The monsoons have backed off, and we've had lovely days in the high 60s, blue skies with lots of clouds. No need for a fire at night. Indian summer: my favorite time of year. Long may it last!
C. canned another batch of veg soup today. There was enough left over for dinner – I think it was the best batch ever.
She's working on more tomato sauce now. I'm to stir the soup pot of paste tomatoes while she is in the shower. She'll put herbs in and let it simmer overnight, and can it tomorrow.
She spent the day picking tomatillos and digging spuds, and I cleaned up the messy area outside the rabbit room. Our boy and family are coming up tomorrow to help with the harvest, so I ventured into the basement and cleaned up the "ice room," our root cellar area. I was pleased with myself. I haven't been down there in a couple of years. I don't do stairs anymore, and these are a steep set of 20 concrete steps. There's an old-school pipe handrail, though, and I took it slowly. Hah. Maybe I'll get on the roof next.
We'll ask the kids to dig carrots, beets and parsnips, pack them in buckets of moist sand, and haul them to the basement. And dig spuds. And move the duck house around the building to the rooster yard....
We're lucky to have family to help us out with the heavy work around the place.
The spuds will cure for a few days outside, and we'll get them to the basement, too.
Yesterday I cut all the cabbages, pulled off their outer leaves, and hosed dirt, aphids, earwigs and slugs off. We've got about 30, some of them bigger than basketballs. They'll become sauerkraut, except for a few in perfect shape that can be wrapped in newspaper and go to the root cellar for storage.
C. cut all the winter squash, and fed the vines to the goats. And I picked the field corn and cut the stalks for the goats and sheep. I'm pulling the husks back and hanging the ears to dry in the entryway.
Our venerable microwave/convection oven died. C. found another for $25 on Craig's List, and the microwave guy gave us some apples, too. C. plans to make apple cider vinegar, after pricing the real stuff ("with the mother") for her pickle-making. You can't buy gallons of the good stuff – it comes in quarts for about $5, and she uses lots of it.
Our fine son-in-law brought us two loads of firewood. He's batching it for a week while Em and Liam are in Portland getting some specialized medical treatment. He's such a good guy. C. will fire up the chainsaw and cut the wood into stove lengths, and I'll stack it on the porch.
Two eggs today; four yesterday.
Monday, September 25, 2017
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Garden: toast
Well, pretty much. A good hard frost hit us Friday night.
It was a surprise – the weather service predicted 36 degrees, then issued a frost warning (didn't know there was such a thing) in late afternoon. We'd been at the Friends of the Deer Park Library book sale all day and didn't know about it until 6 or so. I told C. about it, then promptly went back to the Civil War, and forgot all about the garden. I do get involved in a book. I finished "The Black Flower," by Howard Bahr, at dusk, and wandered outside, wondering where C. had gone. Duh. She was draping plastic sheeting over the tomatoes.
I put on a headlamp, dug out more plastic, clothespins and all the spare sheets, and covered tomatoes until midnight or so. Hard work on uneven ground. We have three 40-foot rows – and a few plants here and there – of indeterminate tomatoes, and those plants get 6 or 7 feet tall.
We had a fire in the wood stove that night.
So Saturday we pulled off the plastic and the sheets, and checked the damage. Some of the covered plants, especially at the bottom of the garden, were hit hard. Others were barely touched. The pole beans were uncovered and took only minor damage. As usual, it's weirdly random.
Then the fall monsoons started. It's been gray, chilly and rainy since. The remaining tomatoes aren't going to ripen much now, and another freeze is forecast for Friday. Might as well accept it.
We finished picking the last of the tomatoes today – six buckets full. The green ones are spread out on the island in the other kitchen. They'll ripen over the next couple of weeks, probably. The yellow, orange and red ones are over here. Wait – I forgot to get the toms on the fence on the little dog yard. We'll get those, and the tomatillos, squash and corn tomorrow. Then we'll pick the giant cabbages, and launch into sauerkraut production.
C. is making salsa right now. She makes really good, mild salsa. I asked for her recipe, and she says she just wings it. I pressed for details, for you, my three readers, and here you go: Take a shitload of tomatillos (Exactly how many is that? A bunch. A bunch? A lot. All you have. Like... a gallon-jar full? Two, maybe... and the tomatillos should be mostly yellow, not green. They're sweeter that way.), three big onions, maybe a dozen medium-sized paste tomatoes, six Ancho peppers without seeds, four big cloves of garlic. Cut everything in half (chop the garlic), coat with oil and roast in batches in a 450-degree oven. (For how long? Until it's done. Blackened on the edges? Browned.) Drain off some of the liquid. Pulse everything up (not too fine!) in a fancy red food processor. Add lemon or lime juice, vinegar, salt, cilantro, cumin. Makes 10 pints to can in a water bath. And since the canner holds only nine jars, that leaves one to eat with chips or crackers while you clean up the huge mess this makes in the kitchen. (That's pretty good. More specific measurements would be helpful, though. Oh. Oh, well.)
So we're closing the gardening season down. Next, we'll get the winter's wood supply in. I'm already remembering those 90-degree days – just a couple of weeks ago – fondly.
Two eggs today.
It was a surprise – the weather service predicted 36 degrees, then issued a frost warning (didn't know there was such a thing) in late afternoon. We'd been at the Friends of the Deer Park Library book sale all day and didn't know about it until 6 or so. I told C. about it, then promptly went back to the Civil War, and forgot all about the garden. I do get involved in a book. I finished "The Black Flower," by Howard Bahr, at dusk, and wandered outside, wondering where C. had gone. Duh. She was draping plastic sheeting over the tomatoes.
I put on a headlamp, dug out more plastic, clothespins and all the spare sheets, and covered tomatoes until midnight or so. Hard work on uneven ground. We have three 40-foot rows – and a few plants here and there – of indeterminate tomatoes, and those plants get 6 or 7 feet tall.
We had a fire in the wood stove that night.
So Saturday we pulled off the plastic and the sheets, and checked the damage. Some of the covered plants, especially at the bottom of the garden, were hit hard. Others were barely touched. The pole beans were uncovered and took only minor damage. As usual, it's weirdly random.
Then the fall monsoons started. It's been gray, chilly and rainy since. The remaining tomatoes aren't going to ripen much now, and another freeze is forecast for Friday. Might as well accept it.
We finished picking the last of the tomatoes today – six buckets full. The green ones are spread out on the island in the other kitchen. They'll ripen over the next couple of weeks, probably. The yellow, orange and red ones are over here. Wait – I forgot to get the toms on the fence on the little dog yard. We'll get those, and the tomatillos, squash and corn tomorrow. Then we'll pick the giant cabbages, and launch into sauerkraut production.
C. is making salsa right now. She makes really good, mild salsa. I asked for her recipe, and she says she just wings it. I pressed for details, for you, my three readers, and here you go: Take a shitload of tomatillos (Exactly how many is that? A bunch. A bunch? A lot. All you have. Like... a gallon-jar full? Two, maybe... and the tomatillos should be mostly yellow, not green. They're sweeter that way.), three big onions, maybe a dozen medium-sized paste tomatoes, six Ancho peppers without seeds, four big cloves of garlic. Cut everything in half (chop the garlic), coat with oil and roast in batches in a 450-degree oven. (For how long? Until it's done. Blackened on the edges? Browned.) Drain off some of the liquid. Pulse everything up (not too fine!) in a fancy red food processor. Add lemon or lime juice, vinegar, salt, cilantro, cumin. Makes 10 pints to can in a water bath. And since the canner holds only nine jars, that leaves one to eat with chips or crackers while you clean up the huge mess this makes in the kitchen. (That's pretty good. More specific measurements would be helpful, though. Oh. Oh, well.)
So we're closing the gardening season down. Next, we'll get the winter's wood supply in. I'm already remembering those 90-degree days – just a couple of weeks ago – fondly.
Two eggs today.
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Cooling off
The smoke is mostly gone, and the days are much cooler – fall is really here.
The tomatoes are ripening like crazy. I pick pole beans every day, then tomatoes. It takes two trips with the picking bucket to get each day's toms in.
We moved the food driers over to the other kitchen, leaving a whole length of counter over here for tomato sorting and storage. I go through them a couple times a day, moving the ripe ones here, and the bad ones there, so we know what needs to be used or canned or refrigerated. I'm pleased to be a slave to tomatoes. And the rabbits and chickens are happy to eat any iffy ones.
We've been making our usual tomato-season sandwiches: a thick slice of homemade bread (or a gluten-free pancake, in my case), a generous layer of homemade pesto, slabs of tomato and grated asiago cheese, all toasted under the broiler. Mmmmmm.
The kids were up the other day to help with the garden. (Liam is getting so big! And he's got chunky little thighs.) We harvested the hops. My pulley system didn't work as well as I'd hoped. The vines climbed four lines tied to a ring, and the ring was to be raised and lowered with a rope going through a carabiner on the top lip of the 20-foot ham-radio pole. But the vines bound everything together, and it took some serious reefing to get the ring lowered. We cut the vines and tied everything up in clean sheets. Next I need to pick off the hop cones and rig up a place indoors to dry them.
The tomatoes are ripening like crazy. I pick pole beans every day, then tomatoes. It takes two trips with the picking bucket to get each day's toms in.
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| No, that's not me. But that's my bucket. $1 at an estate sale years ago. Very handy. |
We've been making our usual tomato-season sandwiches: a thick slice of homemade bread (or a gluten-free pancake, in my case), a generous layer of homemade pesto, slabs of tomato and grated asiago cheese, all toasted under the broiler. Mmmmmm.
The kids were up the other day to help with the garden. (Liam is getting so big! And he's got chunky little thighs.) We harvested the hops. My pulley system didn't work as well as I'd hoped. The vines climbed four lines tied to a ring, and the ring was to be raised and lowered with a rope going through a carabiner on the top lip of the 20-foot ham-radio pole. But the vines bound everything together, and it took some serious reefing to get the ring lowered. We cut the vines and tied everything up in clean sheets. Next I need to pick off the hop cones and rig up a place indoors to dry them.
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| That's the hops tower on the back of the chicken house.
This year was an improvement on the last, when the vines grew into the chicken wire on top of the chicken run – picking the cones was a real pain. Next year, I want to move the vines to the flower bed around the building, and set up several towers. The towers can attach to the roof for stability, I'll use actual pulleys for smoother raising and lowering, and we'll get away from the dust that the guineas and chickens churn up in their yard.
C. wants to make beer with our hops, which would be cool and maybe even save us some money. Of course, I get to design the label. She is looking for a recipe for a "skunky" lager similar to either Labatts or Dos Equis. Don't ask me – I'm not a beer drinker.
My addiction is chocolate, which I think is altogether more sensible. I've been buying Guittard milk-chocolate chips, big fat bits of smooth, rich chocolate – better than any candy bar, IMHO. Since we try to limit our grocery shopping to once a month, I figured I could limit myself (ha!) to four ounces a day, so 10 12-ounce packages would last a month. Right? Not so much. So far, I'm consuming a whole package a day. I guess I'll be realistic, pick up a few packages on payday, suck them down, and then do without. Self-control is a bitch.
Six eggs today. Milk and two dozen eggs from Rose Saturday.
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Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Smoky and hot
September has been just like August, so far. Smoky skies from wildfires. Temps in the 90s. The air reeks of smoke, and the sun is a sickly orange disk.
We watched Em's four dogs for a weekend so she could visit family in Moses Lake. The dogs were pretty good. We still have the weiner, Bella, while they work on training Arnold. We have a weak spot for dachshunds. They are stubborn, arrogant, sneaky, greedy, noisy – and funny. Our own weiner, Annie, is pretty awesome. And she hasn't killed anything inappropriate for a long time (like chickens or kittens). She did get a mouse last week. She's a little jealous of Bella, so I have to make a fuss over her, and give her the best spot on the lap.
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| Yes, the buttons light up. |
I picked rabbit food, green beans and tomatoes today; green beans, dry beans and tomatoes yesterday.
Eight eggs yesterday; five today.
Friday, September 1, 2017
September garden
Our camera is dying, but managed to function for a few minutes today. We have another, but it has too many buttons. We are considering looking at the manual.
C. is having one of those days where she knocks things over every time she turns around. It's a butt-swing thing. Right now she is on a stool pouring boiling water on pickles in the little crock. I offered to help, and she said, "Hell, no!" I was a little hurt until she said she'd just manage to pour boiling water on me.
Five eggs today; six yesterday.
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| Savvy the sheep chows on horseradish and parsnip leaves. |
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| Amaranth and the east corn patch |
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| The dry beans |
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| Amaranth and the north corn patch. We started this corn inside – some of it is 8 feet tall now. Unfortunately, it's field corn, not sweet corn. |
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| The cucumbers continue to crank out blooms and spiky fruit. |
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| These purple snap peas will not die, dammit. |
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| Peculiar volunteer tomatoes |
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| That big cracked tomato must be 8 inches across. |
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| C.'s Just Joey rose is going to bloom! It's in a pot, or it'd be in a gopher. |
C. is having one of those days where she knocks things over every time she turns around. It's a butt-swing thing. Right now she is on a stool pouring boiling water on pickles in the little crock. I offered to help, and she said, "Hell, no!" I was a little hurt until she said she'd just manage to pour boiling water on me.
Five eggs today; six yesterday.
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Late summer
Life is still centered around the garden. It's hot, in the 80s and 90s, but cool at night.
The tomatoes are slowly ripening. I do enjoy picking something that turns bright red when it's ready. Makes a nice change from rummaging among green leaves to find green beans or peas. We have several big bowls of lovely ripe ones we need to do something with today. I think C. plans to cook them down to make sauce. I'm lobbying for catsup, and salsa, too. So much better than store-bought.
We've been saving our pennies, and bought a fancy-ass bright-red HUGE food processor to replace the old Cuisinart. It's magnificent. It's squatting, glowing red, on the counter. It's a Breville Sous Chef, which sounds pretty cool (though not as cool as the Robot Coupe, another brand). I've promised to never use it, so it should last a long time.
I hate those things (C. loves them). C. has five or more small ones, most bought second-hand. They've all got discs and stems and bowls, all in different sizes, and are all such plastic crap. I hate the way they all open and close and lock and work in counter-intuitive ways. I get frustrated and come close to breaking the damn thing every time I use one. Give me a knife and a cutting board, please.
But when it's time to thin-slice basketball-sized cabbages for the 10-gallon crock, I can see the advantage.
C. is thrilled.
The house was messy, so I decided to organize the books. That's how I roll. So now the messy house has stacks of books everywhere. I've been working on it for a couple of weeks. Most of our books were just plunked on random shelves when we moved, and it's been hard to find anything – especially anything in the boxes of books that were never unpacked! I tacked together a shelf for paperbacks, but will probably need to build one or two more. And the book sale is next weekend...
I'm off to feed the chickens. C. is preparing to slice some vegetables.
The tomatoes are slowly ripening. I do enjoy picking something that turns bright red when it's ready. Makes a nice change from rummaging among green leaves to find green beans or peas. We have several big bowls of lovely ripe ones we need to do something with today. I think C. plans to cook them down to make sauce. I'm lobbying for catsup, and salsa, too. So much better than store-bought.
We've been saving our pennies, and bought a fancy-ass bright-red HUGE food processor to replace the old Cuisinart. It's magnificent. It's squatting, glowing red, on the counter. It's a Breville Sous Chef, which sounds pretty cool (though not as cool as the Robot Coupe, another brand). I've promised to never use it, so it should last a long time.
I hate those things (C. loves them). C. has five or more small ones, most bought second-hand. They've all got discs and stems and bowls, all in different sizes, and are all such plastic crap. I hate the way they all open and close and lock and work in counter-intuitive ways. I get frustrated and come close to breaking the damn thing every time I use one. Give me a knife and a cutting board, please.
But when it's time to thin-slice basketball-sized cabbages for the 10-gallon crock, I can see the advantage.
C. is thrilled.
The house was messy, so I decided to organize the books. That's how I roll. So now the messy house has stacks of books everywhere. I've been working on it for a couple of weeks. Most of our books were just plunked on random shelves when we moved, and it's been hard to find anything – especially anything in the boxes of books that were never unpacked! I tacked together a shelf for paperbacks, but will probably need to build one or two more. And the book sale is next weekend...
I'm off to feed the chickens. C. is preparing to slice some vegetables.
Sheep, sheared!
And I can almost say I did it myself.
C. is the fiber person, and she's always done the shearing. She thinks I'm insufficiently careful with both sheep and fleece. But she's busy with the garden, so I decide to step up.
I bait the triangular catch pen, in the pasture, with grain, and manage to catch Bambers.
I know professional shearers plop the sheep onto her butt and hold her upright, and take 10 minutes to peel that fleece right off – like mamma whipping off baby's jammies. I'm not up to that. I put the halter on her and tie it up tight, then sit on a stool next to her and start clipping at the neck. She hops and fusses. I try all four pairs of sharpened hand shears, and one is... okay. Not great. I think it might be hand strength that is the problem. Or the angle of the blades. I eventually go to the scissors, and manage to get the top of her neck down to the middle of her back. Like a reverse mullet. Or a crew cut that slid off the head onto the neck. I leave it for the day, and she gets the hell out of there. Yes, her haircut is tragic – but she is a little cooler, and it is a start.
Next day, I catch her again, and manage to shear her back and sides on down to the top of her tail before we both get tired. Now her haircut makes her butt look big. Heaven knows what the neighbors think.
Shearing is hard on the back, so I rest a couple of days and get back to it. I try the same grain game, but everyone is a whole lot more suspicious. Every time I get one in the pen and the gate nearly closed, she plows past me to freedom. Damn sheep.
They hadn't knocked me down (yet), but I am hot and frustrated. I need help. I find C. in the garden. She is in garden mode, though, not sheep mode, and was not enthusiastic. She has important garden stuff to do. I am hot, frustrated and convinced that one of the sheep needs to be sheared now. It's possible that one of us is being unreasonable.
Peevishly, she joins me at the big gate from garden to pasture. Peevishly, I bring a bucket of oats and the sheep halter. I step through the gate, the goats mob me, and yellow jackets fly out of the pipe next to the gate and sting me. And C. refuses come through the gate to help because of the hornets. Bloody hell.
OK. Plan B. I'll catch a damn sheep in the halter somehow, take her through the hornet gate, and C. will lead her through the garden and out the other gate to the shearing area (my cane and I are not steady enough to lead her any distance.) OK? OK. (Pity it doesn't occur to me to withdraw gracefully, lure the sheep back over to the shearing area and catch them there on my own. Duh.)
So I dump several little piles of oats to distract the goats, make a lasso of the harness and lay it along the top of the grain bucket. The greedy sheep push their heads into the bucket, I pull the loop tight, and I have two. OK, that's a problem. I manage to release one, and keep the other, just in time because here come the goats after the bucket. I pull Tricks the sheep, my intended victim, over to the gate, staying well away from the hornet nest in the pipe. C. opens the gate for me and I hand off the sheep, who drags C. away into the delicious wonders of the garden. I'm closing the gate, wary of hornets, and the other sheep plows right through me into the garden. In the pasture, the goats are fighting over the grain bucket, and one manages to get his horns and head through the handle. Now he's wearing the bucket around his neck, dancing to keep his brother out of the grain. In the garden, C. loses hold of the halter.
We have two sheep loose in the garden, one with a noose around her neck, and a goat stuck in a bucket. It is not our finest farming moment.
The sheep are skittish, we manage to herd them back into the pasture, and the goats are too distracted by the bucket of grain around the little guy's neck to rush the gate. I grab him and somehow wrestle his head and horns out of the bucket handle.
I withdraw to sulk and plot my revenge. C. returns to her gardening. Her hand is hurt from the sheep ripping the halter away.
A few days later, I have a cunning plan. I draft C.to help me move the triangular catch pen into the barn. I lure the three sheep into the barn pen, and shut the goats, and alpaca out. In a confined area, it's pretty easy to get a sheep into the triangular pen, where I sit and shear for a few hours. I'm nearly done when I cut poor Bambi on the thigh. And I had been doing so well. Sheep skin is so thin and delicate, it's easy to do. I lose confidence. C. kindly comes over and finishes for me. We dab that purple wound stuff on her to keep the flies off.
Done!
Yes, I sheared the sheep all by myself this year.
C. is the fiber person, and she's always done the shearing. She thinks I'm insufficiently careful with both sheep and fleece. But she's busy with the garden, so I decide to step up.
I bait the triangular catch pen, in the pasture, with grain, and manage to catch Bambers.
I know professional shearers plop the sheep onto her butt and hold her upright, and take 10 minutes to peel that fleece right off – like mamma whipping off baby's jammies. I'm not up to that. I put the halter on her and tie it up tight, then sit on a stool next to her and start clipping at the neck. She hops and fusses. I try all four pairs of sharpened hand shears, and one is... okay. Not great. I think it might be hand strength that is the problem. Or the angle of the blades. I eventually go to the scissors, and manage to get the top of her neck down to the middle of her back. Like a reverse mullet. Or a crew cut that slid off the head onto the neck. I leave it for the day, and she gets the hell out of there. Yes, her haircut is tragic – but she is a little cooler, and it is a start.
Next day, I catch her again, and manage to shear her back and sides on down to the top of her tail before we both get tired. Now her haircut makes her butt look big. Heaven knows what the neighbors think.
Shearing is hard on the back, so I rest a couple of days and get back to it. I try the same grain game, but everyone is a whole lot more suspicious. Every time I get one in the pen and the gate nearly closed, she plows past me to freedom. Damn sheep.
They hadn't knocked me down (yet), but I am hot and frustrated. I need help. I find C. in the garden. She is in garden mode, though, not sheep mode, and was not enthusiastic. She has important garden stuff to do. I am hot, frustrated and convinced that one of the sheep needs to be sheared now. It's possible that one of us is being unreasonable.
Peevishly, she joins me at the big gate from garden to pasture. Peevishly, I bring a bucket of oats and the sheep halter. I step through the gate, the goats mob me, and yellow jackets fly out of the pipe next to the gate and sting me. And C. refuses come through the gate to help because of the hornets. Bloody hell.
OK. Plan B. I'll catch a damn sheep in the halter somehow, take her through the hornet gate, and C. will lead her through the garden and out the other gate to the shearing area (my cane and I are not steady enough to lead her any distance.) OK? OK. (Pity it doesn't occur to me to withdraw gracefully, lure the sheep back over to the shearing area and catch them there on my own. Duh.)
So I dump several little piles of oats to distract the goats, make a lasso of the harness and lay it along the top of the grain bucket. The greedy sheep push their heads into the bucket, I pull the loop tight, and I have two. OK, that's a problem. I manage to release one, and keep the other, just in time because here come the goats after the bucket. I pull Tricks the sheep, my intended victim, over to the gate, staying well away from the hornet nest in the pipe. C. opens the gate for me and I hand off the sheep, who drags C. away into the delicious wonders of the garden. I'm closing the gate, wary of hornets, and the other sheep plows right through me into the garden. In the pasture, the goats are fighting over the grain bucket, and one manages to get his horns and head through the handle. Now he's wearing the bucket around his neck, dancing to keep his brother out of the grain. In the garden, C. loses hold of the halter.
We have two sheep loose in the garden, one with a noose around her neck, and a goat stuck in a bucket. It is not our finest farming moment.
The sheep are skittish, we manage to herd them back into the pasture, and the goats are too distracted by the bucket of grain around the little guy's neck to rush the gate. I grab him and somehow wrestle his head and horns out of the bucket handle.
I withdraw to sulk and plot my revenge. C. returns to her gardening. Her hand is hurt from the sheep ripping the halter away.
A few days later, I have a cunning plan. I draft C.to help me move the triangular catch pen into the barn. I lure the three sheep into the barn pen, and shut the goats, and alpaca out. In a confined area, it's pretty easy to get a sheep into the triangular pen, where I sit and shear for a few hours. I'm nearly done when I cut poor Bambi on the thigh. And I had been doing so well. Sheep skin is so thin and delicate, it's easy to do. I lose confidence. C. kindly comes over and finishes for me. We dab that purple wound stuff on her to keep the flies off.
Done!
Yes, I sheared the sheep all by myself this year.
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