Wednesday, March 21, 2007

August 19, 2006

I got up at 7 am to pick peas and beans today. We started picking the pea rows last night for dinner and it was nice all of us sitting on the front porch shelling the peas for dinner while the bison steaks were on the BBQ.

This morning I got up before anyone else, and picked several gallons of peas and beans and then as people started to wake up, they came out and just started shelling peas to help me out. I need to get them blanched and frozen here in a little bit, but I thought I deserved a break since I got out of the flow with a couple phone calls.

Picture Above : My boyfriend helping to shell peasFoot ball season started last night and the boys are pouring on the food even more so than normal. Especially fruit!! I need to start buying that in cases as well.Well, I ought to pull in the laundry off the line and toss another load into the washer and go make my bed.. think of what to have with dinner tonight and make something for a snack for the boys.

August 17, 2006

I was dreaming this really cool dream and having a great time with people I knew, when suddenly there was this part that did not work with the dream.. a noise.. rather.. many of the noises rather.. Kiiiii- keeeeee-Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.. OMG.. I forgot to lock the chickens in the barn last night and the hawks were calling. I threw on clothes as I ran through the house while trying to focus my eyes I think.. those memories I am pretty bleary about that .. grabbed my tennis shoes and ran through the newly planted lawn and headed up to the chicken pens.The darn things were flitting from tree to tree.. there were two of them. While I was standing in the chicken pen, trying to convince the chickens they were going to die if they did not get back into the barn (YEAH RIGHT!), one and then the other hawk, landed in the dead tree top next to the hog pen. They were not 30 feet from me and I kept jumping up and down and flapping my arms yelling at them and they seemed to not even realize I was there. They were quite aloof.

Finally they flew off and I grabbed "Kid" out of bed to stand guard and try to help me put the chickens in.. then we sent him out there with a pellet gun and a lawn chair. We can hear the birds but they must be 'next door' now.I got last nights laundry hung to dry outside by 8:30 am.. so it will probably be dry by noon on a day like today.. it is nice and sunny now. Not like the last 2 days.. "Teenager" has been doing alot of his laundry lately and using the dryer which we must put a stop to.. our electric bill went from $54 for every 2 months to over $163 for 2 months.. and that is in the summer.. it is pathetic our electric bill goes up in the summer. I am going to be getting wooden racks for drying this winter inside and he will have to use the clothes line for drying his clothing like the rest of us do.

Yesterday morning was chilly. It was 5C/ 41F and very foggy and I thought the house was a little bit cold to take a bath and then head outside.. This morning is 15C in the house, but I opened the windows anyway. "Kid" is going to bring down a load of firewood and cut up some kindling today and "Teenager" and I are going to clean the woodstove pipe.Yesterday was also the fresh produce co-op.. so I spend the whole day there. It is summertime and people have gardens and the farmers market is each Saturday, so the numbers are down, but I expect come Fall they will come back up again.

Last night I started on a sock.. the first of the Fall/Winter. I have to finish another mate for my "MIL", since I have one done for her.. made the other and found out I did a single instead of a double blue row, which made me mad and I quit on that project for awhile.. this new one is black and a pale golden/yellow and in a 15th century pattern. I am having fun with it, but you need to not be tired to actually get the pattern correct.


Feeding the hogs is scary now. I did it by myself this morning, but I do not like to go into their pen without someone there. They are getting pushy and they are starting to fight each other if they are not fed on time. They are well over 100 pounds now. It is unfortunate that their feeder is now in the middle of their pen. I need to get them some bowling balls to shove around other than the feed trough which is actually quite heavy metal.

Today's list is to make Zucchini Bread, pick a LOT of peas and probably shell and blanche then and freeze. I also probably have beans to pick again. We discovered we have 6 pumpkins which will be a nice size for Fall.. they were all volunteers from the compost bucket. We also had cheery tomatoes and peppers volunteer from the compost bucket as well.. I also have a bunch of wine I need to rack off and/or bottle and actually I do not really want to deal with them today.. maybe tomorrow.

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Monday, March 19, 2007

August 15, 2006

I was coming back from getting 400 pounds of animal feed from the farm store and then picked up our 12 year old cousin to babysit for the day... as we neared the top of our hill and just before our driveway. I see a large dark animal which sorta, but not really looked like a horse standing in the middle of the road and I was beginning to think it was a moose.....and it was a moose. I was pretty excited about just seeing a moose in the road as they rarely stand and wait for you to look at them very well and as I just started to notice something about it.. "Kid" yells out that it had HORNS! After five years of my quest of looking for a bull moose, and lamenting about it here periodically, I FINALLY saw a BULL moose!!! And he stood there.. well, he got off the road and stood in the paper birch trees which were along the road, but that white bark of the paper birches showed him off magnificently. And we stopped the truck in the middle of the roadway and watched him for the longest time while he was watching us.

I was just so excited and me.. who carries my camera with me all the time, did not have my camera *sad*.. but oh well.. he is in the area and our pond is the closest for water, so I am sure he will come to drink and maybe munch on the horses round bale.

The rest of my day consisted of putting my house into order. I sorta of accomplished a bit of Fall cleaning. I have noted that the leaves of certain vegetation has started to change. I have 3 carboys of wine I need to rack off and/or bottle this week. I also feel like starting to make some more socks. I even priced some 50# sacks of coal as I am just itching to fire up my forge.Got alot of magazines I need to mail tomorrow. Got them addressed tonight. It is exciting to see how much the magazine has grown since last year when it started. I have a few really fun ones I have come up with this week. One will be in the Fall issue for Kids (of all ages) and then the other one will be in the Winter issue.

I also went to a historical town this last week and in one of the interpretation things they do with it, I came up with a plan.. one for the magazine and one to help them. They seemed very interested in it and I need to go back one of these days to go help, learn and write. I am excited about this one as well.Well I think I am off to relax for a bit.. and I am going to start on a new sock.

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August 14, 2006

I think the people I was tour guiding with while they were looking at the properties up here found their piece. They will know sometime today. I am pretty excited. They promised me the second call, though I am sure I will hear them all the way from the Island.

Last night I had to go to the dump and I got alot of old barn wood (or shed or something) and I am making slip forms for the root cellar. We need to go get the hand cement mixer today sometime as I hope to work on the cellar this upcoming week. I am tired of staring at the hole in the hillside and I believe I have done enough mental planning on the thing that it is time to get going on it, since I will have potatoes to dig in less than a month.

I also took time at sunset to go up to the cabin site and I laid out a 16x16 foot area and sat in there to see if I could live with the way the cabin would be set for both view and sun strategies. And where the woodstove would go (which I need to restore). Then I went out and sat on the 'porch' to see if that would be set right. I was totally relaxing up there and then the "Teenager" came up to talk with me for a wee bit. So he helped me plan as well.I guess I ought to back up just a little bit... as I went up to the site, I had measuring tape, surveyors tape and an axe with me. Just as I got to the site, this big dark/blackish thing got up from the middle of the cabin site and SCARED ME TO DEATH!! I have seen bear tracks and other signs up there. But as this beast was getting taller and taller though the bushes as it jumped up, I finally realized it was one of our horses "Kit", who is the 13-14 hand pony, who had been laying down and I had scared her just about as bad as she had scared me. When I initially did a girly scream and then talking to the horse, "Teenager" heard me and knew where to locate me at. So this morning, I am going to go out and pound old rusty nails out of the barnwood and lay out my lines for the root cellar. I REALLY want to get the walls going so I can make the niche and then start blacksmithing again so I can start building the door. I am thinking on a 14th century church door I have seen once, but I cannot wait to start on the doors. I have been in such a forging mood lately. But I do not want to start on the doors until I know what size the hole is going to be.

My bf and I took a walkabout on the property last night and we decided to take down all the pines and leave the other things (spruce, fir, alder, poplar, birch ect). The Mountain Pine Beetle is attacking the pines younger and younger and we decided to take them down to utilize them now instead of when they are ruined. We can cut alot of them green for siding and cause them to dry faster.A neighbor down the road had her neighbor's kids run bikes all over her property and ruined all her blueberries. So she came over to pick ours. They are spotty this year, not the beautiful blue carpet that we had last year (and I could not pick due to my injury). She is very interesting to talk to as she is a wildcrafter, herbalist and works at a heath food store. So we can gab alot. I fed her homemade cheese and crackers. It was the cheese that was the demo cheese for when the out of town land buying people were here and I showed her how to make cheese easily.

Today's chores are cleaning up the mechanics shoppe since the back part got cleaned out so alot of the stuff being stored in there can go to the back, such as my dog sled. Bringing up another pallet or two for the woodshed to move the 2 cast iron stoves to, so the boys can being in more wood. We try to do a couple trees at a time, get that all cleaned up and then do the next couple, but our faller/bucker friend went faller-happy last weekend and there are about 40 trees down, so that mess needs to be dealt with. Maybe we can set up the Alaskan Mill and start cutting siding and put all the 'learning to cut siding' up on the shoppe to make it look nicer than the black side of the lumber wrap.

Speaking of lumber wrap, I want to put a layer on the top of the mobile home which is the poultry house as there are 2 holes from where some sort of equipment used to have to go through the roof. I do not want to make too many repairs to it, since in the next 2-3 years we will be building a proper barn since this one is probably the first year they ever made mobile homes and it is rotting.

Well, the chickens and turkeys need to be let out and the hogs fed (who are getting large enough they are making me nervous to go in their pen alone. Took chicken counts and we need to butcher at least 15 in a month or so. Some of the roosters need to have their bands removed anyway as their bands are starting to get too tight on their legs and one poor rooster had a small injury from it.

Evening Update:

My new friends indeed got their place. I am excited and thrilled for them. They are new at homesteading and I will help them along as much as I can.

Today was a long, but productive day here. I got the greenhouse watered, picked a 50 foot row of Calendula and took all the petals off for soap making as I have been negligent at making us more for the last few months.

Between the 4 of us, we almost got all of the woodshed filled today. My bf and "Teenager" cut the trees up with chainsaws and then all the guys filled the trucks with the firewood. Then they bring them in from the back 40, sort them from splitting to just stack it. If it gets tossed to the doorway, I then stacked it. My bf did miss the routine.. and I got slammed in the right kneecap with a chunk of wood. Or maybe I missed the routine.. oh well.. I am not limping now.Dinner was a nice chicken Alfredo made with Mozza over spiral noodles and fresh broccoli salad out of our garden. I had some left over Leek Soup which I made yesterday-ish.

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August 11, 2006

Last weekend was spent at a medieval event for 4 days. I have been 'playing' in the SCA (Society of Creative Anachronism) for around 10 years now.I love the camping out, the rusticness of the place. The non-electricity and how to invent things like showers without having any of the regular ways to have them. The chivalry, the politeness and kindness of people. The blacksmithy, the bakery with its wood fired ovens, the new root cellar for the bakery, the merchants, including the fresh fruit and vegetable vendor. And of course the rapier and heavies fighting. The archery. The LOW TECHness of the place. Not keen on the dust though.

It is always hard for me to leave. I love the lifestyle there. It is what drew me to the medieval re-enactment. I did homesteading and the preserving of foods and tried to study groups such as the Amish and how they did things, but there is so much more open history and such in the middle ages, so when I found this SCA, I thought I had fallen into something right up my alley. I had indeed.This is where I learned my blacksmithing through. Free classes. Many classes are free or low cost. I signed up for a Bodran class and there were a few others I wanted to take, but conflicted with it.I found that both the SCA type events and homesteading went quite hand in hand. So when I am not studying homesteading per se, I go back and study agriculture from many centuries ago.

I nearly swooned when a rather slightly inebriated pirate bowed over my hand and kissed it (well not really swooned, but it was a nice compliment and he was NOT bad looking).

And then a Frenchman in courtly attire, after my friend and I had been discussing music and garb with him half the night as the drummers were drumming most of the night with bagpipe players here and there and then a nice quartet playing off in another corner.

I learned about Lampworking.. it has nothing to do with lighting or light bulbs.. it is a open flame and in this case, making the most beautiful glass beads I had ever seen. I opened my floor length skirts wide to be a wind block for the woman who was showing me how to make them. I must have stood in there for an hour and then a day later as I saw her struggling with her flame, I popped into her tent/booth and offered wind protection once again.. it was a good deal though, as I get a front row seat to see her working.

I forgot to locate the lady who handspins with a drop spindle, she had some nice fiber and natural dyes I wanted to investigate. I need to build a braiser for next year to have our own flame, as it was, I borrowed flamage from the people who sorta invaded our camp when they moved in after we 'parked', but all in all it was great as I rather enjoyed the 2 families and though we have not known each other long, I would consider them friends. Sometimes you just know from the onset that these are "YOUR" kind of people.

We ate alot of cold meals that 4 days, but it was too hot really anyway. Fresh bread from home.. cold sausages and cheeses and LOTS of water.The days were hot, but the evenings were cool. The day we left there was a bit of snow on the peaks and the night before there were the Northern Lights. Many people were from the south, so I had to make sure they saw them. They were in awe and they were not even great lights that night. (Which reminds me, I ought to look outside to check if they are out tonight).

I would like to say I did alot of productive things at the event, but I DIDN'T!! It was nice to have a vacation and the first 2 days I took 2 naps a day, so I must have needed it.

The last couple days, a couple who has been on another newsgroup I own, came up to "Moosetown" to look for property. I have gone around with them for 2 days looking for land. It is fun shopping for land for homesteading, even if it is not for your own. I rather enjoy this couple too and hope they do indeed move up here from Vancouver. They are like minded people and learning and willing to learn, so it would be nice to include them in our circle of friends.My goat must have met up with some barbed wire and she ripped her right udder. I am not pleased. I milked out her left side almost all the way, just to make her more comfortable, but to help her dry up more. She is a serious milker and will not have anything to do with drying up before October/November evidently.

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August 05, 2006

I will be out of the office until Sunday night or Monday. See you guys then, and have a safe fun weekend!!

CLICK HERE to see what "Down to the Roots" is all about!!

August 05, 2006

I will be out of the office until Sunday night or Monday. See you guys then, and have a safe fun weekend!!

CLICK HERE to see what "Down to the Roots" is all about!!