Homesteadin': Sterling Day 19

Tractors this morning was pretty awesome. Greg, Erika, Natasha and I rode the school bus (the bed of Mark Dunbar's truck) over to Mark's farm. the weather was perfect and the scenery beautiful. Our job was to bale and wrap the last of the spring hay. I got to drive the baler which was a whole lot of fun. The only problem I had was waiting a little too long before dropping the bale and almost getting it stuck in the baler because it was too big. Other than that I am pretty sure that if given the equipment I could complete all steps of haying a field from mowing the grass, to raking wind rows, baling the windrows into round bales, moving them with the clamp loader, and wrapping them for storage. The price tage on all that equipment is quite high, especially considering how cheap hay sells for ($8 for a square bale I think? Maybe $45 for a round bale?). For a small scale operation I could see maybe borrowing the equipment if I needed to, but buying it, probably not. The baler alone costs $25,000 new and it's apparently quite difficult to find a used one in good condition. It makes sense for Mark to have one because he owns several acres of pasture, has 60 head of high production dairy cow, and a long, long winter when the animals have to be fed from storage. Sometimes the Dunbar's find a few suprises when they go to open their winter feed. Last year in their bales they found tools, sunglasses, a fox, and a skunk.

In Farmstead Arts we did some distilling. It is a pretty simple but specific process involving some glass wear that costs about $400. I'm thinking it would be possible to gather or make the materials on your own for a lot cheaper. To distill something you need a lower chamber to boil water, an upper chamber to hold the materials being distilled, some hose, and a condensing tube with valves. As the water stats to boil the steam rises up through the material above and gathers the essential oils. When the oily steam gets to the top of the material chamber it hits a right angled tube and then starts heading down into the condensing tube. The condensing tube is actually a tube within a tube. The inside tube is where the steam goes and the outside tube has a continuous flow of cold water from the bottom that drains out the top. The water chills the inner tube and causes the steam to condense to liquid. The water droplets run down the side into a valved collection area at the bottom. As the drops accumulate you will start to see the water and oil separate with the oil floating on top of the water (there will be a lot more water than oil). It takes about 30 minutes for the oil to start appearing and about 1 to 3 hours to completely harvest the oil depending on the materials. We distilled peppermint leaves and orange rinds. When you're done distilling carefully open the valve and allow all the water to drain out. Close the valve right when you reach the water/oil line. This should leave pure oil which you can collect in a dropper bottle and use to infuse flavor in drinks and foods, burn as incense, scent salves, or use for medicinal purposes. Here's some photos of the process.

Breaking off peppermint leaves.