My Two Roos

The chicken coop is settling back into a normal routine. I expect egg production to increase, both because the pullets are laying now and because the hens are much less stressed out.

The Buff Orpington rooster has resumed his post as clan leader:

I still call him Baby, which is a horrible name for a rooster, but nothing else seems to stick. He comes when I call him, too, so I think he knows that’s his name.

And the other rooster has been christened Dave.

He just looks like a Dave to me, all laid back and cool. He’s getting the hang of being a rooster, too, having figured out that the ladies will like him a lot better if he doesn’t ambush them from behind the waterer. He has also learned to call them over to eat instead of gobbling up the scratch grains. Baby occasionally chases him around, but there hasn’t been any bloodshed.

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I was in town most of yesterday trying to bludgeon my to-do list into submission. I was able to get everything crossed off, although that means that other stuff has floated to the top to be dealt with on the next trip. I met with our accountant for an hour in the morning—we do a check-up every fall to see where the construction company is financially and to make plans for the upcoming year.

I am in desperate need of a road trip of some sort. I may have to make do with a quick trip to Missoula next week. After the wedding, though, I plan to treat myself to a weekend in Spokane. The small quilt store there has a Laura Heine workshop scheduled for the first weekend of November. I have the Laura Heine pattern for the sewing machine collage, and I would be way more comfortable tackling that pattern with some guidance. The owner of that store is an excellent teacher.

I am aware that part of my restlessness and this desire to go on a road trip is a response to this pandemic. I am very weary of the restrictions, especially because I think much of this has been politicized and because the level of scientific (and statistical) literacy in this country is so abysmal.

[And yes, I do know someone who has had coronavirus and spent a few days in the hospital.]

I don’t think we’ve yet come to grips with all the knock-on effects of “14 days to slow the spread” that has morphed into six months of “If you don’t wear a mask, you obviously want Grandma to die.” I sit here in my office listening to the scanner, and there has been a definite uptick in calls for suicides and attempted suicides. Church looks different. We can’t have conferences and other gatherings. (Last October, Elysian and I spent a fabulous weekend at the Spokane Food and Farm Expo, which has been cancelled for 2020.) So many of the personal interactions that serve as the glue to hold communities together are forbidden. Have we considered what those losses are doing to us? What about all the business that have folded and aren’t coming back? Yesterday, while I was in town, I stopped in at the embroidery store that opened in Kalispell last winter only to discover that it’s completely empty. That business never really had a chance.

Part of me is angry that my daughter can’t have the wedding she envisioned when we started planning this a year ago. She will still have a beautiful wedding, but who wants wedding pictures full of people wearing masks?

I have so much more I could say, but I’ve got things to do today. I’m tired of this, though, and I don’t accept the assumption that we’ll never be able to go back to the way things were. I won’t surrender to that level of fear. Life is risky. Ask me how I know.

I'd Rather Clean the Garden Than the House

I came home from church yesterday, ate lunch, called my mother, then headed out to the garden to decide what to attack. I ended up pulling out all of the Indian Stripe and Cherokee Purple tomato plants. I have plenty of those two varieties in the freezer because they ripened earlier. The Oregon Star paste tomato vines are loaded and I’m bringing in ripe ones daily. As we’re in for a week of nice weather, it’s worth keeping them going. I also left the Dirty Girl plant because it’s still producing.

The husband came out to see what I was doing. He pulled up the vines in the watermelon patch and gave the overripe and smaller melons to the pigs:

Having the garden right next to the pig pasture is very handy. Excess and overripe produce goes right over the fence:

We made piles of all the vegetation. It will decompose over the winter. We also covered the Oregon Star plants with a couple of concrete blankets to protect them from the frost we got last night. I don’t see another frost in the forecast this week, but I’ll keep a close eye on the overnight temps and cover the plants again if necessary.

I am going to have to do something about the grapevines next year. A week ago, they were loaded. I was waiting for the grapes to ripen. Yesterday, I discovered that they have been completely picked over by birds and my domesticated (wild) turkeys. The mamas with the three babies—now almost-grown juveniles—are still here, and we’ve seen them over in the garden. I got some grapes, but not as many as in past years. I need to make a note to put bird netting on the vines next August.

The animals have to eat, too. I try not to get too torqued about it. The turkeys have become part of the landscape to the point that Lila walks right past them in the yard. And now we have another mama with six poults hanging out here.

Digging potatoes is on the list for next weekend, and that will bring an end to the 2020 gardening season. At least when I clean up the garden, it stays that way for several months, unlike the house.

The pullets have started laying, right on schedule (full-size eggs for comparison):

Hopefully, we’ll get back on a regular egg schedule soon. Eggs are always scarce until the pullets are at full production.

I fervently hope there isn’t another chick shortage next spring. I don’t want to have to hatch out my own chicks again. It was a fun experiment that turned out well, but I know that it’s always going to result in more roosters than we want, and I don’t think my nerves can take it, LOL. Also, it messes up my system of knowing which chickens are the oldest based on breed. I’ve now got a bunch of crossbred hens out there.

I’ve re-written the to-do list and, as usual, I have plenty of stuff to choose from this week. The first task today will be bagging and freezing those chickens and delivering half a dozen of them to Jeryl as a thank-you for helping with butchering.

A Calmer Coop

Item #1 on the to-do list has been crossed off—we butchered chickens yesterday. I was a bit worried that we would have to postpone due to weather, because around midnight Friday night, we had a torrential downpour with a surprising amount of wind. The front had moved through by morning, though, and we woke up to 45 degrees and partly cloudy skies. 

The husband was up early getting everything arranged:

Our pastor, Jeryl, always comes to help us, and I give him some processed chickens in return. Elysian and WS also came over to help and brought seven of their chickens. We did a total of 25 birds: eleven of our hens, seven of Elysian’s hens, and seven roosters. 

We got started as soon as Jeryl arrived. The three of us have butchered together before, so we’ve worked out an efficient system. The husband dispatches the birds, I scald and pluck them (that red boxy thing in the picture is the chicken plucker), and Jeryl eviscerates them and puts them in a cooler with ice and cold water. His workstation is to the left of the picture.

[I was laughing to myself as I was plucking chickens, thinking that if someone had asked me, “Where do you see yourself in 25 years?”, plucking chickens would not have been one of my answers.]

Elysian helped Jeryl. Her son, WS, alternated between “stations” because he was interested in the whole process. At the end, though, he told me that he really thought his job should be to get the chickens out of the coop. He is something of a “chicken whisperer”—most little kids are—but with all those roosters, I didn’t want to take a chance. 

Setup, butchering, and cleanup took the whole morning. We had to make sure there was nothing left to attract bears. The birds are in the fridge in the garage. I was advised to give them 48 hours before freezing them. 

Now we’re down to about 30 hens and two roosters. The atmosphere inside the coop is much calmer. I was able to let the lame chicken out of the isolation ward. (I had put my big Buff rooster in there with her while we were butchering.) She can very much hold her own against the other hens; one of the Buff Orpington hens tried to peck at her and she turned right around and fluffed up her neck feathers and went back at her. It helps that she’s from a Brahma mother and is bigger than most of the other hens. 

Getting this job done is a huge weight off my mind.

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After lunch, the husband got the orchard ladder out for me so I could pick the Golden Delicious tree and retrieve a few stragglers from the Honeycrisp tree. (Note to future self: The Golden Delicious apples aren’t ready until the end of September.) If I have time this week, I think I might make either another batch of pie filling or some applesauce. Grapes are on the schedule, too.

My back is bothering me again—it’s muscular, not structural, and sitting in my Swedish recliner helps to stretch the muscles out—so when I was done with the apple trees, I sat and worked on an embroidery project. 

This is the needle case I have to finish before I will allow myself to start embroidering squash. I started the third bird yesterday. The end is in sight. After the embroidery is done, I’ll add a few appliquéd embellishments and sew the case. 

I am trying to decide if I want to cover the tomatoes again tonight. We are supposed to get a frost, but then we’re in for a stretch of really nice fall weather. I may compromise and pull the Indian Stripe and Cherokee Purple plants but leave the Oregon Star paste tomatoes as I can always use more of them.

Complicated Rectangles

I’ve made two of the four insulated shades for the living room. The first one tested my resolve to make four of them. From a sewing standpoint, these are utterly simple: two side seams, a top casing for the tension rod, and a bottom hem. This is not an heirloom christening dress. The issue is that I am working with six yards of 54” wide insulated fabric and two 60” x 108” chunks of fabric for the covers, none of which fits easily on my cutting table. Instead, I’ve had to lay everything out on the floor of our bedroom and cut there. The insulated shade piece needs to be 46” wide by 44” long. The fabric cover needs to be 48-1/2” wide and 56” long. The wider cover fabric is sewn to the insulated fabric at the sides, and because it’s larger than the insulated fabric, it wraps around each side edge to form a facing on the back.

The whole process is just very cumbersome. I’m sewing on the Janome with the even-feed foot engaged. I really ought to have my small table set up behind it to help hold the extra fabric—that’s the table I use when I machine quilt—but it is currently in the living room, covered with tomatoes.

The finished shades, however, are a huge improvement over the previous version:

These fit nicely inside the window frame. The fabric is a very light beige print. (I may release and re-sew the hem on this one because it looks a bit wonky here. The second shade turned out much better.)

Each shade takes about two hours start to finish. I’ll definitely finish the other two for the living room, but I need to think about whether or not I want to make eight more.

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We are butchering tomorrow, which is why I am writing this blog post on Friday afternoon instead—I won’t have time in the morning. After lunch, I got the scalding pot and the huge cooler out of the storage shed and cleaned and sanitized both of them. I brought a hose and nozzle over from the greenhouse and hooked them up to the spigot on the side of the house. The new fridge is plugged in and cold. Barring any torrential downpours in the morning, we should be good to go. I’ll be glad when it’s all over. I am looking forward to a much calmer and less crowded chicken coop, though. Even just moving those two roosters out of there the other evening has made a difference.

Our pastor is coming to help—the three of us have butchered together several times before and we have a very efficient system. Elysian and WS said they would like to come help, too, and bring some of their chickens. WS asked if he could run the chicken plucker and I said sure. He’s not afraid to jump in and help.

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And I whipped up—literally, because it took less than half an hour—this darling little beanie for Susan’s grandson.

The fabric is a knit remnant from Joanns. The piece wasn’t very big, about 10” long by the width of the fabric (54”, I think), and I could probably get three or four more beanies from it. I sort of fussy cut the top pieces so they would have complete dinosaurs, but I wasn’t paying attention and put the band on upside down. Ooops. I don’t think this child (or his parents) will care. The pattern is a free download from Made For Mermaids. I ran it up on the serger. Easy-peasy.

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The second Squash Squad embroidery pattern was released this morning. This one is for the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. I had never heard of such a thing, so I looked it up. Turns out that this is also known as the Cinderella pumpkin, which is a variety I grew a few years ago. Huh.

I might have to build a fire in the fireplace tonight and wheel my embroidery cart in and finish one of my current projects so I can start embroidering squash.

Little Things Make a Difference

The husband takes a couple of apples with him to work every day. In the fall, I buy them by the case at the grocery store, but even a case only lasts about two weeks. (He really likes apples.) These little stickers are the bane of his existence:

Asking a man who hasn’t yet found consciousness to remove these stickers while he is making his lunch in the morning is a rare form of torture. When I take apples from the box and put them in bowls on the table, I remove the stickers so he doesn’t have to. I have fingernails and the stickers pop off easily for me.

Happy spouse, happy house. I just wish the apple growers would stop cultivating these ridiculously large apples. When I can find them, I try to get the Fuji 113s because they are a reasonable size.

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I painted the ice cream parlor chairs yesterday. I should have bought two cans of paint because I need just a smidge more to touch up a few spots. I’ll pick some up next time I am in town. These need to sit for two weeks and then I can clear coat them. I have three of the four seats re-covered.

When Susan and I were in Seattle a few weeks ago, we went to Ikea with DD#2. This is how I shop at Ikea: I see something I think I’d like, but I don’t buy it. The next time I go back, I buy it. The problem is that I might only get to Ikea once every 3-4 months. (I’ve stopped doing that at Costco because I know if I don’t buy the item when I see it, it might not be there next time.)

I went to Ikea with DD#1 in June and saw these hanging baskets. I thought it would be cool to have a couple of them on the porch to hold some small herb plants. I did not buy them.

When we went to Ikea in August, I bought three of them. I should have bought four so I could hang them two and two—three linked together is a bit too long. I’ll have to pick up one more next time I’m there, or have the girls get one and bring it home with them.

On my more delusional days, I think how nice it would be to have hanging baskets full of flowers across the front porch. I might start with one or two next summer and see how it goes. Do I really need one more thing to take care of?

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Two graduates of Janet’s Finishing School for Baby Roosters went to their new home last night. I “met” a woman in a homesteading group on the internet 4-5 years ago and discovered she lived around the corner. We’ve chatted back and forth since then but never met in person. When she found out I was giving away roosters, she offered to take one. We met in person for the first time when she and her husband came over yesterday evening. The funny thing is that she doesn’t live in the neighborhood anymore as they have moved further out to a big piece of property.

They took the large rooster out of the White Orpington mother. He was the one I was most hoping to find a home for as he is such a good roo and will do well with his own flock. They also took one of the Buff Orpington roosters. The Buffs seem to be late bloomers; I think he will also be a great rooster, but he needs a few weeks yet. My Buff Orpington rooster was the same way.

I wish I could find homes for the others, but no luck so far.

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I still don’t have time to sit and do any handwork right now, but Sue Spargo has started a stitchalong on Instagram—she calls it an Instastitch—and I’m downloading the patterns and stashing them to work on later this winter. This one is called “Squash Squad.” It’s nine different kinds of squash that make a 15” square wallhanging.

IT’S EMBROIDERED SQUASH, PEOPLE.

How can I not do this project? Instagram is not my favorite platform for these kinds of things, but I’ll cope.

Enough Tomatoes?

I’ve been packing the empty pork freezer with tomatoes:

My rough calculation is approximately 50 gallon zip bags. I have room for maybe a dozen more in the door. Ali and her little guy were over yesterday and I told her to help herself to the tomatoes left on the vines. I am going to bag up what I have ripening and bring in a few more, but I think I am close to being done. These will sit until after the wedding when I will schedule a marathon week of sauce-making followed by a long vacation weekend. This freezer has to be empty by the end of November.

I know people here who lovingly prune and train their tomatoes to maximize production. I would love to be like those gardeners, but I can’t quite get it together. I go for quantity (I put in 46 plants this year) and hope for the best. That strategy seems to work. My tomatoes produced heavily, even without pruning.

It rained yesterday so I still haven’t painted the ice cream parlor chairs. That will be the first item on the to-do list if it stays dry today. I did re-cover one chair seat. I am not thrilled with the fabric I got, but the outdoor fabric selection at our Joanns leaves much to be desired—mostly large-scale tropical prints, none of which were suitable for small chairs like this, let alone small chairs in a decidedly non-tropical location. Oh well. I’ll cover these with what I have and if I find something I like better in the future, I can always re-do them.

I’ve cleaned up the sewing room(s) and put away everything except the black fabric for sashing the rows of the Noon and Night quilt and a few other small projects. I picked up the Warm Window insulation for the shades yesterday and will get those cut out, too. They’re just rectangles with straight seams so they’ll be easy to put together.

Cleaning and organizing. I feel like the squirrels who have been busy stashing pine nuts in the woodshed. Lila likes to watch them from the kitchen door.

One Appliqué Project Was Enough

That itch has been scratched. The crab soup apron is done. I finished it yesterday morning while waiting for the sun to come up and the temps to warm up enough to work in the garden.

A couple of notes about this project before I post the pictures.

I bought the crab soup appliqué kit at a little store called Quilt Vine, in Trappe, Maryland, just south of Easton. This is a darling little store that is packed full of all sorts of goodies and I always stopped in there when I visited my in-laws.

They have quilt designs using this appliqué, but it was on display in the store on the front of a wraparound apron. As I had no desire to make an appliqué quilt—but I can always use more aprons—I decided to use my appliqué in the same way.

Their display apron was lined.

I did not find out what pattern they used for the apron but knew I had something similar in my pattern collection at home. I used Simplicity 5201.

I traced the size Medium from the pattern. I should have checked PatternReview.com, first, because several other reviewers noted that this finished apron is huge, and it is. I probably could have done with a Small.

The Simplicity pattern is a single layer of fabric finished with bias binding. I had a few moments of trying to puzzle out how to line my apron—and I wanted it lined to hide all the thread ends from the appliqué—because I couldn’t figure out how to turn what is basically a möbius strip inside out after sewing in the lining. I pulled out another apron pattern from my vast collection and followed their instructions. Basically, you leave the shoulder straps unsewn, turn the apron inside out through one of them, then sew the straps and strap lining shoulder seams. The openings get sewn shut with the topstitching, which I did on the Necchi industrial only because it makes the nicest topstitching of all my machines.

The lining is a pale yellow beach-y type print with starfish and shells on it. I could not find crab-themed quilting cotton anywhere in Kalispell, not surprisingly.

I don’t have any full-length mirrors in my house, so I had to get creative with the picture of me wearing it:

Yes, it’s huge. It’s also much longer than I expected, and I am not short. The picture on the front of the pattern makes it look like it stops just above the knees. Maybe it does on someone who is 6’ tall. I would only make the long version if I were trying to look like Ma Ingalls.

I wish I had placed the appliqué a bit further up, which would have left room for some pockets, but I was totally freelancing this.

This is not my favorite style of apron as it requires a bit of work to get into it. I am glad no one was watching me try to get it onto my dress form. I was laughing the entire time.

(I made a linen crossback apron for Cathy a few years ago and used the free pattern from Purl Soho. I like that design much better and that pattern was also a lot of fun to sew.)

This project is done and I have another apron to wear. I also know how to do machine appliqué should the need ever arise again.

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I went out to the garden after lunch, intending to deal with tomatoes, but I only got as far as the lettuce bed. I put down more cardboard, then pulled up the lettuce stalks and laid them on top. The lettuce went to seed weeks ago and I would just as soon it comes up in that area again next spring. The garden looks ugly now, but all that vegetable matter and cardboard will sit under the snow this winter and decompose.

And I dug up a row of potatoes:

These are mostly Yukon Golds with a few Classic Russets. The Yukon Golds don’t keep well, so we usually eat those first. The Classic Russets are my favorites. After these dry out for a few days, I’ll sort them into burlap bags and we’ll put them in the root cellar. Only eight more rows of potatoes to dig up!

If it doesn’t rain today, I’ll paint the ice cream parlor chairs, which have been scrubbed down.

I’ll leave you with a picture of our neighbor’s sunflowers. I have never seen any this tall!

Mike was out working in his garden, so I popped over to visit with him for a few minutes. His property backs up onto the pig pasture. He’s been feeding the pigs leftover kale and beets and I promised him a couple of packages of bacon in return.

In Search of a Weedless Garden

The husband and I went out to the garden right after breakfast so we could stay ahead of the rain that was coming in. We took the two smaller billboard tarps off the strawberry bed and moved them over to where the beans had been, then spread the larger billboard tarp out over the strawberry bed:

This bed is at the very back of the garden. It was added on specifically for the strawberries, but I should have done a better job of staying on top of the weeds. The whole bed got overgrown with wood sorrel. To the left is our neighbor’s property. To the right is the pig pasture. Directly at the back of this bed—where the pigs are standing—is a small section of the pig pasture, and beyond that is another neighbor’s property.

At 20’ x 60’, this tarp fits almost perfectly in this space. I may have to leave it on through next summer, too, in order to kill the weeds underneath completely, but we’ll see how this area looks next spring. In addition to strawberries, I’d like to put an herb garden in this section.

Not tilling the soil has made a huge difference in the number and kind of weeds in other parts of the garden. The “weeds” I did have this year were chamomile, lamb’s quarters, dill, and cilantro, none of which I find terribly annoying. (And my friend, Anna, who owns the catering business, was more than happy to take the excess cilantro off my hands.) If I can get the wood sorrel out of this section, I’ll be happy. It has tenacious roots. Tilling seems to spread it around even more. I hate it almost more than quackgrass and that’s saying something.

I picked another five-gallon bucket of ripening tomatoes and then the rain started. It was beautiful. Friends down in the valley are telling me they didn’t get much, but it rained off and on here for most of the day.

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My storage container—I have one and the husband has one—is now rearranged and organized. Mine is filled with canning supplies, a few sewing machines, and a bunch of stuff belonging to the girls. I moved all of their stuff to the front of the container so they can go through it next month and decide what they want to take with them.

I ordered heavy-duty shelving. The husband was going to get me shelving from one of his clients, but that fell through. When I checked the other day, none of the stores in town had shelving in stock. I need shelving strong enough to hold sewing machines. The shelving I ordered is supposed to arrive by next Friday. We’ll put some of it in the garage and at least one unit in the storage container.

I also took advantage of the 60% off Joanns coupon that showed up in my e-mail and ordered the Warm Window insulation for the shades for the living room. At $36.99 a yard, it’s not inexpensive, and I needed six yards. The husband says he doesn’t know how Joanns makes any money off people like me. I don’t either, but maybe they make it up in volume. When that gets here, I’ll have everything I need to make the four shades for the living room and a small shade for the door in the laundry room.

We finally have reservations for the rehearsal dinner—finding a place that could accommodate 13-14 people on a Wednesday night was no easy feat. This is a restaurant my kids loved when they were little. It’s under new management, with a new menu, but DD#1 was happy to see that they still have the girls’ favorite appetizer of fried wonton wraps filled with cream cheese.

Looking at the forecast, I see that we have about one more week of nice weather before we get another frost. I’ll bring in what tomatoes I can until that happens—even if I have to set up another table for them to ripen on—and call it good. I should have plenty for sauce. All that’s left after that is grapes and potatoes.

This afternoon, if it’s not raining, I plan to scrub down the ice cream parlor chairs in preparation for giving them a coat of touch-up paint tomorrow. I’ll also cut out the new covers for the chair seats.

The Viking/Husqvarna 19E

My neighbor, Kim, texted me a few weeks ago and asked if I would take a sewing machine that belonged to her mother. I walked over to her house the other night and I brought home this lovely Viking/Husqvarna 19E:

I have never tried one of these. Kim thinks it was a wedding present and said that her mom made a lot of their clothes on it. The husband asked me how old this would be, so I did a bit of research. This model is an early 60s vintage. One source I found said that the retail price on this machine in 1963, according to an original receipt, was around $350. That would have made it higher-end machine at that time. It’s solid, all metal, but still compact enough that it would make a great machine to take to classes. The detachable flatbed is fabulous. I am hoping to find some time this winter to work on machines and can tune this one up. It doesn’t need much.

Thank you, Kim!

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The house is a huge mess, which is partly due to canning season when I always have canners and jars and food everywhere, and partly due to us trying to get things organized for the wedding. Going through the house one room at a time is on my list for this weekend while the husband is here to help me move heavier items.

The grapes are starting to ripen. One of our (now former) employees has been making wine from our grapes the past couple of seasons and sharing it with us. The first year, I gave them the grapes. Last year, I gave them grapes and the juice I had canned (just juice, no sugar). I think I’ll steam the grapes again this year and can the juice, and that way, they can get the wine started later in the season. They’re just as overwhelmed with stuff coming in as we are.

We need to pick up the new fridge this weekend. I am glad it will be here in time for butchering next weekend because I want to try an experiment this year. I always clean and freeze the chickens immediately after butchering. Nicole Sauce has mentioned, on the LFTN podcast, that she thinks it’s better to wait about 24 hours before freezing them. Freezing them after they’ve gone through rigor mortis seems to make a big difference in how tender they are when cooked. I usually make soup or stock out of our chickens because they are so tough otherwise, but it would be nice to be able to roast one. In order to try this, though, I need a place to keep the chickens refrigerated before I freeze them.

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I am going to complete the current apron project, finish sashing the Noon and Night quilt and sew the border on, and that may be it for sewing until the wedding is over. We’re moving into that time of year when the husband and I usually sit and watch YouTube after dinner, and I have plenty of handwork to do. It takes me a while to get used to sitting again, because during the summer, I am moving all day.

I may also take a vacation after the wedding and go to Spokane for a long weekend. It occurred to me the other day that I need the break not so much from the physical activity, which I enjoy, but from the mental load of having to worry about all these animals. Do they have food? Do they have fresh water? Are the roosters fighting with each other and drawing blood? Is the lame pullet okay? I am constantly thinking about pigs and chickens and that is almost worse than worrying about children.

And the husband—I also worry about the husband, LOL.

Last year, Elysian and I went to the Spokane Food and Farm Expo at the end of October and had a blast. I wish we could do that again this year but it’s been cancelled. We’ll go next fall.

Thinking About Roosters

I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about roosters lately. We scheduled our butchering day for next Saturday, so I’ve got to decide who gets to stay. We don’t enjoy butchering day. That’s part of why it’s so hard to get it on the schedule. However, the chicken coop resembles a circus tent these days and something has to be done.

Roosters have a job. Interestingly, we value our roosters for the very thing that society seems to have developed a dislike for, which is masculinity. (That could be a whole ‘nother blog post in itself.) Our roosters are expected to protect the flock from predators. Even though our chickens are inside a fenced yard, when they sense a threat (like a bear), those roosters will hustle all the hens into the safety of the coop. I’ve seen it happen. I can tell what’s going on out there by listening carefully to the sounds the roosters make. Free-range roosters have even been known to sacrifice themselves to predators for the sake of the flock.

A good rooster will seek out food sources and make sure the hens get fed. When I put food scraps out in the chicken yard, the roosters go over to the pile, check out what’s there, and make a specific noise to call the hens over. Some roosters will even parcel out choice morsels.

The roosters keep peace in the coop by inserting themselves between squabbling hens or by keeping younger roosters from hassling the girls. I like to watch my Buff rooster strut around like he owns the place.

These are all lessons that I want my roosters to learn. Some of them figure their job out faster than others. I’ve been out in that coop many times over the past couple of weeks, watching the juvenile roosters and trying to figure out who’s got the most potential. I only want two roosters. My Buff rooster holds the top spot now and he gets to stay. Initially, I thought the baby rooster from the Light Brahma mother would be a good one, but he’s been surpassed by a rooster out of a White Orpington mama. The White Orpington rooster is a fine specimen physically, and he’s also figured out what his job is. Even though he won’t eat out of my hand like his father does, he will come and stand next to me until I scatter some scratch grains around, at which point he calls the hens over. He spends his day out among the hens in the chicken yard and seems to have acquired a nice harem. I would keep him, but I have someone interested in taking him and I will be happy to see him go to a good home.

The other rooster I like is out of a Black Australorp mama. He is a beautiful mahogany color with black tail feathers. Like the White Orp rooster, he spends most of his time out in the yard. He seems to be a calming influence and gets along with his daddy. I think he’s going to be the one that I keep. He maintains his distance from me, but he’s never shown any aggressive behavior.

I’ve also got two juvenile purebred Buff roosters and I would like to give them to good homes, but no one wants roosters. I belong to a couple of local poultry groups on Facebook and it seems like everyone is trying to find homes for extra roosters. As much as I hate the thought, I think the rest of them are destined for freezer camp.

Not all aspects of homesteading are fun.

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I picked cantaloupes yesterday:

This is a variety called Minnesota Midget. They never get much bigger than a softball, but they are sweet and delicious.

I’m up to about 35 gallon bags of frozen tomatoes. I’ll keep going until a frost takes out the plants. I reorganized the storage pantry yesterday and moved older stock to the upper shelves to get used up. We’re down to six quarts of tomato sauce from last year’s batch.

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And I finally did some sewing. I finished sewing down the appliqué:

The instructions suggested invisible thread and a narrow zig-zag for the letters. I tried that and it was an unqualified disaster, so I switched to 50wt black Aurifil instead. I did a narrow zig-zag around the cursive letters, but for the plain letters, I did a simple straight stitch inside the edge of each letter. When I ordered the nonstick needles from Amazon, only the size 90/14 were in stock. That size worked fine for the blanket stitch part of the motif. To appliqué the lettering, though, I had to switch to a smaller size needle. The nonstick coating really does make a difference. I was getting adhesive buildup and an occasional skipped stitch with the smaller needle. I see that the smaller nonstick needles are now in stock at Amazon, so I’ll order a couple of packages just to have on hand.

The appliqué is done, though, and I am satisfied with it. Now I have to put the apron together. I ran the outside edges of the apron pieces through the serger, because that Essex linen likes to fray. The apron is lined and all the edges will be enclosed in the seams, but it’s good to be thorough.

Nineteen Quarts of Apple Pie Filling and Some Lettuce

I’ve made four trips to town in the past three days. I find that a bit horrifying because I try to keep my trips to town to twice a week, usually Monday and Thursday. Some of that was due to poor planning on my part; some of it was due to events beyond my control. I had errands to run Monday morning that couldn’t wait until Tuesday, when I had a dentist appointment. On Monday afternoon, I got an Amazon order for knitting books, but when I went to pack them up, I discovered that the boxes I had for packing were the wrong size, even though they looked like the correct ones, which is why I hadn’t put any more on the shopping list. I got more on Tuesday after my appointment, but had to run the boxes into town yesterday. UPS charges $15 to pick up here. Amazon is very picky about how orders are packed and when they are shipped and will ding your account if you don’t follow their rules exactly.

[Town is 17 miles away and a good 30-minute drive depending on traffic. On Tuesday morning, it took me 45 minutes because I hit traffic on my way to an 8:00 a.m. dentist appointment. Seventeen miles may not sound like much, but it gets old quickly. It’s rather like when I drive to Great Falls—which is a four-hour trip over the mountains—and I realize that that same route took Lewis and Clark months to traverse.]

I came home from town yesterday morning intending to transplant lettuce, but just as I got out to the garden, my cell phone rang. It was the husband. He had met with an equipment rep (which I knew was on the schedule) and decided to go ahead and purchase the piece of equipment. The rep was heading back to Idaho and preferred a cashier’s check for payment. I said to the husband that I could go back to town, but first I had to call the bank and find out how they wanted to handle this as all the lobbies are closed.

Thankfully, this is a local bank where we have done business for over two decades. They know us and were happy to accommodate my request and said they would have the cashier’s check waiting at the drive-through within the hour. I picked it up, called the rep, and arranged to meet him in the K-Mart parking lot. His GPS sent him to Target, however, so I told him to stay put until I got there. I handed off the paperwork and made it back home by 2:30 p.m. I got the lettuce transplanted but still have to put up the hoop.

The new piece of equipment is supposed to arrive on Friday. I need a demonstration of what it does before I can explain it to anyone, but it will save the husband some labor and that is significant.

So, what have I accomplished this week besides driving around the county? I canned 19 quarts of apple pie filling on Monday and Tuesday:

These are the State Fair apples I got from Susan. I was going to add in the Golden Delicious apples from our tree, but they still don’t seem to be ripe. This is the first year that tree has produced fruit, so I don’t have a frame of reference. I don’t think they need a frost. They clearly need another week or two, though. If the husband doesn’t eat them, they likely will end up as applesauce.

The dentist pronounced my teeth “very healthy.”

I got a flu shot yesterday. I took some ibuprofen immediately afterward but forgot to take some after dinner—because I felt fine—and woke up around 10 p.m. feeling just awful. That always happens when I get a flu shot. I took more ibuprofen and I’m feeling better this morning.

After I get the hoop up and bring in the cantaloupe and tomatoes, I plan to spend the rest of the day sewing.

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I was going to go to Seattle again next weekend, but the wildfire smoke has been so bad that I-90 has been closed periodically across the middle of Washington state due to low visibility. I’m going to stay home. DD#1’s wedding is less than a month away and little details that need to be handled keep popping up here and there. A wedding with 25 family members seems to be no less complicated than one with 125 guests, but we’re looking forward to it.

Calling All Coffee Lovers!

I’ve mentioned Nicole Sauce and the Living Free in Tennessee podcast here before because I have been a huge fan of the podcast almost since the very beginning. The podcast is a great resource for newbie and veteran homesteaders alike. Nicole has also built a very vibrant online community on both Facebook and MeWe. Recently, she helped launch the Unloose the Goose podcast with other members of the liberty/agorist movement.

In addition to homesteading and hosting a podcast, Nicole runs a very successful coffee roasting business. I am particularly fond of her Jack’s Bourbon-Cooled Sumatran coffee. Nicole recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to enable her to expand her business. I thought some of you might want to know more about Holler Roast Coffee and the crowdfunding campaign. I am a supporter at the Polar Espresso level—join me and start enjoying some great coffee!

What’s Holler Roast Coffee?

Nicole Sauce occupies a typical Tennessee holler next to a stream and near a lake – with, over the years, 30 or so temporary and permanent cats and dogs (never that many at the same time!), 4 pigs, 2 goats, hundreds of chickens and ducks, side hustles, and an evolving food growing plan. 

For 10 years, she has concentrated on roasting and selling small-batch, quality coffee. In fact, Holler Roast Coffee has expanded since it began, thanks to a spreading community of coffee drinkers. It’s now a thriving coffee business.

Nicole, who’s frugal but not cheap, has worked with the best equipment she can afford, including the pivotal piece, the coffee roaster. For a year or so, she has pushed her roaster  to the limits of its capacity. One day, it caught fire, a sure sign that it is time to install a bigger roaster. She has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help expand her roastery.

Crowdfund the Roastery

At the core of this campaign is the idea of pre-selling coffee: you buy it now, which enables Holler Roast to buy necessary equipment. But KickstartHollerRoast.com doesn’t end there. They've assembled a set of backing levels with different "perks" – Holler Roast items, coffee tasting experiences, equipment to make coffee, dedicated time with celebrities, and, of course, just coffee. Interested already? You can join the campaign here.

Launched September 13, the campaign only runs for a month.

During the first two days after it was launched, this crowdfunding campaign reached its first benchmark. So Nicole rolled out a set of stretch goals that unlock new rewards as benchmarks are reached. You can read all about them here.

Holler Roast Coffee is great. They provide excellent customer service and Nicole does the hard work of tasting many coffee beans each season to choose the best to offer her clients.

I hope you will consider supporting Nicole as she expands her coffee business. Here are the links to her crowdfunding campaign and to Holler Roast Coffee.

KickstartHollerRoast.com

HollerRoast.com

Trying Out a New Technique

The wildfire smoke has been pretty thick here the past couple of days. I decided that yesterday afternoon would be a good time to stay inside and get some sewing done. The Janome is still set up for machine quilting, with the blue dot bobbin case installed, and I wanted to finish the machine appliqué part of the apron before I change the machine set-up back to regular sewing.

[Janome helpfully makes a special bobbin case for machine quilting when using a heavier thread in the needle than the one in the bobbin. The special bobbin case eliminates the need to adjust the bobbin tension to accommodate the heavier top thread. It has a blue dot on it to differentiate it from the red dot on the regular bobbin case.]

For this appliqué, I used Signature 40wt in the needle and Aurifil 50wt in the bobbin, which is basically the same combination I use for machine quilting. I had the open toe foot on and the even-feed mechanism engaged. This is Mode 2, stitch #36:

It went smoothly, although I had to sew slowly and pivot a lot. I found the sweet spot on the foot pedal that let me stitch one stitch at a time. The stitch width was set at 3 and the length at 1. I do think that nonstick Schmetz needle made a difference. If I were going to be doing a lot of machine appliqué, I’d lay in a stock of them.

This is what the whole motif looks like:

I need to finish the applique around the lettering. The pattern recommends invisible thread and a narrow zig-zag stitch for that part. You can see that some of the lettering doesn’t want to stay adhered to the background, so the sooner I get that stitched down, the better.

The apron on display at the store where I bought the pattern was a crossover back style lined with some Kaffe Fassett quilting cotton. I am making a similar style crossover apron, although I am not sure what I will line it with. It might end up just being a plain muslin. We’ll see. This is the Essex Linen I picked up in Spokane a few weeks ago.

I’ve been watching a lot of Edyta Sitar’s “Quilting Window” videos on YouTube. She has such a delightful accent. She is a big fan of making items like doll quilts to test out patterns and techniques. That makes a lot of sense—it’s far easier to find out if you like machine appliqué on something like an apron rather than trying to make a giant quilt. This appliqué project has been fun, but I don’t plan on making a career out of it.

[I also found a Roku channel called News On that runs news broadcasts from major cities around the US. When we first moved to Montana, we could pick up the Spokane TV stations on the antenna, but they are no longer available. Now I can watch the broadcasts from both Spokane and Seattle, which is enormously helpful for knowing what’s going on there.]

I am going to try again today to get the apple pie filling done. The apples will keep for a few weeks yet, but I need to get that project done and crossed off the list. The husband got all but two small pieces of siding installed on the back of the shop before it got too dark to work out there. (We’re losing something like 4 minutes of daylight a day now.) He’ll finish that up some evening this week.

The Moving Target To-Do List

I did not get apple pie filling made yesterday. I pulled out my Putting Food By book to look at the recipe and remembered that I didn’t have apple juice. I hadn’t bought any in town Friday morning because I hadn’t expected to pick apples that afternoon. I probably should get into the habit of buying it at the start of the season to have on hand.

[I do have ClearJel, however. LOL.]

I looked at the to-do list while I tried to decide what to do next. At any given point in time, I have about a hundred things on that list; not having something to tackle next is not a problem. What is a problem, however, is coordinating my to-do list with the husband’s to-do list. I knew he wanted to work on the shop siding yesterday. He had also said we could go to town for date night and pick up a refrigerator if I found one. Having deferred the apple pie filling project, I thought I might go to Sears—ours is a “Hometown Dealer” and only carries appliances and tools—but if they had a fridge in stock, we’d have to get it before they closed at 6:00 p.m. I didn’t think he wanted to stop working that early, and he definitely didn’t want to drive around Kalispell with a fridge in the back of the truck while we got dinner somewhere.

After some discussion with him, I decided to go to town. We would reassess the rest of the schedule depending on what I found. Now that tourist season is over, a trip to town on the weekend isn’t so awful. I went to the Sears store and discovered they had an 18 cu. ft. Kenmore fridge on sale that would be delivered to the store by the end of next week. The husband will pick it up next weekend. Done.

I stopped at the grocery store and got half a dozen bottles of apple juice and a few other things on the list. Done.

I checked in at Joann Fabrics, where I used a 50% off coupon to buy part of the fabric for making the insulated window shades. I am using 108” wide fabric, and rather than wrestle with a huge chunk of it, I am buying it in two pieces to make it easier to handle. I’ll pick up the other half of it next time I am in town. Done.

By the time I got home, though, it was almost lunchtime and too late for me to start making apple pie filling. I need to start those projects early in the morning or I lose steam halfway through. I looked at the to-do list again. Sometimes things need to be done in a specific order. Date night had to be rescheduled, so I needed something for dinner. The six peaches I picked from our tree were perfectly ripe. I had taken out a jar of peaches and a pie crust the night before (I use frozen box crusts—don’t judge), so I blanched the peaches, removed the skins, and cut them up and added them to the canned peaches and made a pie. In order to get to the freezer to pull out something for dinner, I had to sort through the tomatoes that were ripening on top of the freezer, wash the ripe ones, and bag them up. Before I could put them in the freezer where I am keeping them until I get enough to haul them over to the pork freezer in the rental house garage, I had to clean out that freezer and move the raspberries and corn downstairs to the fruit and vegetable freezer in the basement. While I was in that freezer, I found a rack of spare ribs that needed to be eaten (don’t ask me why they were in there), so I put those in the oven to cook all afternoon.

[If you give a moose a muffin…]

The husband came in to eat lunch, so I cut open the one ripe (so far) Minnesota Midget cantaloupe and split it with him, then I headed out to the garden to pick tomatoes. I brought in another 25 pounds to ripen on top of the freezer. I made a salad to go with the ribs and cleaned up the kitchen. The tomatoes I had set aside for seed saving were ripe, so I cut those open, squeezed out the seeds into some water to ferment for a few days, and labeled the jars.

I looked at the to-do list again and thought I might work on re-covering the ice cream parlor chairs, so I went and got my toolbox out of the old garage. After I took the seats off and removed the old fabric and foam, though, I decided that the chairs really need to be scrubbed and re-painted. The husband does not have that color green in his arsenal of spray paint, and I wasn’t going to go back to town to get the color I needed, so that project is on hold for a few days.

At that point, the only thing left to do was to make myself a whiskey sour and go sit on the porch for a bit. The husband, having had only one item on his to-do list yesterday, was able to get half the siding on the back side of the new shop. He’ll finish that today.

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I separated that little lame pullet from the rest of the flock yesterday morning. We put her in the section of the coop where we keep chicks until they are big enough to integrate with the rest of the flock. I now have a bunch of sexually mature juvenile roosters and they saw her as an easy target because she couldn’t get away quickly. They were harassing her constantly and she spent most of her time hiding in a corner. Now she can still see the rest of the chickens—and the juvenile roosters can see her, which is driving them nuts but I don’t care because they are shredding my last nerve—but she’s safe in there. Once the excess roosters are dealt with, I’ll put her back in with the rest of the flock. She can hold her own with the other hens.

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The bean pods are drying nicely in the greenhouse. I popped some open to see what was inside.

They are, from left to right, Jacob’s Cattle Beans, Vermont Cranberry and Kebarika (they look very similar, although one is burgundy and one is more purple) and Great Northern.

Apples and Pears and Missing Appliances

Susan texted me around noon yesterday and said she was getting ready to pick State Fair apples. I have a State Fair tree, but it didn’t produce this year. (Sometimes trees that produce heavily one year take the next year off.) She had told me I could have some State Fair for apple pie filling if I wanted them. Usually I use Duchess of Oldenburg apples, but her Duchess tree was also on vacation this year.

I use what’s available. The husband doesn’t care as long as apple pies appear on the menu.

I grabbed my new harvesting apron—thank you, Amazon—and headed up the road. We spent the afternoon up in the apple trees:

We got the State Fair and Summer Rambo apple trees cleaned off, then picked one of her pear trees (the name escapes me). This was an entirely fabulous way to spend a September afternoon. The temps were perfect, the skies were blue (smoke has not yet come in from California), and Susan is a delightful harvesting companion.

She showed me the grafted trees she started:

These include a Westfield Seek-No-Further (scion wood I ordered from Fedco) and a Northern Lights from her tree, both for me. She also started a Duchess for me, but the graft didn’t take. She said she would try again next year. These will be ready to plant in our orchard next spring. Yay!

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I’ve had the Billboard Tarps website open on my desktop and have been checking it every day in the hopes that they would restock the 20’ x 60’ recycled billboards. I refreshed the page yesterday and saw that they had ONE tarp that size back in stock! I ordered it. We’ll put that one on the strawberry bed and move the other ones over to other places that need to have some weeds killed.

I also spent some time in town yesterday trying to buy a refrigerator. Freezers have been an extinct species now for many months, but I did not expect fridges to suffer the same fate. We don’t NEED another refrigerator, but I thought it might be nice to have an extra one out in the old garage, smaller than a full-size fridge but larger than the dorm fridge we keep on the porch to hold eggs during the summer. We can’t run the porch fridge during the winter because it gets too cold, and I don’t have room in the house fridge for that many eggs.

I tried to do some research beforehand, checking Lowes and Home Depot websites and making notes what appeared to be available. When I got to Lowes, however, I discovered that a) there were no employees in the appliance department and b) the stock on the floor bore no resemblance to what had been listed on the website. After 20 minutes of trying to find a live human being to talk to, I left and went across the street to Home Depot.

The Home Depot employee in the appliance department basically laughed at me when I said I wanted to buy a fridge. They can order one, but—as has been the fate of so many items since the start of this pandemic—most of the fridges seem to be stuck on slow boats coming from China. I’d like to have this fridge before the wedding in case we need it. The guy who was helping me said that was doubtful. He wouldn’t sell me a floor model.

I went back over to Lowes hoping that a human being had appeared in the appliance department while I was away. Nope. I found a woman in a different aisle who told me that she wasn’t even a Lowes employee—she was a contractor—but that she had been pitching in when she could, which was mostly to tell customers that no one was staffing the appliance department. I then spoke to another couple who appeared to be waiting, as well, and they told me that apparently, several Lowes employees in the appliance department had either been laid off or quit. Furthermore, those employees had not, for whatever reason, maintained the database showing what items were in stock, so what was on the floor and in their warehouse bore zero resemblance to what was listed on their website. Instead of being on the floor talking to customers, the new employees were in the warehouse trying to figure out what was available for sale.

I think the small Sears appliance store in town still has a fridge for sale; I looked at it earlier in the week. I will call today to find out. We can pick it up on date night tonight.

I’ll be making apple pie filling today and getting back to sewing eventually.

Secret Sewing is Done

I finished the secret sewing project yesterday and can cross that off the list. Yay. It was a fast, fun make and I am thrilled with how it turned out.

These arrived in the mail:

I can now begin working on the appliqué apron project. I probably could manage the appliqué project just fine without these “super nonstick” needles, but they came highly recommended and I’m at the point in my life where I don’t like to monkey around if I don’t have to. In fact, it occurred to me more than once while working on that secret sewing project how much I appreciate having the correct tools for the job. When I needed to round off some corners, I grabbed my 6-1/2” Creative Grids round template and boom!—it was done. No messing with cardboard templates. When I had to make narrow double-fold bias tape, I got out my bias tape maker and ironed the strip of fabric perfectly in seconds.

My time is valuable, especially in the fall.

I dutifully entered my 19 pints of carrots into my canning journal. That has been so helpful for me—I can look back and see when things ripened last year and how much I was bringing in and preserving. We are right on schedule for 2020. I put 25 gallon bags of tomatoes into the pork freezer yesterday and they are still coming in.

And while I was going through some of my MIL’s things, I found this:

It’s her canning list from 1973. The husband would have been seven years old. Sixty-one quarts of tomatoes sounds about right; I usually do between 50 and 75 quarts. (With the bumper crop of tomatoes this year, I may go up to 100.) Sixty-three quarts of peaches also sounds reasonable given how much the husband likes fruit and especially fruit pies.

I was talking to our renter the other day and he mentioned that when I came home from Seattle, he noticed how excited the animals got. He said, “The pigs were running around, the chickens were crowing, and your domestic turkeys were making noise.” I thought to myself, “Domestic turkeys? I don’t have domestic turkeys,” but I was standing outside with the husband yesterday before he went to work and one of the wild turkeys—one of the mamas with the babies—walked up onto the porch.

Apparently, I have domestic turkeys. And they must have sent out a memo because there has been another mama with half a dozen tiny ones hanging out here lately. They must think the yard is a safe place. The free scratch grains probably don’t hurt, either. It’s fine. Lila sees them as additional livestock to protect and leaves them alone.

Speaking of Lila, we’re on bear alert here—she went berserk yesterday morning and started in with her “Danger, Will Robinson!” bark that she saves for bears and giant toads. I ran upstairs to grab the shotgun while the husband went out to see what was happening. (He had the can of bear spray.) Several deer and turkeys ran out of the woods in our direction but we didn’t see a bear. This is the time of year when the bears are out fattening up for winter. No doubt they’d love a chicken dinner.

Safe From the Cold

The temperature dipped down to 28 yesterday morning before the sun came up. I went out to check on the tomatoes mid-morning. They were nice and toasty under their concrete blankets:

I left the blankets on all day as it never got much above 60. The blankets are light enough that they don’t damage the plants. I’ll take them off today as it is supposed to warm up considerably. We shouldn’t have another frost this week.

I got my carrots processed:

Two 10-pound bags of Costco organic carrots yielded 19 pints. I was being lazy and ran the carrots through the food processor to slice them, but some of them were so skinny that they ended up being “chipped” rather than sliced. Oh, well. They are destined for soups and stews this winter so it shouldn’t matter.

I love my All-American canner:

This is the one that the husband brought home from the neighbor’s shed. She was moving and asked him to help clean out the shed and told him he could have whatever was in there. I already had a smaller All-American so he knew what it was worth. A new canner this size runs about $400. We put $25 worth of new parts into it and now it is the backbone of my food preservation system. I can do 14 quarts or 19 pints at a time in two tiers.

My kitchen is perfectly designed for canning. The stove is in the middle of the island and accessible from both sides.

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I did not sew yesterday. I had to go to town in the morning, so I stopped at Joann Fabrics to do some research. I’ve figured out what I need for the insulated curtains. I will start by making four of them for the living room windows. I also have a table and set of chairs that came from my grandmother’s ice cream parlor in Ohio. They are out on the porch. About 10 years ago, I painted the chairs and re-covered the seats, but we got Lila shortly after that and she had anxiety issues and chewed up one of the chairs. I am going to take the seats off, replace the foam on the damaged one, and re-cover all of them with new fabric.

A wedding is a good reason to get all of the home improvement projects done.

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I added another podcast to the queue yesterday. This one is called Home Processing from Pasture to Plate. The host runs a mobile butchering operation in Texas. He is also part of the Living Free in Tennessee MeWe group, which is how I found out about the podcast. Monday’s episode was about another mobile processor, also in Texas, who is being harassed by the state for supposedly violating state meat processing laws; however, the law that she is accused of violating contains a specific exemption for her type of business. She was forced to shut down and now—if she wants to fight this—faces an expensive legal battle to prove that she wasn’t in violation of anything. This is bullying by the state, pure and simple. I am a bit surprised that it happened in Texas, but then again, this kind of stuff is cropping up more and more frequently.

I’ve mentioned before that we don’t have enough meat processors here in Montana. One of my relatives in Ohio, who also farms, told me yesterday that he didn’t raise pigs this year for the very reason that the processors there didn’t have room in the schedule until January. We got the last processing date in November for our pigs, and that’s at a processor two hours away.

Joel Salatin has noted repeatedly that all of these commercial food preparation/preservation laws are so complex and expensive to comply with that they have driven smaller processors out of business. Of course, the large corporate processors don’t mind having their competition eliminated, but it skews the food supply system in a dangerous way. Remember the meat shortages of a few months ago? Some people will claim that these laws are there to ensure safety, but I’d much rather get meat from a local producer than from some huge conglomerate. And if you are butchering your own animals on your own property for your own use, why on earth is the state even involved?

Weather Whiplash

That cold front didn’t bring us as much wind and rain as predicted—thank goodness—but it picked up steam after it went through here and Spokane got hammered. By late afternoon, 50,000 people in Spokane were without power, I-90 was closed through the middle of the state due to dust storms, and there were several large wildfires burning, some very close to the city. The town of Malden, WA, south of Spokane with a population of 300, was 80% destroyed.

[The weather forecasters are predicting a La Nina winter for the Pacific Northwest, noting that the two of the three largest snowfall events in Spokane came during La Nina winters. I am hoping we have a snowy winter, too, although there have been years where Spokane got inundated but the storms dove south toward Missoula instead of hitting us. So who knows? I’ll be able to tell you next spring what kind of winter we had.]

I am pretty sure the tops of the mountains will be frosted this morning. It was snowing up there yesterday:

The husband and I waited until late afternoon—when the sun was shining again—to cover the tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupes, and grapes. It was 32 degrees when I woke up this morning and I expect the temperature to drop a bit more before the sun comes up. Hopefully the tomatoes are nice and toasty under their concrete blankets.

The high next Monday is forecast to be 87 degrees.

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The husband worked hard on Saturday and got all the siding up on the front of the new shop:

He’ll finish the back side next weekend. We went with the lighter siding to match the other garage. I think it looks really nice. This is why we have an Architectural Review Committee.

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My secret sewing project didn’t take as long as I thought it would. I probably will finish it today. I also cut out the apron pattern and fused the appliqué to the front in preparation for blanket stitching it down on the machine, but I need to practice with some stitch patterns and threads, first. I am not sure if I want to use 40wt or 50wt thread for the stitching.

I’m kicking around the idea of making new insulated curtains, at least for the living room. (Nothing like 32 degrees outside to make you start thinking about the heating bill.) The curtains we have are serviceable, but ugly—I made them from panels I bought at Wal-Mart about 20 years ago, back when it was still possible to buy 48” wide panels, which is the width of our windows. All I had to do was hem them and put in a casing at the top. Now the only available panels are 54” wide. I am going to have to cut and sew no matter which way I go, so I think it would be better to start from scratch with Warm Window fabric from Joanns and make them exactly the size I need.

And I need to bang out a batch of masks for future son-in-law. I took a prototype with me to Seattle and he tried it out when we were at the zoo. He liked the design but asked if I could use a heavier gauge nose wire. That’s an easy modification.

Susan’s younger daughter is here visiting from Bozeman for a few days. She brought a friend with her who wants to invest in an industrial sewing machine for making bags and backpacks. The three of them came over yesterday so this young man could look at my machines and get more information. He knows what he needs; it’s just a matter of finding the right machine for him. I told him I’d keep an eye out.

Sweet Peaches

The tomatoes keep rolling in. We may have to plug in the pork freezer to hold them until I get sauce made, because I am running out of space in the freezer here at the house. I set up a table in the living room for the overflow of ripening ones. I had already planned to make extra sauce this year even if I had to buy a box of tomatoes, but I doubt that will be necessary.

I present to you the 2020 peach harvest:

Before you laugh, remember that this is Montana. Susan is the only other person I know with peach trees. Also, our peach trees had peach leaf curl—a fungal disease—a few seasons ago and Susan expressed doubt that they would even recover, let alone bear fruit. I will give them another year or two and see what happens. We picked these even though they weren’t quite ripe just to save them from bears and because of the weather that is coming in tomorrow.

This time of year, the kitchen starts to look like a science lab. I have more tomato seeds fermenting:

The jar on the left is Dirty Girl seeds and the jar on the right is (I think) Indian Stripe. The Indian Stripe and the Cherokee Purple tomatoes look very similar so I can’t say for certain, but it doesn’t matter for my gardening needs. I just want to save the DNA of those freakishly large tomatoes.

I picked tomatoes again yesterday morning, cleaned out the cucumber patch—that may be the last of them—and brought in the last zucchini. I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen. I had taken out more pork to grind up and season because I use so much sausage. That meat grinder I bought is very useful. And I made one last batch of zucchini bread and zucchini fritters. I’ll probably pull the zucchini plants out this week.

I’m keeping one eye on the weather forecast—the rain tomorrow is supposed to be ushered in by a strong back door cold front from Canada. We are under a high wind watch. This is the same type of storm we got back in March when all those trees came down. Hopefully, this storm won’t be as strong but I am prepared for the possibility. This is 2020, after all.

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The Noon and Night quilt is still coasting for the moment. Finishing it may have to wait until after the wedding. I need to see how the schedule plays out. That denim-y Essex Linen I bought in Spokane is in the process of being turned into an apron. When I was in Maryland in February, I bought an appliqué kit at a quilt store there. The appliqué has been put together, but the fusible webbing to attach it to the base fabric is starting to break down (which is typical after a few months). I need to get it sewn down to the base fabric before it loses its stickiness. I am going to try sewing it down using a blanket stitch setting on my big Janome machine. I’ve done zig-zag appliqué before, but not any of the fancier stitches. Wish me luck. It’s just an apron, though, so it doesn’t have to be perfect.

I also have another secret project in process. I’ll post pics after it is gifted.

Hauling in the Harvest

I brought in another 30 pounds of tomatoes yesterday after getting a little deeper into the patch and looking inside the tomato cages. I also set aside one large tomato for seed saving. I’ve got a zucchini to cut open for seeds, and I’ll probably even save some cucumber seed just to be thorough.

I pulled up the beans and put them into trays in the greenhouse to dry:

It’s not nearly the crop I was hoping for, but I’ll get at least as many as I got last year and that’s something. And that area of the garden is ready to be covered with compost for the winter.

The lavender is pretty well spent. I am going to cut it back soon. Pruning it in the fall seems to work better than waiting to prune in the spring. The pollinators have moved over to the spearmint, which has such pretty pale purple flowers:

I still don’t see many honeybees, but this was buzzing with other kinds of insects.

I checked on the grapes. My goodness.

This has been a good year.

I took a peek at the weather forecast for Monday—a high temp of 55 with rain. (!!!) It may go down to the low 30s Monday night, too, so we’ll have to cover the tomatoes. Temps are supposed to bounce back into the 70s later in the week. As long as we keep the tomatoes covered at night, we should be able to keep them going until the end of the month.

I may start digging potatoes soon, too. My goal is to have all of the garden cleanup done before the wedding. I’ve got about three to-do lists running in parallel right now. They have everything on them that has to be done in the next six weeks. I bought carrots at Costco yesterday, so those will get done this weekend. I also need to keep moving forward on some sewing projects before I have to put things away to make room for houseguests.

The husband plans to work on the new shop siding this weekend. We are on the schedule to have the heating system installed, but not until after the wedding because the HVAC company is just as booked up as all the other contractors. (He has portable heaters to use in there until then.) The replacement lights for the backhoe also arrived this week.

We are going to have to deal with the chicken situation at some point. We’re really past the carrying capacity of that coop. The junior rooster posse hangs out together on top of the nesting boxes, where they watch the proceedings and practice their crowing. All of them, all at the same time. Getting in there to collect eggs takes some doing. No one is being aggressive—they know better than that and their father seems to be doing a good job of keeping everyone in line—but there are a lot of chickens.