Our Happy Acres

I learned a lot about gardening from James Crockett. His PBS television show “Crockett’s Victory Garden” was must-see TV for me as a young adult. It was there I first learned about season extenders like cold frames and cloches. And it was also there that I first learned about composting. When a book from the [...]

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Last year my wife and I both read Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and loved it. We were intrigued by the account of her family’s quest to eat only homegrown or locally grown food for a whole year. And the descriptions of their cheese making experiences inspired us to try to make cheese ourselves.
With [...]

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Today was an exciting day here at Happy Acres. We got to try out our first batch of soap! It had cured for 4 weeks, and was a basic, unscented soap recipe. We both tried it out in the shower and were very pleased with the way it cleaned and sudsed up.
This recipe formed the [...]

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My wife loves cherries in all forms, so I set out to come up with a granola that used dried cherries. This recipe is my wife’s current favorite of all my granola creations so far.
It features almonds, walnuts, dried cherries plus sunflower and pumpkin seeds. It also has unsweetened coconut flakes (or chips), which I [...]

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We made our first batch of soap here 3 weeks ago, and now we are waiting for it to be ready. And waiting. And waiting…you get the picture. We are waiting for our cold process soap to cure, which takes about 4-6 weeks.
This first batch was a pretty basic recipe, using coconut oil, palm oil, [...]

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These rolls are lighter and less dense than the original recipe, due to the addition of vital wheat gluten to give them more rise. I knead the dough with a Kitchenaid mixer, using the dough hook. It only takes about 5 minutes of machine-kneading to produce a nice elastic dough.

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