Fran Sale Stafford

Conundrum

With various businesses closed or on appointment only basis, I have met a snag. My Driver’s License has to be renewed by my birthday in November, but the DMV requires an appointment. I would renew online, but the email I received indicated that I couldn’t this year. As a senior citizen, I would of course prefer to renew online, but since that isn’t an option, I looked into scheduling an appointment. The earliest appointment I could get was November 2, three months away. By then we may be in total lock down again. Under the current circumstances, a one or two year renewal online would be a compromise. I don’t know what will happen if they go back to Phase 1 and are totally closed down again. I guess if that happens they will either have to have a grace period or allow online renewal.

Yesterday it rained most of the day and again today, so gardening isn’t getting much attention. I did get carrots planted and had already gotten peas planted. I still need to get some spinach in if it will stop long enough to work a patch of soil. Each trip to the garden ends up with an armload (or basket if I remember) of produce. The cucumbers are still producing, but not in the quantity as before I pruned them. Some corn has matured, but the ears are a joke, about half formed. Tomatoes are ripening and peppers are forming. The Thai and Seranos have to ripen to red before I will harvest them. The jalapenos are being quick brined still and stored in the refrigerator. Most of the shelves in the refrigerator will end up with ferments and pickled peppers and cucumbers. With just the two of us, the door holds the condiments and cheese, the three drawers most of the rest of the food, so the shelves can be used for the pickles and flours.

One more harvest of tomatillos and I will have enough to make a batch of simmer sauce. I modify the recipe to add some jalapenos to it to give it more kick.

We got up early this morning to get to the Farmers Market before the crowds, our routine since we started going back to the market is to go there first, then go somewhere to get a bagel or drive through breakfast to eat in the car. The early market means more selection as well as smaller crowds. It is safer to shop there rather than the grocer, it is outdoors, number of people in the market regulated, and masks are required. I only saw a few people wearing them improperly under their nose. I have a couple of vendors that I head straight for, to get cheese and butter, meat if on the weekly list, produce if I need something different than the garden is supplying, and finally bagels, then out the gate. I miss staying and chatting with my vendor friends and shopping friends, but I can be in and out in under 10 minutes and everyone is using touch free debit card payment. As I was headed from cheese to meat today, I saw figs. I love figs, but my little fig tree didn’t produce this year, so I bought two little cartons, about 9-10 ounces total. I ate one fresh, but chopped the rest and made a tiny canning of fig preserves. It only made 3 quarter pints. If they have some next week still, I might get more and make another small batch. It doesn’t take long, 45 minutes chopping and sitting until the sugar is dissolved, about 10 minutes cooking, and 15 minutes in the water bath.

The grapes still aren’t ripening and the chickens discovered them. I will have to put a temporary fence around the vines until they ripen or I won’t have any.

Yesterday while it rained, I pulled out the sewing machine again and cut and sewed 6 larger masks for hubby. He had two others that he likes to wear, but with his beard, they didn’t provide good coverage, so I added a panel to the bottom of them to bring them down under his chin as well. He now has 8 that I feel are large enough to make him safer when we are walking or going to a drive through for food occasionally. Beginning a day or two ago, the university started a 10 day move in process for students. Students living on campus have to be tested for COVID prior to moving in, but that means that the population of town will explode now. It will not be as safe for us to do our own shopping unless we can get curbside delivery. Hopefully, early Farmers Market runs will still feel safe.

Stay safe everyone. With schools opening and flu season approaching, I think we will return to feeling totally isolated. The statistics that show total cases doesn’t tell us current cases, so you don’t really know how bad it is where you live.

Tomato Time

I went out this morning to plant fall peas and there were more tomatoes. Mostly slicers this time. It was time to start processing them. The first to ripen were Amish paste tomatoes and I have been coring them and popping them in a big bag in the freezer until there were enough to bother with firing up the canner and heating up the kitchen with a stock pot. The kitchen window sill was full of ones that hadn’t been frozen. The frozen ones were dumped in a sink of tepid water, the fresh ones were scored on the blossom end and had boiling water dumped over them. While they cooled, the frozen ones were peeled, chopped and put in a stock pot. Then the fresh ones were also peeled and chopped. The whole mess seasoned with salt, herbs, and citric acid and cooked down to pizza sauce consistency. Seven half pints were canned and all sealed, and there was enough left over to fill a 4 ounce jar that will go in the freezer for the next pizza night. A half pint jar makes 2 or 3 pizzas for the two of us and what is left in the jar is frozen until needed again. I will have another batch to do when there are enough so we have enough for our pizzas in the coming months.

This was the first non pickle canning session of the year. My memory photo of today is of ripe grapes that were about to become jelly, but the grapes aren’t ripe yet this year. The refrigerator is filling with quick brined and fermented pickled cucumbers, and quick brined pickled jalapenos, fermented sauerkraut and dilly beans. The canning shelves still have some of last year’s applesauce and this year’s canned Bread and Butter pickles, and Garlic Dill pickles. Tonight, the pizza sauce will join them. The freezer has pasta sauce, green beans, and peas. The storage area of the basement has onions and potatoes, and the garlic braid and a basket of drying basil are in the kitchen.

There are enough frozen tomatillos to make about 3 half pints of simmer sauce, but I will wait until there is enough for 6 or 7, then another canning session will be held. I hope there are enough tomatillos to do that and also a small batch of tomatillo/jalapeno jam. The simmer sauce can be used as salsa or over meat or veggies. The Tomatillo/jalapeno jam can be used like pepper jelly on cream cheese with crackers or as a condiment on a Charcuterie board.

The sunflowers are great at attracting native bees and the hummingbirds. The bees gather pollen on their legs until it looks like they can’t possibly fly.

Thunder is rumbling up the river. We had heavy rain showers yesterday afternoon here, but went in after dinner to walk the rail grade last evening and it was dry there. The forecast looks like this will be the norm again for a while, but next week is much cooler daytime temperatures.

Stay safe everyone.

They Fixed It

VDOT actually came out yesterday morning and dug out the ditch and culvert. I didn’t climb down in the ditch to see how far into the culvert they cleared, but hopefully far enough that when it starts raining again later this week, the water will run under the driveway, not down it. They didn’t rebuild my mini berm across the top, I may take a load of watermelon sized rocks up there and make the base with them, then pile some soil and gravel over and behind it. That also help redirect the flow off of our driveway.

The Big Bad Harley is still in the shop in the city. Yesterday hubby checked on the repair and they are still awaiting the mirror.

Yesterday’s gardening and harvesting efforts produced more cucumbers even though I had pruned them severely, they are still provided a few more each day. Another half gallon of Turmeric Dill Quick Brine pickles was made this morning and is cooling on the counter enough to put in the refrigerator without breaking the glass shelf.

About a month or more ago, I fell prey to an ad on Instagram and foolishly ordered the product without carefully checking out the vendor. It wasn’t expensive, under $20, paid for through PayPal so the vendor didn’t get my credit card info. Yes, it was another Chinese company and after waiting forever, the product came and it was a “bait and switch” situation, not what I had ordered. An email to the vendor produced a reply obviously from a non native English speaker whose response was, I see you have filed a complaint with PayPal (I had not, yet), but basically said, I got what I ordered. It clearly was not. So I did file a dispute with PayPal, but of course, the original item is nowhere to be found in an ad now (so no screen shot and the confirmation email doesn’t specify the item), so it is my word against theirs. Yesterday, I received an email from PayPal saying they needed for me to file a police report and send them a copy. Our little county sheriff’s department would laugh me to the curb for filing a police report over a $20 claim to a Chinese company who has probably already changed their name. I told PayPal that and that I had learned two lessons, 1) not to order from a Chinese company, 2) not to pay for goods with PayPal. The vendor will win this one, a pure scam because PayPal will rule in favor of the dishonest vendor. I had just finished dealing with this when hubby because a rewards debit card he has awaiting but still had not come for three weeks that would be used to help defray the cost of the Harley repair, called the credit card company. These rewards can only be spent in the Harley shop for goods or services. The credit card company said they sent it digitally though he had specifically asked for a card because of difficulty using the digital reward at the shop once before. I went from the frustration of dealing with PayPal to the frustration of finding the digital reward email in his Spam folder, trying to help him log on to his HD site to find his password had expired and we needed the old password to create a new one, but the one he had written down didn’t work. A trip through the lost password, reset password route, finally got us to the reward which we were able to print as a pdf, but by then, I was snapping at everything he said, probably would have taken his head off for even saying thank you. Because his riding days are numbered, he isn’t using that card now, he is back to using our joint card that has cash rewards.

Though the mail did not bring his reward card, it did bring another new to me Jenkins Turkish spindle. It is a tiny Black and White Ebony Kuchulu, the ones that are only about 2.5″ in diameter, but perfect for toting in my bag in a little tea tin to protect it so I always have a spindle and fiber with me.

Here it is with the Kingwood Finch (about 4″ diameter) on the left and the Chechen wood Kuchulu and Olive Finch to the right. I love these spindles and the way they spin.

The young farmers came over yesterday right after lunch and got the hay baled and hauled off to the farm for winter feed for their cattle. It was a good first cut, they got 84 large round bales, plus three shaggy half bales, one of which they left for my use up by the coop. Usually the first cutting is down, baled, and moved by the end of the first week of July. All of the equipment is gone except for an old hay rake. They will have to ride one of the tractors back over with no attachment to pick it up. The upper field they did first is already a foot high and the stickweed (Yellow Crownbeard) is thick this year. It is such an invasive broadleaf weed. I sprayed some of it around the yard hydrant with the Citric acid spray and it didn’t touch it. The only fields that aren’t thick with it around here are fields that are sprayed with 2,4-d or ones that are sprayed with Round Up and seeded with grain or corn. We are going to have to get a bush hog again soon and I will resume mid summer and late fall mowing to keep it from going to seed. That doesn’t kill it, but it does help control it some. Even without reseeding, Yellow Crownbeard is a perennial that grows out from a rhizome crown and continues to spread outward. It has gotten worse each year we have owned this farm.

Stay safe everyone. This spring and summer have passed in a blur or what day is it questions. With little outside contact, I am ever grateful when one of our kids starts a stream of text messages about kids, gardens, or cooking. Not being able to see them, hug them, visit with them has been the hardest. Daughter will come by once in a while with her kids and we social distance, masked in the yard and that helps some. Last Christmas, she asked for her kids to be given activities with relatives rather than physical gifts and as a result, most all of their gifts have had to be cancelled, not just ours, but ones scheduled by daughter and the other grandparents. It was such a good idea at the time, but little did we know that three months later, we would all be in social isolation.