Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Nothing like a private fireworks show...
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Striving for self-sufficiency in a modern world, we're a homeschooling family of 3 with a 13yo still crazy about ships of the air and sea, a mad-for-gardening dad who can't keep up with all his seedlings and me, a mom who would love to have more time to indulge in spinning, knitting, weaving, sewing or reading. We're creating our version of the good life in the Shenandoah Valley.
Homesteading updates
- 2015-07-09: 17 newly-hatched guinea keets followed their mama across the front yard to the guineas' feeding station under a crab apple tree.
- 2012-07-26: Two young raccoons came to the backyard chicken's feeder at lunchtime. One removed, one left. (The third one was found, struck on the road in front of the sheep field, Monday a week ago.)
- 2012-07-25: Put up 21 quarts of Helen Witty's extra crisp bread-and-butter-pickles.
- 2012-07-22: Put another 1.5 gals of sour pickles in regular 2-gal crock. Tested first batch--they're getting there but not quite yet. Put down a 5-gal bucket of sliced cukes in lime water for bread-and-butter pickles.
- 2012-07-15: Put 1.5gals of "Bubbies pickles" in water-lock fermentation crock.
- 2012-07-13: Put up 24 pints of Amish canned coleslaw. Saw 3 young racoons climbing fencepost in backyard. Jim noted they were "cute and purred" at him when he approached them. That diversion saved them, they escaped before he could get back outside.
- 2012-07-09: Caught a full-grown racoon in trap set with marshmallows(!).
- 2012-07-06: Lost all 5 of EB's 2-mo-old chicks to a racoon that got in the chick pen around 1am. Ordered Little Giant live animal trap.
- 2012-06-17: 7 quarts of brown beans, 3 quarts of beef broth and 7 pints of spicy pineapple chicken -- done.
- 2012-06-16: Old votech shed moved, set-up near garden, re-roofed and painted.
Homemaking Projects - Completed
- 2011-07-22: Applied double-fold bias tape to sides of fraying bath towels.
- 2011-07-18: Cleaned out linen closet.
- 2011-07-14: Added curly pink pig's tail to thrifted pajama bottoms. Part of DS's HP 7, Part II costume for midnight showing.
- 2011-01-30: Two Undercover Crate liners sewn and put to use.
- Embroidered tea towel - rooster iron-on.
- Finished hooking mat. Now to bind it.
- Two more Undercover Crate liners cut-out and ready-to-sew.
- Two more Market Skirts for grandneices.
- Re-covered and added padding to ironing board
- Patched more of DH's flannel pajama pants - no more wearing them for outdoor chores, remember?!
- 2 Market Skirts for grandneices
- Finished chulo for DH
- Wool socks finished for me
- Cleared out a dozen well-worn t-shirts by cutting them into Tarn and rolling into balls
- Sleep boxers for DS - cut out, ready to sew
More Market Skirts
Boomer in his felted wool coat
Wardrobe Refashion
Topics
- books (7)
- canning and preserving (47)
- chickens (26)
- Christmas (16)
- cookery (111)
- crafts (45)
- dinosaurs (3)
- drive-in (1)
- DS (2)
- dyeing (6)
- felting (8)
- field trips (7)
- garden (56)
- homeschooling (17)
- household (4)
- knitting (10)
- menu planning (18)
- music (2)
- needlework (9)
- oamc (20)
- one local summer (13)
- pets (6)
- recipes (88)
- sewing (12)
- sheep (5)
- trains (1)
- travel (4)
- treehouse (1)
- use-it-up (31)
- weather (31)
- weaving (2)
Christmas treats
Daily-stop websites
- Fractured Frugal Friends
- LibraryThing | Catalog your books online
- Bookfinder.com - Search and Price Comparison for New, Out-of-Print and Used Books
- WorldCat.org - Search for books, music, videos, articles and more in libraries near you
- Netflix
- Spinners', Weavers' and Knitters' Housecleaning Pages
- Weather.com
- Yahoo! Groups
Salsa for canning
growing food closer to home
Snowball with her day-old Turken chicks
Warhammer 40k
DH and DS's armies going at it on the kitchen table.
Currently Reading
- The Guynd: A Scottish Journal - Finally getting around to reading this work by Belinda Rathbone that I requested thru PaperBackSwap. It's a memoir of courtship and marriage to a modern-day Scottish laird -- the Guynd is where they end up living, the property that's been in his family for 400+ years. Finding it pretty interesting as it's part guidebook, part history, and part bio that's presented pretty evenly tho the reader is always aware it's written from Rathbone's sometimes one-sided perspective. The progressive telling of the poignant yet wry personal relationship dovetails nicely with the story of the ancestral home.
- There Will Be Dragons - First in a series by John Ringo, this one is SciFi plus Fantasy and starts with earth several thousand years in the future where humans have become so satiated and complacent without strife, famine and crime that the population has been in decline for years. The ruling Council finally splits on the question of how to deal with the problem and the result is the world is thrown back to pre-industrial days when the previously limitless power supply is cut-off. Combines a little bit of survialism relying on medieval recreationism (think SCA) and some mythology with just plain fun (read good) human drama and characters worth knowing. Well, some, anyway.
- The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family - Reads almost like a novel tho I know it's not. Came to this after running across Debo Mitford's recent "Counting My Chickens." I remember vague mention of one or other of the family in my reading over the years but Lovell's book brings it all together. Much better than my lamentable memory especially since I never knew half of their story. Making notes for more reading as I go. Good footnotes and bibliography. I like that in a book.
- Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province - Good looking recipes and the couple I tried so far taste good, too.
- Sauce Book - Straightforward recipe book -- but what solid recipes. Basics to more refined. Liked this one so well I ordered a used copy (OOP) for myself.
- American Prince: A Memoir - A bit of whine shows thru and he always seems to be fighting an inferiority complex but I generally like Tony Curtis. The Persuaders are still a favorite, Spartacus wouldn't be the same without his pretty-boy self, and a few of those old movies (comedies mainly) are keepers, too. So the book held my interest for the most part -- lots of skimming, tho.
- Alt Fiber: 25 Projects for Knitting Green with Bamboo, Soy, Hemp, and More - Hmm, worth picking up at the library. Wouldn't purchase a copy -- perhaps if I didn't have so many other sources of info, this one would appear more important?
- The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life - Taking notes with this one. Just the sort of guide I needed right now. Lots of ideas for reading and makes me feel like I am not alone.
- How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way - Good how-to video. Lee and Buscema keep it light and entertaining. Worked well for our homeschool drawing class intro to drawing comics. There's a book of the same name that adds a bit more detail, too.
- Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book - More than I ever knew about comic books. And that's more than enough.
- Storey's Illustrated Breed Guide to Sheep, Goats, Cattle and Pigs: 163 Breeds from Common to Rare (Storeys Illustrated Breed Gde) - Always interesting topic for me and Storey invariably does a good job at this sort of book.
- Home to Roost: A Backyard Farmer Chases Chickens Through the Ages - Ugh. Too hard going for such an interesting subject -- trying too hard?
- Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 - Interesting. Either I became adjusted to writing style or it evened out after first couple of chapters.
- Absolutely Organized: A Mom's Guide to a No-Stress Schedule and Clutter-Free Home - Um, not a lot here for me. Perhaps I've read too many of this type of book?
- The Best 30-Minute Recipe/ by the editors of Cook's illustrated - Cook's Illustrated books are interesting but sometimes more than I want at the moment. Good recipes.
- Mark Bittman's Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times: Featuring 350 recipes from the author of HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING and THE BEST RECIPES IN THE WORLD - Several worthy recipes but didn't go into book too deeply -- just flipped around thru the recipes, stopping at ones that appealed in the moment.
- Coming Home - Another Rosamunde Pilcher story to lose myself in -- in this case just right for after-surgery reading except that the book was too thick to rest on my tummy!
Hollyhocks in bloom
Living wreath hanging above hollyhocks
DS with rag balls
DS at 13 months enjoying the rag rug strips that used to be rolled into balls!
Wool dyeing
Use up the leftover Easter egg dye by dyeing a bit of wool.
Turkish drop spindle
favorite easy-to-knit houseshoes
My favorite men wearing my favorite knit houseshoes.
handspun shawl
Handspun shawl in-progress on triangle loom
picot edge cast-on from "Mary Thomas' Knitting Book"
Picot Edge Cast-on in use
DS and Holly-dog
Holly and the new girl on her first day
Feedjit
2008 Food Preservation
| Net Amount | ||||
| Food | Frozen | Canned | Dried yield | Root cellar |
| apples | 2.5 bushels | |||
| applesauce | 15 pints | |||
| beans, green | 167 quarts | |||
| beets, pickled | 34 qts | |||
| broccoli | 32 lbs | |||
| cabbage, green | 4.5 qts | |||
| cabbage, red | 3.5 qts | |||
| cherries, sweet | 46 pts | 4 lbs | ||
| jelly, grape | 6 pts, 10 half-pts | |||
| jerky | 3 lbs | |||
| juice, grape | 72 qts, 27 half-gals | |||
| meat | 7 qts | |||
| mincemeat, green tomato | 7 pts | |||
| mustard, cranberry | 4 half-pints | |||
| mustard, nectarine | 21 pints | |||
| nectarines | 40 halves | 3 qts | ||
| peach nectar | 18 pts | |||
| pear honey | 6 pts, 1 half-pt | |||
| pears | 6 qts | |||
| peppers, green bell | 1 pt | |||
| peppers, hot banana, pickled | 24 qts | |||
| peppers, pepperoncini, pickled | 5 qts | |||
| pickles, bread and butter (cucumbers and onion) | 24 qts | |||
| potatoes | 11 qts | 5 bushels | ||
| preserves, peach | 6 pts | |||
| preserves, rhubarb-strawberry | 11 pints | |||
| rhubarb, chopped | 3 qts | |||
| salsa | 33 qts | |||
| sauerkraut | ||||
| spaghetti sauce | 2 half-gals | |||
| spinach | 3 lbs | |||
| taco sauce, green tomato | 7 pts, 1 half-pt | |||
| tomatoes | 28 qts | 6 qts | ||
| zucchini and spaceship squash, sliced | 3 qts | |||
| zucchini chips | 4 qts | |||
| zucchini, shredded | 3 qts | |||
| zucchini, sliced lengthwise | 2 qts | |||
7 comments:
Wow! lucky you guys! Looks like fun!! great shot, Carolyn!
Ooo, that would be wonderful fun to be able to sit in the yard and enjoy the fireworks!
I just found your blog through Ravelry via the Fiber Guild. Great blog! You have done what we are trying to do in a smaller way on our 4 acres. But because we started with 4 acres of totally trees it is taking longer that I hoped it would. We had a little garden spot this year but because it is the first year for our garden and with the erribly hot and humid weather it did not do well at all. It will take a couple more years to condition the soil etc.etc. After growing up in Iowa and having huge and abundant gardens it is kind of disappointing.....It is hard to be patient. ;)
But what I wondered is where did you get all those Damson plums?? Are there places that we can pick or buy them. Or are you so fortunate to have your own trees? I wish I could find a place to buy fresh produce like this to eat and preserve. Especially since it will be quite a while until we can produce our own. (By the way, I think we may have met the other day at the Guild meeting and I live in Louisa County).
Thanks!
The damsons came from a friend's tree. For now, I have a little damson seedling with hopes that one day soon it will produce like the tree that threw it. Don't know of any farm producing damsons for sale, tho, damsons and native persimmons seem like a good fit at a farmers' market.
The C-ville city market and amFOG are two places I go to for produce when I'm on your side of the mountain. Plus Chiles and Carter Mountain, of course.
I know I shouldn't encourage skipping guild meetings but check out, if you haven't already, the Heritage Harvest Festival scheduled for 9/11/10. Don't really recommend it in the rain (as it was a couple years ago), but it can be a great day of workshops, garden tours and mushroom walks, tomato tastings, etc.
I did not realize The HHF was the same day as the next meeting. My Husband and I were thinking about going there. Guess I will have to wait and see what the weather turns out to be like and make the decision.
Thanks for the tips!
Question: Do you or have you ever dehydrated Damson Plums? If you have are they enough to snack on or do they need to be used in a recipe, like cake, pie or something else?
I have found a place to buy them but don't want to buy to many if they are not good dehydrated.
Thanks!
I've never dehydrated them as individual fruits. I like to use the pulp, after juicing, to make fruit leather but I add honey to sweeten.
Since the sugar intensifies with dehydrating, it takes less than if I were to eat them fresh so maybe straight drying them would be a viable option. Will have to save some out next time to try... I can't easily remove the pits from Damsons while fresh. I usually have to add heat in some form to release the pits. Do you have a good technique or are you just very determined? :)
Hmmm, I am not sure. But I do have plenty of time.
I looked all over the net and found nothing but jam and sauce recipes.
Maybe it is just not worth the effort and I should put that money towards something tried and true...more peaches. :o)
Thank you for your help. I thought if anyone would know, you might.
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