginning to cluster especially on the colder days.

When I took the first picture 3 bees came out of the cluster to see what was happening at their entrance.

On the same day, October 24th, the flowers seemed to have already been pollinated. But a few days later the farmer responsible for cover crops was on his tractor in a field and saw so many foraging bees that he stopped cutting to give them a chance to gather more. We are worried for their well being this winter.

Yesterday they got their new late fall entrance, but today the weather was nice and they were hanging out on the front stoop and checking it out.

Whats fermenting ? Pear juice!

Several varieties of pears were crushed and presses and kept separate to ferment. These are from this weekend and our pressing on 10/13/14.

These are from the pears from The Buckle Farm in Maine. Today we crushed and pressed more pears from here on Ivory Silo Farm-two varieties, and the sweet pears from Simon's tree.

These pears from the tree right next to the silo are so astringent we really couldn't eat them. As you can see they are round like apples and have an asian pear skin.

It is most likely our last pressing this year. Now we wait.

Pizza!

Appetizer pizza: Beets, fava beans, olives, olive oil, goat cheese...

Main course: olives, olive oil, lion's mane mushrooms, mustard greens, onions, parmesan romano mozzarella cheese...

and fresh herbs: sage, thyme, oregano, basil.

And for dessert: Pizza! With raisons, coconut oil, chocolate almonds, pear sliced thin, brie cheese and just drizzled with maple syrup.

So good topped with raspberry sorbet. Decadent!

Daily Harvest

Concord Grape Wine or Pyment?

I strained the concord grape wine,

but I didnt want to waste the juice in what was left over, so I tried to figure out how to press it at home.

I wrapped it in cheesecloth

and pressed it with a bowl.

I definitely got more wine but the result was still wet. So I started to do it in smaller batches by hand.

I only recommend this method with less than 5 gallons of fermenting wine and friends. But it worked and I got about 1 1/4 gallons of wine.

I added a few lbs of honey to that yesterday and its already bubbling again.

No sulfites, no yeast, no nutrient, nothing. So from what I read, to make a pyment you use grapes and honey and make a wine mead combo, but you start the ferment with both ingredients at the same time. I am not sure I can technically call this a pyment if I added the honey and started a second fermentation after the wine had fermented. Its not a sweetened wine though because the sugar will be eaten by the yeast bacteria. I plan to add oak cubes since I dont have an oak barrel to age this in, and some spices-cloves etc. depending on how it tastes in a week or so when it stops bubbling and running over.
11/9/14 note: This tastes delicious. I think I might spice some of it, and age it, then bottle it. Its sparkling now, so I may bottle some to preserve the fresh taste and sparkling qualities. But to answer the"pyment" question this site says its technically a Concord Grape Melomel and that Pyment in the historical sense was a wine with honey added at drinking time to sweeten it. However, on wikipedial under Mead it says that a Melomel is made with berries and a Mead that is fermented with grape juice is called a Pyment. The recipe on the link  above boils the honey with water before adding grape juice and then uses yeast and nutrient, which I didnt use. My project explores the ways before those innovations and adds honey after the grapes have finished their initial ferment-not exactly fermented with juice but wine, so I still dont quite know what to call it, except homemade Concord Grape Honey (help you through the winter) beverage with a nice kick, or just "honey-wine" for short.

Combined Daily Harvests....Fall

Fall Harvest from farm and garden...

and two more volunteers from the compost pile.

Pears for Perry: Pressing

The Work: pressing

They did oxidize and the juice is tasty from the tasty pears(the Angelica di Saonaras were the most complex)and not so much from the Seckles. There is only a pint of juice from them anyway, and it may spoil because of how rotten they were by the time we got to them, but just in case they ferment into something drinkable and can add a good flavor to the finished product we are keeping them in the experiment.

The Work: pressing

This is how its done the old fashioned way, on the farm, in small batches.

The Work: pressing

Compost: The pears crushed and pressed

We started to do a second pressing and it did yield enough more juice to make it worth it.

The product: well so far anyway

Except for a small amount to drink this will be sitting in a cool place under airlock all winter.

The Celebration

Sun going down, work is done...for now

After crushing pears, a walk down to the river...

and on the way back we discovered that rye grass will grow anywhere.

Pears for Perry: Grinding and Crushing

Seckle Pears

Its hard to tell from this picture, but these pears are very small, not very tasty, and many of the were rotten. To make good perry we had to cut each one open to make sure no rotten ones were pressed.

Variety Unknown

These pears were picked last weekend right here on Ivory Silo Farm. (See last weeks post.) They are tasty ripe or hard, but we did have to cut off a bunch of bad spots and rotten parts.

Angelica Di Saonara?

We purchased a bushel of these pears from The Buckle Farm. Jim Buckle had a clue from the previous owners of his farm as to the variety, and in my search, Angelica Di Saonara was the closest I could fine. A European variety from Italy that is green and red in color and is drought resistant.

Leaf from the Pears from The Buckle Farm

 I was trying to compare this to the pictures of leaves of Angelica Di Saonara pears on line. Its close.

They were almost as tasty as our pears and in much better shape. We hardly threw anything in the compost from this batch. Since tasty isnt what we are looking for in a pear for perry, we are hoping these pears will blend well with the almost inedible seckle pears for a good perry. Its all an experiment.

The Press

This cider press has a crusher on it. This makes it easy to make apple cider. Once crushed the slatted bucket is just pulled forward under the press and another vessel is placed under the front to catch the juice. (See last years post for more on this process.) But with pears its seems you need to let them oxidize after crushing for up to 24 hours to remove some of the tannins so the perry isnt too astringent.

The Work: sorting and cutting

Th Work: crushing

The Crushed Pears

We kept all three pear varieties separate for the fermenting process(washing the press in between crushing each) because we are using the natural bacterias on the skins to ferment the pears. If one variety turns to vinegar at least we might not lose the others. Tomorrow after these have oxidized we will press them into juice!

Pizza!

With Farmer Bill's chocolate peppers and our ever present cherry tomatoes,

or grass fed sausage, pesto from our garden basil, black olives and farmer Bill's caramelized onions... served with arugula!

Whats fermenting? Besides concord grapes? Sauerkraut!

Purple cabbage salt and sore and purple hands starts a bubbling brew.

These bubbles happened right away while I was making it. Not sure why, I don't remember that happening the last times. It did get nice and moist though. I used a little more salt because I didn't like the way the last batch smelled. Its been a hard year for fermentation products for me. This year pickles and kraut took longer and developed more mold. So hopefully this one will work better.

Picking Pears from the old trees on the farm

and then scrounging under the rose bush for the ones that fell was my job.