Garlic
There is a day dreaded by every caretaker of God’s greatest gift to the practice of the culinary arts. And that day came most unfortunately to Serendipity Farmhouse late in December 2021. That was the day when Blondie walked into our well-stocked pantry and let out a most terrible and mournful shriek. Despite the pain caused by four broken ribs, I dashed for the pantry at a full run. – There must be something dreadfully wrong. – And there was!
Yes, it was worse than I could have ever imagined. The wondrous pantry of the soon-to-be-world-famous SFH Test Kitchen had become something worse than the “bog of eternal stench” from the movie Labyrinth. The smell was beyond description by any words from any language devised by man – it was the smell of decomposing garlic.
If you read our post SFH Journal: 2020-06-30 through 07-05 – Happy 4th of July!! you will be instantly aware of the tender love and care that we lavish upon our yearly harvest of garlic. We take every precaution to ensure that our precious crop is dried and stored to ensure freshness from the first to the last clove of the year. So, how could it be that our crop could be going bad this early. – – The answer was, and this makes me most proud to say, it was not our crop that was going bad. No, we had done everything correctly. Our crop was still good. But this year we had purchased a large number of garlic heads from the CSA across the road from us as a backup to our supply. Apparently, they had not dried or stored their crop with as much care as we had. It was their garlic that was causing the obnoxious odor in our pantry.
Upon close inspection, we determined that only some of the heads were beyond salvaging. The remainder needed to be either consumed immediately or preserved in some way. So, we searched for various alternatives for preserving. That is when we the read the post Storing Garlic in Wine or Vinegar and Refrigerating on the Garlic Blog. – – We decided to give it a try. We also decided to do the same with the remainder of our own crop. After all, this is the SFH Test Kitchen! We are always ready to try something new if it looks like it has promise.
Below are some pictures from our latest experiment. We will post results on how well this technique works in the coming weeks.
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Hackers
Self-respecting bloggers never want to admit that a blog they run has been hacked. Yet here I am with no alternative other than to say that the SFH blog was hacked by a very cunning, devious, and malicious hacker.
I came to this realization this week when I saw that a post entitled Access Granted to 黑客猫 had been published from our site. I knew that I hadn’t posted anything. When asked, Blondie said that she hadn’t put out anything. But there it was, Access Granted to 黑客猫. I quickly checked out our site statistics and found that there had been 23,417 views of that particular post.
However, when I tried to open the post to read it myself, there was no post. All that was there on my screen was just this picture providing indisputable proof that we had been hacked.
I really don’t know what to make of it. Somehow though, there is something about this photo that seems vaguely familiar to me. I just wish I could figure out what is. – – If anyone has any ideas about this, please let me know.
Now that the lawn tractor has returned, I am a much happier man. You might well ask, what was it that caused the lawn tractor to cease functioning? Well, dear Readers, it turns out that the electronic control module, with its embedded computer chip, had its brains scrambled. Consequently, the lawn tractor was almost fatally infected with – 
Worst of all and most troubling to us, our esteemed SFH Chief of Security has been diagnosed with a rare and potentially serious malady afflicting his left ear. This will mean that Mr. Monte will have to travel many miles to see a veterinary specialist and likely undergo surgery. – You can be certain this is not to Mr. Monte’s liking.
Hi! Mr. Monte here!
this. For my dear and most loving Wife, 2020 was to be the year for a very, very special birthday, a once-in-a-lifetime birthday. It was to be as grand and as memorable as the 
Industrious and beautiful Wife, widely known for her fabled “green thumb”, has officially declared the growing season and the harvest of 2019 officially at an end. Using all the expertise at her command, and commanding back-breaking labor from her ever admiring hubby, she has planned and executed all that took place in the vast, expansive (somewhat less than 224 square feet), and fruitful gardens of the Serendipity Farmhouse estate.
the SFH sign was affixed to the entrance way of our humble abode. Her struggle and sweat through one the hottest and most grueling growing seasons ever recorded in this area were rewarded with fresh vegetables on the dinner table on a daily basis, and with frozen, dehydrated, and canned food stores to brighten our table through the holidays, holy days, and days between now and the next harvest.
On the other hand, weather events from as far back as March of last year continue to rack up their toll in destruction. During Winter Storm Riley in March of 2018, our beautiful pine tree in the front yard was damaged and was leaning at a bad angle. (See our post 
Normally, we buy popcorn twelve pounds at a time. There is a cost savings when bought in quantity. When we realized we were running low on this essential snack, we found that the dealer had been out of the large bags for almost two months. So, we purchased two four-pound bags to get us through the crisis.
Popcorn was added to the five quart jars and Cow Horns were added to the pint jar. One oxygen absorber packet was added to each of the six jars.
Because oxygen absorber packs immediately start absorbing whatever oxygen is available, unused packets need to be vacuum sealed to preserve them for future use. So, even before I sealed the jars, I made a new bag for the unused packets and sealed them.
