Basement Walls and Root Cellar

This morning, Jon and I worked on putting up boards for the basement walls.  The cement walls have insulation and studs up and rough planed boards will make up the final wall.  This corner of the basement will someday be my weaving studio (as well as home to a hot water heater).

The middle section of the basement will be root cellar/pantry.  This section will be walled off on three sides with insulation.  The left side has drawers and shelves and the right side has shelves floor to ceiling.  I am waiting on a quote for a countertop.  All of the extra kitchen supplies will be kept here and I am very excited to have a place to stock up on bulk items and keep canned goods.  The temperature stays steady and cool.

The last section will be closest to the door and will be Jon's workshop.  There is only one wall to go now, and the weather keeps getting warmer!

Cucumbers

My favorite time of year!  Cucumber season!

This is my favorite variety, Russian pickling

As always, I have far too many cucumber plants out there in the garden.  Last year, I was picking about a quarter bushel a day.

My favorite dill slice recipe comes from Summer in a Jar, a lovely vintage cookbook for canning in single jar batches.  This book also has the best dilly bean recipe, featured in Mother Earth News.

I can't wait for the cucumbers to really start coming in!  I should probably stitch one of these for my kitchen:

Kits and Pups!

If it weren't for all the leaves on the ground and the stark blue sky, I would think that it was spring here!  It does seem that the animals have chosen fall this year to multiply and give us quite a surprise.  A couple weeks ago, as Jon was removing the panel that separates the back of the insulated outdoor hutch for cleaning, he saw two new little fuzzy faces looking at him.  This was a complete shock, as we were sure that the mother was a male!  She had recently molted so we didn't notice when her belly fiber went missing and was made into a little nest way back in the darkest corner of the hutch box.

I won't know what gender they are for a while, but now that I am certain that Firari is a female and Tavie has proved to be the male that I knew he was, I now have a breeding pair, both with really nice fiber.  So, oops!  I'm breeding angoras once again!  Now to be strong and not keep them all!

As for the guinea pigs, they couldn't help themselves, either.

Gary Busey the guinea pig had been living with other male guinea pigs.  The pet store had sworn that it was male, and we had them check before we left to be sure.  Wrong again!  Busey, as she is now called, gave birth to just one pup, but it is healthy and cute and I'm going to have a really hard time not giving this one away.  Look at the face!

To complicate the situation, we took another look at one of the newer angoras that we got over the summer, and are pretty sure that this one is female, not male like we thought.  It is VERY difficult to tell when they're young.  Two other people had agreed that Pika was a boy.  Now there is every possibility that she has been bred as well.  No wonder Tavie was so happy with his living situation!  So far there is no sign of pregnancy, but she is going to be isolated for a month just to be sure.  It also wouldn't be tragic for another little to appear, a bit more expected and planned for, with another few little balls of fluff to play with.

I'm a bit overwhelmed at this point with trying to figure out the new living situation.  I am still grateful for each of these new little creatures.  They all have their own personalities and quirks!

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We have started to have frosts here at night, and there is even a chance of snow this weekend.  The garden is almost done.  There are only a few root vegetables and onions left out there, and they will be fine through even harsher weather.  I harvested corn last week and hung the cobs up to dry in the basement.  The kernels will be ground into meal later this winter (once I figure out how to do that...).  The stalks decorate our front door.

The canning jar shelf is nearly full.  I still haven't done any applesauce yet, either.  The freezer is full of local pork.  The mini fridge is full of pickles.  Extremely sour mustard pickles, to be specific.

Time to go having another cup of coffee and rake some leaves!

Harvest

Waking up with a migraine, I've allowed myself to be cozy on the couch with a cup of my new favorite tea- The Tea Guy's Coconut Truffle Black Tea.

This has been a busy summer.  Once again, I quit my job (unsafe work environment!), so I have had a bit more time to keep up with the garden and fiber arts.  Somehow, all of this 'free time' does seem free at all!  I've been busy canning tomato sauce and pickles, harvesting dried beans, playing with baby rabbits...

I've named the grey one Sterling and the blue and cream one Pika, both males from the same litter.  We also got another grey male, Firari (runaway in Turkish after he nearly escaped!), who is six months old now.

Firari has bonded with the two kits, and I think they will do well together.  Tavie, our two and half year old male, is kept separate due to his age and inability to bond well with other males.

Why do we have so many males?  Our large outdoor hutch originally had three separate pens, but when we moved, we took those out so that everyone could have a large run and keep each other warm.  We couldn't keep any does with our male without the inevitable happening!  It turned out that our original male was too old or his personality didn't allow him to bond well with our new ones, but these new rabbits seem to be happy and carefree, so I now get to have four angora rabbits =)  I do plan on breeding them in the future.

The garden has been producing well, especially since we had only amended the newly overturned soil with loam.  I've never seen so many cucumbers!

I have probably 20+ pints of pickle slices and three gallons of sour mustard whole pickles in the basement fridge.  Tomatoes had late blight and didn't produce well at all, but I was able to buy 60 lbs of canning tomatoes from Sapowsky Farms and I put up 8 pints of ketchup and 7 pints of sauce from that.  Canning a couple pints of sauce at a time from my own heirlooms, I think we will have enough to last at least into the next year.  Next summer, I hope to have 30-40 tomato plants instead of 15, and I will find a drier spot to ward off rot and blight.  I have also put up 40 lbs of peaches (sliced and jam) from Breezeland Orchards.  If I can get another couple bushels of apple drops from Mt. Pleasant Orchard, I think we will eat well this winter!

One last summer market on the 23rd, and then I might been a vendor at Northampton's winter market!

I think the rest of today should be spent avoiding shelling more turtle beans, finishing the hat that I've been knitting, and watching classic Doctor Who.  Also eating cupcakes because it was someone's birthday and I made sure there would be leftovers.

Next post will be about buying half a freezer pig from Mockingbird Farm!

New house, old harvest Yarn and fiber for sale.

We are all moved into a nice two bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood of a large city.  It was a very long process involving lots of sorting, cleaning, moving things, and of course, lots of stress.  Hopefully this situation will be a good one, and so far, it mostly is.

There are lots of new shops and markets to discover.  A middle eastern grocery sells Halal chicken and extremely large bags of rice.

25 lbs of jasmine rice

 I might have to turn this into a tote bag.

There are two Russian grocery stores nearby.  At the smaller store, a very nice Russian lady with limited English has conversations with me about the need for each of us to practice our new languages.  She also helped us find the very best non-expensive kolbasa in the meat case.  I LOVE being able to find affordable Russian food again and hope to be able to discover new recipes while practicing my Russian.  They also have extremely large bags of flour.

How could I pass up 50 lbs of flour?

You can see a theme here.  Now that we have a whole house, why not start buying goods in bulk?  The local doughnut shop sells food-grade buckets.  We have a small chest freezer.  I am very much looking forward to a winter of plenty.

We are taking this opportunity to go out more, explore new shops, take walks...this is already becoming fun.  I don't know how long we can keep up eating 2-3 dozen doughnuts a week, though...

Because we moved again during harvest season, I have had to improvise food storage methods.

Sunflowers and onions hanging.  The sunflowers weren't ready when I cut them, so they are drying near a dehumidifier in the basement.

Carrots, green tomatoes, sugar beets, and rutabaga.

More green tomatoes, and Amish pie pumpkin, and some winter squash.

 Dried and canned goods

More dried goods and spice cabinet

Before and after the move, I have also been saucing apples, dehydrating apples, canning tomato sauce, sorting dried beans, and soon I will start making a molasses-type syrup from the sugar beets.

 I processed 60+ lbs of drops apples

 Glorious apple peeler and slicer.  I don't know what I would do without it.

 Just two batches of unsweetened applesauce.

Kidney and yin-yang dried beans.

The backyard is one giant retaining wall project, but after that is over, Jon and I will be making a small garden space.  I get to really think planting over and practice some French intensive space-saving methods.

I will also be selling yarn, fiber, and knit things on ebay.  Some are made by me, some are from a farm back home.  I am very happy to sell things outside of ebay, too.  I have lots of boxes to go though, but please comment here or send me a message if you're looking for something specific.  I can also knit custom items.  There will be niddy noddies and antique carders listed, too.  My ebay page is located here. *Page is now active and has several items listed.

Day Off! Violet Jam and Transplanting.

It has been more than two weeks since I had a day off to myself.  I've spent a most relaxing day getting lots of things done and catching up on chores, hanging out with Tavşan.

He's so pretty now with his fur all grown in!

(Yes, he CAN see)

I made more violet jam.  I had more than enough violets picked from Jon's parents' and his Gramma's yards.

Absolutely beautiful, tastes of flowers.

And then I transplanted tomatoes, ground cherries, huckleberries, peppers, and eggplants into larger pots with Coast of Maine organically approved potting soil.  I also did some replanting and planted a container of lettuce.

 My awesome indoor greenhouse!

 Cherokee purple tomatoes

 Carmen, jalapeno, chocolate beauty peppers and one rosa bianca eggplant

 Principe and roma tomatoes

Lettuce box: one side Freckles lettuce, the other an heirloom blend

I hope to have time later this week after work to hand cultivate the garden plot here, and then sometime soon I will start planting at my parents'.  For now, after all this and washing every dish in the house, I am ready to eat some chocolate and take a nap.  Work is hard.  I have 'ice-cream-elbow'.  I really hope that they hire more people soon so I don't have to work at such a frenzied pace!  I'm also looking forward to Thursday, when it is supposed to rain...even though I still need to walk there and back...

Canning tomatoes

I didn't wake up this morning and think, 'Wow, today's a great day to spend in the kitchen hovering over boiling pots of things and getting covered in tomato juice!'  But that's what happened.  And some lamb broth making (now also covered in lamb tallow...), more garden harvesting, cleaning, bread baking, veg. dehydrating, moving heavy objects, and taking my landlady out for errands.  This was also one of those days where I found myself in public with various food splotches on my clothes and dirt all over my unshaven legs.

But even though I am coated in a layer of sweat now, too, I feel like I am actually making some progress in my summer goals.

(summer squash, straight eight cucumber, lemon cucumbers, less ripe tomatoes --> ripe and ready to be sauced tomatoes)

All of those ripe tomatoes only made 3 pints of plain sauce.

(cherry tomatoes next to house model and wood glue)

All of that is just from today, besides two green bell peppers.

Two cans of tomato sauce with veggies that I made a few days ago, but canned today.  They will be used up first.  That is also my French press <3

Purple pole beans.  Would not do these again- they have strings!  At least Jon eats them.

Dehydrating some cherry tomatoes and hot Portugal peppers.

Whole wheat bread ready to go in the oven.

Canner on left, lamb bones stewing on right.

Whew.  I am exhausted and I smell like lamb tallow (which I am saving, by the way, to use to fry something like potatoes in...somehow I think a lamb scented candle wouldn't meet Jon's approval).  But there is good food cooking/canning/growing.

My pantry is growing.

I haven't made yogurt, cheese, or butter for a few weeks while my parents are getting the cell count down, but now that it is on track again, I have dreams of mozzarella cheese and maple yogurt.  I've been getting fish and cookies at market for the vendor price, and have been trading my time and labor for eggs, lamb, and chicken.  Our grocery budget is extremely small, and I have been meeting it.  I really do miss ice cream, though.  We are getting a freezer from a family friend next month, and I am already thinking of all the ice cream that I am going to make!  

Summer has been extremely busy with translating, visiting friends and family, and working in the garden.  We mostly survive on my pizza, stews, sausage with veggies, pasta, berries from the woods, raw and cooked veggies, and bread.  Its working.  I am pushing through all of this canning and dehydrating now, to enjoy my own veggies in the winter.  The garden seems to be pushing me to my limits, though, and I wish that we already had kids that I could give chores to!  The orange pumpkins out there are calling me to make pies...

Canning and Old Sturbridge Village

I have been translating when I can get the work, but I have quite a bit more free time now.  So, I decided to get started on Christmas presents, hostess presents, and stocking up the pantry for winter.  Canning!

Yesterday, I did 3 quarts and 1 pint of pear butter.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/pear-butter/detail.aspx

It tastes so good!  The orange flavor is perfect with the pear.  But...it takes 2 lbs of pears to make 1 quart.  Fortunately, we have maybe 50 lbs of pears (friend of the family sent Jon home with half a truck full), so I can and should make as much as I want.

Today, I started two more batches.

That one is a saged pear butter.
http://tigressinajam.blogspot.com/2010/04/saged-pear-butter.html
It has pepper and sage, and is making the house smell wonderful!

The next batch is a caramel pear butter.
http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2008/10/caramel_pear_butter
These take half a day to cook down, but they are completely worth it.

My other project today was making pickles.  My grandparents had the most amazing sour mustard pickle recipe, which my uncle continues to make, that make your mouth pucker and eyes water.  I found this recipe, which is the closest I could find.
http://www.almanac.com/recipe/ruth-feeneys-mothers-sour-mustard-pickles
I am canning them, though, so I used these instructions.
http://www.pickyourown.org/makingpickles.htm

Three of the jars are filled with lemon cucumbers, and the other five are regular straight eights.  I've never actually canned before, besides making the jam, so I hope that they turn out alright.  The smell of the brine was enough to make me cough, so they should be strong enough!

My biggest problem now is running out of counter space.

Jon and I went to Old Sturbridge Village for the second time last Saturday.  We had an amazing time there in the rain, with very few people around!  I got some photos to save for inspiration when we are building our house.  I love the little house in the front of the village.  I want to live there, right now.  Can I just stay there, get paid to just work and live, and not have people ask me a million questions?

Here are some of the pictures from that day.

 I want this wallpaper!

 My parents have a fireplace in their kitchen just like this, but not used in a very long time.

 Timberframing

 Very nice step.

 The siding has something to do with ship siding

Jon, sporting his new beard