Christmas Chocolate!

We've made some significant progress in the area of chocolate presentation and candy making.  In this shot are truffles, toffee, almond bark, and peanut butter cups.  These are for various friends and family we're seeing or sending to this year.  Shout out to http://www.cocoasupply.com for having great prices on beans and cocoa butter, that let us afford to make somewhere around 25lbs of chocolate this last month.  In fact, the chocolate pictured is only a portion of what we've made so far - the fancy looking part.

During this, we've made some new chocolate recipies and tried new things.  It's been a great chance to experiment.  I plan to write up our recipes later as a separate post.  For now, have a merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a great New Year!

Peanut picking

We got maybe 1/2gal of peanuts in shell when we pulled the plants out of the shed today, after drying for a month or two.  We skipped some nuts that looked moldy or bad, since I've read that peanuts can attract a certain mold that is carcinogenic if eaten O.o

I started shelling them, but it's taking a while...

Pecan harvest

The pan is 1 night of pecan harvesting (~20min) by 2 people.  It seems we only harvest at night because that's when we have time to wander around in the yard - outside looking at the ground with flashlights. :P

The bags are from previous nights this year.

Bring on the pink

We bought a nice LED grow light (Phlizon 'Newest 600W', though only uses ~110W) to supplement our cacao trees.  It's really bright and I'm optimistic that it will help our plants grow well even with shorter winter days.

One problem, though, is that the pink glow is quite visible, even from the street.  I have preemptively told the police department to call me if they have questions, as grow lights like this are not usually used for cacao plants.

On another note, it seems our heating system is keeping up in the inner greenhouse area, which is good!  This is our first winter with a greenhouse, so there's been a lot of work/anxiety on my part trying to get it ready and tuned properly.  I understand now why people use kits and predesigned greenhouse systems.

More greenhouse work

We carefully added a small space heater on a dedicated 12 gauge extension cord (and 2 smoke detectors), plastic shower curtains, an interior roof, the grow light we've been using inside, and other things to keep the cacao plants happy.  For a little while, we had mold in this area, so we added an above table fan to keep air moving well.  The fan under the table blows air over several very large bags of water, which we hope are working as a thermal mass to keep temperatures more stable.

We also moved a bunch of plants (banana, dragonfruit, strawberry, pineapple) into the outer area or the greenhouse to help protect them from upcoming frost this winter.  It seems like we're getting closer to keeping things alive this winter; wish us luck!

First plants in greenhouse!

Today, we built a platform for our cacao plants and moved the outdoor or into the green house.  We've got the misting system from before, a small fan, and an old phone turned WiFi camera.  I'm excited to see how things grow in here.  I'm also trying to figure out exactly how we'll keep this warm in the winter, though we have some ideas.

Indoor cacao doing well

The indoor plants are doing really well, benefiting from consistent temperatures and regular watering.

In the front is a Cinnamon tree we ordered online.