Well, That Was Different

I can honestly say that this has been a March unlike any I have ever known. We started with a quick get-away to Myrtle Beach where the weather was decidedly gloomy.  Came home and made a bunch of sausage with the kids and grandkids, and began syrup making for this year.

And then, life as we know it changed.  DH was ordered to work from home. So, the desk in the study, which has largely been used as a catch-all in the last 4+ years, had to become a work space once more.

Another big change was that my usual shopping method of stocking up on groceries once a month couldn't happen.  My shopping date hit right as people were being told to work from home, or that they weren't going to be working for the next few weeks (teachers, etc), and so when I went to the store the panic buying was beginning, and I couldn't get a month's worth of anything.  Which meant I've had to go to the grocery store weekly (or twice a week sometimes) rather than once a month plus maybe one more time to restock on produce and dairy.

Ironic that since we've had a lockdown, Stay Home order from the governor, I've actually had to go to the store more than I do when we're allowed to roam about freely.

My cooking routine, however, is largely unchanged.  Since we hardly ever eat out and I've cooked from scratch forever, I'm still baking bread, making pizza by hand, and all the other things I do in my kitchen but most Americans don't.

cabbage rolls

making ricotta for lasagna

finished ricotta

The syrup season has been a crappy one, if I may be blunt. The weather has mainly been too cold, too warm, too rainy, or too windy for the sap to run.  As a result, I've only boiled down one more batch of syrup, which yielded 1 qt and 1 pt.  The local wildlife have been checking out my sap buckets in the woods, as evidenced by the muddy paw prints left behind.

This looks to be our last stretch of days below 50 degrees, so I plan to go out and pull taps tomorrow.  Will either boil sap tomorrow evening or on Thursday after work, depending on how much is actually in the buckets and how long it will take to finish into syrup.

raccoon print

finishing off in the kitchen

I had started my pepper and tomato seedlings indoors in late February, and they have grown enough that last weekend I transplanted most of them into larger containers.  They will continue to live indoors in these containers for another 6-8 weeks before going out to the garden.

Since I work on a farm, I am considered an essential worker and get to leave home to go to work everyday like normal.  Which means I still get to see my horse even though I'm not working with him much currently.

Because I'm still driving 5 days each week, the Suburban continues to roll closer to my 300,000 mile goal on the odometer.  We hit 263,000 this month.

I have been doing more sewing than usual.  I made two quilt blocks for a forum quilt I'm involved in each year.

I also made some hot pads as part of Surprise's upcoming birthday present.  I was tipped off that she likes cows, and there is a really cute cow block pattern in Farm Girl Vintage 2.  So. . . 

in process

finished

There has also been knitting going on, but those pictures are waiting for April's Yarn Along post.

Outdoors, I managed to get DH to do some adjusting of my clothesline setup.  The posts have been leaning inward for years, needing to be pushed back upright with the tractor when the ground is soft.  It's soft now, and I can easily go without using the clothesline for several more weeks since April is usually rainy month.  The timing was perfect to get those posts fixed and let them sit a good while to firm up before needing my clothesline. While we were at it, I decided that I might as well take off the old cotton lines and just put new ones up when I'm ready to hang clothes.

I also decided to actually have DH pull the post on the far end, and move it about six feet closer to the other post.  With only 2-3 of us home, I really don't fill the entire clothesline with laundry like when I was raising four kids and doing 1-2 loads of laundry every single day.  A shorter span would work just fine, plus it would be less unsupported weight to put strain on the posts.  Hopefully they will stay straight longer.  Plus, there is a spruce tree near the far post that had grown big enough that in a few more years it's branches would be able to be touched by laundry hanging (and blowing) on the line.  Now that the post is moved, that tree probably won't interfere with my laundry for a decade at least.

post pulled

both posts in the ground and straightened

That about wraps up what's been happening at this little place here since I last posted.  We'll see what April has in store for us; currently the news reports are that Michigan will remain on Stay Home until April 30th, if not longer.

Sausages and Syrup

DH and I returned from our mini-vacation on Thursday evening last week.  On Friday (he had also taken as a vacation day), DH purchased 60 pounds of boneless pork butt, and that evening both of our sons came over to make sausage.  K3 and Toad came along too, and spent the night (DS1 went home and came back the next morning to finish the sausage project.)  DD1 and Honorary Son also came over on Saturday to assist with the sausage.  That's been our rule since we started making sausage in 2016:  if you want homemade sausage, you  must come help create it.

I typically don't assist in the sausage making endeavors, mainly because I eat very little sausage (for some reason my digestive system is not fond of pork sausage) and also because there are always many other tasks on my to-do list.  That weekend, my main task--other than catching up on laundry after being away from home--was to boil down the 15 gallons of sap that flowed that week.  I had set taps the prior weekend, in anticipation of the warm up that was forecasted to occur while I was out of town.

After breakfast on Saturday, the guys ground the 60 pounds of meat they had diced and seasoned the night before, and the grandkids and I checked sap buckets out in the woods to see if any more had run overnight. It hadn't, but the grandkids wanted to go look, so we did.  Any excuse to go for a tractor ride or to the woods will do.

It was rather muddy in the woods, and K3 mostly wanted to just walk/balance on every fallen tree she could find.

Toad, on the other hand, is drawn to puddles and mud like a magnet.  As a bonus, it had been cold enough overnight to form a thin layer of ice on most of the wet spots in the woods.  He of course had to walk on them to see if the ice was thick enough to hold him.

It wasn't.  But that was okay, because both kids were wearing boots.  We always request that they bring boots when they are coming over to stay with us.  Because kids need to explore outside no matter what the weather or ground conditions.

Back in the house, they washed up and then helped with stuffing Italian sausage into casings, as well as packaging all three kinds of sausage: Italian, chorizo, and breakfast.  They also helped me keep an eye on the sap as it boiled down.  

Unfortunately, they had to go home before it was finished syrup, but I did dip a little out shortly before they left and let it cool so that they could taste the progress from slightly sweet water (the beginning sap) to light golden brown almost-syrup that was kind of like an uncarbonated maple flavored soft drink.

A few hours later, the syrup was completed, a lovely amber color with a delicious flavor.  That fifteen gallons of sap yielded 2 pints, 6 ounces.  The pints are sealed and in storage until needed.  The 6 ounces, being not enough to fill even a half-pint container, went into the fridge for use first.  A couple spoonfuls went on top of vanilla ice cream for DH and my dessert that night.

This post tells in more detail about how we make sausage.

Yarn Along: March

I'm finally joining Ginny for this month's Yarn Along.  I was without computer access for most of the week while DH and I took a little R&R time.

I got DS2's Wanderlust socks finished in time to give them to him for his birthday. (Photos are unblocked socks; they really are the same length and shape.)

Left sock, right sock.

 

Inner leg, outer leg.

He had mentioned to me last fall that the socks I had made him several years ago for wearing while hiking were getting pretty worn out.  I decided then, that a new pair would make a great and useful birthday present. Especially as he and his outdoor adventure pals are planning a backpacking trip in Glacier National Park this summer.

Once those socks were finished, I began a just-for-me project that I had actually bought the pattern and yarn for about a year ago:  a Hue-shift afghan.  I am absolutely loving working on this project and confess that making those mitered squares has become quite addicting.  I don't like to put this project down if I have an uncompleted square!

Miter magic!

However, it doesn't make a good travel project, and DH and I had a little mini-vacation to go on.  So, I grabbed a skein of speckled yarn my Mom had dropped by (in January) with the request that I make her a pair of socks whenever I have time to spare.  I have to be honest; I'm not a huge fan of speckled yarn.  On it's own, I find it kind of uninteresting.  It doesn't show patterns very well, in my opinion.  I decided to take a little creative license with Mom's yarn and match it with a skein of purple tonal yarn that I've had in my stash for a while. 

I'm making a very plain sock: ribbed cuff, slip-stitch ribbed heel and all stockinette (no pattern, formula in my head); yet the addition of the purple for the cuffs, heels and toes is really making those speckles pop, especially the purple ones.  I don't think Mom will mind that I took a little liberty with her socks.

true color picture

Not true colors, but shows how much was knit in 3 days!

I've read a couple of book since February's Yarn Along post. Treadmill walking and being on vacation have given me lots more reading time than normal.

The Lost Husband by Katherine Coulter was good, yet at times I could have sworn I've read the book before.  Just some deja vu sections, although I can't find any record of it in my library history.

Going Over Home; a Search For Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land by Charles D. Thompson, Jr. was sometimes like memoir, sometimes like an educational text.  Overall I liked it, but I did start to get tired of the style about 2/3 of the way through the book.  The parts where he talked about the history of his family sharecropping and farming in the Appalachian hollers were of particular interest to me, as a good chunk of my lineage comes from the same.

Postscript by Cecelia Ahern, her lastest novel and the sequel to P.S. I Love You.  I love everything I've ever read by this author and this book does not disappoint.

Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason, is a murder mystery set in Iceland.  Straight forward, makes you think, no excessive sex or gore = my kind of book!  I've become a little leery in recent years of new to me authors because it seems so often books these days are more graphic in the sex or horror/gore department than I care for (or just poorly written/edited). This book is A-1!  I have definitely found another author to follow and plan to read all of his works.

Currently, I am reading another Linda Castillo novel, The Dead Will Tell, and I am devouring it. It also goes well with stockinette knitting!

Quality Time

DH and I spent some relaxing time together on Sunday afternoon.  The sun was out, the wind was not, and it was just a beautiful day to get outside.  So we did.  We went to the woods and cut (DH) and stacked (me) some fallen trees and widowmakers.  This probably isn't what most couples would call quality time, but for us, it was perfect.  DH loves cutting wood.  And I really don't mind helping out with that task, as long as I'm not behind on my own tasks. 

So, we went to the woods and spent over an hour working together, assessing leaning and hung up trees (the widowmakers) and discussing which way each would fall once DH started cutting it.  He's really good at aiming trees as he cuts, and I'm getting better in my knowledge and input ability in that area.  For stacking, we relied on my expertise in the area of how that part of the woods floods for about two months every spring and where the woodpiles should be located in order to not be partially submerged--which way the water flows and what is actually the high and dry ground.

What do you think of when you look at this picture?

I think of firewood, of heat, of a cozy house in winter.

One fallen tree cut; many to go.

Fresh sawdust on snow;

can you see where the tree used to lie?

A fresh stack

Now, I'm guessing the majority of women wouldn't count going out to cut and stack firewood as quality time with their husband.  But I do.  If there's a task that you both enjoy doing, go do it together.  That's what quality time is all about: a shared enjoyable experience.  It doesn't have to mean spending money or even leaving home.

Pizza, Pancakes, a Skunk(!), and Pretzels

Friday after school, K3 and Toad came over.  The plan was for them to spend the night with DH and I, then go on adventures with DD1 and Honorary Son on Saturday afternoon. Two things have become a given whenever they spend the night at this little place here:

1. We will make pizza for dinner.  They love this, because not only do they get to help make the dough, but once it's risen I give them each their own hunk of dough to stretch and shape.  They get to make their own pizza, with whatever toppings they want on it.
2. We will make pancakes for breakfast.  K3 and Toad measure and stir together the ingredients, and I do the actual cooking. There will be regular circle pancakes, but there will also be shaped pancakes--turtles for Toad and for K3 it varies.  Typically it's Mickey Mouse heads, but this weekend it was bunnies.

These are givens because they request these two things every time they spend the night.  Each is something I did once, and apparently they enjoyed it enough that they want to have it again and again and again.

This time, I had an additional food related activity planned.  But that would come after we spent some time outside on Saturday morning.

And on Saturday we woke up to a surprise that would require our attention right after breakfast.  Not a surprise that DH or I had planned, that's for sure.  You see, early last week something got into my coop overnight despite the closed and latched doors.  It killed a chicken (thankfully only one).  So, last week I got out our large live trap, set it up near the front of the coop, and baited it with that dead chicken. Tied into the back of the trap with baling twine around it's feet, so that whatever critter came along could not steal it out of the trap without getting caught.

The first night, we caught (and disposed of) a decent sized raccoon.  The second night, we caught (and disposed of) a slightly larger raccoon.  Which is what I suspected, as I'd seen raccoon tracks in the snow around my coop the week before.  Raccoons are not welcome around my barn and coop; if caught there they receive the death sentence.  They need to stay out in the woods. 

The third night, nothing ventured into our trap.  The fourth night was Friday night.  And we woke up on Saturday to discover this:

Uh oh.  We'd caught a skunk. Skunks are a lot trickier to shoot than raccoons are.  When I catch a coon, I walk up to the cage (aka the death chamber), stick the end of the .22 through the wire, and dispatch the coon with a shot between the eyes. With a skunk, you can't get that close.  Not without getting a stinky souvenir to show for it.  So, the two times we've caught skunks in the past, they've gotten a stay of execution and a ride out to the woods where they are released. This is accomplished by walking up to the skunk in the trap with an old flannel sheet held up in front of me, so I am not seen (ie no predator threat).  Then I wrap the trap in the sheet, and load it into the tractor bucket.  I drive it out to the edge of the woods, set the trap on the ground, take the sheet off the front end of the trap (leaving the rest of the trap covered), and prop the door open with a chunk of wood.  Then I walk away, or, if the skunk doesn't exit the trap right away, drive back to the house for a few hours.

That is the technique I planned to use on Saturday.  Except that Toad, K3 and DD2 wanted to see the skunk.  And since DD2 has experience (from her internship at the small animal rehab  in 2018) with handling young skunks, she walked K3 and Toad within about eight feet of the trap so they could get a fairly close up look at the skunk.  I have to admit, it was cute, with a white stripe down it's face and a white patch on the top of it's head and no white anywhere else on it's body.

The wrapping in a sheet and transporting to the woods didn't go so smoothly though.  Because just as I had the trap wrapped and was about to get the tractor out of the barn, DH came roaring up on the 4-wheeler, towing our wood hauler trailer.  He thought that would be better to carry the trap with, and we could bring in a load of firewood after releasing the skunk.  The noise however, startled the skunk, and it did spray.  So now I have a smelly sheet and a trap that is slightly skunky.

skunk transport

(kind of makes me think of a casket on a caisson)

door propped, ready for skunk release

walking away to wait

observing from a distance

It took a while, and we were over at the woodpile in the corner of the field when the skunk finally decided it was curious enough to walk out of the trap.  Once out, it didn't hesitate about heading into the woods for cover.

skunk in the woods

After we had a good size load of firewood on the trailer, and K3 and Toad were tired of climbing on the woodpile and logs, we headed back to the house for our next activity.  Making chocolate dipped pretzel sticks!

They sure had fun with that!  We of course had to eat some before they left this little place here.  And we packed some up to take to DD1 and Honorary Son's house, as well as some more to take home to their parents. Although I suspect they will remember the skunk adventure longer than they will remember dipping pretzels in molten chocolate!

So Simple, An Engineer Can Understand It

Thankfully, late winter has arrived, with it's more abundant hours of daylight, and my hens are swinging back into production mode.  After carefully doling out my remaining stash of eggs laid last year (the hens typically take a break in the darkest months, from late November or early December until mid- to late February), I'm very happy to walk into the coop each day and see this:

fresh eggs!

It's always cause for rejoicing when those first eggs of the year start appearing.  The long, virtually eggless winter is over!  No longer do I need to ration eggs.  

In fact, this week, the girls in the coop have been giving me four eggs a day. Soon I will have an abundance of eggs, and we can eat them in all the ways we love them even if it uses a whole bunch: the 5-egg brownie recipe, omelets, custard, angel food cake, homemade egg noodles. . .

Vitally important is a system for making sure the eggs are used in a timely manner as well as planning for the decline in production in the fall and the eventual end of production in the winter.  

I make sure the egg cartons are rotated between filling and use by marking each full carton with the date on which it was filled before putting the full carton in the basement fridge, and then when using eggs, bringing up to the kitchen fridge the carton that has the oldest date written on it. As each carton is emptied (ie all the eggs in it are eaten), the date is crossed off, and it is put in the cupboard to await refilling.  Pretty simple: look for a date, use the carton with the oldest date first.  Don't use the carton in the kitchen fridge that has no date.  There should always be two (and only two) cartons of eggs in the kitchen: the one with the date that is being eaten, and the one without a date that is being filled.

That has been my system since 2003, which was the first year we raised chickens and got our own farm eggs. A foolproof system, I thought.  A system which all four of my children learned and understood, and taught their significant others and the grandchildren.  A system that I thought DH understood too.

A system which he's followed: eat from the carton with the visible date, don't eat from the carton with no date visible (ie if the date is crossed off, that is the carton being filled) for 16 years without reminder or explanation.  Until this past December, that is, when we were down to our last two cartons of eggs, one of which was very slowly being refilled as the chickens sporadically laid an egg or two in a week's time during the spiral down to the shortest day of the year.

In his defense, he was cooking breakfast for himself and his hunting buddy (I wasn't home that morning), and it's well known around our house that when this particular buddy is around, DH's intelligence tanks. Which, really, is no excuse.  And it's not the excuse he used for cooking the SIX freshest eggs (SIX!!! eggs, for TWO people--during the time of year when we are rationing eggs the most!) and emptying my 'being filled' carton instead of getting eggs from the carton next to it; the one with an October date legible on it. 

No, his excuse was that my egg carton system was confusing.  Nobody could tell, he told me, in front of this buddy, which eggs were supposed to be eaten and which were supposed to be left alone.

So, I came up with a new system so simple, it would be impossible for an engineer to not understand it.  All I needed was a red marker and a sticky note, and the problem was solved.

Egg cartons for engineers. . . 

Everyone who opens my fridge now, finds this hilarious (and easy to understand).  From DH, there has been no comment.  He does now, however, always get eggs from the correct carton.

Reseasoned Cast Iron

For longer than I care to admit, I've had a couple of cast iron pots sitting around in need of reseasoning.  Let's just say that one was all ready awaiting my attention when DD2 found an abandoned dutch oven in a fire pit at work the summer of 2018. . .

The dutch oven she found was half buried in ash, and other than some very burnt food inside of it, appeared to be brand new.  Except that it had been left in a fire pit, and gotten rained on, and obviously had that carbonized food that needed to be cleaned out of it.  But, knowing the value of good cast iron (we found this brand and size for $40 at Walmart later. . ), she asked her boss if she might be allowed to keep the dutch oven.  Of course Mom (me) would know how to clean it of the charred food and the rust it had accumulated.

Yes, Mom (me) does know how to clean and reseason cast iron; we've had our own camping set for nearly two decades. But, along with all the other challenges life was throwing at me in summer 2018 (and for another year plus), I really wasn't overly eager to tackle the reconditioning project.  And so it sat.  And sat.  And sat.

Until this month!  Maybe it's the increased amount of daylight.  Maybe it's the endorphins from doing my daily mile on the treadmill. Maybe it's the fact that DH's job has eased up a little and when he's home, his brain is too and his phone doesn't alert with work calls or texts in the evening or on weekends lately.  Whatever the reason being, I decided it was high time to get to caring for that cast iron that needed me.

And so, armed with hot water and a steel wool pad (actually, two, the first one got totally eaten up on the dutch oven), I set to scrubbing.  And scrubbing. And scrubbing.  (And forgot to take pictures of the process.)

Once the rust and residue was removed from my three cast iron pieces, I rinsed them in scaldingly hot water and let them air dry (being hot, they did so quickly).  Once dry, each piece got coated inside and out with shortening.  Then into a 350 degree oven they went, for one hour.

On the rack underneath the cast iron, I placed my largest cookie sheet to use as a drip pan.  I didn't want to also have to scrub my oven when finished with this cast iron project! Incidentally, this cookie sheet has long been my favorite cookie sheet; it was a gift at my bridal shower in 1993, and has been so well used that the original coating has just about completely worn off.  In fact, just a week prior, DH had asked me if I didn't think it was time to replace that cookie sheet.  A question I vehemently answered "NO!  That cookie sheet works great!  It's my favorite one!"

The cast iron came out of the oven perfectly seasoned, and very hot.  I set it on cooling racks on the island for several hours.

So black and shiny!  And HOT!

Finished cooling; still beautiful.

I was very pleased with how the dutch oven and my pot turned out.  They look like brand new!

My cookie sheet, however, did not fare so well.

Yuck!

The shortening that dripped off of the cast iron during the seasoning process kind of baked itself into a very plastic-like film on my beloved nearly 27 year old cookie sheet.  A film that I have not been able to get off with steel wool, or boiling water, or even sticking back into the oven to 'soften'.  I think I killed it.  Guess DH was right; time to retire my cookie sheet. It isn't fit for baking cookies on anymore.

I will, however, keep it on hand for when I need a drip pan under a pie or cheesecake, or the next time we have some cast iron in need of reseasoning!