What happened to September?

Urgh.  School started, that's what happened!  Holy cow, but we get busy this time of year.  I'm hoping to get some posts up about the family soon, but in the meantime, we have all been obsessed with the tUnE-yArDs and wanted to share.  James and I saw them at the Bonnaroo Festival earlier this summer and they were pretty darn cool (they played live music during a Buster Keaton Film Festival!)

Gangsta

Merrill Garbus IS the bOmB!!  (I'm not sure I can get away with that kind of lingo. Oh well.)



Things we have been doing for the past month:

Hiking Trips:
Cumberland Falls - saw the double rainbow, hiked Eagle Falls Trail
Shakertown - hiked Anderson Trail
Shakertown - hiked Meadow View Trail 

Cultural Stuff:
Spirit Walk and Heirloom Dinner at Shakertown (we only live three miles from Shakertown, so yeah, we go there a LOT!)
150th Anniversary of the Perryville Battlefield (saw the re-enactment of the Battle for Webster Hill)

School Stuff:
Volunteered at the Cake Walk and did Face Painting for the kids' school's annual Fall Festival
Caileigh and James went on an overnight field trip to Pine Mountain Settlement School

Home Stuff:
James canned a MILLION tons of tomatoes.  Jars! Pots! Pans! Squishy Tomato Innards! EVERYWHERE!
Bees, chickens and garden are all doing well!

It's also Vegan MoFo this month, and Isa just posted a new Vegan Chopped! Challenge, so you know I'll be getting on that this weekend!  See you soon!

Red River Gorge Hiking Trip

It was the kids' last weekend before school starts, so we went on a hiking trip to Red River Gorge.  We took a lovely picnic of sandwiches, carrot sticks, fruit AND a delicious vegan Triple Berry Lemon Bundt Cake (it was sooooooo good!).  Then we set off on the trail to Gray's Arch.

First of all, let me just say that I am convinced that the distance to Gray's Arch is longer than 1.2 miles, as indicated on the sign at the trail head.  Holy moly.  It's been a long time since I've been to Gray's Arch (20+ years?), but I really don't remember the HUGE wooden staircases descending from the ridge to the base of the arch.  And then it was a pretty difficult climb up the rocks and roots to the arch itself.  Ah well, it was gorgeous day (sunny and not too hot!) and we had a lot of fun.  However, the kids were really whooped by the time we got back to the car.  My thighs were feeling the burn, too.  I kept telling the kids it was character building and that they would look back and remember this experience with fond memories someday, but they weren't buying it.  They just wanted air conditioning and electronics!

To treat everyone after the hike, we headed over to Miguel's Pizza (on the road to Natural Bridge).  We'd never been there before, seeing as we usually just go the Red River Gorge side of Slade, but it was REALLY GOOD.  And super crowded!  I felt so trendy sitting there with all those athletic young hikers. 

Anyhow, it was a really wonderful day and we hope to get our family hiking more often.  Go Kolasas!

It's a bug hunt

Well, my poor feet and legs have had a rough couple of weeks.  I appear to have been bitten several times by a venomous spider (our thoughts are possibly a brown recluse).  I eventually ended up at Urgent Treatment because the main bite appeared to be infected and I just finished a course of antibiotics. The FIRST attack involved a large bite wound area on my shin and several lesser bites on my other foot.  Ouch.  The SECOND attack caused a quarter-sized black-and-blue and very painful spot on the bottom of my big toe.  Double ouch. 

After some thought, we decided that I most likely ran into the evil spider upstairs in Caileigh's room, since both incidents were discovered upon waking up in her bottom bunk  (Yeah, yeah, I know.  We are slowly weaning CK off of having a parent sleep in her room, but she was having terrible night terrors/hysteria at bedtime.  You do what you gotta do.)

In any case, no one is sleeping upstairs right now, until we finish de-spidering the room.  Blargh.

Wish us luck!

New chicks on the farm

They're so cute (Jake and the chick)!

Summer Staycation

I had a lovely "staycation" from work last week, and we celebrated both children's birthdays.  Caileigh is now 11 years old, and heading to sixth grade this fall!  Jake is 8 years old, and as wild and crazy as ever.  Speaking of birthday boys, check out Jake and his prize winning cucumbers at the Mercer County Fair!  Our kitchen is currently overrun with cucumbers, and James has been canning pickles like a madman.

Our staycation included a birthday sleepover, two birthday cakes, a trip on the Dixie Belle at Shaker Landing, a visit to the Salato Wildlife Center, watching the Olympic opening ceremonies, and a party at Bounce U, among other things!  Good times.

Meanwhile, in the garden...

James and the kids have been busy making tomato cages.  Here's hoping we get a good harvest before all the critters eat them!

Best-In-Show!

James's "Bee Product Gift Box" won the Best-in-Show award at the Lion's Club Bluegrass Fair! James made the whole shebang himself - the Shaker box, the spiced honey, the beeswax soap, and the peppermint-beeswax lip balm.  He's so crafty.  Woot!

An Unexpected Harvest

James has one demonstration hive out at Bluegrass Community and Technical College's Peace Meal Garden off Leestown Road.  The bees have been doing very well there, and we were lucky to get a few frames of honey from them.

We won't have enough honey to sell, but we did have enough for the Bluegrass Fair!

Vegan Chopped!

I just competed in the Post Punk Kitchen Vegan Chopped! on-line dessert challenge. The basket ingredients were red bunch beets, fresh mangoes, unsweetened dried coconut, and crispy rice cereal.  This is the second Vegan Chopped! challenge I've participated in, and they've been a blast!  My entry?  Spiced Beet Cake with Crispy-Coconut Frosting and Mango-Ginger-Lime ice cream.  It was pretty tasty, although I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to make beet cake again.

Spiced Beet Cake
The final cake was really surprising!  The batter was bright purple-y-red, but the baked cake was a lovely spice-cake brown.  The cake was nice and moist, and you just got a hint of the earthy flavor of the beets.

Ingredients:
1 bunch red beets, oven roasted and pureed (I got a little over a cup of pureed beets out of my bunch)
Add enough applesauce to pureed beets to get to 1 and 1/2 cups of puree total
1/2 cup veggie oil
1/2 cup orange juice
2 tsp. vanilla
1 T. grated fresh ginger
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. mace
1/8 tsp. cloves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease & flour your cake pans (I used two med-small ramekins and then baked the rest in a muffin tin).  Mix the dry ingredients in large bowl and set aside.  Whisk the wet ingredients together in another bowl and then add to the dry.  Mix until well combined.  Scoop/pour into prepared pans and bake.  The cupcakes took about 18 minutes; the ramekins took about 22 minutes.  Let cool for a few minutes in the pans, then remove to a rack to complete the cooling process.

Crispy-Coconut Frosting
1 cup canned coconut milk (shaken, not stirred)
1 cup sugar
2 T. Ener-G egg replacer mixed with 3 T. warm water
1 tsp. ground ginger

Combine above in small saucepan and cook over medium heat until boils, whisking regularly.  Boil for one minute and then remove from heat.  Then stir/whisk in:

3 T. Earth Balance
1/2 tsp. salt

Then stir in:

1 cup Crispy Rice Cereal
1 1/3 cups toasted unsweetened coconut

Set aside to cool.  Frost cakes!

Mango-Ginger-Lime Ice Cream
2 ripe mangoes
grated zest and juice of 1 lime
1 T. grated fresh ginger
1/2 cup sugar
1 T. molasses
pinch of salt
1 can coconut milk
1/4 tsp. xanthan gum

Peel and chop mangoes and put in blender.  Add remaining ingredients and puree until smooth.  Refrigerate for at least several hours until well-chilled.  Put in ice cream machine and let it churn!  When ice cream maker is finished, I like to put the ice cream in the freezer for a few hours to set up.

Welcome!

Welcome to the 20 Acre Wood blog!  We are a small farm in Burgin, Kentucky.  We are currently rebuilding our beehive population and hope to have honey available next summer (2013). We sell honey and bee products at the Mercer County Farmer's Market.  In the meantime, please enjoy these posts about our family and our other hobbies!