One potato, two potato, three potato, four...

Bushels of potatoes. Mostly Kennebecs, some Yukon Golds and some Red Pontiacs. All neatly sorted and stacked in (thrifted) bread racks, ready for cool, dark and humid winter storage.

That just leaves the culls.  A few were culled because they were small.  Past experience says that if we store the smallest potatoes, there'll be nothing left when/if they sprout.  (Mid-winter we sort through the stored potatoes, breaking off any sprouts and removing rotten ones.  Helps keep them through till spring -- or till we eat them all, whichever comes first.)

This was a good year for potatoes so we have only a small dishpan of itty bitty potatoes to deal with.  Those won't last two weeks as I'll scrub a potful at a time, boil in their jackets and put them in the refrigerator for use in a baked dish like Doris' Golden Potatoes or make our favorite late morning breakfast -- home fries (cold boiled potatoes, sliced and fried) paired with garden tomatoes, cucumbers and onions in vinegar, plus farm fresh scrambled eggs with just-picked chives.  Yum!

The other culls are potatoes injured while digging or showing damage from wire worms or other pests.  A few more of those but still not a bad year. 

Some will be used over the next few weeks in the usual manner -- mashed, scalloped, roasted or perhaps as oven fries.  But today I'm filling the Excalibur with 10+ pounds of grated potatoes so we'll have dehydrated hash browns ready to prepare when needed.

Peeling, shredding and blanching that many potatoes is a tedious job but it's pouring rain outside and the heat from the stove burner and the dehydrator are welcome. DS's helping by running the Salad Shooter and even set up one of Susan Wise Bauer's Story of the World audiobooks for us to listen to as we work. Wish Alex Bellos' Here's Looking at Euclid was available as an audiobook, too, since we're using that as a math read-aloud this month but Jim Weiss' narration of Bauer's works are surprisingly soothing on this rainy day.

The difference between the white-fleshed Kennebec and Pontiac Red potatoes as compared to the buttery yellow Yukon Gold potatoes makes for some pretty hash browns when laid out on the dehydrator trays but once they're dried the difference will fade to almost nothing. When I'm ready to use, I'll pour boiling water over top, let them rehydrate for 20 minutes or so then prepare according to whatever recipe I'm following. If I'm following a recipe -- these are really good simply tossed on a hot greased griddle and quickly grilled. Maybe with a few onions added...

Doris' Golden Potatoes

2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter, divided
2 cups sour cream (*see note)
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
6 large potatoes, cooked -- approx. 6 cups diced

Cut cooked potatoes into a medium dice.

Combine cheese and 1/4 cup butter in medium saucepan; stir over low heat until cheese is melted. Remove from heat and stir in sour cream, onion, salt and pepper. Add potatoes, mixing gently.

Pour into a greased 2-quart casserole; dot with remaining butter. Bake at 350°F. for 30 minutes.

*Note:
I like to sub lightly drained kefir for the sour cream and when I'm short on cheddar, I use almost any hard cheese or blend of cheeses including Monterey jack, colby, or Swiss that's on hand.  And leftover ham, diced and tossed with potatoes, and toasted breadcrumbs sprinkled on top before baking make nice additions.

Another broody hen comes through with two cute chicks

Echa hatched two chicks and I think Snowball's envious.  Or maybe she just wants her pen back...

Bierrocks for now and for the freezer or another idea for an extra head of cabbage...

DH brought in a couple of heads of savoy cabbage from the garden when I'd asked for one.  He does that a lot.  Sometimes it's a push to use up what's ready in the garden.  One extra head doesn't seem like enough to run through the dehydrator and what with all the other garden produce flowing through the kitchen, it can get lost in the chaos.

So I decided to make a batch of bierrocks for the freezer.  Sort of kills two birds with one stone as we always need quick meals when the garden's growing and the outdoors is calling.

I took three pounds of ground beef from the freezer and a couple of red onions from the garden, and started them to cooking in a big skillet.  I never bother thawing the ground beef first.  Just put a teaspoon or so of oil (our beef is really lean) in the pan, add the frozen meat and put a lid on the pan over low heat.  I check it every few minutes and break off the cooked meat, stirring everything together.  Then put the lid on and let it cook a few more minutes.  In a half hour or less, the meat's cooked and broken apart, while I've been able to work on the rest of the dish.

Homemade dough came together pretty fast, though I use the sponge method to get it off to a good start.  And one could always use frozen bread or pizza dough if need be.  The fresh-ground whole wheat dough I used this time is pretty light and the same one I use to make sandwich buns but a good pizza dough would make a great bierrocks' bread, too.

Once the meat and onions were done, I added the whole head of cabbage, shredded, to the pan and let it cook for another 8-10 minutes or so, until the cabbage was tender but still slightly crisp.  Rolling out a piece of dough, a little smaller than a tennis ball, into an oval was the next step.  I mounded a tablespoon or two of shredded cheese on each oval of dough and topped that with 2-3 tablespoons of the meat-cabbage mixture.

I like to fold half the oval over and leave enough of an edge on the bottom section of dough that I can overlap the bottom over the top edge and crimp them together with a fork.  That's the best method I've found to contain the filling so little to none will leak out while baking.  I do have a neat little plastic pocket-looking thing that supposedly lets you prepare the works in one step, then folds over to crimp the edges together.  It works about half the time.  Doing it by hand works all the time plus I don't have to worry about extra filling poking out the open hinge area of the plastic thing when folded.  Overall, that kitchen tool is a good idea but not truly effective.  Still can't bring myself to toss it, though.

So one extra head of savoy cabbage, three pounds of lean ground beef, two red onions and a batch of fresh ground whole wheat bread dough yielded three dozen small-hand-sized bierrocks or 33 for the freezer.  (After all the hard work, we each had to have one for supper...)

Bierrocks for now or for the freezer

3 pounds ground beef
1  head cabbage, chopped or shredded
2 onions, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
12 ounces shredded cheese or sliced American cheese
1 batch of  Wholegrain Hamburger Bun dough
   OR 3 pounds frozen bread dough
1 egg, beaten (optional)
                  
Brown ground beef in a large skillet with the onion.  Drain grease, if necessary.  Add cabbage and continue cooking 5-8 minutes or until onion is soft and cabbage is tender but still slightly crisp.  Season with salt and pepper.  Let cool while preparing dough.

After dough has risen the first time, roll out balls of dough into thin ovals about the size of your hand.  Place a couple tablespoons of shredded cheese or half a slice of American cheese on one end of dough oval and top with meat-cabbage filling.  Fold over and seal like a turnover.  I like to use a large meat fork to press the edges together and fold the bottom edge over the top edge, then crimp to make a good seal.

Place on a baking sheet and brush with egg.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve immediately or cool and freeze.  To reheat frozen, simply bake until hot.  May also be frozen before baking and baked from frozen state.  Will require longer baking time.  Plan on at least 30 minutes.

Yield: about 30

Hamburger bun heaven

Nothing beats a good hamburger.  But the bun can make a good thing even better.  I've been on a quest for a good wholegrain hamburger bun for a couple of years now and think I've finally found it using a variation on a recipe from a Bosch mixer cookbook, Healthy Recipes from the Heart of Our Homes by Phyllis Stanley and Shirley Heinmets.  The buns even keep well in the freezer -- for the short-term, at least, and the prepared dough, shaped into rolls, then frozen before baking was a success, too.  I haven't had time to test it for more than a few weeks on either method, tho.  We keep wanting to thaw and eat them -- with a hamburger or just on their own.  They're good!

Wholegrain Hamburger Buns

4 cups warm water
2 tablespoons sugar
7 cups fresh ground hard white wheat flour
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons wheat gluten
2 tablespoons powdered milk
4 tablespoons Saf yeast
1 tablespoon salt
additional water, 2-3 tablespoons
additional fresh ground hard white wheat flour as needed

Using the dough hook, mix water, sugar, 7 cups flour, vinegar, oil, gluten, powdered milk and yeast together in the Bosch bowl until moistened.  Let rise until it doubles.

Add salt and enough additional flour so the dough pulls away slightly from the sides of the bowl while on setting 1.  Add another 2-3 tablespoons water and knead for 5 minutes.

Cut off dough pieces and shape lightly into rolls.  My baking sheets are not full-size cookie sheets (9x12-inches) and I put 6 rolls on each.  Let dough rise until doubled.

Bake for 20 minutes at 400ºF. until golden brown.  Remove from oven and brush with butter while still hot.

One variation I've tried is using real buttermilk (left from churning butter) in lieu of the 4 cups of water.  That made a great dough for bierrocks...

Rain + hot weather means garden's growing!

Yes!  For the first time in several years we're catching a few of the thunderstorms that bounce around here.  No hail, thankfully, but some good rains at the right time make a great change in how the garden grows.

Not everything's perfect, of course.  We lost the first planting of green beans to wildlife depredation so had to plant again.  But we're on the third picking of the short double row DH finally got past the birds and rabbits and they're so good!  So far we haven't gotten past the steam-and-eat stage but I have hopes of getting a cannerful one of these days.

Bistro Salad with homemade creamy Italian dressing

Using up garden produce is sometimes a challenge.  When faced with a bountiful harvest of sugar snap peas again, I find myself wondering how to prepare them.  So far we've had them steamed, stir-fried, included in fried rice, as an ingredient in a green salad, tossed in a light chicken soup just before serving, and raw with dip.  Some of those have appeared on the menu more than once -- not so much that I couldn't squeeze another one by the family but often enough I want to try something different.

So I rummaged in the fridge and found some cold roast chicken plus, thanks to a trip to the newly-opened Friendly City Food Co-op, there were a couple of tomatoes, a bell pepper and a cucumber.  Since it's the Year of the Onion here, the garden could provide an onion, too. But our lettuce has started to turn bitter and bolt (go to seed) so if we were going to have a salad it would have to take a slightly different form from the usual lettuce-tomato-cucumber one.  Green sugar snap peas could be the basis instead of lettuce.  And the dressing would have to be homemade as that's one thing I've cut from my grocery list -- homemade dressing tastes better and I control the ingredients.  This is what I came up with -- and we all loved it.  Can't beat that kind of meal.

Bistro Salad with Creamy Italian Dressing

Makes 4 main dish servings

2 cups cooked cannellini or great northern beans, drained and rinsed
3/4 cup cooked chicken, chopped
1 small bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 small cucumber, diced
1/3 cup diced sweet onion
salt and pepper, to taste
1/4 cup creamy Italian dressing (recipe follows)
12 oz. sugar snap peas, optional
3 small tomatoes, optional

Combine first five ingredients in a large bowl and toss to combine.  Pour dressing over salad and toss to coat.  (I start with a 1/4 cup, add more if needed, then serve extra on the side for those who really like to drown a salad.)  Taste and add salt and pepper if desired.  Serve on a bed of raw sugar snap peas and sliced tomatoes.  Crusty bread makes a good partner.

Creamy Italian Dressing
(adapted from Jim Long's excellent book, The Best Dressed Salad: World Famous Salad Dressings & Their Origins)
Makes about 1-1/4 cups

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup rice vinegar
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dry marjoram
1 teaspoons dry parsley
1/4 teaspoon dry basil
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon fresh chives, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon liquid lecithin, optional

Combine all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth.  Recipe may be halved or doubled.  Will keep several weeks in refrigerator.

1 chick, 2 mama hens

This is a conundrum almost worthy of King Solomon.  We have one chick but two hens who are each sure the chick is hers.  The chick doesn't seem unduly worried either way.

It started a few weeks ago when DS reported that Mrs. Badger, our grey Silkie bantam hen, had gone broody.  Then after a few weeks we realized that E.B., a black hen, herself hatched in the backyard last year, wasn't out-and-about as much as usual -- reason?  She was broody, too!  And seated right beside Mrs. Badger in the corner.  They even seemed to be sharing eggs. When one would take her daily break to eat and drink, the other attempted to cover all the eggs. 

We were busy with other things (mainly garden and end-of-year homeschool activities) and instead of separating them and giving each a clutch of fertile eggs from the pastured girls as is our wont, we left them to it.

Well, late last week, DS went out to check for eggs and discovered there was a tiny chick tucked under a hen in the backyard coop.  Problem was, we couldn't tell just which hen was claiming the chick.  He (tail could indicate a cockerel but not sure yet) would pop out from under first one black wing then another.  (Mrs. Badger, though known as a grey Silkie, is more of a charcoal color -- nearly indistinguishable from E.B.'s coloring except in bright light.)

Snowball and her two-month-old chicks were still in the baby pen so first we had to relocate them and re-situate the pen on fresh ground.  Snowball still isn't happy about that -- she sits right outside the gate apparently waiting to be let back in though she did lead her chicks into the big girls' coop from the first night on.  Since we couldn't tell which hen had hatched the chick, we decided to move both hens with the baby.  We figured once they were in the baby pen, the "real" mama hen would take over and the other would want to be freed to roam again with the other backyard girls, guinea fowl and Badger, the grey Silkie bantam roo.

But that's not the way it was.  Both hens would call the chick and he went to either; they all slept in the little house together.  However, after a few days, E.B. seemed to want out -- she was pacing the pen, eyeing the other chickens in the yard as though she was ready to re-join them.  Mrs. Badger and the chick just watched her from a distance.  We thought "Aha!  It's Mrs. Badger's chick and E.B.'s ready to give up and re-join the rest of the flock!"  So DS let E.B. out yesterday afternoon and all seemed fine. Mrs. Badger called the chick to her when I gave them some treats and E.B., though she hung around the yard near the baby pen, ranged with the other girls.

Until evening, that is.  Mama hens and their little chicks often go in for the night long before the rest of the chickens.  Around 6:30 or 7:00 last night, well before the 9:00 bedtime the other chickens adapt this time of year, E.B. began to terrorize the other hens and Snowball's two chicks.  I'd tossed out some leftover cornbread near the baby pen and the big girls were all enjoying their treat except for E.B.  She would pick up a few crumbs, then charge an unsuspecting hen from the rear -- pulling tail feathers and seeming to ram into them before they could run off.  Then she'd go back to pecking for crumbs.  She's always been a bit of a bully so DS and I, watching from the deck, didn't think too much of it except that there was no cause.  She had access to as many crumbs as any other chicken.  I'd scattered them far and wide over that area of yard.

When the cornbread crumbs were mostly gone, E.B. began pacing, then practically loping around the chick pen.  And the chick was trying to keep up with her on the inside.  Mrs. Badger just sat quietly by the door to the little house and watched.  Finally DS and I got the idea -- E.B. wanted in the chick pen.  (We can be pretty dense sometimes.)  So DS opened the gate and shooed her around the pen till she could see it was open.  That's all it took.  E.B. ran into the pen and almost immediately she and the chick were inside the little house settling down for the night.  Mrs. Badger joined them in a few minutes and scooted right up to E.B. with the chick sort of in between them at the rear.
I tried to get a clear picture but only the hens were visible.  DS suggested he take off the house's roof in order to spot the chick but that just stirred everyone up and they all hopped over the side walls fussing up a storm.  Or maybe that was due to me using the flash -- hard to spot a little black fluffball between to big black fluffballs without proper lighting...
So for now, we have a chick who has two mamas.  Perhaps one hen will get tired of the process and give up but no sign of that yet.

Yield: 1 pullet, 1 cockerel

Snowball, the white Silkie bantam hen, hatched three eggs (gathered from the pastured hens) in late April. They were all Turken chicks. One was lost to an unknown cause about a week after hatching. The survivors have grown and are 10 weeks old now.

They're taller than Snowball now thanks to their long legs and probably weigh a little more, too. One is definitely a cockerel and, I'm pretty sure, the other is a pullet.
I love how her black-and-white patterning makes it look like she's wearing a cool cap. Sometimes Turkens just look like Woody Woodpecker to me so I like to see one that appears almost fashionable.

It's a jungle out there...

Hollyhocks and spiny bear's breeches gone wild. Where will it end?

Spring, no, better make that early summer garden update

A few days last week seemed to herald the end of spring -- the daytime temperatures shot up above 90ºF., nighttime lows (71ºF. one night) were not really low and everything seemed to shimmer with heat waves, especially me! But by the weekend it leveled off and Sunday was a gorgeous day. We went to a graduation party at a nearby lake in the afternoon and it was warm enough to swim yet comfortable enough in the shade to be, well, comfortable. I still think it's more summer than spring but, by the calendar, it's at least two more weeks till summer's official.

Jericho and Rouge d'Hiver lettuces are keepers for next year's garden list.

Savoy "Ace" cabbage proves it was worth searching out the seeds again this year.

Ruby red cabbage

Cool weather plants like lettuce and cabbage are still looking good.  I really wanted to try row covers for the cabbage this year but the time came and went for covering them and I still hadn't decided which type to order.  Maybe next year.  So far they're not showing much, if any, damage so perhaps this won't be a bad year for cabbage loopers.  One type of kale has gone to seed but I managed to fill the dehydrator with kale chips early last week using the other varieties that are hanging in there for now. 

Various tomatoes

I made a crock of kimchi with the last of the Michihili cabbage which is billed as a "Chinese" cabbage.  I like it but so do the bugs.  A lot.  Every year I say we won't plant it again because of how bug-eaten the leafy part becomes but the crisp stalk part more than makes up for what I have to trim away.  And the sheep and chickens seem to like the leafy part -- bugs aren't an issue for them, I guess.

Caged cucumbers

The tomatoes are set out and, in some cases, staked plus green beans are up.  If only the rabbits and birds would leave them alone.  DH had to do a second planting for beans and some squash and cucumbers thanks to those rascally rabbits.  He cages them till they're of a size that's no longer quite so tasty but I think the birds must nip off more than just beans because the rabbits I see in the late evening are too big to get through the cages...

Potatoes in bloom

Three types of potatoes (kennebec, pontiac red, and yukon gold) are blooming so I'm looking forward to scrabbling along the edges for new potatoes in a week or two when the flowers die back.  DH always acts irritated when I do that but the one year I managed to hold off, he came in carrying a bunch of golf ball-size potatoes in his shirttail asking if I would fix them for dinner.

Steamed, stir fried, pickled and straight from the vine -- that's how we've had sugar snap peas so far.  I picked a couple of pounds right after taking this photo on Saturday and we should have another picking ready today or tomorrow.  They will keep blooming if I keep them picked and the temperature doesn't soar again (and stay that way).

Blooming herbs and sugar snap vines loaded with peas

I really need to pick some of the herbs in the surrounding beds and dry them or, in a few cases, use to flavor vinegar.  They could all be used like that, really, but I've found that lovage, chive, and tarragon vinegars are the ones I use the most.  One of the cold frames has a few Swiss chard stragglers that DH never got around to transplanting out and I plan to dry that and some of the kale to serve as a vegetable base I want to try.  I dried kale and powdered it on its own last year and really enjoyed the little burst of "green" flavor it could add to soup and broth.

Other than herbs, the other more-or-less permanent plantings like berries (blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries), rhubarb, garlic,etc. are not planted in the regular garden beds area.  But a little over a year ago, my mother needed to relocate a gooseberry bush so DH said he'd just "heel it in" one of the garden beds.  Well, after a brief discussion of where it should go "for good" -- I wanted to put it near the little one he constantly mows down in hopes he'd quit doing that, we promptly forgot about it and so it's stayed in it's temporary spot and, apparently, is thriving.  DH took the headboard from an old maple bed frame I intended to use in a flower bed and set it as a support for the gooseberry.  I guess I'll have to figure out how to prune this one but I kind of like the way it looks leaning on it's frame.

Watching the mist burn away as the day warms up - 6:30am on the first Saturday in June

Busy, busy, busy -- must get back to a menu plan, week of 2011-04-18 plus Paneer Manchurian

Okay, so we're on this season's third (or is it the fourth?) complete new set of seedling flats under the lights. Lettuces, cabbages, broccoli, kale, spinach, lots of onions, some potatoes, horseradish, sugar snap peas, and some other cool weather veggies (daikon radishes? bok choy?) that I can't recall right now (nor ask DH because he's at work...) are growing out in the garden. The latest batch of seedlings, which DH spent part of the past weekend potting up in newspaper pots, is mainly tomatoes and peppers. We're getting ready for warm weather and the last average frost date for our area which is around May 15.

DS and I try to spend a couple hours every day weeding, trimming back herbs and mowing. Just yesterday I found, under the leaf mulch, two rhubarb starts that were planted late last year and I thought were lost to the fall's dry weather -- Cherry, I think, and Canada Red. Or maybe they're both Canada Red. I definitely need to keep better gardening notes...

And thinking of garden journaling, I should note that DH set out another grape vine last week, a seedless red called Reliance, plus, in an area of the backyard where plants often fail to thrive or even die because of the many black walnut trees, he put a couple of currant bushes. Currants, along with raspberries, are included on many plant lists suggested for tolerance to juglone. I'm determined to find productive plants that can co-exist, even thrive, with the black walnuts.

So whenever time is short (and, really, when isn't it?) I know I need to plan a menu in order to make the best use of available foods, leftovers, and prep time. Otherwise we end up stopping for a sub sandwich or chinese takeout when we'd be better off budgetwise and foodwise to eat at home or take a packed lunch with us. Not to mention it seems silly to spend so much time growing our own food only to declare we don't have time to prepare and eat it! So back to menu planning for me.

Monday, April 18
Potato soup with ham bits and fresh chives
Cornbread

Tuesday, April 19
Spaghetti with meat sauce
Carrots and celery sticks with ranch dressing as a dip

Wednesday, April 20
Egg salad or homemade pimiento cheese sandwiches
Harvey House slaw
Peach crisp

Thursday, April 21
Paneer Manchurian (recipe follows) over brown rice or noodles
Stir-fried vegetables (whatever's in the crisper or ready in the garden)
Stewed rhubarb

Friday, April 22
Scrambled eggs and/or sausage patties
Homemade biscuits and apple butter
Milk

Saturday, April 23
Country-style steak with gravy
Mashed potatoes
Green beans
Pickled beets

Sunday, April 24
Potato salad
Cold ham
Yeast rolls
Fruit salad
Oatmeal cookies or gingersnaps
_____________________________________________________

Paneer Manchurian

This is adapted from a recipe I found at dhara.org. The sauce is wonderful with the paneer but equally good on cubed and sauteed chicken or tofu, too.

12 to 16 ounces paneer, cubed
2 tablespoons grated ginger
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 poblano pepper, diced or other fresh pepper of your choice
1 cup chopped onion
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon sriracha sauce
up to 1/4 cup vegetable oil, divided

In a medium saucepan, heat a tablespoon of oil and add ginger, garlic, pepper and onion to saute. Stir in the soy sauce, ketchup and hot sauce after the onions have started to turn translucent and cook for a couple of minutes to blend flavors.

Meanwhile, heat a wok or iron skillet over high heat and add 2 tablespoons oil. Toss in half of the paneer and lightly brown on all sides, stirring or tossing as for stir-frying. Remove the toasted paneer to a holding dish or, if the sauce is finished, add to saucepan and toss lightly to coat. Add remaining 1 tablespoon of oil, if necessary, and repeat with the rest of the paneer. Serve with rice or noodles, if desired.

Notes: I use my home-canned Western Gourmet Ketchup but regular ketchup or even a thick tomato sauce (spicy or plain) would work, too.
I use a poblano pepper and opt for a hot sriracha sauce however it could be switched around a bit by choosing a hotter pepper but a milder sweet chile-garlic sauce instead of sriracha.

Baby quilt with embroidery -- finished!

And before the baby's arrived, too.  That's a new record.

I took the quilt block I embroidered last month and turned it into the center block for a 52"-square baby blanket.  Backed with flannel and lined with a piece of white sheeting, it reminds me of two my grandmother made.   They had tractors and farm animals and nursery rhyme scenes embroidered in the squares.  And they wore out from my brother, my sister and I dragging them around wherever we went.

My embroidery wasn't as ambitious.  The fun duckling with balloons in the center block was a full design, the other four embroidered blocks were done to supplement and tie the overall design together.  So I chose four simple shapes from Doodle Stitching: Fresh & Fun Embroidery for Beginners -- I found a dragonfly, butterfly and duckling that echoed the printed duck fabric's designs and then added a balloon for the fourth block, lifted from the larger duckling design in the center block.

When I drew out the quilt top on graph paper, I realized I didn't want to simply surround the center block with straight nine-patch blocks.  That seemed sort of blah to me and, somehow, seemed to take away from my center block, too. So I used four nine-patch blocks with the plain, yet embroidered center squares and added those other four with the three long blocks of color in each.  I know where that idea came from.  Just prior to drawing out the overall design, I was reading a thread on Chickens in the Road and saw a photo of a just-completed baby quilt that I couldn't get out of my mind.

This blanket is meant for regular use.  To cover a sleeping baby, to spread on a floor to provide a toddler's play space or just to be dragged around by a growing child.  It should go through the washer and dryer without a problem.  And I hope it wears out just like the ones my grandmother made.  I think that's what happens to all well-loved baby blankets and so it's what I wish for this one.

99 sweaters to wash in the wringer, 99 sweaters to wash

Put some in, swish'em around, 93 sweaters to wash... *

From 9 a.m. till 3:30 p.m. last Saturday, I washed knitted wool sweaters plus woven wool skirts, jackets, scarves and slacks.  And one wool Army blanket.  (Smelled like wet dog, washed it just before lunch when we changed out the water.)

Some of the woolens had been washed previously at the laundromat.  I'm always leery of bringing in stray moths when I get woolens from the thrift store so I either store them in the shed or my car's trunk till I can get them washed in hot water and rinsed with a bit of lavender vinegar.  And I've learned my lesson about washing thrift store woolens in my front-load washer.  It doesn't felt as well, of course, as this old Maytag wringer washer but the main risk is my next several loads of laundry are likely to smell like wet mothballs.  So the ones I'd washed late last year at the laundromat were cleared for moths, but hadn't felted as well as I like so they needed a round in the wringer to achieve their fulled potential.

Since my mom's stroke four years ago DH and I've made a monthly commitment to deep-clean her vinyl kitchen and laundry room floors and apply a coat of the shiny "floor finish" she likes.  Between moving all the furniture, sweeping with a broom, scrubbing the floor (on hands-and-knees scrubbing, not the long-handled mop kind), waiting for it to dry, then applying the shiny stuff and waiting for it to dry before putting everything back in place, that's easily a two- to three-hour job.  This month DH agreed to tackle the floor on his own while I washed woolens with the wringer washer in the shop.  He did it because he's a good man but also because he wants a pair of felted mittens to wear, as he said, "the one day every winter when we go out shopping for Christmas."  Yes, he had an ulterior motive and it means I have another project added to my list but, hey, I have till December to worry about THAT.

His willingness to help may have been influenced as well by the last trip we made to Activity Day in my car.  DH and I were in the front, DS was in the back and the trunk was so full of woolens waiting to be washed that DH had to put his two crates of Squad Leader game pieces and hex maps on the backseat next to DS.  When we swung by the farm co-op on the way home to pick up a bag of mineral salt for the sheep and a couple of bags of chicken feed, there wasn't a place to put them except for under the passengers' feet.  And since I invariably drive my car, as DH does his truck, that meant he was one of the inconvenienced passengers.  So when I arranged the day for cleaning with Mom, I asked to use the wringer washer, too.  That's when the Army blanket was added to the queue.

A few years ago the wringer washer lived in our garage.  I used it for much of our regular laundry during the warmer months and whenever I had wools to wash it was right there ready to go.  But we have no basement and very little storage space other than the attached garage which also serves as the root cellar in the cooler months.  So when our 25-y.o. top-loading washer gave up a few years ago I moved the wringer washer (it was my grandmother's originally) back to my mom's shop and we bought a very efficient front-load washer.  (One of these days I hope to have space again for the wringer washer and its tubs.)

Mom's shop only has cold running water these days so DH carried hot water over from her house in 5-gallon buckets.  It took two trips or about 3-1/2 buckets to fill the wash tub.  Meanwhile, I filled the rinse tubs with cold water.  I added two tablespoons of Orvus Paste in the wash tub and 1/4 cup lavender vinegar in each rinse tub.  I don't use regular laundry detergent because I avoid washing wool with the so-called brigheners or bleaches that are often added to detergents. Orvus Paste is what I use for washing fleeces and it works just as well on the finished goods.


Once we had the tubs filled, I added the first load of sweaters and commenced to washing.  So sweaters in wash tub, wait 15 minutes.  Run the wash load through wringer and into first rinse tub.  Put next load of sweaters in to wash.  Use stick (wonder what happened to the long-handled wooden spoon we used for this purpose when I was a kid?) to poke clothes below level of water and just all around play with the laundry.  You know, same way you do with an outdoor fire...

Then after about 10 minutes, start the batch in the rinse tub through the wringer again.  This time they go into the second, or last, rinse tub.  Then move back to the washer and wring those clothes, which have been washing for just about 15 minutes, into the first rinse tub.  Third load goes in the washer and the countdown starts again.

This time there's even less waiting as I factor in how long it will take to run both rinse tubs-worth of clothes through the wringer and still get back to the load in the washer at the right time.  It's not a problem if I run the wash longer than 15 minutes, but I've found that's a pretty optimum time for felting most wools and I want to do this as efficiently and quickly as possible without unnecessary delays.

In between washing, poking the rinsing (can't forget that important step!) and wringing, I sort the items by color.  It's not perfect but I like to start out with the natural or lighter colors first and move through to the reds and then blacks at the last.  Many red wools bleed dye so I aim to do them just before the darkest items or before we plan to change out the cooling wash water for hot.  And in between washes I top up the washer with hot water from a fresh bucket DH brought over mid-way through the morning.  It's surprising to me but the washer does a good job of holding the water's heat, especially when I remember to keep the lid closed except when necessary to pull out/put in clothes.

At lunchtime, DH drained the washer and I did the same with the rinse tubs.  The tubs are made with a fixture on the bottom where a hose can be attached but we just used the buckets and emptied them outside around flowers or shrubs.  It's been so dry here this winter they can use all they can get.

Mom often fixes Saturday lunch for a friend who helps her with landscaping and house maintenance so she increased her covers to include us as well.  (The menu was country-style steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, sauerkraut, fried apples, cornbread and chocolate cake -- well worth stopping work for!)  After lunch, DS helped his grandmother clean up, DH carried fresh hot water for the washer and I refilled the rinse tubs.   I was ready to get the job finished.  And DH still had to clean the floors -- he didn't want to interrupt lunch preparations in the morning but once the dishwasher was running he got to work, too.

Final count was 69 sweaters, 2 scarves, 10 jackets, 9 skirts and 2 pairs of pants.  And can't forget the one Army blanket.  So it wasn't QUITE 99 sweaters but 93 woolen items is close enough for me.

*DH has this habit of ad-libbing lyrics and he couldn't keep it to himself while we were unloading baskets and bags of sweaters for washing. And you know how it is when you get a song stuck in your head.  Especially a silly one.