I'm actually back this time.

Ok, so...what have I been up to? Well, as I may or may not have mentioned in a previous post, my wife and I bought a house for our family about eighteen months ago(April of 2012, to be exact). As such, we(she, mostly), spent a lot of time converting our overgrown, suburban-y boring lot into a mini-homestead.
We have a small flock of laying hens(ten in number for the time being), two goats for companionship/milk(one a show goat for my eldest daughter), three french Angora rabbits for fiber, three meat rabbits(two creme d'argents, one silver fox), fourteen meat chickens(mixed heritage breed roosters), and about 50,000 bees I caught (with assistance) after they swarmed my neighbor's chimney.
We also have a vegetable patch, an herb garden, and scattered offerings of fruit (multiple apple trees, a pear tree, a plum tree, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry and blackberry). We even have a bed of flowers somewhere around here-even those are used to some extent.
So, in summary, the biggest reason I haven't been updating my blog(or making much, if any, soda), is simply because I have devoted so much time to ensuring our home is what we want it to be. I am looking forward to the day down the road in which I will be able to pick apples from my own front yard to be used for making apple syrup for homemade sodas. Until then, however, I will have to tide myself over with honey harvested from my backyard top-bar hive.

Another reason I put off updating the blog is that when I said I would make more soda is that my youngest child has celiac disease, and it occured to me that my ale yeast might contain barley malt-which would make any resultant soda unsafe for my daughter's consumption. I have yet to figure out whether or not my specific brand is safe, but it is worth noting to any of my gluten-free readers out there that you may have to take that into consideration. I will do my best to ascertain which brands are definitively gluten-free and post a list in the coming future.

Also, I have a tendency to obsess on specific subjects for varying amounts of time. This past April I became very involved in collecting retro video games-specifically seeking out those games which I enjoyed in my childhood and many of the games I missed out on for various reasons growing up. That pursuit took quite a bit of my time as well. However, my loving wife has been chiding me into getting back to making homemade soda knowing the joy it brings me, our children, and my readers. I would like to thank everyone who has hung around and happened upon my site, especially those of you that have left so many encouraging comments. You guys are awesome, and even in spite of my absence the blog has continued to grow in readership, garnering nearly twice as many hits per month as I was receiving when I was fervently updating.

I have some other projects in the works that may or may not come to fruition, but I plan on getting a couple of reviews and at least one recipe up here before I seriously start working on anything else.
I believe I will be relating my honey-harvesting in an upcoming post as well.

Until next time, happy soda-making!

Eos Rising Farm By the way, if you'd like to keep up on the other aspects of my lovely household, my wife's blog can be found there.