Busy Day at the Farm

[helwen]

Candy for the farmers market is running out, so we need more made. So today, L and I learned (or in his case re-learned from when he was a kid), how to make brick pops and brick sugar (same thing, different size rectangles the sugar gets put into), and molded soft candy. Marian learned decades ago and in her heyday she could do it all on her own. It takes two of us to more or less do the same thing :D But even she says it's much easier with two sets of eyes and hands to do things and keep track of things.

With her supervision we made the brick type sugar in the morning. Then a break for lunch, which got extended at first because she needed a longer break, and then because I was in the lower barn looking for a particular box and discovered that some of the chickens were down there. They'd found a hole and went exploring.... one on the same floor as the chicken room, and a five down one floor, where I was. Startling to say the least! I let the folks and L know. Marian caught the upper story one and the rest of worked on catching the other five. I was mostly a spotter and indirect herder, although I did make a try for the last one. She was quite clever and tricksy!

Then after a short rest, back to making candy, the softer type that goes into rubber molds that have all sorts of shapes. Most of them actually look pretty good :)

Tomorrow I get to wrap everything. L says he'll help when he can, but he does have a regular job after all, so we'll see how that all goes. We have some ideas on how to make doing up the boxed candies a little easier, so hopefully that will help.

Comments

[hiddennature410.livejournal.com]

You know for great excercise for me i should buy a chicken so i can chase it around in a pen to try and catch it. :P Lol.

[fitzw.livejournal.com]

Your statement is pretty funny, but in reality it has two problems:

1) The faster you chase a chicken, the less likely you are to catch it. We caught these by being patient and calm.

2) Chickens will actually fall over dead if you scare them too much, which chasing them can do.

My father, age 84, caught two of the chickens. My mother, age 74, caught one. I caught the remaining three (two at the same time, one in each hand). All of us worked to corral them in areas where we could approach them from more than one side at the same time (in one case, from either end of a tractor bucket that was facing a closed barn door). H may not have caught one herself, but she was very helpful in directing them, and helping us keep an eye on where they kept running off to.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

LOL Maybe you could be a chicken herder ;)

[loosecanon.livejournal.com]

This morning I had a visit with some wonderful folks with a similar situation; last makers of a wonderful regional product which doesn't make a profit, and no one to take over. Every time they think they find a caretaker for the tradition, something happens.

It's time for a "traditions" site which aggregates products like this and gift baskets them.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, thankfully she isn't the last candy maker, but true there aren't a lot of them in this area. OTOH, 50 years down the line there may or may not be sugar maples growing here still :(

Interesting note: Her brick pop mold is made of tin not steel (the larger brick mold is steel) -- she prefers the tin one, which she believes is probably around 100 years old. She's been using it for 50 years or so and got it used and in need of a bit of repair. I suspect that latter bit is one of the reasons -- ability to maintain and repair at home without too much fuss. Speaking of which, I think after we pop the pops out today and clean up the mold pieces, I might be taking a mallet to some of the bits and re-flattening them :D