What Housework?

And 2012 starts off slow

Looking around you'd hardly know it's winter in Vermont. I think we've had one measurable snowfall so far, unless you count today, which so far amounts to less than an inch. I tire of the snow pretty quickly, but this is just weird.

Not much going on, other than a lot of knitting and spinning. Finally, after months and months, I finished spinning and knitting the linings to my Northman Mittens, the outsides of which have been done since last February.

My first handspun for the lining (done in July) was much too bulky. It took me until a couple of weeks ago to spin more Romney and angora rabbit fur and maybe some alpaca, though I don't remember exactly, into a fine enough yarn. Success:

I never did get a good finished shot of the outside. In any case, they're pretty, and they're incredibly warm, but they're not real practical. I can drive with them on. But I can't turn on the ignition or even carry my keys into the house without dropping them. These are more for walking in the woods than going to work and back, I guess. Bonus: I had just enough handspun left over to knit one of my co-workers a pair of fingerless mitts, accessories I believe should be standard issue in our igloo of an office.

I also made my husband a dickey, and not just because everyone giggles when you say "dickey." It might not be as fashionable as Cousin Eddie's in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation --

-- but my husband requested it to keep the wind off his neck while working outside.

I got it from Elizabeth Zimmerman's "Knitting Around," which is a fun read and I'm glad I used the dickey (snort) pattern as an excuse to buy the book.

I made my baby niece Cori a cute little earflap hat with sock yarn (held double) that my daughter had dyed several years ago. I didn't get a picture of it on the baby, so picture it like it is below, only 10,000 times cuter.

I suddenly got the bug to do more spinning, so I reclaimed a bag of superfine merino I had dyed a long time ago that never sold on my long-neglected Etsy shop:

Then, halfway through spinning, my beautiful, expensive, beloved Majacraft Rose spinning wheel BROKE -- the crankshaft came right out of its socket! Thankfully, I was able to contact Tracy Eichheim of Woolly Designs on New Year's Eve, no less, and he gave me a full photo tutorial on how to fix it with cold-weld metal epoxy. If you are interested in a Majacraft Wheel and superior customer service, I highly recommend him.

Out of fear I waited a week t do the repair, knowing if I lined the treadles up wrong before gluing things together I'd end up with a ruined wheel. But in the end, it came out perfectly, and I came away with 380 yards of buttery soft 2-ply yarn.

I originally thought I wanted to knit gloves (for days when I actually needed the use of my hands and the new mittens wouldn't do), but the yarn's awfully soft and probably not durable enough, so I'm thinking some sort of shawlette/scarf in a garter stitch to highlight the color variations.

If I still want gloves, I can use a bit of this lovely stuff:

This (Milo-approved) fiber is nearly four pounds of roving I bought from a family I met at a Christmas party last month. They raise Romneys. It's beautiful and a lot stronger than the merino would be. I am practically giddy with ideas on what I'm going to spin and how I'm going to dye it. So many possibilities....

It's been pretty quiet, other than my debit card number getting hacked over the weekend -- with only a $9 transaction successfully made against my account. Fortunately, the $600 Dell computer order and the $1,100 charge to an online store were declined and my account is now secure. Sheesh. (Big shout-out to Amazon here, for emailing me to say someone had tried to open a second account using my existing card number. They rejected all the attempted transactions and advised me to freeze the card and call my bank. Good call.)

Among many other Christmas gifts I did get a new telephoto zoom lens for my Canon Rebel DSLR. I haven't used it for much yet but I'm going to get some good shots outside if we get a nice day. We could use maybe a picturesque snowfall. (I know, I know: be careful what you wish for.) If nothing else, it will make for a more exciting blog post!

 

 

Home for the holidays

Can you believe it's already Christmastime?

We bought and decorated the tree early again this year (Dec. 3, I think), something I used to oppose. Now I'm all over it. One less thing to stress about at the last minute and more time to enjoy the fragrance, the lights and the decorations. In addition to the standard Christmas balls that came from who knows where, I must point out a couple of special ones.

There's this one:

This is special mainly because it was a gift from the justice of the peace who married my husband and me in 1994. And it was our 17th anniversary on Dec. 10. And we break a lot of ornaments, so it makes me happy to see this one (and the marriage!) still intact.

And the yucky kitty on skis, a family favorite:

This poor thing was one of the many casualties of the year we moved into our previous old house in '94 and stored the ornaments in the basement. Stone foundation + cardboard boxes + water seepage = mildew. We lost a lot of ornaments but this one we just couldn't let go of. So every year the nasty, diseased skiing kitty comes out of hiding and takes a prominent place on the tree. Don't you just love him?

*********

I'm not going crazy on Christmas this year but it seems I've been making quite a bit of stuff anyway. Like these:

Family and coworkers clamor for homemade donuts, something I used to make quite frequently, always on Friday mornings. But now my mornings are reserved for working out, not pigging out. It so happened that certain brothers-in-law started whining constantly about the lack of Friday morning donuts, and my workout schedule happened to have a day off fall on a Friday. So there were many donuts.

And they were good.

**********

I also did some dyeing, something I haven't done in ages, and which I miss. But this wasn't yarn.

Dharma Trading sells clothing "blanks," undyed clothing and accessories that you can custom dye. They have silk and rayon velvet scarves for cheap, like $8-12, and I wanted one. Then I figured I could dye a few extras for Christmas. Then I figured I should ask my coworkers if they wanted any, while I was at it. In the end, I dyed about 40 scarves. However, in the Christmas spirit I failed to charge for my time, so while I didn't make any money, I did make a lot of scarves and had a lot of fun doing it. (I never did get one for myself, somehow, but there will be more.)

I dye yarn with acid dyes, but these were done with fiber reactive dyes, a different sort of process. Still, it's pretty easy. If you like playing with color, get yourself a starter kit from Dharma and try it. Great fun. (I did all my dyeing with yellow, fuchsia, turquoise and black, but if you don't like mixing your own colors, you can buy whatever shades you want.)

************

A month or so ago I got a phone call from my sister-in-law.

Her: Do you have any extra fabric for making mittens?

Me: Fabric? Like fleece for sewn mittens? (She sews.)

Her: No, like yarn, for knitting mittens.

Me: Sure, I have tons. But I didn't know you knew how to knit.

Her: I don't. I need to you to knit me some.

Cracked me up.

She is one of my frequent knitting recipients, so I dutifully made her a pair of heavy mittens.

Halfway up the left-hand mitten, I carried the white yarn in my right hand, apparently, instead of the left as I did throughout the rest of the pattern. The way it's receded compared to the other rows drives me batty but I didn't bother to rip it out when I finally noticed it. How many other knitters would have left this? Probably not many.

*******

I also knit a helmet for my husband to wear when working outside (which is often almost every day, all winter), using a pattern from an old Lopi pattern book. It's not the sexiest thing, but it's to replace one I made for him 10 or 15 years ago, which he has lost. He loves this pattern because it gives him options.

Really cold weather:

When he gets hot from moving around:

Stay away from him, girls. He's all mine.

I also made him a secret gift, which is at the framer's right now. We don't have pigs this winter and he is like a lost soul without them, so I found an old picture and attempted a pencil drawing of some from the past, a picture I call "Pigs We Have Eaten." (Well, we loved them when they were alive.) In the early stages:

He is a master Christmas-gift-finder, even when he is not actively snooping. He doesn't read the blog, but now I have to delete this picture from my computer because today will no doubt be the day he decides to browse through all our saved pictures for the first time ever, and he'll find it. I hate that guy.

*****

Winter is becoming a lot more cozy at our house because we had the old gas "woodstove" that had been in my neglected shop (sob) moved into our very cold, very un-cozy living room. We also got a giant new flat-screen TV (Black Friday price, five days before Thanksgiving, sweet), so we'll be spending a lot of time in the living room this winter, I can already tell.

Can you blame us?

*******

We will only have two of three children home this year for Christmas (again), which stinks. But it will still be nice to have our annual Christmas Eve family party, complete with obligatory annual showing of "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," now on a 55" screen, followed by a quiet day of sloth and presents on Christmas with our required cinnamon braided Christmas bread and coffee all morning, and then in the evening, dinner at another sister-in-law's house for prime rib, shrimp and other goodies. And I get a four-day weekend.

So that's it, and my apologies for the long blog silence.

Merry Christmas to all!

 

 

Lucky turkeys

These guys are not going to be dinner any time soon.

It's a moral dilemma. Since we're too attached to these turkeys to eat them (though not to any of the other food animals around here), do we (a) pay big dollars for a locally grown fresh turkey that still isn't as humanely treated as our own animals or (b) pay $.49 a pound for a factory-raised frozen bird that still tastes pretty good even though we feel a little guilty about it?

We go with (c): forget the turkey and roast one of our own meat chickens, raised this summer, thus getting good flavor at no additional cost and still eat something we raised ourselves. Our chickens go over 10 pounds and there will only be four of us for Thanksgiving dinner.

Problem solved.

Not much else going on now that all the harvesting and canning and freezing is over. The weather has been eerily mild so it's been tough to get into the oncoming winter panic; there are still windows to be sealed up and all that stuff. I've done a bit of knitting. A Very Braidy Cowl is done:

Either I knit way too loose or I have a really tiny head because cowls are always a bit roomy on me. Go figure.

Milo is carbo loading in light of the oncoming winter.

As are we.

That's from the latest batch of Lazy J home brew, a yummy Canadian ale. I need to make more soon; we go through this surprisingly fast.

More Milo, hanging with the man.

Last week:

This week:

And Sophie, the free-ranging sheep.

It's been a good run for the goats and the sheep; they've had their freedom for several weeks now. But it's time to fix the gates and build a higher perimeter on the fence (Who are we kidding? Sophie can't jump. But the goats sure can). Today I received two calls at work from drivers passing by our house and panicking that the goats are out in the yard. Two weeks ago someone even stopped and tried to corral them back in their pen out back. We were home but didn't notice the commotion and the would-be shepherd (who didn't notice our car) gave up after a few laps around the yard. It's better for all if we get them under control. We know.

Since I don't have much excitement in my own life, I will leave you with a pretty funny video you have no doubt seen, if you are a knitter. If you are not a knitter, watch and learn. Or not.

 

 

That was then, this is now

"Then" was last night.

"Now" is this morning.

Can you spot the difference?

Apparently much of the Northeast is getting hammered by a winter storm. We got only a dusting, but I took my camera out this morning for chores.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the only snow we'll see this winter. (I'm psychic.)

The animals seemed a little concerned, too.

The goats and sheep have actually been enjoying a lot of freedom lately, ever since they decided that that whole "fence" thing wasn't working out for them. We ended up taking the gate right off and they're tidying up the yard at their leisure. That's going to end soon, as they keep eating all the chickens' food. But for now it's interesting, to say the least.

Last week:

Lucy sometimes pretends she's a turkey.

Mama turkey ended up with two poults.

That puts us up somewhere around a dozen turkeys. If you factor in how many we will slaughter for Thanksgiving, we should have, oh, exactly the same number left. We just haven't been able to do these guys in, I don't know why. Lucky them.

However, this is a great time of year for food around here. The freezers are packed with pork, beef and chicken. The shelves are full of tomatoes and applesauce, apple butter and apple jelly. If something hadn't eaten Every Last One of my pie pumpkins and various types of squashes (insert sob here), we'd be all set.

I made one last foray out into the garden the other day. Turned out to be a good thing, mostly because I found our two beef cows had knocked down the pigpen fence to help themselves to the grass outside their pasture. But also because I discovered a lot more hot peppers than I had noticed before. Stunningly red.

I also remembered I had planted a bunch of broccoli rabe in a spot formerly occupied by beans. Last year it got chewed full of holes, but this year? Beautiful.

Cook the stems in olive oil, garlic and coarse salt, then add the leaves toward the end, and  you're good to go. Delicious. I believe I have some kale out there too...

I have to admit I've been slacking in the yardwork/gardening/fall cleanup area. The first burst of chilly air sent me right to the couch with my knitting needles. My husband has worked, I think, seven of the past eight weekends, possibly more. Seriously, he works seven days a week, which is awful except that it means business is good. It's been a while since we could say that.

Without him here being the farmer dude, I find it quite easy to sit guilt-free and knit all weekend. The gardens need work. But I've made some stuff.

My niece had a baby last week, but since they decided not to find out the gender I decided to knit just one small thing for now. It's a girl (Cori), so now I can move ahead. I think this was pretty timely:

Meanwhile, I cranked out Vivian, by Ysolda Teague. By far the most challenging thing I have ever knit. I'm fairly happy with the results, although the sleeves are way too long, as shown in the second picture.

The cables were pretty complex, but there was also shaping going on in between them that required constant vigilance. Due to my short supply of constant vigilance, I ended up doing a lot of ripping out and re-knitting. My husband said technically I should have three sweaters for all the knitting I did. (Correct, but two of them would be completely messed up.)

I immediately started another cardigan. Then I decided I needed a cowl (our office has already switched to winter tundra climate), which will be done today, I hope. Then my sister-in-law called last night to ask if I had any yarn for mittens for her.

"Sure," I said. "But I didn't know you knew how to knit."

"I don't," she said. "I was hoping you'd make them for me."

I'll probably move those to the front of the line, and then I have to spin more yarn for the lining for my very lovely mittens made months ago, since the stuff I spun last time was way too bulky to work. I tried.

Maybe I'll just use commercial yarn. It depends on how warm I want these to be. And how soon I need them...

So, you probably saw in my Vivian pictures above, that the gray hair is coming right in. Not evenly, unfortunately, but it's coming fast and furious. I'm 43. I have been offered the senior discount (over 50) on more than one occasion. Does this bother me?

Yes and no.

Yes, because I feel like I shouldn't have to dye my hair just to appear younger to other people, and yes, because I'm ticked off that I'm going gray so soon.

But no, because as it happens, I'm feeling pretty good these days. I believe I'm in the best shape of my entire life. I have tons of energy, I'm strong, and I have muscles. As of today I'm halfway through "Insanity: The Asylum," another of Beachbody.com's crazy-intense workout DVD series, and I'm rocking it, people. So, to offset the old lady pictures above, I'm including this one, the Asylum "before" shot:

I'll say it again: If you are over 40 and think you're past your prime and there's nothing you can do about it, think again. I, for one, plan to kick ass for quite a few years yet.

Now excuse me while I go refill my coffee and have another scone. (I earned it.)

Let there be light

The husband came through with his awesome wiring skills. After five years in this house, we now have a dining room light I approve of. (As a small warning, let me say I am well aware of the popcorn ceiling, unpainted bookcase and tattered bland curtains that say "Jessie's dining room." We're working on it. Slowly.)

Before:

You'll admit it lacks a certain ambiance. Even lit.

Not only was it not good for seeing your food but the glare when reading a newspaper could positively blind you. 

I saw somewhere online that people have refurbished older "brass" chandeliers cheap, so I decided that's what I would do. I have re-wired ceiling fixtures before. How hard could it be? (Cue violins in minor key.)

First, to find a chandelier. I trolled eBay for weeks and then came upon the perfect item. Hanging in my friend Jenn's kitchen. She swore she wasn't using it (it was not even over her table) and I offered to take it down. My husband, fortunately, stepped in and did the work, including replacing it with the above ceiling light so she could have some emergency overhead lighting, because it was not a straightforward job and I would have left wires hanging out of her ceiling. 

Then I went home and got to work.

I ditched the old-fashioned flutey/frosted glass globes, wiped the lamp down, and masked off the unpaintable parts, like so:

Cleaned the little "candle stumps" (so realistic!) with a toothbrush and soapy water.

I had to get a little creative to clean inside the brass cups.

Next, I had to cover those candle stumps. Online I had seen people use newspaper and masking tape, but I found something better. If you are not lucky enough to have college students in your house, you might not have plastic shot glasses on hand. But I did.

Perfect fit.

Voila.

Next, I took a can of metal primer and got to work. Eventually I realized hanging the light worked better than setting on newspaper. Live and learn. Also, it was damp and drizzly so it took longer than the "15 minutes" mentioned on the can. More like two days.

I then hung it, and did the necessary touchups, and then got to the fun part: the finish coat in matte black. Only it appears I never took pictures of that step. 

Moving on: Rewiring. The old cord was old and frayed and only a few inches long. Apparently this had been mounted close to the ceiling in its original location, but ours would need to hang lower and be swagged over to the center of our table. I bought seven feet of black wire and seven feet of black link chain and took apart the lamp guts. I pulled out the old main wire and threaded the new wire down through the center of the light.

Below you see the new wires, stripped. I joined them to the five wires from the arms of the light (which were not in bad shape) and wire nutted them together. Again, no more pictures. What is wrong with me?

Next the lamp sat for weeks and weeks as my husband continued his unbroken streak of now 26 days without a day off. 

Tuesday night he came home, dog tired, and suggested that we get the lamp off the table and hung over it. Being a contractor with a background in electrical, he happened to have two toolboxes devoted to wiring, which he brought in.

You know my personal motto, right? "Nothing is easy."

And so this old phrase proved true again. The box that had held the ceiling wires had been improperly installed by the former owner of our house and was ready to fall out. It was the wrong size. Plaster ceiling fell out in chunks. But he did wire the light.

Then I handed him the new dimmer switch to install. Again, the switch had been put in improperly and the new dimmer was too deep to fit in the existing box. Over the course of a couple of hours and numerous trips out to the workshop, he managed to get a box to fit the hole and get it all installed.

And, drum roll please, we now have a dining room light:

I was not allowed to show the plate on the ceiling because there's a piece of plaster missing and my husband didn't want his reputation ruined online. There's also a hole next to the ceiling hook where he drilled the "center" hole in the wrong place. He blames me for holding the tape wrong; I blame him for not listening to me when I said it didn't seem right. Whatever, there's other patching to be done so I'm not worried about it.

Edited to add: Anyway, in case anyone is curious, I didn't track all the expenses on this project, but I believe I had about $10 in spray paint and $30 in dimmer switch, wire, chain and lightbulbs. I consider that money well spent.

That's all I got for now except this:

That's a BLT made with homemade bread and homegrown bacon, lettuce and tomato. (Actually that's baby broccoli rabe greens because I didn't have lettuce. Humor me.) It's probably the last BLT of the summer so I feel it deserves recognition. Delicious.

Sunday morning at the Lazy J

Nothing like having coffee on the porch on a sunny, late summer morning.

With poultry.

I'm glad I got these pictures, taken last week, since I lost a similar set last time around. We spent close to an hour out there, my husband working on a bid, me with my to-do list, Calvin the rooster strolling around, and one of my egg-farm rescue hens relaxing in a chair. Milo visited, too.

The thing about Calvin: he's a big rooster.

And even though he's always been very gentle around us...

...sometimes he gets really close and just looks at you. And you wonder if he's going to peck a chunk of skin off your leg.

Nope. He's just curious.

I'm definitely going to miss our mornings out there, now that we're heading into cold weather.

Speaking of fall, here on the homestead it's most definitely harvest season. Each year I get a little better at getting things done efficiently. I also get in a little further over my head. It never gets easier.

This year I smartened up, and only froze 7 dozen ears of corn, rather than the 13 dozen we did last year.

In addition to tons of garlic and a good supply of onions, I got some shallots (which I almost forgot about):

The tomatoes have been coming fast and furious. As of today, I've canned over 30 pints, plus put a few bags in the freezer. It's a bit of a drag, but I love having tomatoes for sauces and soups in the winter.

I love the variety of tomatoes I have growing (some I started from seed, four I bought, and some re-seeded themselves). I need a lot of tomatoes. And I'm getting a lot of tomatoes.

 

Good grief, am I getting a lot of tomatoes. (I swear I'm not complaining.)

 

What, no jar photos? Refer to last year. It's all the same coming around again...

Last year, I grew some beans to dry. They were so amazingly good, despite the small yield, I decided to do it again. Beans are good for the garden soil, but they take up a lot of room for not much in the way of results. Still, they're easy to grow. And for some reason, probably because they're not as old as the storebought ones, they are tastier than the dried beans you buy -- and they cook significantly faster. Plus you can get unusual varieties you might not otherwise find.

I grew four varieties of dried beans this year. My first was October beans. They're cute. I got just about 3 pounds, which is quite a bit more than last year. (Like the beans you grew? Save some and plant them the next year. It's the gift that keeps on giving.)

I also grew regular kidney beans. The process of growing them is pretty easy. I'm still working on streamlining the harvesting part, but it's getting better. Last year, I dried them on the vine and then peeled them one by one like shell peas. Because they pods are dry, they're fairly easy to shell, but it takes a while.

For the October beans this year, I put them in a bag and beat it with a board. That got the beans right out of the shells, but left all the vines and leaves to be sorted out. When I got ready to do the kidney beans, my husband offered a better idea. 

I picked them and let them dry as usual in my dye studio (lately more of a potting shed/brew house/canning supply store).

I took them outside to an empty trash can.

 

I took a handful of vines and banged them around inside the can.

Beans! Not a lot of them, but beans nonetheless.

It didn't take too long, although I still ended up with a lot of chaff.

To clean them up, I channeled my inner Laura Ingalls and tried my hand at winnowing: basically pouring the beans out in a stiff wind and letting all the lightweight stuff blow away. While holding a camera.

Two or three passes and that was that. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.

I got slightly under three pounds of kidney beans, which was a good haul, in my opinion.

Today I did the same with some tiny white navy beans (a HUGE amount of plants for relatively few beans, so I know not to plant those next year). And I pulled the tall, vining Good Mother Stallard beans from the garden. I'll let them dry further inside and beat them in a trash can in a week or two.

So what are we talking here? Possibly 12 pounds of beans, all told. Let's see, at $1.00 per pound (or less) at the store, I've saved, hmm -- not much money. So why bother?

Because I get the satisfaction of eating something I grew myself on my own land. And I like being able to say I winnowed over the weekend. Beats watching TV.

I also picked our first half-bushel of apples this morning. I turned some into a pie, which is in the oven as I write this, and peeled, sliced and froze enough for another pie. And I washed six pounds,

quartered them, skin and all, and simmered them about 25 minutes. And then I tried out my brand-new jelly strainer and let them drain (while I went a-winnowing),

 .

They gave up just over 5 cups of lovely pink syrup, to which I added about 4 cups of sugar and a splash of lemon juice.

I simmered it for what seemed like hours until it hit 218 degrees and started to thicken. The result: five half-pint jars of pretty pink apple jelly:

Applesauce will have to wait for another day. I'm pooped.

In other news, one of our turkey hens showed up with babies a couple of weeks ago. Three of the original six are left, which is actually better than the usual average around here:

Looking from the kitchen window the other day, I saw Milo relaxing in front of the bird feeder, probably deciding what to have for snack.

The recent cold snap has made him quite affectionate. He likes hand-knit socks, apparently.

I wish I were better about updating the blog so it weren't so long every time. All I've got left today is (a) a new car and (b) a special project. The "new" car is a 1999 silver Honda Civic sedan to replace the leased 2008 Toyota Matrix I just returned. It comes without a remote keyless entry, without a 110-V outlet in the dash, without a rear wiper, without an outdoor thermometer, without any distinguishing characteristics of any kind. And without a car payment. 

Priceless.

The project I wanted to share today is how we got rid of this lame excuse for a dining room light

and replaced it with a refurbished chandelier. I did my part: I revamped the new light, an older piece a friend kindly allowed my husband to rip out of her ceiling. My husband, however, hasn't gotten around to hanging it. Apparently, just because he's worked both of the past two weekends (meaning it's been about 16 days since he's had a day off), he's too tired to put it up. So I can't do the Big Reveal yet. 

I will, however, give you this: the "before" of the chandelier. I cannot wait to show you the "after" (and all the steps in between).

It had better be hung before my next post.

 

All is well

Vermont finally made national news, but not in a good way. Tropical storm Irene came through Sunday afternoon. The flood damage in the state is unprecedented and kind of hard to wrap your head around. Brandon, a town not far from here, lost several downtown buildings when the river overflowed. 

I am touched by all the people from far away, most of whom I've never met in person, who have emailed to see if we're OK up here. Actually, our town saw relatively little damage, and our property saw no damage at all. Roads outside of town are apparently washed out and causing major headaches for lots of people, like dairy farmers, whose milk has to be dumped because the milk trucks can't get through, not to mention the people in outlying towns who've been stranded. So, all is well at the Lazy J. But thanks for your concern.

The blog would have been updated two weeks ago, because I had the cutest pictures I've taken all year, including a series of my husband sitting out on the porch Sunday morning sharing a bowl of cereal with a hen who had made herself comfy on his lap.

But I deleted the whole set of pictures by accident. I'm just getting over the loss now.

There's not much farm news. It's late summer, I need to process the corn and tomatoes, pick the basil and green beans, and shell the dry beans. And brew another batch of beer. Same old, same old.

A few weeks ago, I picked the last of the shell peas.

The results, though always meager, are delicious.

I pulled the pea vines and they made some goats and a sheep quite happy.

Other veggies from a few weeks back:

We had a hailstorm, but as with Irene, it didn't do any damage.

Sunday, when Irene came and it rained and rained, was the day our meat birds were scheduled for slaughter. My husband and the two guys who came to do the work did despite the rain, in the barn. The day before, we had spent the morning trying to get 76 giant, not-too-bright chickens from their portable coop into a holding pen in the barn. Not exactly the running of the bulls at Pamplona, but eventually they got in there. Now they're all in freezers around the county.

Except one.

What we have in this photo are five young Araucana ("Easter-egger") laying hens. And one Cornish/White Rock cross meat bird. "The one that got away," I guess you'd say.

He was gimpy from the get-go, but never immobile. Still, while his coopmates ate and grew strong and healthy, he never left the coop. Each day we brought food and water to him and my husband kept saying, "I should get rid of that bird." But he never did. Slaughter day came and went and we were stuck with this undersized, limping bird not fit for eating. My husband, once an avid hunter, doesn't care to "get rid" of animals on the farm if he can help it. So this one got a stay of execution.

For the time being he's living with the other birds. The big chickens peck him hard whenever they get near him, but the young girls don't seem to mind him. Maybe he'll be rehabilitated, probably not. Maybe he was faking a limp so we wouldn't eat him. Whatever. He's staying for now.

My last batch of photos, the ones I deleted, dammit, had some pictures of the meat birds on pasture. I have not yet tasted one of these so I can't say if keeping them outdoors on grass made a huge difference in the finished product. However, contrary to what many people told us, they DID move around a lot outside compared to the ones we've kept in the barn in years past. They DID chase earwigs and other bugs, they DID peck in the dirt, they DID eat grass, and in general they acted a lot more like real chickens, not like lifeless eating machines. Just getting sun and fresh air had to make a difference in their health. I'll report back with a taste test soon.

The tomatoes are coming in fast and furious, and thanks to my friend Jenn, who came out and saved me with her gardening skills a couple of weeks ago, the weeds have been beaten into submission and the garden is once again thriving. Which may not be a good thing; it means more work for me.

So tonight I have a date with the Squeezo and a batch of tomatoes. But there's this other thing I've been wasting my time on lately:

Yeah, knitting. Remember that thing I used to always do? This is Vivian, a cabled, shaped cardigan by Isolde Teague. Winter is coming, after all, and fast.

So, wrapping up, life at the Lazy J is crazy, as always, but smooth and untroubled compared to the rest of the state. Thank you to all who have expressed concern as to my safety. We got lucky with this one. Just ask Roy and Trooper.

 

 

 

Summertime and the living is crazy

There's been a lot of this:

Inside the boundaries -- a hayfield -- there is a garden. Things are growing. I am scared.

I'm mostly scared of these:

and these:

and these:

and these:

and the other many varieties of tomatoes plants -- planned and unexpected -- that are growing (with a low rumbling sound) in my garden. Besides those that I planted (20), those that I bought (6, because I wasn't sure those 20 were going to make it), those volunteers that I replanted in a better location (10 or 15) and those that grew up in the beans and the basil and the squash and that grew so fast I didn't have the heart to rip them out (and I did rip out literally over 100), I have a lot of tomato plants. I conducted a census this afternoon. The result: 45. 

Forty-five tomato plants.

Yup, I'm screwed.

I picked the first two last night, below, along with a good amount of basil. (During the pesto-making process last night I remembered I don't have a blender or mortar and pestle, my food processor died, and the fabulous Magic Bullet wouldn't do the job. I chopped until my arms gave out.)

See, last year I grew many tomatoes and canned many tomatoes and still ran out in January. I didn't want that to happen this year. But I'm in over my head.

Besides tomatoes, I have several varieties of beans, mostly to be dried for shelling. I like my winter soups, after all. I tried a new trellis system for beans this year: just hang strings from a wood frame (the extent of my husband's help in the garden so far). The string beans and shell beans really took to it:

The snap peas, I now realize, are a bit too dainty. They need horizontal support as well. Those diagonal strings below are (barely) holding up snap peas swooning in between trellises.

But they're growing nicely.

I have a tomato-centric garden this year, but not exclusively. I've got a few varieties of peppers (still in flower, this is Vermont, after all). Squashes (butternut, acorn, Thelma Sanders):

October beans (as well as kidney, navy pea, and Good Mother Stallard):

Carrots, which I planted sparsely and thinned ruthlessly for once:

Onions:

Garlic (I just picked 64 bulbs, which are curing in my so-rarely-used-these-days dye studio):

Corn:

And apples:

The snap peas are coming every day.

Here's about a third of our first blueberry harvest. It made a few smoothies, at least.

The raised beds need some updating. The raspberries and strawberries and asparagus are gone by. The shallots are hanging out. The rhubarb and chives are still growing. The weeds are hanging in there as well.

I have some lettuce, but the spinach never came up. Neither did our 70 pounds (!) of potatoes; the spring was just too wet. We had great intentions of replanting, but we honestly could not carve out two hours of time or energy to go for it in the past six weeks. We have been unpleasantly stressed-out busy for several weeks. At least it reminds me of the only thing I don't despise about February: there's down time.

I ran into my friend Shelagh (knitter/spinner/designer extraordinaire) yesterday morning at the market and she admonished me for not updating the blog lately. I assured her I've been running out and snapping pics whenever I get the chance but I feel like I never get the chance. Between my daughter's summer softball games and two not-to-be-missed social engagements, we were booked five straight nights last week. Add a day job to that and there's not a lot of leftover time for weeding, cleaning, blogging or anything else. Certainly not spinning, knitting or dyeing.

But I'm whining. So:

Remember these little chicks, shown here back on June 25?

This was them on July 24:

 

Yikes.

Sad news to report: As of Monday, we are down to two cows (the third is headed to the freezer) and NO pigs. For the first time in four years, the pig pen is empty. Jerry wasn't having any luck breeding Lucy (or Red before her) and the prospect of keeping two many-hundred-pound pigs as pets wasn't feasible. RIP to two great piggies. We'll have a quiet winter and start up with piglets in the spring. 

(The remaining two cows bellowed for a day and a half after Polly's departure. As if we didn't feel bad enough already.)

In other news, a now-12-year-old does some summer reading on the round bales:

For a brief time, we had two turkey poults. One lived a week. The other disappeared last night. What's new.

Lily:

Milo:

Mark and Trooper:

Tomorrow afternoon we pick our daughter up at Camp Downer (not nearly as depressing as it sounds!) on the other side of the state. I'm making it a personal day, so hello three-day weekend. I need it.

Scapes and strawberries and poultry, oh my

SCAPES

 It's a crazy time of year. I'm learning, as we head into our sixth summer on this property, that June and October are the craziest months of the year on the ol' homestead. Not much spinning or knitting because I don't sit down, except at work, from 5 a.m.-10 p.m. Tired. But in a good way.

I've got a ton of pictures.

For starters, we've got garlic scapes, perhaps the coolest looking item in the garden.

These are the stems that grow from garlic, at least the hardneck variety. I am obsessed with the look of them.

If you keep letting them grow, they will eventually flower, but that doesn't do your garlic bulb any favors, so when they loop around, you trim them off and eat them.

Last year I only had a few, so I cut them up small and used them in omelets and salads and soups and such. This year, I had more. Here are just a few:

I chopped them and then blended them with a hearty amount of olive oil and salt. I didn't have any pine nuts or even walnuts so I guess I can't really call it garlic scape pesto, but I created a fabulous fluorescent green paste that, combined with a pile of grated parmesan, turned a bowl of linguine into a night on the town. (And I sauteed broccoli with some tonight. Awesome.) I failed to take a picture. The flavor is sort of garlicky but not the same as a garlic flavor, maybe a bit more subtle and just plain new, different and delicious. Too bad it's in such limited seasonal supply. I got about a 12-ounce jar all told.

STRAWBERRIES
Our own strawberry beds have yielded approximately 110 strawberries so far (yes, still counting them individually), with another dozen or so left to pick. That's a lot more than I expected but not enough to keep us in smoothies and jam all winter. 

So we went to a local u-pick place, Douglas Orchards, and got these:

That haul, 26 pounds, was three of us picking for an hour (with the adolescent doing more sighing than picking). Then there were two hours I spent washing and trimming. The going rate is $1.75 per pound. I have no idea if that's a decent price, but the way our beds are exploding with new vines, this may be the last year we need to buy berries. I threw most of these in the freezer, ready for me whenever I get motivated enough to make the jam. The rest became really awesome strawberry shortcake.

POULTRY

So I woke up at 2 in the morning Saturday in a panic. I knew that my husband had ordered 40 or 50 day-old meat birds a month or two ago but in the craziness of spring we had forgotten when they would be coming (and he failed to mark the date on the calendar). This year we wanted a portable coop so they could go outside and have a chance to act like real chickens, rather than factory birds, sitting in a room in our barn next to a trough of feed, getting huge and immobile and pathetic.

In the morning, we found out that the birds had actually arrived that Friday (!) but the sighing adolescent had failed to take a message. So we picked them up and put them in temporary housing, a tub:

Considering that Cornish Rock crosses grow exponentially, this was not a long-term solution. So Mark set out to find one.

Sunday morning, he drew up his plan...

(The thing at the top is for a roof vent for better air flow to keep the birds cool.)

Then he got to work.

It was a gorgeous, breezy, low-humidity blue-sky day, which we haven't had many of this year. And I'm not going to lie: I think Mark is looking pretty hunky these days, and I enjoyed the view all day.

He worked for about 10 or 11 hours straight. Here he's laid out an 8 x 12 foot frame with pressure-treated 4 x 4s and 2 x 4s in between.

 

Then plywood:

A chick or two came to check on the progress.

Mixed in with the meat birds are five araucana chicks (the egg layers that lay blue eggs), extras that the feed store was trying to get rid of. They look like chipmunks at this age.

Anyway, work continued.

Uprights made from some random spare wood we had. (People driving by thought we were building a tee pee.)

Roy, Bo and Ed found the nail gun noises captivating.

The chickens offered their advice and encouragement.

Our quality-control hen:

Our OSHA hen:

So ended Sunday.

I went to work the next day, and when I came home, the thing was finished. Mark dragged it out back with the tractor, and the chicks got a new home.

The vent works amazingly well. Even when the sun is beating down on the tin, it's cooler inside than out. I don't know if that will continue if we get super-hot weather, but so far, so good.

The purplish tin was leftover from one of Mark's construction jobs.

 

Mark built them an 18" high chicken wire fence for their run but Lily immediately came by, thinking it was an all-you-can-eat buffet, so we've since upped it to 3 feet of plastic mesh over hog panels. It seems pretty cat proof. Netting over the top (not installed yet) might help with hawks.

I'm happy to report that these birds are loving life right now. We've never tried putting meat birds on pasture; we've been told, and it certainly appeared, that they are too lazy and too heavy to move around. In fact, many people have given us ideas to make them get bigger even faster (birth to slaughter in six weeks, just like Tyson does it!). But we're actually trying to slow them down, to try to minimize health problems, such as broken legs, which have happened in the past. It's very sad and not at all the way I want my food to be raised.

These chicks are out pecking at the dirt, eating bugs and running all over the place, more so every day. They are definitely programmed to eat all the time but we are throwing a lot of their food on the ground so they have to scratch for it, and we're not keeping so much on hand as we did last year.

They're a lot more fun to watch than last year's birds.

I'm interested to see how they end up, both in size and in flavor, not to mention in health. And I should mention that the feed store had more birds to get rid of, so Mark stopped by and bought 50 more, which means we need more housing... They are, however, all spoken for; we're only keeping 20 this year.

And finally, here's Sam. I know, I know, he's not poultry but I didn't think one picture was enough to earn him his own heading.

The Buzz

So we have a lot of tall black locust trees in our yard.

Last week they came into bloom. They get white flowers that smell absolutely wonderful. And the bumblebees love them. Some years, we get thousands of bumblebees all bumping around in the trees and the sound is so loud at first you can't tell that it's just bees.

This year was not a huge year for bees, but every evening for a few nights, you could definitely hear a low buzz. And if you looked up, you could see them bumping around up there.

My husband enjoyed the view from the best possible angle.

The coolest thing we learned this year is that at a certain time of night, the bumblebees decide to catch up on their beauty sleep. I assumed they lived in hives like regular bees. But, at least at this time of year, they apparently fly solo and "roost" in the trees.

Looking closely at the bark of these black locust trees, which forms deep inverted-V-shaped grooves, we discovered that the bumblebees fit right in.

They stay there all night and are fairly late sleepers. I get up at 5:15 to let the birds out, and they are all still sound asleep in their little nooks.

They pollinate the trees and the trees provide bumblebee cozy, sheltered, rain-free lodging. Pretty cool.

*******

Now, in case you didn't know, it's been rainy in Vermont. So rainy that farmers were very late putting in corn and cutting hay and so rainy that gardeners got a really late start. Most people around here in zone 4 feel safe putting in the most delicate plants by Memorial Day, sometimes the weekend before. Not this year. Things would have floated away.

So we worked last weekend (about 10 hours on Sunday alone) and managed to plant the whole garden plus the pumpkin patch. It doesn't look too promising yet:

But here and there, things are coming up. In just a few days, the beans and the butternut squash made their appearances. I will never get over the joy that this gives me:

And this:

I love that things grow. (Sometimes I change my mind about that at harvest time, but still.)

Meanwhile, in the raised beds, established plants are growing quite well. Our first crop of strawberries is looking good:

In the past two days we've picked a whopping 17 strawberries. They're huge -- a bit tart -- but still delicious and juicy. I'm guessing we'll get maybe 2 quarts this year. Next year we should have nearly four times as much garden space just for the strawberries, so I expect an actual yield, one not measured in individual berries.

We have equally tiny but satisfying harvests of blueberries and black raspberries expected.

Someday there will be jam.

*****

I caught a random shot of cat and chicken on the porch. This is a common sight during the day. It makes me smile. The hen is hoping I'll bring her a treat. Milo doesn't trust her.

Lily chased a full-grown turkey the other day, which begs the question what she would do with it if she actually caught it. She has been a very hyper but standoffish cat (except with my husband) until this weekend, when she voluntarily fell asleep in more than one non-Mark lap, including mine. This never happens.

Exhibit A:

Now, I've been processing two fleeces as time permits, and then I was given two more last week (Cotswold, if I remember correctly). In truth I have a lot more fleece than I have the time or need for. Some of it isn't soft enough to use for sweaters or hats, so I've been thinking about different ways to use it. I could card some up thin to use as quilt batting, for instance.

Then another idea struck me, and I ran with it.

Step 1: Dye up some wool in great colors.

(This is actually some very lovely Romney from 2010 that I would use for sweaters and hats. But it was all I had that was already scoured, and I was looking for quick results.)

Step 2: Spin into a super-bulky yarn. So far I've spun and chain-plied five of these little bumplets.

Step 3: It's a secret.

I want to give this a try before I share what I'm doing. Stay tuned...