super pleasant sunday!

yesterday dr. reed (who i had shadowed in the ER on tuesday) called to invite me to her home for sunday! so this morning i set off on a series of gravel roads to her property. i got there at 9a, in time to watch her (and even try my own hand at!) milking her goats! she's got a nice little barn with milking goats, kids, egg laying chickens, barn cats, and a pretty little horse! she brought a large pail of goat's milk in, and i got to watch her make cheese! it's amazing that with the milk of the two goats she milks day and night, dr. reed makes cheese, yogurt, cream, buttermilk, and ice cream.

the property that she has made her home is pretty amazing. she has miles of trails for hiking, lots of maple trees that she taps for sap and actually makes her own maple syrup, a patch (at least) of wild blueberries near the house, lots of trees some of which became the lumber that is her house and her other buildings, solar panels and a wind turbine that is sufficient for 96% of her power needs, compost piles that date back 3 years, and an amazing vegetable garden. she has a greenhouse to get her plants going, then a large outside garden, then another part of her garden that is covered by a hoop house and can stay warmer, then yet another part of her garden that she plants vegetables that can grow more toward winter (at which point she can pull the hoop house over to cover the winter garden). she plants snow peas, shelled peas, green beans, celery, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, different lettuces, different peppers, newt potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, carrots, horseradish, fennel, beets, every kind of tomato, many kinds of chilies, garlic, different shaped eggplants, asparagus, melons, watermelons, pumpkins, squash, strawberries, raspberries, many kinds of other berries, a couple of different apple trees (just from what i remember), and more! then near the house, she has a giant herb garden, with many herbs i have heard of and many more i have not. she has a few different cold rooms in her basement of different coldnesses where she can store a lot of her fruits and vegetables and cheese to eat over the winter. her maple syrup operation is also quite impressive! the trees are tapped, with tubbing that runs all around and into a reservoir, which then has tubing that runs the sap to the syrup house where they have to boil the sap down 25:1 to make syrup. on her property, she has vegetables, dairy products, eggs, and maple syrup (which she uses in the place of sugar for everything) to sustain her and her husband, and a lot extra of many things to give away to friends. i think sustainability is a huge goal of her and her husband!

it was such a pleasant sunday; dr. reed showed me all around her place and we chatted while she made cheese, watered her flower gardens, and made killer blueberry wild rice pancakes! it's amazing that she began to build her home and life on this property at the start of medical school, and even had goats to milk before school started. she really knew what she wanted both in her career and in her life, and went all out for it!

i watched her make those pancakes, but forgot to take mental note of the recipe. i want to document what i remember so that maybe i can recreate it sometime. 1C whole wheat flour + 1C whole wheat pastry flour + 1Tbs baking soda + baking powder (?) + pinch of salt. 1/2 a stick of melted butter + 3 egg yolks + 1/4C maple syrup. combine dry stuff + liquid stuff + goat buttermilk + vanilla (?) + goat milk until correct consistency. then fold in cooked wild rice + blueberries. lastly fold in the egg whites, which were first beaten until stiff. butter the hot griddle and make pancakes! i don't know if i have forgotten ingredients or messed up the order, but doesn't it sound delicious?! we had these amazing pancakes with butter and her maple syrup, plus easy over eggs from her hens, and coffee with goat milk cream. she also sent me home with a bottle of her syrup!

i got back to walker's house a little after 4p, was still feeling lazy after yesterday's biking, but decided the two pancakes and two eggs (one brown, one green!) i had earlier merited some sort of physical activity. i biked a leisurely 12.5 miles round trip just past sturgeon lake (going south) and back. i wanted to make it to this gorgeous farm/ranch i saw last time on my way to willow river. apparently it is owned privately by a family. the building on the left is the house, and the equally gorgeous building on the right is the barn!



the munger trail basically runs right next to hwy61. here's a nice little stretch of the hwy with tall, straight pine trees lining the side!



there you have it in terms of pictures of the munger trail. two posts back were pictures of the trail going north of moose lake, and this post is going south. the rest in between is more or less the same. at least the part that i have ridden, which is about a 30 mile stretch from finlayson to mahtowa.