As I spend my evening with my wife, Melissa, at the emergency room, a fleeting thought danced across my head: computer coding, being mostly solitary, tending bees and being an assistant-lord to a flock of chickens suits me well. Being an E.R. nurse, doctor, tech, assistant, or otherwise would put me on edge. I am a bit on edge now just sitting here. Too much commotion, too much movement. This is not to say that these are not valuable societal occupations; it is just not a work field that would suit me. Besides, I trend toward sweating the small things, and being generally nervous. These are not qualities that would put a patient in duress at ease.
In an Andy Rooney-like fashion, I digress.
The weather here in Northern Minnesota, and all of Minnesota for that matter, has been warm. Too warm for early January. I worry, of course, about the bees that are tucked away in their hives. Too warm, and the queens will begin to lay eggs (brood). This would lead to more mouths to feed and the chance of food-stores being burned through too quickly; extra winter feeding on our part would be needed else we run the risk of having bees starve and die.
We are hoping to make a nearly-all cane sugar fondant for winter feeding. The recipe is ultra simple: water, granulated cane sugar, and cane syrup. 2:½:2 = Two cups of granulated sugar; ½ cup of water; 2 tablespoons of syrup. This should scale linearly. You will also need waxed paper or butchers' paper for which to put the finished product as well as a candy thermometer to gauge the stage of the product while it boils.
Put all ingredients into a sauce pan or appropriately sized vessel; put the pan over medium heat with a lid. Dissolve all the granulated sugar and bring the mixture to a boil for 2 to 3 minutes.
Remove the lid, and using the thermometer, heat until things are at 240 degrees F (116 degrees C). Pour the liquid onto the waxed paper or butchers' paper and let cool for a few minutes; long enough to start to stiffen. When it is cool enough to be touched, you can work it into the shape you would need.
We like to sometimes fill empty honey super frames with the fondant. It makes for easy handling and easy deployment.
Unfortunately, I will be away for the weekend; no checking the hives this week and no whomping up fondant. Perhaps a midweek whomping and a feeding next weekend.
We did, however, do a small bit of whomping with almond oil, jojoba oil, beeswax, a bit of rosemary oil and water; we made lip balm. It turned out quite well. Very simple. Recipe for another day.
+ 1 Tbsp Yeast + 1 Tsp Salt + 3/8 stick (6 Tbsp) Unsalted Butter + 4 - 1.1/2 oz boxes of Raisins + 2 cups warm (110 F) Water + 1/3 cup honey (warmed) + 2 eggs (large) + 2 Tbsp Ground Cinnamon + 1 Tbsp Ground Nutmeg + 1 cup Rolled Oats + 3 Tbsp Gluten Flour + 4 to 6 cups unbleached flour
In your stand mixer's bowl, put in Yeast, Salt, Butter, Raisins, Water, Honey, Eggs, Cinnamon & Nutmeg, Rolled Oats, and Gluten. Using the dough hook, mix these items until things look blended together (e.g. egg yolks are broken, the rolled oats and gluten are mixed into the water, and such).
With the mixer on a low speed, put three (3) cups of flour into the mixer's bowl. When this amount of flour is mostly mixed in, add another cup or so of flour. Continue mixing. Slowly add 1/3 cup of flour at a time allowing it to be completely mixed in; continue this until your dough is slightly tacky - it will stick slightly to the bowl but will not leave any behind as it gets kneaded by the hook.
Once the dough has reached the tacky stage, continue kneading the dough with the dough hook for another two (2) minutes.
Place dough in a greased bowl; cover and set bowl in a warm place; if your kitchen is cold like ours, try placing the bowl into a warmed oven (but make sure the oven is not on when you walk away!).
Let the dough rise for 60 minutes or until doubled in size. Punch dough down, if you have smaller bread pans, cut into two equally sized pieces; shape each piece into a dough-cylinder and place into a greased bread pan(s). Cover and let rise for 60 minutes or until doubled.
After doubling, place the loaves into a 350 degree (F) oven for 45 to 60 minutes; when the top of the loaf is browned, and when tapped quickly with a finger, the loaf sounds hollow -- remove the baked bread from the oven. Cool & enjoy!
The twelve hens are egg-laying machines. Since I am a well seasoned data-whore, I took it upon myself to collect and curate data on the hens' egg-laying. Shortly after the girls got into their groove of consistently laying hard-shelled eggs (we had a few eggs that were just a soft membrane without a shell), we took to maintaining the record. Three hundred forty-eight eggs, and counting (as of this writing). Why would I keep an accurate record of egg production? I guess it is just how I am; I like data and I like to know things; combine the two and you get a clearer picture of the world around you.
By collecting data, we have learned that the production curve, when put onto a ten-day moving average, followed the curve of the amount of day late as the winter solstice approached, occurred and passed. This is a well established characteristic of chickens and their laying patterns; less day light will usually correlate into fewer eggs laid. Even with all the theory and general rules, we are currently getting nearly ten eggs each day and we only have twelve hens. With 83% of the aggregate hens laying each day, and the general rule that it takes a hen 26 hours to form an egg internally, squeezing out many more eggs creeps into statistical impossibility territory.
See Also: Complete Data Log on egg production.
Winter, astronomical winter that is, arrived on December 22, 2011 at around 12:30 AM CST. Fast-forward a week, and we do have a tiny amount of snow and the ambient air temperature is often below +32 degrees F (0 C), but it honestly does not feel like winter. There are things such as snowshoeing, snowmobiling and ice fishing which northern minnesotans usually partake in during the winter that hasn't been possible thus far. For the Jokela household we do not snowmobiling (fumes & noise) or much ice fishing (not enough time and equipment) but we are fans of snowshoeing. Hopefully sometime in the next few weeks we will get enough snow to be able to enjoy this season called winter. The snowshoes, skijouring harness and dog booties are all ready to be used. The new dog-hauler is ready to rolls, as well.
Even with a tiny bit of snow here in Proctor, it feels more like late fall than actual winter. On Christmas day, however, headed up the shore of Lake Superior to Judge C. R. Magney State Park (see Devil's Kettle - Snowshoeing the North Shore for my last visit to this gem of Northern Minnesota). Along the way to the park, we made our traditional Christmas day stop in Grand Marais, MN. We had the hounds in tow with us this year as we now have a swanky hound-mobile with room for all four dogs. Windy and colder than at our southern end of the North Shore, but gorgeous none-the-less.
Right next to viewing the Devil's Kettle in Judge C. R. Magney Park, as far as my favorite sights of the North Shore, is being able to look down (south) from Grand Marais and see the Sawtooth Mountains cut across the horizon. It is particularly spectacular as sundown is nearing.
Even with the great sights of Grand Marais and the strangeness of being in a town on Christmas day that appears to be completely empty and the only things working are the one or two stop lights; the whole region - from Proctor in the south to Grand Marais in the north, does not feel like winter. Maybe by Valentine's Day we will winter, maybe?
