What A Week!

 Other than having a jury duty summons for this week, it didn't start out too bad.  The weather was warm.  Sap was running. So after work on Monday (no jury duty Monday because it was Presidents Day), I got out my maple tree tapping supplies.

Buckets: Still clean (yay to storing them stacked and upside down!)

Lids: Still clean (also stacked, but right side up)

Spiles: Yep, still clean.

Tubing: Ugh. Some very small critter (insects, I assume) had gotten into every single piece of tubing and made some sort of mud nest.  Note to self: at the end of this season, put all clean dry tubing into a sealable plastic bag for storage before putting into tubing storage box.

bad picture of yucky dirty tubing

All tubing needed to be taken to the house and washed before I could go to the woods to tap trees.  Thank goodness for the extra long super skinny brush we have in our homebrew supplies; it was just the diameter to fit into the tubing, and long enough handle that I could get to the center of the tubing from each end.  Not a fun job, and it took time I hadn't anticipated needing, but I got them cleaned and sanitized.

With buckets and tools (and tubing!) loaded into the tractor bucket, out to the woods I went!  As you can see, there was no snow on the ground anymore, and things were actually a bit muddy.

The tapping of the trees--I decided to tap six this year--was quick and easy.  I took a picture to send to DD2 and let her know my syrup season has officially begun.  And then my phone died.  Weird, because I was sure it had a whole lot of battery a half an hour before, when I left the house.  I didn't think it was cold enough outside to drain it that quickly, but maybe it was.  I'd had trouble back in the Fall if I took pictures after my phone had gotten cold while sitting in the deer stand for a few hours.

Meanwhile, DH had come back to the woods on the four-wheeler. He noticed that one of the trees I'd tapped didn't have direct access from the woods road because of a bunch of dead tree limbs he'd pushed off the road a few years before with no thought to the fact that he was pushing them against a maple tree.  Since I hadn't tapped trees in that area until now, it hadn't been a big deal. Suddenly, now that I was using that part of the woods for sugaring this year, he felt the need to remove the pile.of dead branches.  So he jumped on the tractor, drove it to the brush pile, put the edge of the loader bucket in position to drag those limbs away from the maple tree, and began to move them.  Some of the pile went with him a few feet, then he cranked the tractor around to come at the pile again from a slightly different angle and pulled at the rest.

At which point the right front tire of the tractor fell off. Actually, the whole wheel, rim and everything.

This is a problem he's had before.  Years ago it happened, and he replaced some, but not all, of the parts in the wheel assembly.  Last summer it fell off once or twice.  This winter, it's fallen off so many times (only while he's using it *ahem, maybe not in a way it can handle without replacing those other wheel assembly parts*) that he's gotten the process of reattaching it down to less than 10 minutes.  Ironically, when I set out for the woods with the tractor that day, he'd cautioned me not to put it in 4-wheel drive because that's the mode that the wheel tends to fall off in.  I had left it in two wheel, and had no issues.

Anyway, now we're back in the woods, I'm done tapping trees, and I'm ready to go back to the house to cook dinner and also call the jury hotline (because it's after 5:00 p.m.) to see if I need to report for jury duty the next morning.  BUT the tire fell off the tractor, and DH has taken the 4-wheeler back to the house to get his wheel re-attaching tools and he wants me to stay in the woods to help (and also drive the tractor back once it has four wheels again).   Cue the Final Jeopardy waiting music. . . 

Twenty-five minutes later, I'm back in the house, the tractor (with all four wheels in place) is parked in DH's shop where it lives, dinner is started, and I called to check about jury duty and found that I didn't need to report on Tuesday.  Phew.

Tuesday was a normal day.  Barn work, work at home, call in after five to see about jury duty for Wednesday (a day which I happened to have a dentist appointment that, when consulted about my impending jury duty week, the dentist's office had said let's not reschedule because then I wouldn't be able to get my teeth cleaned until this Fall as they were that far out in their scheduling for cleanings; they said to hope for the best and if I had to miss my appointment to serve jury duty to just call as soon as I knew and leave them a message.  No hard feelings if my cancellation was less than 24 hours notice.)

Thankfully, I didn't have jury duty on Wednesday.  So I got to go to the dentist instead.  Honestly, as dental visits go, it was a really good one.  Maybe it was just the perspective of jury duty versus dental appointment that made it a happy event. After leaving the dentist office, I headed straight to the horse farm to work.  It was sleeting, but not terribly. Our forecast for Wednesday was a winter storm moving in throughout the day, possibly freezing rain, probably sleet, maybe an inch or two of snow by Thursday morning, and definitely some ice.

What we got was more and more and more sleet.  By the time I was done working (around 2:00) and ready to head home, my trusty rusty Suburban had a thin coat of ice all over.  I had to bust the ice on the door handle to even open the driver's door and retrieve the ice scraper so I could set to work clearing the windshield.  On the way home the roads weren't too bad, just starting to get slick in spots.

Oh boy, did it get worse after the sun went down!  At 9:30, our power blinked a few times, then came on in a dim brown-out capacity.  So DH went to the electric panel in the basement and shut off the main (so as to avoid damage to every appliance that was plugged in without being on a surge protector--like fridges, freezers, ovens, water softener... ) and I used my phone to get online and report the issue to our electric company.  Except their website was overloaded and it took another 45 minutes before we actually were able to get through and make an official loss of power report.

Being as the ice storm was still going, and predicted to go through the night, there was no information available from the electric company as to when we might again have electricity.  So DH and I just called it a night and went to bed.

We actually slept well, as it was really dark and quiet, and the house cooled off in the night making the bedroom a good temperature for deep sleep.  But in the morning, when we needed to get up for work (yay, no jury duty on Thursday either!), it was chilly and not appealing to crawl out from under the covers.

DH got the generator out from where it was buried stored in a corner of the garage, hooked it up, gassed it up, and fired it up.  And we had electricity to cool off the fridges and freezers, power the pump that brings the hot water from the outdoor wood boiler into the house for heat (and domestic hot water in the winter months), the well pump for cold water, and modem for the internet--so DH could work from home as he has been for most of the last three years.  A quick check of the electric company website said they basically had no idea when they would get our power issue fixed because they had hundreds of thousands of customers without power due to the storm.  

So we set about normal life with the generator running: using nothing that draws a lot of electricity, especially things that heat up--like the oven, microwave, etc.  Which is why, when we built our house, I chose to have a gas cooktop rather than electric one. I can still cook, just not bake or roast anything. Using the generator also  requires conserving water, as the well pump uses quite a bit of power and we wanted lights, heat, and water (and cold fridges and freezers) without bogging down--and stalling out--the generator.

Outside, everything had a thick coating of ice. Including the chicken door on the coop. They had to stay in until later in the day when the sun had melted things enough for the ice on the door to be thin enough DH could pull the door open.

With no jury duty, and no babysitting of Faline and Buck (as all the schools had a 'snow' day and DD1 didn't have to work) and not being scheduled at the horse farm because Thursdays this year are babysitting days, I had a day off.  Of sorts.  A lot of my fun options were limited due to being on generator power (no ironing of fabric for sewing, actually no sewing of anything all ready ironed, cut, and ready to sew) no unnecessary internet surfing, no baking, no recreational outdoor activities because it was SLICK.  So I read some, knitted some, and then found myself working on household tasks (that didn't need electricity) that I'd been putting off.  

I did take a few pictures though, until my phone turned itself off again.  I'm wondering if there's some sort of glitch related to camera and the phone battery or something. . . 

poor sad pine tree; thankfully it thawed and had no loss of branches

Thursday evening I called about jury duty and heaved a huge sigh of relief when told I didn't need to report on Friday morning.  My week of service had gone by without actually having to appear in person.  Not that I mind serving on a jury; I did in 2008, it's just that every jury summons I've gotten since then has been to the courthouse in the major city nearby (versus the small county courthouse I served at in '08) and the drive to that courthouse in that city (plus maneuvering parking ramps) stresses me out to near panic attack.  The expressway I have to take is notorious for daily accidents, and currently several of it's on/off ramps are closed for construction making safe driving even more difficult.  And then there's multi-lane one-way streets once I'm off that expressway and somewhat close to the courthouse.  And trying to find parking in a parking ramp for my behemoth trusty rusty Suburban. . . Having the possibility of jury duty hanging over my head all week had been really stressful.

Checked the power company website; still no restoration estimate.   Went to bed, same as Wednesday night (with the exception of shutting down generator and stowing in garage so it was safe from coming up missing in the night).  Friday morning chilly inside the house and no update from power company, out came the generator again and DH fueled it and fired it up.

So Friday was a normal work day, like Tuesday.  Except with ice.  Lots of ice.  The roads were all clear and dry.  But the driveways and other paths that had melted to slushy on Thursday had all frozen solid over night and were skating rinks.  I also was in charge of turning out all the horses at that horse farm on Friday morning because the barn owner had gone on vacation Thursday and the person she had arranged to do Friday morning feed couldn't stay until horses were done with their breakfast and ready for turnout.  That person had a regular job they needed to be to by 9:00.

I managed to safely get everyone to their respective turnouts which, themselves, weren't icy.  Neither was the grass of the lawn and driveway edges (which I walked horses on so none of us slipped and broke ourselves and died--sorry not sorry if the lawn got a little punched up with hooves).  The normal walkways were all way too slick to traverse that morning (but much melted and usable by noon).

All the water tanks were iced over (who removed the tank heaters all ready?!?), so I grabbed a pry bar and a maul and set to work on removing the ice so the horses could drink throughout the day.

The pry bar and maul worked really well, and it only took me about five minutes per tank to split and remove the 2-3 inch thick ice from each one. I'm glad I had thought to bring extra gloves, because mine were soaked after the first tank.  The sun was out and bright, but the air temperature was only in the twenties at that point.

The horses seemed grateful for my ice removal endeavors.

Friday passed with no update on our electric status, which we kind of expected.  We aren't exactly in the wilds of Michigan, but we are in the boonies of the more populated cities so are typically low on the priority list when the power gets knocked out.  Which is why we own a generator.  Friday night a run to the village 6 miles away to refill our two 5-gallon gas cans, but other than that a repeat of Thursday night: shut down and stow the generator before bed.

Saturday, I was awakened at 7:30 a.m.by a text from the electric company: they had an update!  They expected to restore our power 'on Sunday'.  DH did the whole morning generator routine.  We're glad to have it, but by now are really tired of hearing it run in the background all day long.

Saturday evening, we babysat Faline and Buck, as previously planned, even though we were on generator power.  They, too, had been out of power since Wednesday night, and had procured a generator on Friday.  DD1 and Honorary Son deserved a little break to go to a trivia fund-raiser event they'd signed up for back in January.  After they picked up the kids and went back home, DH and I repeated our nightly generator ritual.

This morning, Sunday, we awoke with the sun (actually, the alarm clock because DH and a friend were planning to drive a few hours north today and go snowmobiling in the part of Michigan that had gotten a foot of snow and not the 1/2"+ of ice that we'd received) and checked the electric company website.  No change from yesterday.  Still says our power is expected to be restored today, but no estimate of what part of the day.  And it was still off.  So, again, haul out the generator, fuel it up, fire it up.

still going. . . 

As of posting this, we have been without power for over 87 hours.  That's more than three and a half 24-hour days.  I'm craving muffins, coffee cakes, biscuits,  something other than fried eggs and granola for breakfast.  A roast chicken, or pulled pork from a pork shoulder cooked down in the crockpot for dinner; something other than another concoction of venison burger, pasta, tomato sauce, spices (and maybe cheese!) cooked on the gas stovetop.  And we're down to our last two slices of homemade bread; I'll probably break down this afternoon and run to the store for a loaf of store bought bread.I may end up needing to make a gas run anyway.  I'm really glad I did a few loads of laundry on Wednesday before the power went out, otherwise we'd be running low on clean clothes and towels about now. 

It will be good to get electricity back (fingers crossed for sometime today) and be able to run all the things simultaneously that we can't while using the generator--washer, dryer, oven, dishwasher, microwave, coffee maker, iron, sewing machine. . .  A long hot shower instead of a quickie basic soap-down and hair wash. . . 

But it will also mean a few busy days of catching up on chores while also working a normal schedule this week (and probably not actually getting time to use the sewing machine).  Is a relaxing, easy week too much to ask for?

What We Were Doing In August (when I didn't post hardly at all)

 You haven't really heard about it yet, but August was the start of some big changes around this little place here.  Changes had been coming, planned for about a year but in the 'what do you think about. . .' stage for at least a handful of years before that.  The November before (2021), DH and I had decided to bite the bullet, refinance our house (again) for about a 1/2% lower interest rate, but mainly to pull out a whole bunch of equity so that we could fund the 'what if' projects that had been tossed about for years.

Once we had the funds, then came the actual detailed planning.  Like who, exactly, was doing which hard tasks.  Some we could definitely do on our own without killing ourselves.  Others, well, those we had done in the past (like 17-25 years in the past) and had the know-how to do again but weren't so sure our bodies would be on board with it.  And then there was the "oh hell no; we're paying someone else to do that!" group.  Which meant we had to research the someone elses, contact them for bids, decide on which someone else for each task, and get on their schedule for construction season in Michigan.

What we did do:

• trenching for water and electric lines
• laying waterlines 
• installing hydrants & drains
• site prep for DH's shop

First came prepping the site where DH's shop would go.  In his mind, the trenching for water and electric lines didn't need to happen until he had a for sure construction date on the erecting of the pole building that was to be his shop.  Because he wasn't about to dig trenches to my existing barn and then come back months later to dig more trenches from my barn to his shop.

The site, finally chosen (the proposed location has changed several times in the 5 years we've been discussing building DH his own barn/shop), had to be measured out and corners marked.  Then the sod and topsoil needed to be removed.

We also had to cut down a poplar tree (that had grown voluntarily for about the last 12 years) because it was in the northwest corner of the building site. You can see the stump to the left of center in the photo below.

We also had to then bring the entire building site up to grade.  DH started with one 25-yard load of sand. And then another (and another, and another, and. . . ) about $3000 worth of sand later, the site was level. Turns out the spot we chose, that had looked pretty level, actually dropped almost two feet over the 60 feet that building would span.

the first load of sand

Before all that sand could be spread and packed, DH needed to get rid of that stump from the poplar tree.  Needing to also do some excavating where we would be putting in water hydrants, he decided to rent a mini-excavator to tackle both the stump removal and the digging of hydrant locations.

stump

later that evening, no stump!

Being that we live on very heavy clay soil, and that it was August (ie the dryest part of the year), DH decided to use that mini excavator for as many digging related tasks as he could.  So not only did he dig out the 'pit' where the water hydrant inside the barn would go (and need to be wide enough he could get down inside to actually hook the hydrant to the incoming waterline and outgoing drain), he also dug the trench for the incoming and outgoing lines and drains. The trench didn't need to be that wide, but, well, give a man an excavator. . .

Digging inside my barn for where waterline will come under exterior wall

Using the mini-excavator to trench all the way to where waterlines 

and drains will be in my future tack room.

He also needed to dig a large spot near the well head in the front yard so he could tee into the existing waterline that runs from the well into the house.  Quite a bit of that he did with the min-excavator, but the last, most delicate part (don't cut the electric main going into the house!  Or the main water line!) we had to finish out by hand digging.  That was a bitch (excuse the language, but it truly was).  Even four foot down, the soil was rock hard.

Found the old landline for the phone, oops! 

Forgot about that; it's been over a decade since we've used it.

Oh well, if we ever sell this house, and the new owner wants a landline, 

they can deal with it. We'd had to have it run originally when we build the house.

In the photo below, you can see my feet, and in front of them, where I'd finally found the electric main by digging ever so carefully with a trowel.  

That was pretty much an entire weekend of work.  Later that week, DH rented a trencher to dig the rest of the trench with; anywhere it only needed to be wide enough to lay down conduit or a waterline and not wide enough for a person to stand and work in below ground. 

The trench ran about 120' from the well head to my barn, crossing the driveway in two places.  So for the next couple weeks, we parked on the other side of the trench and walked back and forth from the house to our vehicles.  I don't think the mail man, UPS, FedEx or Amazon delivery drivers were very happy about the extra walking.  Sometimes things were just set down by the sawhorses we'd used to block the driveway right where the trench crossed.

Since we were doing all that trenching and running water and electric to the barn and DH's future shop, we decided it was a great time to also get water and electricity out to my garden shed.  So we trenched about 200' in the opposite direction too.  That required disassembling part of the rock wall so that the trencher could get through without having any sharp bends in the waterline.

Unfortunately there is quite a slope from the house down to the garden.  We didn't realize it until afterward, but the trencher didn't work the greatest on slopes.  If the ground was too unlevel, it kind of backfilled as it went.  So there were several areas that required hand digging to actually get down to the below frost level that the waterline needed to be at.  Definitely not DH's favorite part (in the photo below, he started at the pit he'd excavated for the garden hydrant, and then continued to dig out the trench --sometimes having to widen it so he could actually get the shovel in and out--in the backfilled portions.)

But, finally, probably two weeks after we'd started with the whole excavating/trenching endeavor, everything was the right depth, and we had all the materials we needed to lay and connect the new waterlines.  We'd had to order the hydrants if we wanted them all to be the same, and not have to drive all over creation, because not one store had more than two of the ones we needed.  And it was impossible to get ahold of 200' rolls of underground waterline, so we ended up having to (order) many 100' rolls then get all the couplers needed for the extra joins.

A big moment--water not just to the house, but also going out to the barn and to the garden!

Once the waterlines had been laid in the trenches, and connected to the main water line, DH hooked them to the four hydrants we'd put in: one in the garden, one in his shop (or, rather, where the beer brewing/deer processing room would be in his shop), one in my barn and one outside the back of my barn (for filling future pasture water tanks via hoses).

And then came the other momentous occasions in August: the testing of each and every hydrant to make sure water actually came out when you lifted the handle!  And even more importantly, no water sprayed or seeped out of any joins in the lines or where the hydrants attached to the lines.

A successful test!

All the water lines and hydrants passed with flying colors.  Phew!  After that we had to backfill the trenches from 48" deep to 24 inches deep, which is the depth the electric line would go.  Backfilling was much easier and faster than the trenching had been. 

We were ready for the electrician to come in September to hook into the main electric line outside our house and get us power in the barn (which we needed to hire a professional for; the electric line to the garden shed would be a simple underground wire going from the electric panel inside the house and DH ran that himself).

August was busy.  And sweaty.  And exhausting.  And at times, frustrating.  But it was also the start of something big!

February Horse Update

Camaro and I have come to a road block.  Namely, his body.  Since several weeks ago, he's been lame at the trot to varying degrees.  Bute didn't fix it.  Rest (okay, one week of nothing after several weeks of 1 weekly ride at walk and trying to longe him 1 or 2 more times each week) didn't fix it.  Time to take in right in the wallet, and call out the vet.

She saw him on Monday of this week.  Conducted a very thorough lameness exam, followed by radiographs of his front feet (fine, nothing new there) and several views of his left front knee (not fine, some slight joint remodeling evident).  

Looks like age, plus messing around in the slippery footing of his turnout (right before things actually froze for several weeks straight), and Camaro tweaked his knee.  Thankfully no tendon or ligament injury, but there is some mucking up of the joint.  

prepped for hoof radiographs; standing on wooden blocks and snazzy

barium paste lines indicating centerline of each hoof

Well, that explains that. Good to have root caused our mystery lameness.  Coupled with the slight hock soreness he's been having since Fall--and increased soreness in the right hock (the diagonal pair of the left knee) this month--I'm no longer debating whether to put him on meds for joint health.  He's coming 14 this year, we've progressed in our training to where I'm asking him for a lot more bend in his joints than a year ago, and it's just time.  

He got his first shot of Legend yesterday.  Two more loading doses a week apart ($$ ouch my bank account) and he'll be ready to drop to a once-a-month injection.

Meanwhile, we are under strict orders for no riding and no longeing.  Straight-line hand walking (or gentle curves following the arena walls) for 5-7 sessions followed by long-lining (again, straight line or following arena perimeter) for 5-7 more sessions before we even think about putting me up on his back.  Hopefully by the time he's had his third dose of Legend we'll see enough improvement that he and I will get the green light for light riding at the walk.

I'm trying to keep positive.  All that hand walking and long-lining are hopefully going to help me lose some of the weight I've gained in the last few months.  

Cold Weather = Lots of Sewing & Stitching; February Update

 I made a whole quilt since the January sewing update! Well, I did show this photo in January, which is as far as I had gotten:

the first two blocks

Those are the first two of 21 paper pieced crossed canoes blocks that I had planned for a baby quilt that goes to the daughter of one of DH's cousins.  This young lady is extra special to DH & my's family.  She is just a few months older than DD2, but has always been very close to DD1 (three years her senior).  She was basically raised by her grandpa (the brother of DH's Dad, he had stepped in as surrogate Dad to DH when DH was 24 and lost his father).  Last Spring, her grandpa died, which was a huge blow.  That summer, she found herself expecting her first child and basically estranged from her own mother (due to her mom's life choices; an issue the entire 25 years of this young lady's life that escalated again after grandpa's death).  

 

Long story, but it's how I decided that I needed to make this particular baby quilt.  I don't make quilts for just anyone.

Crossed canoes is very symbolic, as the (late) grandpa had been a huge canoeing enthusiast and had been a significant partner in a white water canoe livery down in Arkansas where he (and his granddaughter--the expectant mom) lived.  He had been a key part of DH and my family being so much into canoeing and kayaking, and all my kids had gone on float trips with him as young as age three back when he used to come up to Michigan in the summers.  So this quilt, was a nod to our love for him, as well as a special gift for his granddaughter and her baby: his first great-grandson!

I chose blue and green batiks for their 'watery' feel to make the canoe blocks out of.  

six more blocks

I was a little afraid it would all be a choatic looking mish-mash, but they actually came out well.  Especially how I set them with solid blocks; when I had made all 21 canoe blocks, I sewed them into rows alternating a solid block of sand-colored blender fabric with each canoe block.  The blocks finished at 7" each, so I adjusted my typical baby quilt of 9 rows of 7 blocks each (when using 6" blocks) into a quilt of 7 rows of 6 blocks each for the 7" blocks.  Once all the rows were sewn into the top, I added a 1" border of a light colored fabric that looks like small pebbles (again the water/river/canoe theme) and a 3.5" border of a swirled green fabric.

 Then I had to remove all the papers from piecing.  That is my least favorite part of paper piecing, but the end result is so worth the hassle.

removing the papers; tedious but kind of like scratching off 

the gray blobs on a scratch-off ticket to reveal what you won

I did a matching binding with the green border fabric.

picture day was kind of windy

For the quilting, I used green thread on top, and brown thread in my bobbin, and stitched in the ditch around each block, then outlined each canoe.  The stitching around the squares pretty much blends in with the backing fabric (which looks like the type of fabric the grandpa's shirts used to be), but the quilting around the canoes is fairly visible 

the back

Did I mention that the baby was born a little early, in December rather than January, and was given his great-grandpa's name as a middle name?  It sounds like rather than being called by his given first name though, that his parents have settle into calling him Little middle (great-grandpa's) name.  May he grow to be as big hearted, responsible, and outdoors loving as his great-grandpa was.  

When I wasn't sewing on the crossed canoes baby quilt, I stitched quite a bit on a cute wintery fox (pattern purchased here) counted cross stitch.  I love it; just the seasonal thing to work on right now.  The design is approximately 6" x 8", so a nice size for a project that won't take months to stitch.

Notice the little fox shaped needle minder?  That's new too (purchased here).  I'd never used one before and I'm definitely loving how easy it is to secure my needle--without worrying about distorting the fabric-- when not in use.  I've even had three needles on it at once when doing sections with lots of color changes and it holds them without slipping, tangling, or--horrors--falling off and getting lost in the couch cushions.  I'm for sure a fan of a needle minder.

Sausage Making Party 2023

 Several Saturdays ago, we hosted a sausage making party for the first time in a few years.  DS2 had requested it; he was out of sausage and a couple of his friends who had made sausage at our first big sausage making party had been asking him when we would have another.  We'd had a smaller, just family one since then, and DH and I have made several even smaller batches of sausage (for just the two of us) in the last two years.  Then DD1 asked about sausage making, and DS1 asked, and DD2 mentioned it, so it seemed like January was going to be a good time to have another large sausage making day.

DS1 ended up not being able to come because he and a couple of his kids were sick that day (but still wanted about 15 pounds of sausage).  

DD2 ended up not being able to come due to previous plans for that date (but still wanted 4-5 pounds of sausage).  

DS2 did come, as well as two of his good friends from college (who'd attended the inaugural sausage making at this little place here). We ended up making about 55 pounds of sausage that day.

DD1, Honorary Son, Faline and Buck also came and participated.  Well, Buck mostly slept, being barely two months old, but Faline was all in for helping.

It was Faline's first sausage making party, and she really got into it.  She helped transfer meat from the tote--where the four meat cutters had put the pork they cubed--into the grinder.  She did it by the armfuls, as you can see.  This was before any of the meat was seasoned, so we didn't worry about spices bothering her skin.  

To her it was all a great treat being able to help and scoop and dump, and all the grown-ups were so tickled by how much fun she was having doing a rather mundane job.

Once all the meat had been ground, it was divvied up into batches of differing weights, based on how many pounds total we planned to make of four flavors: breakfast, chorizo, Italian and hot Italian.  Each batch was then put into DH's brand new meat mixer, and the seasonings added.  Then DH proceeded to mix the seasonings in thoroughly without his arms getting tired. (He'd been wanting an automatic mixer for a while.)

All of the breakfast sausage and chorizo were left in bulk (ie, not stuffed) and packaged in 1/2 or 1 pound packages.  Some of the Italian was also packaged in bulk; it's great on pizza. . .  The rest of the Italian and all of the hot Italian were put into the stuffer and stuffed into casings, which were then twisted into links.

Faline was extremely interested in watching the casings being stuffed.  She stood on a stool between DH and DS1 and watched intently as DH guided the stuffed sausages from the stuffer and DS2 twisted them into links.

Unfortunately she needed to eat dinner several hours earlier than when everyone else at the party was going to be taste testing some of the newly made Italian sausage, so she ended up having hot dogs that night.  I don't think she felt like she was missing out though, as she had so much attention from her Uncle DS2 and all his (so far unmarried and childless) friends, she was the queen of the day.

Saving My Onions

 Last year, my onion crop did pretty good.  The varieties I chose, I picked for their storage life.  Even so, some of them are starting to go downhill a bit down in the basement.  

Not wanting them to go to waste before we can get them eaten up, I sorted through the crate of yellow onions (the reds I grew have a longer storage life) and diced up any that were starting to get the slightest bit squishy or show signs of sprouting.  I ended up filling two cookie sheets with diced onions.  

These went down into the chest freezer overnight to flash freeze for better pourability. The next day I scooped them into freezer bags, ending up with two quarts of diced onions for future use. The frozen ones are great in omelets and on pizza. . .  And any time I need onions for a recipe but am short on time to peel and chop them.

In a few weeks I'll sort through the onion crates again, and chop and freeze more if needed.  I have enough onions that I should be able to make it to this summer's harvest without needing to buy any if I pay attention to my stores and not let them go bad before we can eat them all.

Knitting Update, February

 Happy February!  January seemed like it flew by.  February is such a short month, I'm curious to see if I blink and miss it this year.  Just in case I do, here's a knitting update.

I finished my shortie Solor socks.  The pattern was easy to memorize, and made for some good mindless knitting while watching TV with DH.  He's much more fond of sitting and watching than I am, and it helped to have something to do with my hands and a portion of my brain.  

The 50g skein of yarn I used turned out to be not quite enough.  I played yarn chicken and lost by 2/3 of the toe on sock #2.  Bummer. I've won at yarn chicken with 50g of other yarn when making short socks, but this one was a tad shy. I dug out some remnant yarn from my stash of leftover sock yarns that matches pretty well to finish the toe decreases and grafting.  From the side, it's not so noticeable that I had to sub in different yarn.

From the top, it's definitely something that catches your eye.  Oh well.  Makes them a little quirky, and they're just for me, so not a big deal.  Overall, I do like them.

Literally right after casting on the Solor socks, my mom asked me if I would make her a pair of socks if she supplied the yarn.  This has become an annual request, so it wasn't unexpected.  In fact, it was part of the reason I'd decided to cast on for some short socks at the end of December.  I'm planning on making myself a full size (regular height) pair of socks later in 2023.

She dropped off her yarn choice--Supersocke 333 in colorway 2808 around the middle of January, and it's been waiting for me to finish my socks so that I can cast on for hers.  Due to not having a way to print out new patterns--our printer died in late November--I dug through my file of previously printed sock patterns and decided on Fairy Maidens.  I had used this pattern back in 2020 to make myself a short pair of socks.

I just cast on for Mom's socks on Monday night.  So far I have the cuff and two repeats of the 8 row leg design knit up.  It's a little hard to see with only two repeats done, but I think the pattern will work well with the self-striping yarn.

The Yarn Thief is eight years old now, but she still likes to keep an eye on my knitting.  In the picture below, I caught her calculating the distance between her and the yarn versus the distance between me and the yarn.  LOL!  Every now and then she does test her luck and try to do a snatch and grab on whatever yarn I'm using.

The book in the photo is A Mother's Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot.  I saw it mentioned in Ginny's blog recently, and borrowed a copy from my local library.  Even though it's written by a Catholic woman, clearly for Catholic women, and I'm a Lutheran, I'm still finding her book interesting, thought provoking, and useful.

Other books I read in January are:

• Amish Women by Louise Stoltzfus was a quick and easy read.  Each chapter is like a stand alone short story about a particular woman the author knew.
• The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary.  I loved this book.  It was a little predictable (you kind of knew at the start how it would end) but the twists and turns along the way are great.  Will definitely be looking for more from this author.
• The Gold in These Hills by Joanne Bischof.  I had read two other books by this author and loved them.  This one, I felt, fell a little flat.  Not bad enough to keep me from planning to read more from her, just not quite as engaging as the others.
• Fallen by Linda Castillo.  Another Kate Burkholder mystery, another book I could not put down.  I want to grab up the next in the series and dive right back in, but there's only two left (one of which isn't going to be published until this summer), so I will exercise some self control and wait a few months before reading the next one.  Linda Castillo has several short stories featuring Kate Burkholder that are available on Kindle, but I'm a 'real paper book' holdout still; I just find trying to read on a screen hampering.