Kalamazoo Flood 2008

Hurricane Ike reached Michigan. We got thirteen inches of rain in a couple of days, and we flooded. The water kept pouring down. Our nieghborhood lies low along the Kalamazoo River, and as it rose, parks and streets and houses went under. One of these photos is the park in Comstock, with the ball field 3 feet under water; beside the ball field is the Comstock fire house, all wet. This two-story house was for sale a few years ago for $5,000, and Chris and I thought we should have bought it for that, but now maybe we see it's a good thing we didn't have the dough. The woods scene is our road with water coming across it. The water is receding now, a week later, but still roads are closed off. A big wet time. We feel lucky to have dry floors.

Elderberries Unite,Ferment!

I collected a big grocery bag of elderberry clusters and spent a lot of hours separating stems from fruits, and now I've mixed up the ingredients according to my recipe, and I'm keeping the mess at 65-75 degrees (though outside temperature went down to forty degrees last night) and I can smell the yeast doing its work. Here's the recipe I'm using, though I've tripled the amounts:

1.4 lb Elderberries
1 gallon of boiling water
3 lb granulated sugar
Yeast packet
8 oz chopped raisins
Juice of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 orange
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
1 teaspoon yeast enzyme with vitamin B

I got this recipe off the web last year, and I sort of used it but not exactly. This year I figured I'd follow it exactly. The only thing that worries me, however, is that I just found a recipe on the web that is exactly the same as this recipe except calling for 4 lbs of elderberries rather than 1.4 lbs. It makes me wonder what I'll come out with. I wonder if it's too late to go find another 8 lbs of elderberries.