Cabin Crafted

Category: Cooking

  • Market Day and Repairs

    Another week has drifted by in isolation with a few woods, pond, and rail cut walks. Another gray and drizzly market day. It was raining lightly when we left the house, but it hadn’t reached town when we got there. There was still some sunshine and a few broken clouds, but it was raining lightly by the time the market pick up was done and breakfast in the car eaten. There were more vendors at the market today and more people that were just browsing, too many people not respecting social distancing. Social distancing is difficult when you stand back 6 feet, then have someone “cut” in line in front of you because they don’t realize there is a line as happened to me today. I allowed it to happen instead of saying something to the two young women who shouldn’t have been there when I was as they hadn’t pre ordered, nor were they 55+ years old. Then a young man, also not meeting the prerequisites to shop that hour stepped right up next to my shoulder, again, no respect for distance. Everyone is masked and I know the young volunteers at the information table don’t want to challenge everyone with a question about whether they had pre orders or were old enough. Today made me somewhat uncomfortable in the crowd. I guess I need to go back to the beginning of the first hour and take my chances that everyone is set up. But this below is why I like our Farmer’s Market.

    This is a sampling of the goodness that was brought home today, thanks to Riverstone Farm and Greenstar Farm for the veggies, Whitegate Farm for the butter and sausage, and Williamson Farm for a pound of grass finished ground beef. No bread this week since I baked during the week. As we were heading off to get breakfast, I was discussing with hubby how some of the issues could be handled, not that anyone asked me. There are three rows of vendors in an L shape. One row is under the shelter below, facing the green.

    The second row backs up to them and the third row is across the lot from them, no cars are permitting on Saturday mornings except for the vendors to unload in the morning and reload in the afternoon. About where the roof changes heights, there is a two way opening to try to direct traffic that causes congestion and has people coming and going between the rows. My idea is to close in the first row with vendors filling that opening and the corner opening and making traffic one way. You enter at the first vendor in that row anyway. If they did that and shifted the last vendor in that row a couple of feet to open a path to the rear rows as the exit is currently in line with the entrance behind the first row. One way traffic would help alleviate some of the congestion.

    Once the goodies were home, a basket to hold the potatoes on top of the refrigerator was sought from my supply. It needs to be away from the sunny window where the wire hanging tiered basket is that holds onions and garlic that isn’t in a braid. The one I was going to use was one of my earliest ones made and stained with Walnut stain. I used to be very good about hosing my baskets off about once a year to remove dust and dampen the reed to keep it from getting brittle, but I don’t think that most of my handmade baskets have been given that treatment since moving in to this house 15 years ago. I had noticed some broken reeds in the weave of several of the baskets, but that one was the worst. When in the basement to pull out ceramic pumpkins and the ghost to decorate with a couple of weeks ago, I spotted a plastic bin with a partially made basket and reed in it. That unfinished basket must be 18 to 20 years old. I remember the day I was teaching Son 1 and friends how to make baskets, in the back yard of the house we sold in Virginia Beach prior to building the house here. We spent a couple of years renting while plans were made, house was started, and finally completed.

    The reed was checked for soundness and size. I needed narrower reed than what was there, so after soaking it and the most damaged basket, it was cut to width and the basket was repaired. That inspired me to inspect the other baskets and do more repair. There was some narrow chair caning reed that worked perfectly on the blue and natural apple basket that was made by my friend that took the class with me. The wider reed was right to repair the largest basket. The odd shaped unfinished basket was made into a very crude, misshapen basket that went on the top of the refrigerator for the potatoes and covered with a small tea towel.

    Two baskets still need a rinse, but they are too large for the sink, so they will go out to the yard and get a quick hosing down. It would have bothered me when I started making baskets to not make the one on the right perfectly shaped and properly edged and the unstained reed on the stained basket would have stressed me, but it shows that repair and keep using is more important than perfection and I kind of like it.

    The two winter squash with the last pumpkin from last year’s harvest were put in a wooden trencher that hubby gave me years ago from a craftsman at a fair. They will be used for meals in the next week or two and the pumpkin will make pies for our isolation holiday meals as we can’t have our kids here and since the garden did not produce pumpkins this year. The local pumpkin patches are open but they aren’t any fun without grandkids along.

  • Waste Not, Want Not

    Last evening before it got dark, I ventured into the garden with a single basket. It proved to be too small. There were a few red tomatoes, a few turning red, and 7 pounds of green tomatoes on dead vines. There are still two determinate type slicers growing with a few fruits on them. The Thai and Serano peppers had a couple hands full of red ripe peppers and the Jalapenos had a hand full of pickling size, and fortunately I had on a jacket with big pockets to hold them. The basil got cut again, maybe for the last time. And about a dozen Tomatillos ready to harvest.

    The basil was stripped to dry but the rest was just left on the table until this morning while I tried to figure out what to do with 7 pounds of green tomatoes. All of the recipes I saw online were for salsa you broiled the tomatoes, onions, and garlic then food process mixed them for a refrigerator salsa. There were too many tomatoes for that. One of my favorite canning cookbooks to the rescue.

    First, I pickled the jalapenos, blanched and froze the Tomatillos and ripe tomatoes. Put the ripening ones in the window to finish ripening. Strung the red Thai peppers to start the third string of them drying.

    Though her recipes are generally for a few half pints, I have successfully doubled or tripled them for pints. The recipe for a canned Green Tomato Salsa called for 2 pounds to make 3 half pint jars, I tripled it and realized very quickly that it was going to make way more than 4+ pints, so 6 pint jars went into the canner to heat up and as I was filling them with a very thick and chunky salsa, added a 7th. The recipe called for a half poblano pepper. I don’t grow them, they don’t have any “kick.” I had harvested Serano and Thai peppers that had no immediate use, there weren’t enough Seranos and no red Jalapenos to make Sriracha style fermented sauce, so I just chopped them up with the Thai’s and added them to the 6 pounds of chopped green tomatoes, onion, garlic, and spices. The suggestion was to remove it from the heat when it was thick enough and taste it to adjust the salt and hot peppers if needed. Well, I think I will name it “It might make you cry” Salsa, it made me cry. Son 1 likes it hot, hubby likes it hot. Between them, I’m sure all 7 pints will disappear in short order, but I won’t be eating any of it.

    The last pound of green tomatoes were layered in a box with a ripe apple in hopes that they will ripen and can be added to the bag in the freezer to use later in the winter and a recipe calls for whole or diced tomatoes.

    For years, we have had an indoor/outdoor thermometer system. They last 4 or 5 years before they give out and quit working. Our last one quit about two weeks ago. It is funny how you learn to rely on something. I can check the weather forecast, but the station that reports for us in located somewhere in the county in an area that seems to be more extreme temperature changes than we have. I have checked to see that it was reporting as much as 10 degrees colder than our unit said when it worked. The outdoor part of ours in on the inside of a post of our north facing covered front porch. Tractor Supply carries a variety of thermometers from ones you hang on the porch and either try to read through the window or brave the elements to go out and look at it, to the indoor/outdoor ones with all sorts of reporting. I got us a medium range one that shows temperature, time, indoor temperature and humidity, barometric pressure, high/low temperature history, and supposedly, a prediction (we will see on that feature).

    It is hanging near the front door, so we can see how many layers we need to put on before going out. The high/low feature won’t kick in accurately until it has been up 24 hours. It is a pleasant 72 today, the high for the week. We had a quick rain shower but have a couple days of soaking rain due tomorrow and Wednesday. While picking up the thermometer, we also picked up a roll of heavy mil plastic sheeting that will cover the fig and if necessary some garden plants if a frost is predicted this week.

    I need to go find space on the pantry shelves for the salsa.

    Stay safe all.

  • Another Glorious Day

    It is clear and crisp, cool enough for a light wool in the mornings and evenings, and a light long sleeved shirt when working outdoors during the day. This is my favorite time of the year, after it cools off, but before it gets cold.

    The Asian Pear Marmalade was made yesterday afternoon. It took forever to cook to jam consistency, but it is thick and a beautiful golden color. The 3 pounds of pears and an orange, filled 4 half pints plus a quarter pint jar with just enough left over to enjoy warm on a biscuit remaining from Friday night’s dinner.

    Last week, I began a ferment of some of the small Eggplants that I had gotten at the Farmer’s Market. It has been sitting on the back of the counter all week with the ferment weight and ferment lid, all covered with a small towel. I hadn’t even peeked at it all week and decided to check it this morning. What a gorgeous color it turned and the ferment is so good. I have to thank a local friend for introducing me to fermented eggplant many years ago, and a distant online friend for reminding me of it now that I ferment so many good foods. I bought zesty salad mix and radishes at the Farmer’s market yesterday and a block of goat milk Feta cheese last week. I think a salad with those items and some of the eggplant and a tomato if I can find a ripe one will be a nice addition to dinner tonight.

    As soon as the morning sun and wind dry the garden leaves, I will pick beans and any other produce ready to come in for the freezer. Soon, the remaining beans will be left to mature and dry to save for planting next year. I have planted this variety for a couple of years and they perform very well here. Last year I didn’t save the seed and had to purchase seed, but bean seed is so easy to save. When the peas start producing, I will harvest to enjoy and also let them mature and dry for saving. Some packages of seed I use have so many seed in them that the package will last two or three years, and some seed is so tiny and difficult to save, I just purchase when I need more. I suspect I will have volunteer tomatillo all over the place next year and have in the past, dug them and relocated them where I wanted them to grow.

    Since my newest spindle arrived during the week, I have been spinning mostly on it to get used to it’s size and weight and because when it spins, the wood grain of the figured Bigleaf Maple makes the most interesting concentric circles, very mesmerizing. This is the second turtle of fiber on it. It would hold a lot, but I am trying to keep the colors of the braid consistent enough that the plied yarn will be similar to the first half of the braid that I finished last month.

  • Sunday, Sunday

    Our television is in our loft which has three windows plus two double dormer windows across the vaulted ceiling over the living room, so the large open space can be very bright when the shades are up. As a result, the Roman shades on the loft windows stay closed. Yesterday was the first NFL games of the season and hubby had the TV on from 1 p.m. until long after I left for bed. I’m not much of a football fan, or television at all. I played in the garden for as long as the heat and humidity allowed, weeding and harvesting, bringing in a very full basket and an armload of produce and basil.

    I sat at the dining room table and stripped the basil to dry in another basket, sorted out the beans from the peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos. Then brined a quart of Jalapenos, strung the Thai peppers to dry.

    Then filling my iced tea cup, I came up to spin or knit while football played on. I mentioned that the shades stay drawn so there is no glare on the TV which makes for poor lighting for knitting, but it was just basic ribbing on for the bottom of a grand daughter’s sweater. I alternated knitting a few rows, then spun some yardage on the spindles. The old wrist break and the arthritis it has caused, prevents me from knitting for very long any more. Spinning on the spindles doesn’t seem to bother it.

    After the first game series ended, I went down to make hubby’s favorite meal, homemade enchiladas and tacos which involves frying tortillas into taco shape, shredding cheese, dicing onion, making the enchilada sauce, so a fairly intensive and time consuming meal, as the football games continued above.

    After the meal was completed and cleaned up, left over beans, sauce, and taco meat packaged up for the freezer, I returned to the loft. Only I put on my headphones to block the games and continued with my crafts. As it got darker and more difficult to see what I was doing, I realized that three rows back, about half a round in, I made an error, knitting when I should have purled and thus the ribbing was messed up. Too tired to continue with it and not wanting to try to rip back three rows and picking up 134 stitches in the dark room, I tossed it in my basket, spun for a while longer and retired to bed with my book.

    This morning in the brighter light, I surveyed the damage.

    For some odd reason, it was half a round and only in the row down three rows, so this morning, I dropped each stitch back three rows one at a time and picked them back up correctly. It may have taken longer to do that than to just frog three rows and pick up the stitches, but the yarn is superwash, so slick, the knit not very tight and I didn’t want to risk having to frog all 2 1/2″ and starting over. At any rate, I can continue knitting the rib for another half inch then begin on the body of the sweater. This sweater has a pouch and hood like a hoodie sweatshirt, so the fiddly pouch will have to be picked up soon. I have knit this sweater at least a dozen times in various sizes for daughter and her kiddos, but that pouch always causes me pause, plus I need two needles the same size and only have 1 so I will borrow one from daughter, after all, the sweater is for her daughter.

    The eggplant purchased at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday was salted, wept, and brined to ferment on the counter for several days. I had fermented eggplant a few years ago at a fiber retreat, it was made by a friend and I hadn’t thought about it for a while until an online friend made some. Since eggplant is like a sponge and absorbs flavors, I used fresh basil, fresh oregano, minced Thai and serano peppers, and crushed garlic to flavor it. It should be delicious in a salad with Mediterranean food in a few days.

  • Who was I kidding?

    Yesterday, after 14 quarter pints of jams and jellies, I said there was nothing to do for today, then I went into the garden last evening before the rain began, to pick tomatoes and do a bit of weeding. Well, I came back in with this:

    While weeding, I turned up two small potatoes, too. That was the half pound of tomatillos I needed to make another batch of green salsa/simmer sauce, and with the fully ripe tomatoes here plus the ones in the kitchen window, enough tomatoes to make a couple jars of salsa. After morning chores, picking a handful of jalapenos, I cored and scored the tomatoes and poured boiling water over them. Chopped the onion, peppers, garlic, located necessary citric acid and salt and made two pints of salsa to add to the shelf. Then the frozen and fresh tomatillos, peppers, onion, garlic, and spices were blended into a semi smooth sauce and cooked down to 3 half pints of the green salsa/simmer sauce. Instead of using crushed red pepper this time, I minced 3 Thai hot pepper to go with the 2 jalapenos. Bet this batch is spicy.

    When cool, they will be labelled and added to the shelf. I have had to clear another shelf to accommodate the past two days. The tomatoes still in the window sill to finish ripening will become canned tomatoes that can be used in chili, soup, or seasoned to make more pasta sauce if needed later. A couple of the tomato plants are beginning to brown, I think we are reaching the end of the season for them. There are probably 200 Thai peppers on the two plants, as they ripen red they are brought in and put in a drying basket. I should start stringing them to dry before I have too many for a single layer in the basket.

    It is that time of year when the coop and hen run look like the comic exploding chicken when you see feathers going everywhere. It is molt time, starting with the Oliver eggers, including the crazy broody one. The Welsummers are showing it on their heads, so they will be losing more feathers quickly, then the Reds. That means few eggs, soon, no eggs until they grow their new winter feathers. At least they aren’t waiting until is it frigid outdoors like they did last year.

    I would like to start a new flock for next year, but with Covid, Son 1 can’t come to thin the flock, plus the freezer still has at least 4 or 5 from last time. No matter what I do with them, I can’t make them palatable. He does somehow, but he lacks a big freezer and I can’t get them to him. He joked about coming, staying in the basement, eating on the back porch and avoiding the main part of the house so he could pick up his canned and frozen goodies. I joked about driving the 3 hours to his house, leaving it on his porch, and driving back home. I WANT TO BE WITH MY KIDS!!!! ALL OF THEM!!!

  • Tools and Tasks

    Late last summer, we purchased me a large stainless steel water bath canner with basket rack. The rack is supposed to hang on the rim of the pot to load and unload, but the handles are a joke, they take up jar space, don’t hold the rack steady to load without tipping, and won’t stay upright so you can grab them when the canning batch is done. I have considered just removing them. When we got it, I decided I didn’t need all of the other stock pots that vary in size enough to nest with the largest one large enough for canning quarter pints and half pints. It will do a few pints if I don’t use the steamer basket to hold them off the bottom of the pot. I need to find a 10 inch round cake cooking rack to put in the bottom of it. I listed a couple of the stock pots with the deep and shallow steamer baskets and lids and someone said they wanted to buy them, but then didn’t show up twice at our meeting place, so I gave up. Now I’m glad they didn’t sell. I use the largest and smallest stock pots frequently when canning. If I have a big stock pot of sauce to can or want to use quarts, the huge canner is used.

    Last year when I was helping out at Son 1’s to help them move, I mentioned the difficulty of picking the apples and pears. They asked me if I had a picking basket and I had no idea what they meant. Later that trip, they showed up with an extension handle picking basket as a gift for me.

    That basket and the canning tools are the tools of summer, used only then and stored away for another year.

    I did pick the apples yesterday afternoon, using my picking basket, there weren’t many and they were a sorry looking lot, but I brought them in, washed, cut, cooked, and canned before preparing dinner.

    They added 5 pints of thick unsweetened applesauce to the larder. There are two left from last year and an open jar was in the refrigerator that had an additional half cup or so added to it as it didn’t all fit in the pint jars. We finished the open jar with dinner last night.

    This morning, when I got up, I pulled out a pound of the frozen tomatillos to begin to thaw, went out and picked the rest of the ripe grapes, and while it was still cool this morning, made two batches of jam and canned them using the quarter pint jars I bought for lids before my SIL so generously mailed me 4 dozen. First up was Tomatillo/Lime/Jalapeno jam. It is good on a Charcuterie tray, as a glaze on pork, meatloaf, or spread on a burger (meat or veggie). There are 7 quarter pints to add to the shelf. While it was canning, the grapes that were frozen were thawed and added to the fresh ones and cooked for juice to make Concord Grape Jelly. The Folly Mill that gets used only a couple of times a year, to remove the skins from the cooked apples for applesauce and the skins and seeds from the grapes was pulled off the drying rack and the grape juice extracted. The jars for canning it were put in the canner to sterilize and heat up and the sugar and pectin added to the juice to cook into jelly. That also ended up being 7 quarter pints.

    Quarter pints of jams and jellies are a good size as we don’t use a lot, it is good gift giving size, and they get used up before I tire of the flavor and switch to another one from the supply.

    Late yesterday, I emailed the reuseable jar lid company and asked when I could expect my order to ship. They originally said up to 2 weeks. I had received 3 identical emails telling me they had plenty and they would ship in approximately two weeks from order date. Yesterday was 2 1/2 weeks. I got an email back saying they would ship today and this morning, received an email that they have shipped. I still have 2 unopened boxes of lids from my SIL, one open one, plus a couple of boxes of wide mouth unopened. I should be in good shape to await the shipment. Right now, there is nothing awaiting canning. When another half pound of tomatillos ripen, I will make salsa. More tomatoes are turning pink then red and more tomatoes will be processed. Peppers are loving the cooler nights and the Thai peppers are beginning to turn red, the Jalapenos producing for brining, dicing and freezing, and when some ripen red with the Seranos that need to ripen red, Sriracha style sauce will be fermented. Tomorrow and Saturday will be cooler, so I will work at closing down parts of the garden, preparing a bed for garlic, while continuing to harvest what the garden will give.

  • A new month

    September is usually winding down month on canning, but there are so many green tomatoes on the vines, that tomatoes will still be canned; the grapes are finally ripening, so grape jelly is still to be made; the ground cherries are just beginning to bloom so jam from them will be prepared; there are so many Tomatillos forming and blooms still developing that some will be made into green salsa, some frozen or canned in halves. Usually September is Asian Pear marmalade and applesauce time. I went out Sunday afternoon to check the ripeness of the Asian Pears, and they are gone, every last one of them from the top to the bottom. There are few apples, maybe one small batch of sauce. Because of a later frost, there weren’t a lot of pears or apples, but certainly enough to make a few batches. I don’t know what happened, I have gotten so many pears in the past that I have shared them, pressed them into cider, made the marmalade and pear sauce. Not this year. I will buy enough at the Farmer’s Market to make one batch of marmalade, that is my favorite jam, and enough apples to make a canner full of applesauce jars. This wasn’t a fruit year in our gardens.

    It was fall like temperatures and very rainy yesterday. I had submitted orders to Eat’s Natural Foods and to Tractor supply for curbside pick up of some groceries for us and feed for all the critters. On Sunday, I sold the monster Stihl line trimmer on Craigslist after wearing myself out trying to start it and then daughter who brought her kiddos over for a masked socially distanced visit also tried. It started once and cut out. I was tired of fighting with the Herculean task of using the professional sized monster, so we had ordered a mid sized Stihl battery powered one and the larger battery, that was to be picked up too. When daughter and grands came over, granddaughter presented me with a pair of new socks that she insisted her Mom get for me because they were definitely ones that according to her “Mommom will love.” They are adorned with gourds and down the side is written, “Oh my gourd ness.” For you NP. As I dressed to go out in the cool rain, I donned my new socks.

    Yesterday I posted my start photo for the Jenkins monthly spinning challenge, I had started knitting mittens with some of the yarn spun last month. I will be spinning the same fibers, to finish the Shetland/silk braid and work on through the blue Tunis.

    About 3 inches into the mitten cuffs, I decided the yarn was just too fine for mitten weight fabric, so I “frogged” them and rewound the yarn, began again holding two strands together to get a better weight. That meant I was going to need at least that much more yarn to make them, so last night I challenged myself to spin heavier yarn on my heaviest spindle. It won’t be counted in the challenge, but will be knit into the mittens. I think it may be heavy enough, I hope.

    I will finish this spindle full and another and ply them to see. I am not usually very successful with this spindle except to ply finer yarns as it is heavier than I prefer and my yarn singles tend to break if I get any yarn weight on it. So far I am doing okay with a heavier spin. Time will tell.

    I made a difficult decision about Cabin Crafted Etsy Shop. I am paying personal property tax on equipment and stock and with no craft shows upcoming due to Covid, paying relisting fees on Etsy, as I have a fair size stock that is just sitting with no income. All yarn, knits, and weaves in my shop were drastically marked down to materials cost with no markup for labor. I need to move the stock I have made and then decide whether Cabin Crafted as a cottage business is going to continue on or close up and just knit and make soap for my family and me, or for friends that make specific requests. I enjoy the process and even setting up for events, but the times are tough right now.

    Stay safe everyone. with the University in town opening two weeks ago, cases of Covid had soared, from 5 to nearly 200 cases just on campus in those two weeks. They are even on the rise in our very rural county as folks work and shop in the town. We are back in full isolation with only curbside pick up of necessary goods.

  • Small batches

    Because we are senior citizens and just the two of us in the household, the garden is planned to provide for us and not a lot of extra. But providing for us includes not just eating fresh food, but freezing some vegetables and canning others. Toward this goal, I discovered Marisa McClellan’s books on canning in small batches. Typically, most of the canning I do is done in pints and half pints and since we can’t eat a dozen each of several different jams and jellies, her recipes that make only a few half pint jars each are perfect and provide variety.

    The exception is usually pasta and pizza sauces. Generally I save tomatoes until there are enough for a full pot, but it usually still canned in pints. Yes, I did use quarts a few days ago when I thawed and canned the pints that were in the freezer, but that is rare. I will use some quarts for tomatillos or jalapenos that go to Son 1, but rarely for our pantry shelves.

    This morning, I noticed that the tomatoes that I was gathering on the kitchen window sill needed to be used and was faced with just freezing them, peeling and coring them and then freezing them, or just going ahead and making a batch of something that could be canned. It was just about 2 1/2 pounds of peeled, cored, and diced tomatoes, so not but about a quart’s worth. I decided that I would just make a small batch of pasta sauce. I had used the pint that was in the freezer, the one that evolves when I use less than a pint or make a batch that is more than the jars ready to can, but not enough for another jar. When the freezer jar is full, it is pretty layers of leftover sauce and then it becomes the next jar to use and is thawed in a saucepan with whatever additions I want to add for that meal.

    The tomatoes cooked down to rough sauce consistency, made two pints with a new layer to add to last night’s leftover. The biggest stock pot with a silicone pad in the bottom instead of the deep steamer is tall enough for pint jars, though it only holds 4 or 5 safely. The big canner pot takes so long to heat up it isn’t worth using for only a couple pints or half pints. They were canned, just two lonely pints, but the satisfying pop that signaled they sealed means two more for the pantry shelf while I wait for more tomatoes to ripen.

    I guess you can call me a southern woman, I was born and raised in Virginia. I am southern enough for some traditional foods like black eyed peas, collards, and grits, but not southern enough for corn bread without a little sugar in the batter, I detest overcooked vegetables with fat back in the pot, and I can’t tolerate sweet tea. One traditional food I do like, but rarely get is fried green tomatoes. This morning as I was picking a couple more tomatoes to add to the sauce that I was prepping, I plucked a medium sized green tomato and made myself 4 slices of fried green tomato with my breakfast.

    I still have not received a shipping notice for the reuseable canning lids, but a friend offered me a box which I declined because of having just bought the flat of 4 ounce jars the same day, but then in today’s mail, an angel sent me 4 dozen brand new regular mouth canning lids. This angel is my SIL, she is an avid canner, far more canning than I do. There was the sweetest note saying she noted back in March that lids and jars were hard to come by, started a quest that found them on Amazon at a price gouging price, then landed a windfall. As she was finishing up about 300 jars of her canning, she shared some of hers with me. I now have enough to finish any canning I will get done this season. I know she must read this blog or she wouldn’t have known my need, so thank you, you are the sweetest.

  • Winding down

    Another month is drawing to an end. As the month has progress, so has my spinning for the monthly Jenkins spindle challenge. The challenge only requires 25 grams, only slightly more than 3/4 ounce to be spun in the month. I have spun along, spinning several samples that I had, they are good to carry in the car with my tiniest spindle; I worked on some Tunis roving that I purchased that is a nice blue with variation from light to darker; and I worked on a 5 ounce braid of Shetland blended with Bombyx in a color blend called Elderberry. That fiber is so smooth and soft and spins very fine.

    During the month, you post 4 check in photos of your progress, then a final photo taken on a scale to show how much you spun. I stretched out my check ins this month, posting my 4th and my scale today. I had spun about half of the braid of Elderberry and I wanted to ply it.

    My total for the month was 129.54 grams, the ball of Shetland/Bombyx has a small doggie tennis ball wrapped inside that weighs 20.8 grams, so it has to be subtracted from the total on the scale.

    After lunch, I started plying that ball on my wheel, figuring it would wait until next month when I finished the braid to fill the bobbin. I was so wrong. I barely got it all on the bobbin, then wound it off on the Niddy Noddy to measure how many yard it made. As I said, it is only about half of the braid. The finished yarn was 24 WPI, very fine, the skein is under 2 ounces and there are 489 yards in the skein.

    It is gorgeous and I still have 2 1/2 ounces left to spin. I am going to end up with over 1000 yards of this yarn. And the kicker is, I don’t knit with lace weight yarn. I guess when the rest is spun, the skeins will go in my shop. It will take me all of next month to finish spinning that braid.

    The morning harvest had lots of beans, a few peppers, 1 tomato, 2 cucumbers. As I was doing dinner prep, I blanched and froze two more gallon bags of beans, plus cooked some to go with our dinner and set aside a bag to take to daughter tomorrow. The third planting of beans are blooming, but beans aren’t forming quite yet, so we will have beans in the freezer and lots more to enjoy.

    The morning began foggy. It is always interesting to look out the back and not see the next ridge and then later, it is visible again.

    Stay safe everyone.

  • Work on the Mountain

    When we built our house, we ran our power line 2/10 mile underground from the road to the transformer to the meter. We didn’t want to look at the line coming down our driveway or have poles in our view. But that is not the norm here in rural, rocky, mountainous land. For the past two years, the power company has hired a contractor to cut down trees anywhere near the power lines. They come in, cut a wide path, leaving branches, limbs, and tree trunks where they fell. It may help to reduce power outages, but it has increased wildfire risk. It has been unseasonably wet this year, so hopefully we are not threatened. Since we have lived here, the power goes out periodically, but usually only for a few hours at a time. After a Derocho wind in 2012, it stayed out for 42 hours, and a winter or two after that, it was out for 7 days after an ice storm. We hauled water from the catchment system. Once we could get off the mountain, we hauled ice when we could get it to try to keep the freezer cold enough to not spoil, we grilled, cooked on the top of the wood stove, kept fires burning in the wood stove and the fireplace, wore lots of clothes, and coped. After a week, we booked a hotel room for a day, took all our laundry down, got hot showers, and while hubby tried to watch a Sunday football game on a very poor TV connection, I went to the laundromat. We got a hot meal not cooked on the grill, camp stove, or wood stove, and started home as it was getting dark. To our amazement, as we cleared the gap and could see our mountain, we saw lights scattered up the mountainside, the homes had electricity again.

    One of the power line cuts near us.

    When our house was being built, before the power line was laid by son and DIL for the power company to hook up, we had a small gas generator they used for power tools. After the week without power, I tried to start it, but it wouldn’t start, so we took it to the repair place and were told it wasn’t repairable, at least not for what a new one would cost us, but we didn’t purchase one then. We should have.

    The hurricane that is about to slam Louisiana and Texas tonight will make it’s way here still with wind and rain, certainly not anything like what they will endure. My thoughts are with those folks who have lost or had their homes damaged before as they face this again. I hope it isn’t another Katrina for them. But, we will have wind and rain and possible outages. Maybe the destruction around the power lines will reduce the likelihood.

    At any rate, we drove to town yesterday and the grocer did not have canning lids alone, but I was able to purchase a flat of a dozen 4 ounce jars with new lids. I came home, thawed the pints of pasta sauce and reboiled it while the big canner heated up and canned it in quart jars to save lids, so my pasta sauce is safe from an outage. Then I went outside to the garden and picked almost a dozen more tomatoes that are sitting in the kitchen window waiting to see if enough will ripen to make another batch before they have to be frozen. I won’t can green beans or peas as I don’t like the texture of overcooked vegetables, so I will just make sure that the freezer is packed densely toward the bottom, not in the hanging baskets and toss a couple of big bags of ice in there too and hope that if we lose power, it isn’t for long enough to spoil the meats and frozen vegetables in there. The brined and fermented pickles and peppers in the refrigerator will be fine. Hopefully the wind won’t be strong enough to knock down the tomatoes. We had a brief, maybe 90 minutes worth of strong wind and some rain with thunderstorms that dropped south last night. It tipped over a large jade plant on the porch, blew a cushion off a chair, but no other damage.

    Today’s walk was a throw back walk. Fifteen years ago, we stayed at Mountain Lake Lodge about 4.5 miles farther up the road off which we live, with Son 1, DIL, and 9 week old Grandson 1. The lake was full, Son 1 and DIL dove off the pier after a canoe ride across the lake and around the huge rocks at the end of the lake. The lake is only a pond now with no swimming, fishing, or boating allowed. We started up in the woods and walked down the mountain to the Lodge parking, down to the pier that is now on dry land with young trees growing up, then down a path through what used to be the lake bottom to a temporary floating dock they installed when the lake started losing water. It too is on dry land now. From there, we did a steep uphill back to the trail that lead to where we parked our car. The walk was about the same length as the walk we do in town, but it was cooler, less foot traffic, and more intense in elevation changes. A very pleasant time.

    The original pier.
    The temporary no longer floating pier. Above hubby’s head and slightly left across what remains of the lake are the rocks we canoed around on that trip.
    A little garter snake by the trail.
    A ferny woodland.