Blog

Doing What I Love the Most

An early start to a busy day, fueled by my super oatmeal with chia seed, walnuts and honey, I’m saving the eggs for the family visit and to send some home with our student family. Prep work for their visit requires a good house scrubbing as Son#1 shows signs of allergy to the pups. Beds which are left unmade to discourage stink bug hiding, must be given clean sheets, blankets and quilts. They are threatening us with accumulating snow on Wednesday or Thanksgiving, so wood must be stacked on the back stoop for the wood stove and the garage or front porch for the fireplace.
While Mountaingdad still slumbered, bread was started. I had nearly forgotten what a pleasure it is to make bread. I used to make all of our bread but we have been buying artisan loaves at the Farmers’ Market for a while now, but it is up to $9/loaf and with five of us eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 4 1/2 days, it seemed much more economical to make it. Two loaves and a pan of rolls are in the works.

The kneading bowl was a Christmas gift from Mountaingdad, handmade in November 2006 of cherry wood by Glendon Royal. It was often used in the past and brought out of display for bread making today. There is too much dough in it to allow a good initial mix and rise, so another treasure was put back into use.

This enormous hand thrown pottery bowl was thrown by Rob Podd of the Poddery. It is one of my early pieces from them. We met them at a craft show as they were just getting started and with our purchase of a small dish were given an invitation to their first annual kiln opening to be held the weekend before Thanksgiving which falls on or near my birthday. It became a tradition to go for my birthday and let me pick out a piece of pottery as my gift. There are mugs, a honey pot, plates, bowls, pitchers, and casseroles added a piece at a time over the years, all treasured, used and loved. This piece isn’t dated. Later at the request of the opening guests they began dating each piece. The scramble to get a piece warm from the kiln was fun as folks leaned and shouted to be able to have first refusal on the next piece touched. I don’t know if they still hold the openings or not, we live too far away now for the annual visit and I have all the pottery I need. We only missed two openings, the year I was over due with our daughter and hubby dared not take me 2 hours from home and the hospital and the year they didn’t have it because Karen was due momentarily with one of their children.
Such memories. The bread is rising for most of the day to make it light enough for the grandson’s tastes. Sandwiches, French toast, dinner rolls for Thanksgiving, I await drooling over the thought.
It is time to get back to mopping, scrubbing, sweeping, bed making all while enjoying the bergamot and vanilla infused water in the tiny sauce size crock pot simmering and filling the house with delightful scents until the bread can fill the house with it’s enticing aroma.

November 23, 2014
Market and Turkey Day

Yesterday, I was silent, it was a birthday, another senior one that I am ready to ignore. Mountaingdad took me to breakfast at our local diner, gave me an LLBean, leather Healthy Back bag and let me sit around and knit and read until dinner time, then took me for the best dinner at one of our local more upscale restaurants. Usually when we go out, we skip appetizers and desserts and I typically get soup and salad or a veggie plate. Not last night. We shared a Charcuterie plate with a delightful whole grain mustard and an onion/hot pepper jam. They had homemade mushroom stuffed ravioli with hazelnut butternut squash sauce, adorned with toasted pepitas, white raisens and asiago cheese. It was delightful. Makes me want to learn to make my own pasta. A glass of Malbec, and ended with a shared slice of New York Cheesecake and a scoop of pumpkin ice cream. I left stuffed and happy.

Today was both Farmers’ Market day and the day we drove to a county about an hour away to pick up our freshly killed and cleaned pasture raised turkey for Thanksgiving. I cleaned out a market stall of all of their remaining Yukon Gold potatoes and picked up some pork for us and for son to take home after the holiday. He is still hoping for a successful deer hunt while here and we have a few chores that we need help with, repairing a strip of log siding on the back of the basement and reattaching a downspout that has come loose and may be the cause of the strip of buckled siding. We also got a cord of seasoned hardwood dumped but not stacked and we need to do that in preparation for the cold and occasional power loss due to ice and snow.

Knitting is progressing on Granddaughter #2’s Christmas sweater, a Wallaby. It looks like a knitted hooded sweatshirt with the pouch pocket. I am about to finish the body and start on the hood. The sleeves are on as this is a bottom up sweater and most of the loose ends are woven in. I had lots of knitting time between yesterday and the two hours of car time going and returning for the turkey. Granddaughter #2 called me a couple of days ago and asked for mittens too. I thought I would have enough of the sweater yarn to make them, but now I don’t think so, so we stopped at one of my favorite yarn shops on the way to get the turkey and bought a skein of a tweedy yarn with the same color in it to make them.

We came home with a 14.5 pound fresh turkey, a 2.5 pound Boston Butt Roast, 2 pounds of ground pork, 4 chops, a pound each of Garlic Brats and Hot Italian Sausage.

Once this sweater is finished, I need to make her big brother one of a different color, then I will tackle her mittens and hope it all gets done in time for their Christmas.

Today was a balmy day compared to the recent weather, tomorrow is to be about the same but rainy, so I will tackle cleaning up my craft area, vacuuming the whole house, make guest beds, and make bread and prebake the rolls for Thanksgiving Dinner. Tuesday morning, I will drive to Northern Virginia, pick up son’s family once they are done with their school and work days and we will all drive back to the mountains for some family time.

Love our life in the mountains, our local products, and my ability to make warm cozy sweaters and mittens for family.

November 22, 2014
An Energy Rant

OK, I’m basically liberal in my leanings. I do think that the overabundant use and collection of fossil fuel is ruining the environment between mountain top removal for coal extraction and greenhouse gasses from the burning of it and natural gas as well as the fracking for that gas. The fracking process is poisoning ground water and the waste from it dumping chemical laden water in holding ponds and radium and radon sludge being dumped above ground. Once this coal or gas is extracted, it is transported to a coastal port via train and pipeline primarily to be exported overseas. All the while, the highways are clogged by petroleum guzzling semi trucks hauling goods around the country that could be more economically transported by rail.

If you have followed me for a while, you know that we are in the path of a proposed fracked gas pipeline, 42″ in diameter. Our region is limestone, karst topography, full of caves, sinkholes, 3 fault lines and every resident relies on groundwater from springs or wells for our water supply. Our immediate community is a Historic Preservation region with more than 300 historic and historical sites including two covered bridges, many that are also in the path of this pipeline. There are 3 significant caves on the path within 5 miles of our house, one containing endangered albino bats and all home of bat populations already threatened by the fungal white nose disease. In the meetings we have attended to learn more about this pipeline and to work to organize to oppose it, we have learned that a pipeline of this size, should it leak, causing an explosion, that the blast zone would be 2000 feet. That the industry accepted loss from these pipelines is 1% (probably higher if that is what they are reporting) and that methane would leech into our groundwater.

The company that is already using divide and conquer techniques and threatened lawsuits trying to force this through has a bad reputation for shoddy work and accidents and has many fines and a major lawsuit against it for damages in Kentucky.

To say we don’t want this in our backyard is an understatement, but we don’t want it anywhere, not just in our backyard. The years and dollars spent on this project would be much better spent on clean, alternative energy. Natural gas, especially fracked natural gas is not clean. It produces more greenhouse gas than burning coal. Don’t be deceived by the “Clean Coal” and “Clean Natural Gas” advertisements, it is not clean, do some research. Watch the video Gaslands.

We are fighting this, with peaceful opposition at meetings with the companies, through letter writing campaigns, with voting for politicians who are against these practices. We need help. Yesterday, the Keystone Pipeline was narrowly defeated, but will resurface as soon as the new congress is in office. Also yesterday, it was announced that fracking was going to be allowed in the George Washington National Forest. This is where parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Skyline Drive are located.

To frack or build a pipeline, acres of forest will be destroyed, herbicides will be sprayed to keep the undergrowth controlled, herbicides that will affect the health of the fauna and the human populations near the areas and anyone who receives their water from the groundwater or the watersheds that these areas serve.

What can you do? If you live in any of the counties affected by any fracking or pipelines, join the organized fight against them, attend the meetings, stand up and be heard. If you don’t live near them, but want to continue to enjoy our natural resources, write your politicians and be heard. It is going to take a national community to stop this desecration of our country by these practices and to stop our natural resources from being shipped overseas. For the funds being spent on these projects to go toward true clean energy that doesn’t destroy the environment.

If you are local, we need an auditorium full of people at Giles County High School, November 20, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. to peacefully show opposition by our numbers and our signs. Questions of the pipeline companies will be allowed by filling out a 3 X 5″ card with your question.

If you want to see more about fracking and pipelines, look on Wiki or check out http://www.preservethenrv.com.

Please help. This is our dream retirement home, built with our lifesavings and we don’t want to see it despoiled or destroyed, nor do we want any environment poisoned or destroyed.

November 19, 2014
We May Be In For It

… This winter that is. It is still November and we experienced the coldest night this season with an even colder one due tonight.

This was 2 hours ago. The wind howled all night, yesterday’s rain turned to snow flurries during the night and everything was frosted this morning. It is bright and sunny, but there is no warmth in it. I failed to bring the chooks waterer in last night and it was frozen solid, fortunately there is a spare since there are currently no culls or meat chicks.
It is supposed to warm back to normal by early next week, so Son#1 may not have to wear everything he brings plus Mountaingdad’s barn coat to hunt next week. He is hoping to put a deer in the freezer to supplement the chickens for their winter meat. Their three student budget is tight so meat is a luxury for them. I don’t eat venison and Mountaingdad isn’t a big fan either, but we have the freezer space.
I’m hoping for tolerable weather on Saturday as we will drive two counties over to pick up our freshly killed and cleaned, pasture raised turkey for Thanksgiving. As I was making the menu and grocery list, I was pleased at how few items we must purchase between our garden’s produce from summer, last week’s Farmers’ market and our local turkey. Olives don’t grow here and I don’t have a cow for cream, nor do we have a cranberry bog, but the rest will be local, homegrown, and homemade.
Lovin’life on our mountain farm, even if it is frigid.

November 18, 2014
Dreariness

It is cold and raining. Not the biting cold of last week, that is due again tomorrow, but cold enough to make procrastination on outdoor chores inevitable. I cuddled in bed with my book until the Shadow, the German Shepherd was dancing cross legged by my side of the bed, Ranger, the big guy still lazing on his pad on the floor by Mountaingdad.

It is wet enough that the pups didn’t want to stay outside very long, not long enough for me to finish prepping their eggs, so they hovered around and behind me while I cooked. The recalcitrant hens producing barely enough eggs to have for home use and as I used one of yesterday’s 3 eggs to make cornbread last night for a meal we shared with our recently widowed neighbor after the Pipeline Opposition meeting, there were only two to cook this morning. Once I carton a dozen and put them in the refrigerator for neighbors or friends, I leave them alone and only use from the bowl on the counter. This left me with no egg today, but I had leftover cornbread, a wedge lightly buttered and toasted in a cast iron skillet is a treat to be savored, with or without an egg. The pan was heating to cook the pups eggs, so I got my cornbread first.

With the house critters (including me) fed, it was getting harder to stall about layering up in gumboots, coat and gloves and finally making the wet, chilly walk over to let the chooks out and to feed and water them. Their sloped run, bare of a single blade of grass and with the hay scratched and washed off was as slick as ice. It is too wet to uncover the big round bale of hay to throw more down at the gate, hopefully later it will quit raining long enough to accomplish that task. Their coop hay tossed to loosen it up for insulation and turned to facilitate the deep litter composting that produces heat for them, their feed served in two metal dog bowls to keep it from being trampled into the mud and a quick check of nesting boxes for cleanliness and I found a surprise.

Three fresh, warm eggs to keep my hands warm as I slogged back to the house. I haven’t seen morning eggs in weeks and am luck to find 3 or 4 cold eggs in the evenings. It would be nice to get back to going out and finding more than I can carry in without a basket, but maybe not until springtime.

If it is going to be wet and cold, it should at least be white. I’d settle for the mountain snow flurries that fall for days on end with no real accumulation, just the dusting on gardens, roofs and cars. Cold, rainy winters remind me of winters on the coast, you are supposed to have snow in the mountains. I know, I should be careful of what I wish for, we may find ourselves snowed in without power later in the winter and we haven’t laid in wood for the stove and fireplace, having only a bit left over from last year. I suppose we should set in an emergency supply at least.

November 17, 2014
Sunday Thankfulness

Weekends bring the Farmers’ Market and breakfast out. We live near a major university town and university towns have bagel shops, except this town didn’t. You could get a bagel at one of two local coffee shops, but they were made in a city nearly an hour away. Those bagels could also be bought at the natural foods stores, but they are only delivered once a week. You can get Panera’s idea of a bagel. A new vendor at the Farmers’ Market is now selling bagels, I haven’t tried them yet and yesterday was much to cold to stand outside and eat a cold bagel. On Monday, however, the town got it’s first made on the premises, get them fresh bagel shop. Welcome Hello Bagel. We ventured in instead of going to the usual diner which has been so busy the past few weekends that we have had to stand at the door and await a table. Yesterday’s bagel was hot and delicious, buttered with a cup of coffee. They do need more cream cheese varieties, but lots of bagel flavors.
Fueled with breakfast I braved the market while Mounntaingdad sat in the car and finished his newspaper. My favorite meat vendor was back and was saddened to hear her absence was due to the death of her father. She had just left his side to return home when he passed.
A few meat items and a large cabbage were purchased from her, potatoes and almost 4 pounds of Daikon radishes from another vendor. I had kimchi or more correctly, Maangchi in mind.
Growing up, I had never heard of fermented food, wasn’t a big fan of canned sauerkraut, and yoghurt wasn’t in every dairy case. Upon buying our farm we found, with son#1’s help, a Korean Restaurant in a tiny town west of us and I experienced my first kimchi and though I don’t like all kinds, I do love Maangchi, the radish kind, and a turnip one that is similar. Most all of the fall harvest of radishes were made into Maangchi and it is nearly gone. Daikon’s make a better version and since they were available, I knew I could have more.

Such an easy process.

Not many ingredients.

Like kraut, the radish mix must be packed down to remove air. It can be eaten right away or let to sit on a dark shelf for a few days to ferment before putting in the refrigerator for enjoyment later.

I do think that next year the garden will contain Daikon radishes instead of the smaller cousins.

I am thankful for discoveries, for an awesome local market, for good food and as we are leaving shortly for another organization meeting against the pipeline, for “neighbors” who also want t o stop the desecration of our beautiful environment by this abhorrent potential project.

November 16, 2014
Olio – November 13, 2014

Olio: a miscellanous collection of things.

My blogging goes through spits and spurts, sometimes my creativity is just not there, or focused on other issues. As the winter sets in, I am more content to sit and read or knit, sometimes both at the same time, if my book is on my tablet and my knitting is mindless. I have been going through books at a record rate lately, some of them not worthy of mention, but several quite noteworthy. The Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline fascinated me. The period of time related to my Dad’s young life and I recommended it to him and my stepmom. They both loved it too and set out on some research to see if her grandfather was one of the orphans. He was an immigrant orphan, adopted in that part of the US. They are still trying to prize out information for her, and her mother’s maiden name happens to be Baker. The Glassblowers, Petra Durst-Benning, a translation from German totally enthralled me. A loose historical fiction of the glassblowing village of Lauscha in Germany and three young women as they struggle to survive and break the gender barrier to create some of the earliest blown glass Christmas ornaments. Another good one was The Light Between Ocean’s, M. L. Stedman, a tale of love, loss, and deception, set at a lighthouse off Western Australia.

This is Yellow Cat, a sickly intact male barn kitty that rarely goes to the barn, spending much of his day on our front porch. He is a rescue that was born with Feline Aids and can’t be neutered because every time we try to take him to the vet, he has a rhinovirus attack. He is pitiful, wheezes like Darth Vader, but is loving, friendly with the dogs, and keeps most of the mice out of the house by his presence. He was enjoying the 5 minutes of morning sunshine we had on this brisk cloudy day. We certainly aren’t suffering the cold and snow of parts of the country, but the temperature is 20 degrees below normal for this time of the year and we are having snow flurries and very cold in the teens nights.
On my way to my spinning group today, riding shotgun for hubby, I finished knitting granddaughter #1’s sweater. The ends are woven in, it has been washed and is blocking on the downstairs bed. I can’t decide whether to use plain buttons the color of the sweater or go looking for something cute and three year old appropriate. I guess I’ll decide that tomorrow. I still have two kid sweaters to get done by Christmas, then I will get back to my own sweater.

I did get some spinning done today. My arthritic right thumb has been noncooperative lately and so I have only played a bit with the Turkish drop spindle, but today I spun on my wheel. Though I’m not a fan of pink and am not sure why I bought fiber that color, the darker purples and grays are making an interesting single.

Loving life on our mountain farm.

November 13, 2014
Sunday Thankfulness

Last night it got cold, down in the 20’s cold. The morning was bright and sunny and the two together created frost shadows.

Every trip out to the garden area reveals a few more pumpkins. I think I have harvested in the neighborhood of 100. At this point, there is a small pile collected on the edge of the garden to throw to the chooks. They aren’t producing many eggs lately. Of the dozen hens, we are only getting 4-6 eggs each day. One is in a serious molt, one just got over her broodiness, but that leaves 10 that should be giving me a few more than I am getting. It is enough for us, but not really producing for my neighbor and knitting buddies.

On the knitting front, Granddaughter 1’s sweater for Christmas is progressing well.

The pattern is In Threes which has a cap sleeve, but I am modifying it to add long sleeves. I need to find some buttons and finish the sleeves. I still have two more kids sweaters to get knit before Christmas. One of them is another 3T, so it won’t take too long, but the other is for an almost 8 year old and it will take a bit more time.

We are due for two beautiful days before we are faced with a few very cold days due to the Polar Vortex headed our way. I need to get some extra hay in the coop and figure out how I am going to keep their water thawed. The heavy barn coat has been moved back to the utility room near my gum boots for dealing with the coming winter woes.

November 8, 2014
This Moment

Silly pups

November 7, 2014
Flip flop

Today is gray,
Cold is back on it’s way.
Granola is baking.
Chickens are grazing,
Residents are lazing.
A good day to knit, read, drink tea.

Sorry, not much of a poet:D

November 5, 2014