RANCHO FERMENTO

 I can see clearly now....the mess is gone. It's gonna be a bright, bright, sun shiny day!

It too two weeks to "git'r'done" but we finally did it.

We can even get "Yoda", our '85 Toyota picky-up truck, into the carport!  We have no regrets though we are dealing with no few aches and pains in the various parts of our high-time airframes.

Yes! We have lots of peppers! We have lots of peppers today! I'm experimenting with pickling my jalapeños along with some hard-boiled eggs. We may even dehydrate some of them. 

We'll, things are happening pretty fast around the ol' ranch. Seems someone has managed to foist winter upon us far too quickly for the old folks around here to cope with (have I mentioned how fast time is whizzing by?). Why on earth does it take so long for summer to get here but winter pounces on us?

It's autumn and the skies are absolutely clear and gorgeous. The temps are marvelously cool and blustery winds are not to be found and peace has conquered our ranch. That makes the early morning pre-chores like drinking coffee and checking e-mail a real pleasure. This is one ranch hand that needs to greet the day but has to do so at his own pace and under his own conditions, don'tcha know. When I finally did make it out to the "back 40" (actually, back .75 but who's counting?), a light breeze was sauntering through the orange trees and teasing the leaves awake.

No wise man will hop out of the sack and rush into the hazards of life without warming up a bit...or two bits (I can do three bits on rare occasions). One must have his constituent parts (spirit, soul, and body) in alignment or not much will happen that day. An empty spizzerinctum tank does not bode well at any ranch but surely not at this one. So, one must insure that his  "spizz tank" is topped off or the day will be really long. A hot coffee latte' goes a long way in helping to fulfill this task.

This is especially true if you have to mount an attack against the vile murines (rodents....although I've seen a few humans who fall comfortably into this category) who have set themselves against you roundabout to overtake your property and homestead it without permission. After the first rain which softens our hard ground, the California pocket gophers burrow as if they were on crank. Mounds of "mine tailings" appear all over the yard in great contempt of your privacy. You'd think that there was a gold rush in progress! They're too selfish to split the profits with me, though.

Anyway, the ranch hands are now scrambling to be at least a half-step ahead of the "heavy rains" that are coming upon us with a wonderful vengeance. Now, "heavy rains" in California isn't at all like "real" heavy rains in other places like Texas (Houston just got 12" in two days! That's more than our normal annual total!), OK, WA and in many other parts of our nation. In other places, folks break out the canoes and rafts when they get heavy rains and it takes weeks to clean up during the aftermath! Here, we may get the 3/4" to one inch or so that is forecast. That would be maybe one inch for the entire time the storm hangs around which is sometimes a few days. The exception, of course, is the Sierra Nevada mountains; they got "heavy rains". One place just got 10" of rain and another got 6" of snow. Our snow cap is vital around these parts.

So, we break out our sponges and mops and we're good to go after a few minutes work. Contrast that to other truly wet places that get clobbered with an inch of rain per hour....all day long! These poor folks have to keep the "Coast Guard" on hand to help rescue the perishing!! To stay safe, the fish and frogs head to Nevada for the duration!

What this means is that we'll daily be working days-and-a-half to prep the coop for the "monster El Niño" that's now stalking California. It's supposed to be the most intensive "El Niño" we've seen in a long while and greater than the one from '69 (which brought serious flooding in this area).

Lowe's Hardware was our source for some nice 10' x 100' clear plastic sheeting which will provide a curtain to shield our cluck-a-sauruses against the soon-arriving monsoon season. Plastic sheeting is our friend!

After a long long day of toiling (did I mention that I hate toiling?! Did I mention that "toiling" and "toilet" are related for a very good reason?), the under-paid hands just now hung the drape around the coop with our last couple of ergs of energy then called it "quits". God knows we don't need any soggy layers around here so this should help our "keep 'Princess Lay-uh' dry" campaign on an even keel. Soon, we'll go on to the next project which should be right after the expected downpour (or right after my next day off). I think we've narrowed the "project list" down to only a few hundred items now.

You hadn't heard about "Princess Lay-uh"? Just let me tell you, neighbor! Since Rancho Relaxo appears to be the place of odd royalty, there was no reason not to hang a regal moniker on Connie's favorite Buff Orpington. This is already an odd name so she fits in rather well.

Contrary  to what some would suppose, a Buff Orpington is not a hen that works out at the gym all day. It's named after its color and after the town in England from whence they originate. I'm confident that "Orpington" is the old English word for "egg head" (though some sources argue that the root word is "bird brain") since their efforts have yielded hens that are not just another pretty wattle; they truly are good layers.

The folks who gave her and her siblings (one of which will surely be tagged with "Buffy" but that's soooooo pedestrian) to us had a daughter who made pets of the chickens. The young chicken hugger held them and doted over them. So, when she became part of our poop troop, she adopted us. Connie picks her up and pets and holds her for a bit when she comes to her. She's a pretty little hen but all of the Buffs are that I can tell (I see why they are so popular!). Now you know the skinny on our Rancho royalty. We can only hope that "Princess Abbie" doesn't get jealous and that other of our local critters don't vie for a place at the king's table.

Ol' Ran has stumbled across some interesting things lately. Actually, he stumbled across them some time ago but is just now getting around to implementing his findings (and it isn't even a day off!). As part of our current "looking out for the old folks" routine, we have been canning, dehydrating, freezing, and pickling just about everything within reach (or is slow moving). It probably isn't possible to do that without running headlong into another part of food preservation: fermenting.

Fermenting is an ages-old method of keeping your food from spoiling by controlling the conditions and time it takes to rot. My first stab at it was ...uh...rotten. The simplest recipe (and one that would take some real effort to botch) was Kimchi. You just slice/shred some cabbage and veggies, pitch them into a bowl, toss in some of your favorite heat, cover with water, cover the bowl, and, in about three or four days, you have fermented Korean cabbage.

I mean....just how simple can it get? No one can screw that up, eh? HA! My Kimchi was curing along nicely and was presenting the nice bubbles and such that are concurrent with the "working" of the friendly fungi found freely floating around the farm (aren't you glad I'm not talking about sea shells?). Then, we had to head south to Harbor City to see the kids and grandkiddies for a few days. Connie always remembers their birthdays so that put the Kimchi program on hold. I  suspected that you can't just put fermentation on "hold". I was correct.

When we returned, it was easy to note that the experiment didn't get the memo that I would be gone. So, I immediately learned that Kimichi doesn't do well after about a week of being ignored. My nifty edible experiment had gone from a wonderfully bubbly fermenting bowl of Kimchi to a pot of rot with all of the flotsam and jetsam of the U.S. Navy's 6th Fleet in it. Isn't that interesting? I reckon  that it developed a rejection complex and just died of spite or something. It didn't spare me the foul stench of decomposition, either. I could have sworn there was a gack-eating Klingon with major gastro-intestinal distress in the vicinity. Strike one.

OK....I've never been known as a "quitter" even after an entire strike out. The head of cabbage was once again herded to the chopping block where it was noticeably reduced in size by my favorite "Shitzu Shredder" knife, a special martial arts knife made especially for chefs (well...that's what they said on QVC). Then, I rehearsed the recipe using all of the same ingredients and hardware. The bowl was covered and the clock was ticking. Tell me: just exactly what can go wrong at this point? It's about as difficult as loading earwax on a Q-Tip, right?

Have you ever heard of "perceptual filtering" and "perceptual blocking"? That's when reasonably intelligent humans stop seeing things right in front of their faces. It's one of those situations where the brain says, "It hasn't been here so it's not supposed to be here, so then... it isn't here"; the item is no longer visible. It can happen when you're distracted, busy, multi-tasking, sleep deprived, inattentive, under attack by the Gypsies, or just plain stupid. I'm not copping to anything or making any excuses. However, when I remembered to check my Kimchi....a week later....the U.S. Navy's 6th Fleet, utterly undetected, had returned with the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet and had defiled my cabbage.  Chef-0; Compost Pile - 2. Strike two.

My lightning-fast mind knew that folks have been successfully fermenting things for thousands of years. So, not to be deterred by foaming flops, I switched to something that, hopefully, wouldn't be hidden in plain sight and that the time line wasn't so critical. 

That would be "Kombucha". "Kombucha" is fermented tea discovered in China around 221BC. No doubt it was an  alchemist looking for ways to convert mundane things into gunpowder (including his mother-in-law). Later, in 415 AD,  a Korean physician named Kombu got involved with it and they added the term "cha" which means "tea" in Korean. Actually, I first thought that "Kombucha" was a dirty name a sodden borracho from 1880 called someone: "Hey, kombucha! Get off my burro!"

The recipe is something that you stumble into by sheer accident because nobody has any idea what that is. Thankfully, it, too, is a "no brainer" and, so far, I'm typecast. You brew your tea like any other iced tea project. Then, after it cools, introduce a "scoby" which is what some folks call the "mother". It's the fungal fermenting starter/agent. After a few days of leaving it alone, you sip it and see what you think. Home run! It was actually not only potable but rather tasty what with the sweetness of the sugar and the tart of the vinegar that was being produced. In fact, you have to remove the "scoby" or you will end up with a strong potion of vinegar that will cause your tongue to move to Alaska without you.  

That was a treat but the new wore off rather quickly for some unknown reason. After a couple of jugs of that I was ready to try something else. The "scoby" had set me back about seven clams and I didn't want to just toss the bloody thing since it was still active. Well, when you assail an overweight, middle-aged, white guy with such heavy thought, he is sure to meet the challenge with aplomb (or faint from exhaustion...I was lucky).

What to do? Easy...just grab some apple juice. Everyone has heard of apple cider so why shouldn't Ol' Enrico Fermenti have a go at it? That was simple enough. However (why is there always a "however"?), when you have fermentation, you have the digestion of sugar by a bacterial or fungal agent. That produces the nice carbonation and a wonderful sharp vinegary tang to the cider. Included in this process is the conversion of sugar to C₂H₆O which, if you skipped a few chemistry classes (or haven't sat in one in ...oh...50 years or so), is ETOH, which is ethanol which is alcohol which is ...booze.

OK....that is not at all what I had intended to do with my almost-spare time. "Ran the rum runner" does have a nice ring to it but that's not what I want to be when I grow up. I knew I had to dial things in.

The first simple batch fermented for about 4 days. Then some of the golden "elixir of Kings" was ladled into a large mug which then touched the lips of "der braumeister" . To quote ol' Jed Clampett, "Whoooo, doggies!" Man! That was some smooooth stuff! The carbonation was perfect and the smoothness was unequalled! So, I finished off the mug and refilled it.... just to be sure that I had a reference point....of course.

It's sho' 'nuff easy to see why the Mennonites grew so many apples and why they were called "the smiling Mennonites". Why not? You have your "Quakers",  "Shakers", and "Dunkers". Might as well have "Smilers" and it certainly has no particular sinister inference that I can tell (I'm making this up so all you "Smiler's" be sure not to send any hate mail). Anyway, this experiment was getting rather enjoyable and quickly at that.

Being successful brewing this batch of cider resulted in learning that you don't have to wait forever for it to turn into "Kickapoo Joy Juice"! In only a few days, you will have at least some ETOH. Let's put it this way: by the end of the second mug, I was a real mellow Mennonite! Ol' Ran needed to pay attention or he could end up as a really goofy lab rat.

I can see it now: after a few rounds at the demijohn,  "Ol' Ran, the Singing Ranch Hand" would start letting his inner "Fogerty" loose on the place. That would probably mean that Connie would hear me yowling "Proud Mary" for the first time in her life. Perhaps he would flood the farm with his cover of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" thereby proving that Medley has nothing on Minnick. That high octane apple juice really does effect the brain cells that way so it's probably a good idea to keep the cork in the tun.

Sooooo....decisions, decisions. It appeared that Ol' Ran was going to have to moderate his brewing to accommodate his palate....and tonsils....and tongue....and adenoids....and uvula (they all get a vote) and his sobriety. The best way (until I spring for a hydrometer to measure specific gravity) is to simply taste the stuff every step of the way until you have a bit of carbonation and a bit of tang. Then .....just don't drink a gallon at a time, stupid.  Otherwise, there is just too much potential of being hammered all of the time with your home-made hammer ("If I had a hammer...I'd hammer in the mornin'...I'd hammer in the evening......". See what I mean?).

I found out on one website that you can expect the really hard "good stuff" in about two weeks of it being ignored then let it sit quietly for another week before you throttle a bottle of it. That's probably good to know if we ever endure another depression at which time your home-made commodity becomes part of the local currency. "Applejack" is another story altogether and is processed quite differently and your "currency" will be of a larger denomination (you bootleggers paying attention?).

A third lesson is that, if you let your keg sit long enough, it will make truly wonderful apple cider vinegar. My first bottle of ACV is on the shelf now awaiting initial test runs (...you comedians...don't go there). Connie drinks vinegar-laced "swamp water" because of the health benefits so it's likely she'll be the first guinea pig. There's no way of immediately assaying the percentage of acid in the vinegar but I'm willing to bet a beer barrel to a ball bat that it's more than the 5% stuff you haul home from the store.

There you have it: the update from the ranch. Stay tuned and don't touch that digital frequency determiner as things could get ...interesting.