Chicken & Sheep

I took this amusing picture at an historical village. Maybe it's amusing because I'm not that familiar with the habits of sheep or chickens, but it's still pretty darn cute!

Drying & Stuff

It's official! I am saving electricity!! After seeing our atrocious electric bill for last month (blasted, but wonderful A/C!) I decided to do something drastic. Yes, I turned off our A/C at least some of the time, but I also don't know why I haven't done this before - I bought a clothes drying rack. Now I can dry my laundry in the sun! WOOOO! And it's completely free, free, free, that amazing sun is.

Of course this does mean that I have to rearrange how and when I do my laundry and I'll probably have to buy one or two more racks, but what an awesome investement, don't you think??? One obstacle to clothes drying: I don't like the smell of sun-dried clothes. Call me crazy, but I think it smells weird. And your clothing comes out stiff. However, I heard of this trick. Sun dry your clothes and then toss them into the dryer for 5 minutes (with a dryer sheet if you so desire) and PRESTO! Soft laundry without the hours of electricity burning away. Genius!

Here is a picture of some of my garden bounty. See those tomatoes back there? I grew those!!! (Ignore the avacados. I have no idea how those got onto my counter... but they sure made an amazing guacamole!)

What the Zukes!

So, I was one of the lucky ones to be given some huge zucchini from a friend's garden. I didn't grow any this year, so I was actually excited to get some! Well, after the excitement wore off, those three big dudes sat on my kitchen counter until I could figure out what to do with them. I didn't want to freeze them since we'll be moving soon and that would be a waste or I'd be a 2nd generation giver (heh heh). And right now I'm not that into stir-fry. So... what else do you do with zucchini? I cracked open my Ball Blue Book of Preserving because I was sure it would tell me something I could do with zukes and I was right! It said I could dehydrate them. Wow. Why hadn't I thought of that? It's brilliant! Dehydrated stuff takes a miniscule amount of space to store and they're fast and easy to use. And if the electricity goes out they don't go bad like frozen stuff.

So, I busted out my hand-me-down dehydrator from the '70s, cleaned it out and sliced up those zuke daddies. My dehydrator has about 6 or 7 shelves and it took 2 1/2 of my zucchinis (plus a couple of Bloody Butcher tomatoes)! And I really think I'll be able to fit all the dried chips into one quart mason jar. AMAZING!!!

I love this article in Mother Earth News about drying food. It got me really excited about drying food because usually canning stuff is the star of the preservation show. I am amazed at what you can dehydrate and the fact that you can do it all in the sun (indoors or out!) is even more awesome! I'm really paranoid about running my dehydrator at night (risk of fire???) so it's taking longer than it probably has to, and I'm not too fond of how much electricity it's taking, but I am excited about my proactive streak and not letting the zucchini go to waste. :-)

Why Old Time

I found this video from Cold Antler Farm. It looks really fabulous. I'd love to see it. I've grown up with the drive to make my own music - taught myself the piano and the harmonica and a little fife. I'd love to learn one of those mountain instruments like dulcimer, fiddle or banjo. It just feels a little harder and more complicated as a mom and wife. I should have no excuses though. I need some of my old childhood gumption back and just do it! (Did you know that I used to practice the piano 3 hours a day just because I loved it so much? Man, that is drive for you - and someone with oodles of time!)

August Harvest

Hooray for harvesting tomatoes! Biting into a sun-warmed tomato that was seconds picked from the branch is divine! The flavors are so sweet, so complex, it's like stepping into a completely different world of taste that you never knew you were missing. I really don't see how I could ever eat those awful, tasteless store bought tomatoes ever again. I don't know if I'll have a big enough harvest to do much canning, but I do want to make at least a small batch of homemade salsa. Mmmm!

For awhile I had a resident grasshopper in my little garden. He loved hiding amongst the cool sugar snap pea foliage and my lettuce (which is still going strong!). I didn't see that he did much harm, so I left him alone. Then we went out of town and a sweet neighbor watered my plants for me. When I came back and went over to thank her, she proceeded to tell me how she found a huge grasshopper in my plants. Grasshoppers completely freak her out, so she took a big rock and dropped it on the little guy, smashing him. I'll have to admit that I'm going to miss that green hopper, but I suppose it's for the best. I had wondered if he was the culprit for ruining my first ripe Brandywine tomato...

Daily Rythm

The heads of wheat have turned gold in the fields, the days are scorching hot, and last night I had a dream about helping a sheep give birth to twin lambs. I know I want to have my own little farm one day, but I hadn't planned on having sheep for quite some time. It really was a very strange dream... See, my husband (who is very wonderful!) needs to be convinced one step at a time. Oh, he thinks me canning is great, was a little skeptical of my container garden (the initial cost and all) but is now proud of me, and I keep telling him that I can't wait to have chickens. And cats. And ducks. (I'm starting with the small animals.) He cringes when I talk about those, but I'm being persistant!

I'm reading a homesteading memoir right now called A Small Farm in Maine. I am only three chapters into it, but I have been surprised at how sensitive, honest, and insightful the author has been in her memoir about homesteading. She really helps you realize that homesteaders start with so little knowledge and it's building on that knowledge - one skill at a time, one season at a time. It feels like such a slow process! I read a lot of gardening books as a teenager and I thought I knew a lot about gardening - that is until I started doing it myself. Man, what a difference!

I've also realized with my little garden this year that homesteading has to be apart of you. Each step you take, each element that you add to your tiny patch of dirt is something that you have to add to yourself so that it becomes apart of you and apart of your daily rythm; like the habit of watering your garden. When my pregnancy started making me sick I forgot about my garden for two days. My poor tomatoes were keeled over screaming for water by the time I remembered. I was so scared that I was going to lose them, but lucky for me they bounced back really well. This also taught me another thing - that I am completely responsible.

So, I think for now, that it's a good thing that I'm only taking care of plants at this point. I feel the garden slowly becoming apart of the rythm of my day. And when the time comes for chickens, ducks, and cats, taking care of them will become apart of that daily rythm too. I can't wait!

Small and Large Harvests

So, I finally got to harvest some peas! (About 3 handfuls. Woo!) I'm so glad I planted sugar snap peas because you can just eat them right off the vine and they're crunchy and sweet. Oh! They were so good. I just had them on a salad for lunch too. My Bloody Butcher tomatoes are loving their homemade self-watering bucket. I've noticed that the roots have grown down into the water resevoir. I wonder if that's a good thing... The plant seems to be really, really happy. There are about five or six large clusters of tomatoes. I am really excited! All my tomatoes except one have tomatoes on them. The Brandywines are getting huge! So, a tomato harvest will be coming soon. My goal: to have enough to can some salsa and maybe make some spaghetti sauce. Mmmm! Homemade is the best!

As for the large harvest: my wonderful friend Clair has a cherry tree and was begging people to come pick some because she hated to see any go to waste. Of course I didn't mind at all! I don't know how big a bushel of cherries is, but I think I picked about 2. I canned cherry pie filling and cherry preserves. It took me 2 weeks. (I haven't been feeling well since I'm 9 weeks pregnant!) I still had some left to can and yesterday I bit the bullet, clenched my teeth through the nausea and canned the last of the preserves. Right now I never want to see a cherry again! haha! But I have lots of little jars to give away and enough cherry preserves and pie filling to last us quite awhile. I think in all I canned.... about 3 dozen half pints of preserves and 1 dozen quarts of pie filling. So - Thank you Clair!!!! But really. I don't want to see cherries again for awhile. I saw people selling them at the farmer's market and nearly lost my breakfast. haha!