A little progress, and a failure.

Here's what I started with. Yeah, it was that bad. Even worse actually, I had already started to clean up a little before I took this picture. Those old chicken feed bags are actually full of sawdust and chicken poo that needs to be composted. The old pallets, well, their gonna be the compost pile. At least I was able to work in the shade for a while. I couldn't breathe worth a damn, at least I didn't have to cook in the sun too!

And here, is the end of this afternoon. It shouldn't have taken so long mind you, but it did. I had to take some breaks and catch my breath, and kept getting side tracked. But I think it came out pretty good all in all. Should have good air-flow, and is made out of all recycled materials so it only cost about $1.50 in nails. It started raining pretty hard this afternoon so I got pushed inside, but hopefully I can get the compost piled in there tomorrow and get it "cooking" so it can get mostly done before winter.

The other thing that I did get done was my first attempt at homemade sauerkraut. A~ swears I tried it once before at our last house, but I don't recall it. Who knows? (honestly she's probably right!)
I sliced the cabbage and salted it with some of the homemade Salt Lake Local-Salt that I made not long ago and then packed it into a couple of containers. In total, I used 5 lbs of cabbage and followed a recipe that I found in "The Joy of Pickling". We'll see how it works.
So, two things I wanted to do got done, at least mostly. One however, was a failure. The sourdough no knead bread. I don't think it's the starter, I have great confidence in it. It's just hitting a year old this week as a matter of fact. Having been "born" to our family last September.
I mean take a look at that. Those bubbles are from yeast. Not wild, we tried that and weren't happy with the quality of it, but no doubt influenced by it through it's time exposed to the air during "feedings" such as this one. We generally have sourdough pancakes on Saturdays, and this one, I took an extra cup of starter out to use for the dough.
A close-up of the bubbly goodness that is our "pet", the sourdough start.

At any rate, the dough did leaven to a degree, but I think either I didn't use enough start, or the weather was a little to unsettled and the temperatures too low to really get it to mature as a dough. I didn't waste time with baking it, it would have been a brick, but I'll try again. That's just how it goes doesn't it. We try things, tweak them, learn from our failures and progress. What more could I ask for.
Till next time.
P~