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I know I’ve been promising this post for oh-so-long. I wanted to make sure this was the real deal before I extolled its virtues. And my conclusion? It is! It is! We’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately, and have been exposed to lots and lots of nasty germies, and so far, knock wood, we’ve avoided the nasty.

So here is a basic outline of what kombucha is and its health benefits.

Another reason why I like it is I am growing this out of THIN AIR. And we know how much I like that! Just like the stinky cheese bread.

So, to start, I have to warn you not to be afraid. A kombucha scoby is kinda gross looking. They call it a mushroom. It does look like a giant portabello mushroom. And it grows and makes more mushrooms. They call the main scoby a “mother” and the little babies it grows are the “babies”. And this mother makes a LOT of babies.

So, to start, brew some tea. Either green or black. DO NOT use flavored teas, and make sure it is organic. That is important. I brew 2 liters of tea per batch. I put in 4 bags. Then I add about 1 cup of organic sugar per batch. Don’t freak out about sugar. The scoby eats the sugar and that is how it grows and makes the effervescence of the kombucha. The sugar pretty much goes away. Then top it off with another 1 liter of water. If you are starting from an old batch, add a little of the kombucha from that batch. If it is brand-spanking new, add a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, that gives it a jump start. Let it cool to room temp before you put in your scoby.

Tea brewed and ready to add scoby. Left is green tea, right is black.

Add in the scoby, icky looking!:

Then cover them with a cloth or I use folded paper towels. Secure with a rubber band. This keeps dust and bugs out. Fruit flies LOVE this stuff. Then they go night-night for about a week or week and a half in the kombucha drawer.

Then you end up with this! Mmmmm kombucha!~

I am brewing the kombucha in beer pitchers. The scoby needs surface area to grow, and I wanted a container with a spout for easy pouring. Beer pitchers! Perfect!

Kombucha comes out fizzy, sort of like champagne — maybe more like a favorite wine of mine: Mateus. If you bottle it, and cap it, it will get very fizzy, and when you go to open the cap it will explode and hit the ceiling and your entire kitchen will be covered in sticky kombucha. Don’t ask me how I know this.

Now, where do you get a scoby to do this? Well, if you live by me, let me know I’ll let you have one of my babies   But, what I did was buy some kombucha from the health food store. I poured it out into a saucer, covered with a towel and let it sit for a week. Voila! It grew a little scoby of its own. Cool! That tiny little scoby grew into all the scobies above. Neat – huh?

Read this tonight and am going to TRY and remember to TRY this. Sounds really yummy!

I have to give credit to my daughter Bean. She was right in there, helping her dad through the whole process. She took great interest in the anatomy of the birds, so we turned it into a homeschool science lesson. This is the heart, this is the liver, here is a the bile duct, etc. She learned it and then showed me how it is done. I tell you, if everything goes belly up and we need to live off the land, I want that kid on my team.

Lula didn’t quite have the stomach for it. That’s okay. She and I spent the day putting up more apples. She sliced and quartered and cored and ran everything through the food mill. 12 quarts of applesauce is a lotta applesauce. And I still have more to do — maybe tomorrow.

I joke that the two of them need to stick together — Bean can provide the meat for the table and Lula can cook it. At least I know they will never go hungry.

Kids are dropping like flies from volleyball and dance classes. Swine flu has hit. I am arming my family with kombucha. So far it seems to be keeping the germs away — I don’t know if that is what is doing it, but I would not be surprised. As soon as I get a working camera back I am going to post the kombucha making process. Warning: kombucha is very weird to look at, but once you start drinking it — it is addictive. I crave it every morning before I get going on my run.

Okay, so now I have to go start a batch of chicken feet broth. Yep.

I LOVE this time of year when the seasons they are a-changing. Yes I have been busy — it is remarkable that even though we lost much of our garden this year I still had much to do in the way of preserving a bountiful harvest. I put up several quarts of sweet zucchini relish, which beats hands down, all sweet pickle relish I have ever tasted. We had a plethora of beets and I put up large quart jars of pickled beets upon beets upon beets. If you have any scandinavian blood in you, you know that pickled beets are like the mother country. True ethnic joy!

The twins’ sewing teacher has an apple tree in her front yard and she passed along a very large paper grocery bag full of apples which I made into applesauce and canned. We’ve been bringing her eggs every week, so it was a great trade. She also loaded me up with tomatoes for which I am ever so grateful. My tomatoes are a sad sight this year.

This weekend will be a busy one with 20 chickens to butcher. No it isn’t fun, but they are ready and we are ready to be done with having them around. Honestly, the egg birds are the most darling little personable things, more like a pet. The meat birds are foul (pun intended!) things — more like hogs than anything. I am ready to be done with them.

I may stir up some controversy with this one, but the twins will be on hand for butchering. I think it is important for these kids to know how food is made, where it comes from and how to do it! Not unlike a father who takes his son hunting, I want my girls to have these skills if they one day need them. You never know. I always say that knowledge is power — and I feel giving my kids the knowledge to be self-sufficient if needed is a worth-while endeavor. You never know when it might come in handy.

We still have the four turkeys, and we will keep them as breeding pairs. Mark put in for a turkey license this fall so we will have wild turkeys gracing our table this Thanksgiving. I am so looking forward to this.

And another adventure! I am into making kombucha these days. I have little scoby’s growing all over the kitchen. As soon as I get a working camera in my possession I’ll post some pics of the process. It is really quite satisfying to grow such a healthful beverage — again from thin air, just like the stinky cheese bread.

Are you familiar with the sweater curse? If you are a knitter you are. Another version of the proverbial curse is to attribute the same to family members or friends. You spend hours and hours — weeks, even months of your time knitting some article of clothing or an item that you hope they will enjoy and will offer them a piece of your heart, and it gets relegated to a back closet somewhere or worse, treated with disregard: on the floor, the dog chews on it, you get the idea.

I would like to propose a version of the sweater curse as it applies to organic produce. As a gardener, you spend hours and hours preparing the soil, agonizing over organic, heirloom seeds. Start those seeds indoors, baby them along, harden them off and finally plant them in your carefully tilled garden. Then they are tended: protected from hail and varmints, heat and cold,  and bugs meticulously hand-picked and disposed of. Weeds kept at bay with a hoe — back breaking work, but worth it for the result of wholesome, organic sustenance for your table.

Then comes preservation! Picking, shelling, chopping, pitting, preparing, mixing. Jars to sterilize, boiling pots of water to heat in the thick of summer. The canning, the checking of lids. All in the name of quality organic sustenance for your family.

Eggs! What of organic eggs? The maintenance of the flock, the cleaning of the coop. The feeding, the watering, the doctoring when needed. All for those organic wonders to place in a cardboard carton.

I admit, when I hand over a basket of produce, a jar of jam, a carton of eggs, it is difficult to let go.  This is so much more than mere groceries — it is true sustenance, obtained by many hours of planning and laboring. I am hopeful that the recipient will realize what a gift from the heart it truly is. I know when I am the lucky recipient of such — I take it for what I hope it is worth. I am grateful — excited — wanting to be worthy of such a treat.

To me, the best I can do is to return the favor, in kind. Some of my own produce that has made it this year, a carton of eggs, a few jars of wild raspberry jam. Or even, perhaps, a hand-knitted hat or mittens in preparation for the colder months to come.

*Image by Swedish Folk Artist Elsa Beskow.

We broke down and got a “Have a Heart” trap to get that pesky skunk that keeps skulking around here at night. It’s been set and waiting for a week now. So far we have caught:

2 of our own turkeys

4 of our hens

The neighbor’s cat

I was getting pretty discouraged until Bean came in screaming that there was something in the trap! And it is black and white! Hurry Mommy! Hurry!

I rushed out, not sure what the heck I was going to do about this situation, beings Mark was not home and I am not getting near a smelly critter locked up in the trap. Indeed, the closer I got, the more black and white fur I saw, wriggling around in there.

This is what I found:

Does he look contrite? I am hoping so . . .