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.

The Tomato Avalanche

I picked tomatoes just before I left last week and told the husband not to worry about checking on them while I was gone. He had enough to do. They were fine, although they definitely needed some attention yesterday. I brought in close to 50 pounds. Some tomatoes were ripe enough to go right into the freezer. The others are spread out on a towel on top of the freezer in the laundry room. I tend not to let my tomatoes ripen completely on the vine for a couple of reasons. One is that ripe tomatoes are too great a temptation for ground squirrels, who will come through and gnaw on half the tomato and leave the other half to rot. The other is that the Cherokee Purple and Indian Stripe varieties are ripe before they turn full red. I pick any that have started to color and bring them in to finish ripening inside. That way, I can check them daily and freeze them at the height of their flavor.

I continue to be amazed at the size of some of these tomatoes.

I wish I could give you my secret for growing award-winning produce, but I have no idea what’s going on. The tomatoes do like that spot in the garden and have done well there before. Growing conditions were excellent this year. And I simply may have lucked out and gotten a batch of seed with superior genetics. I am going to choose one or two of these really big ones and save the seed. I am doing that with the Dirty Girls and it’s a good practice in case seed is scarce next year.

I am going to pull up all the beans today; they are starting to turn yellow and there is no point in leaving them out there. I’ll put them in trays in the greenhouse to finish drying like I did last fall. Lettuce Crop 2.0 looks great and should be ready to transplant outside soon. The husband is eating his way through the watermelon patch and the cantaloupe should be ready to pick soon. I need to pick up a couple of bags of organic carrots at Costco for canning.

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Things have eased up some for the husband, thankfully. I’m borrowing a picture from our friend Lee, who owns a farm down in the valley. One of the husband’s specialities is grain bin foundations and he poured this one for Lee about two weeks ago:

Another contractor friend of ours, Cal, assembled the grain bin and lifted it onto the concrete pad. The husband and Cal have worked together on quite a few of these.

When the husband does grain bin foundations, I have to ask if it’s for an actual grain bin, because some people here are putting up grain bins and turning them into Airbnbs. (I know.) Speaking of Airbnbs, DD#2 found out that the woman who lives in the other half of her house (it’s a duplex) has an Airbnb in the studio basement. The next time I go to Seattle, I can stay right next door to DD#2.

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A few days in the big city is a fun diversion, but I am happy to be back here with the chickens and the vegetables. I get claustrophobic in Seattle. It’s crowded, the streets are narrow, and buildings are tucked into every tiny little nook and cranny. Getting back to the open space of Montana is always a huge relief.

We spent most of our time in Seattle in the outlying areas, but we did drive downtown Monday morning. Susan’s daughter and her family are staying with a friend of theirs while waiting for more permanent housing. The friend has an apartment near the space needle and Susan was going to the apartment to watch the baby. We took 99 into town instead of I-5—that’s a lovely drive, by the way—and I was a bit surprised to see that downtown looks like a ghost town. Normally, that area would be packed with people. It wasn’t. There was very little vehicle traffic. Most people are still working from home. Honestly, it was a bit eerie.

Seattle Fabrics and Pacific Fabrics are still closed to foot traffic. I suspect they will stay that way.

I maintain my view that the majority of people are kind and pleasant and want to get along and live in peace. I find it distressing that the media is working so hard to pit us all against each other—and worse, that people keep falling for that narrative. I am in no way trying to minimize the problems that exist. I am simply noting that creating further division is not the way to fix them.

Do your part. Be a good human today.

The Mothers Take a Road Trip

My friend Susan and I loaded up the car last Friday morning and headed for Seattle. Our girls grew up together and at the moment, three of the four of them are in Seattle. Susan’s younger daughter is an artist in Bozeman. Her older daughter just enrolled in a nurse practitioner program in Seattle. She and her husband and their one year-old son spent their summer here in Montana but in-person classes started this week. Because I was going over to help DD#2 move from one house to another, I suggested Susan come with me so she could be available for grandma duty while her kids got settled.

Everyone wants to travel with me. I go to all sorts of fun places, like fabric stores, thrift stores, and Trader Joe’s. The Quilting Bee in Spokane was our first stop. I have learned not to go there without a shopping list because otherwise I get overwhelmed. I was able to find everything I was looking for:

The top is Essex yarn-dyed linen/cotton, which I need to finish a project. The middle is Northcott Fabric’s Toscana Blenders in Olive—I thought I wanted Moda Grunge in Zesty Apple, but when I looked at it in person, I realized that it had some other colors in it that wouldn’t work for what I am envisioning. The Toscana was the same shade without the color variations. The bottom is five yards of backing for the Noon and Night quilt. I wanted a black print for the backing, but black prints in 30s reproduction fabrics are few and far between. This will work. 

All that and we’d only gotten as far as Spokane!

I discovered along the way that Susan had never driven to Seattle. The few times she’d been there, she had gone by air. I’ve done this trip many dozens of times, so it was fun to experience it through her eyes, seeing it for the first time. The weather was stellar the entire time we were traveling and we had some great views of Mount Rainier as we approached Seattle.

I had booked us an Airbnb about five minutes from DD#2’s new house. We arrived Friday night and ordered in Indian food. (I confessed to the husband that DoorDash is so convenient that if I lived in Seattle, I would be tempted to give up cooking altogether and just order dinner every night.) Susan’s daughter and her husband were not scheduled to arrive until Saturday afternoon. DD#1 and her fiancé had gone to see his parents and were expected back that evening as well. Susan, DD#2, and I spent Saturday morning visiting Ikea, Half-Price Books and Joann Fabrics. After lunch, we went to DD#2’s Nordstrom store so I could return my original mother-of-the-bride dress and get something a bit less formal. DD#2 had ordered a couple of dresses for me and had them shipped to the store for me to try on. 

On Sunday, all seven of us and the baby met at the zoo and spent a wonderful couple of hours wandering around and visiting before going back to the Airbnb to relax and order dinner. We all got to play with the baby, who is just over a year old and great fun. 

Susan’s daughter had to start clinicals on Monday. After a visit to Trader Joe’s, I dropped Susan off so she could watch the baby while her son-in-law got groceries. DD#2 and I went shopping for the rest of what she needed for her new house and did a Costco run. All of us met back at the Airbnb again that night and ordered in dinner and sat and visited. 

Tuesday was the big moving day. Susan stayed at the Airbnb with the baby while the girls and I, future son-in-law, and Susan’s son-in-law worked on getting DD#2 moved from one house to another. With three cars and two strong young guys, it only took a couple of hours and went very smoothly. I like DD#2’s new neighborhood a lot. It is a bit closer to downtown, but in a nice residential area. Several of her new neighbors came over to introduce themselves while we were moving in. The landlord is very attentive and it’s obvious that she takes care of the property. 

We all met for dinner (Indian again) at the Airbnb, then said our goodbyes. Susan and I loaded up the car yesterday morning and made the drive back to Montana. We had almost as much stuff in the car coming back as we did when we went. I always wonder how that happens. 

I did buy a few books, because Half-Price Books is a wonderful used bookstore:

I am justifying this by noting that these are all block encyclopedias, so I view this as foundational research material, rather like stitch dictionaries.

I also did a big whiskey resupply:

You can buy hard alcohol in grocery stores and even Target stores in Washington state. I had amassed a collection of whiskey on previous visits to the girls but stock was getting low.

All in all, it was a great trip and we had more fun than two people probably ought to be allowed to have. Susan’s daughter will be in Seattle for the next four years and DD#2 has no plans to go anywhere, so Susan and I likely will be making more visits there in the future.

And now I’ve got to figure out what day of the week it is and what I need to get done. The first stop this morning is going to be the tomato patch. I suspect there will be a big haul.

Catching Threads

I was cruising Pinterest yesterday, looking for a small sewing project, when I ran across a tutorial for a thread catcher. I have one on my upstairs machines and love it. I bought it at the Amish store last summer and would have picked up another the last time I was there, but they were out. After reading through the tutorial, I thought, “This cannot be that difficult,” so I got out some remnants, made a few quick measurements of the thread catcher I have, and started cutting.

About two hours later, I had this:

If I make another one, I might make a few mods, but overall, this went together easily. I had plenty of walnut shells for the pincushion/weight portion, having bought a 25-pound bag of lizard litter at Petco a few years ago. The top of the bag is held open by a strip of plastic cut from an empty gallon vinegar jug. This thread catcher should work nicely and is now installed on the industrial Necchi treadle.

I am getting better about flying by the seat of my pants with my sewing projects. That’s a big step.

My Dirty Girl tomato seeds have finished fermenting and are drying on a paper plate:

I’ll store them in a small envelope until next spring.

Someone asked me why I fermented them—it is to remove the gelatinous covering on the seeds and neutralize substances that inhibit germination. Tomatoes obviously do this on their own and will pop up as volunteers in most gardens, but I think it does help when saving seed.

We’re so close to the end of August, and of tourist season. This summer felt more like a marathon than usual. I am grateful that the days are getting shorter, only because it means the husband has to stop working and rest a bit sooner. Fall really is my favorite time of year.

I am up to four gallon zip bags of tomatoes in the freezer with more on the way. I usually do at least 50 quarts of sauce, so I need lots of tomatoes. And Susan has some apples to share from her trees. I’ll be making a batch of apple pie filling soon.

The Noon and Night Quilt That Started It All

I connected with my friend Vicki and she sent me some pictures of the original Noon and Night quilt pieced by her great-grandmother.

I am trying to figure out why I thought it was on a black background?—perhaps because the binding is black? Who knows, LOL. In any case, I was tickled to see this one again. And I love the variety in the stars. Some of them have mirrored points and some have rotating points. Some blocks are oriented so the large star points are horizontal. Some are vertical. I think fabric scraps got pieced the way they got pieced and used no matter what. And many of these fabrics definitely look like original feed sack fabrics. What a treasure!

My Noon and Night quilt is still in time out. The black batting I ordered for it arrived yesterday. I’m feeling a bit like my sew-jo went on walkabout. The satisfaction of finishing up so many languishing projects is keeping me from jumping in and starting something new. I did make a few more face masks yesterday. I might knock out some zipper pouches or a couple of pincushions just for fun, because something small is more likely to be finished in one session.

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The husband is pouring a basement slab at 6:30 this morning. It is 4:49 and he just left. At least he’ll be working while it’s cool. One of our former employees—a guy who now has his own renovation business—is coming to help him.

The husband normally handles the animal chores in the morning, but I’ll let pigs and chickens out as soon as the sun comes up. The chickens seem to have reached an understanding about who is in charge. When I went out to the coop yesterday to get eggs, the baby chickens came in from the chicken yard, followed shortly by the Buff rooster. (He was hoping for a handful of scratch grains.) I looked down and all of the baby roosters were hiding behind my legs.

The big roosters do keep order in the coop. It sounds so sexist and cliche, but there is a definite way of things in the animal world. I was walking back from the garden one time and noticed two hens arguing in the chicken yard. All of a sudden, the Buff rooster came running out from the coop and planted himself in between the two of them. They stopped arguing and eventually wandered off. I’ll leverage that instinctive rooster behavior however I can. As long as the roosters understand whose hand is holding the scratch grains, they can be in charge in the coop. And I am convinced that having a well-mannered older rooster is key to the young roosters learning how to behave.

[Why yes, I do have a degree in rooster psychology, thanks for asking.]

The pigs are driving the husband a bit nuts because a couple of them prefer to sleep in the pasture at night instead of coming into the shelter, although they are big enough now that they don’t have to be locked in for safety.

We got an estimate yesterday on putting heat in the shop. Hopefully, that will be done in the next couple of weeks. Getting the heat in and finishing the siding are really the only two big pieces left. We’re planning a “garage party” as part of the wedding festivities and it will be nice to have all of that in place.

Powers of Observation

I try to make it a point to walk around the property once every day to see what’s going on. Sometimes stuff falls off my radar screen, though. We have two sections of fruit trees on our property and another on the rental property. The apple and pear trees are in front of our house. I look at them multiple times a day because of where they are. The peach and cherry trees are beyond the old garage, in the front yard on the other side of the driveway. I haven’t paid much attention to them this year because they haven’t borne much fruit and indeed, the trees are looking sorry enough that I was thinking about taking them out altogether.

I happened to be over there yesterday, though, and what should I see but this?

No, it’s not terribly impressive, but this is only the second time this tree has had peaches on it. They aren’t quite ripe yet. Hopefully I can get to them before a bear does.

We really have no business growing peaches or cherries here. Cherries do well along the shores of Flathead Lake because it’s much more temperate there. Our cherry trees have never produced anything, which is why I am thinking of taking them out. I have hope for this peach tree, but I think it will probably only produce the summer after a mild winter.

[And yes, that is a satellite dish in the upper left corner of the photo. It was here when we moved in. Some day, I would love for it to disappear. Where does one recycle an old satellite dish?]

I haven’t yet tried the rusty nail trick, but maybe I’ll give that a shot over the winter and see what the trees look like next spring.

The only apple trees that produced this year were the Red Wealthy, the Golden Delicious, and one of the Honeycrisps. I tried a Golden Delicious yesterday and it’s not quite ripe. The Wealthy only has about half a dozen apples on it. The Honeycrisp needs a few weeks yet.

My Dirty Girl tomato seeds are in a glass jar, fermenting:

I will probably do one or two more of these, because there just aren’t a lot of seeds in each tomato.

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The husband banged out quite a few things on the Honey-Do list over the weekend, one of which was hanging a replacement roller shade in our bedroom. That roller shade has been propped up in a corner for over a year. We went to Lowes after date night one time to buy it—armed with careful measurements based on the shade we were replacing, which had ripped—but the person helping us obviously wasn’t the person usually in that department. When we got it home, the shade didn’t fit. To make it fit, the brackets needed to be moved. That was one of those 10-minute jobs that never got done.

There is nothing like an impending wedding, though, to make sure that all of these little jobs get handled. He also put the towel bars and toilet paper holder back up in the girls’ bathroom. They got taken down when DD#2 painted bathrooms in March. And we hung some of the family photos that I brought back with me from Maryland.

I’ve run across a few more things that need to be done, so I’ll update the Honey-Do list and we’ll keep chipping away at it.

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We took down the fencing in the chicken yard separating the little chickens from the big chickens, and now everyone is together. As usual, there was a period of jockeying and arguing, but we haven’t had the bloodshed I was expecting. One of our neighbors said she would take the big baby rooster. He is definitely ready for his own flock. She is supposed to come get him today.

Rooster hierarchy is fascinating to me. We had three roosters last year: the big rooster who was sired by our old Buff Orpington rooster on a Barred Rock hen; a Black Australorp rooster from the year that the farm store had problems and we got a batch of supposed pullets, half of which were roosters; and our new Buff rooster, who is about 18 months old. The big rooster was clearly in charge, with the Buff as his second-in-command. The Black Australorp rooster had a small harem but mostly stayed out of the way.

The big rooster died in February, which left the BA and the Buff roosters. The Buff rooster moved into the dominant spot, but then the BA rooster went to Elysian’s for a few weeks. When he came back, there was a big fight—resulting in a limping Buff rooster—and the BA rooster became the dominant rooster. He still is. It was almost as if having his own coop full of hens with no competition gave him the confidence he had been lacking.

The BA rooster is about five years old, though, which is getting up there for a rooster. He may be ready for the soup pot. I love my Buff rooster, and I’d like to keep one of the baby roos, too. The other baby roos aren’t quite as mature as the big baby roo and it will be interesting to see which one of them develops into a more dominant rooster once the big baby roo is gone.

Egg Bites and Farm Stuff

I thought I loved egg bites when I got them at Starbucks, but I love mine even more. I did two batches yesterday, one with bacon and cheddar and one with pesto and parmesan:

(I ate one before I remembered to take a picture.)

I need more molds. I have an 8-quart IP, so I am pretty sure I can get three layers of molds in it at one time. These will be great to have in the fridge, especially on the weekends. I get up so much earlier than the husband that I either end up cooking breakfast twice or I default to string cheese and tortilla chips (I know) with my coffee. Now I can have a healthy breakfast right off the bat.

The husband was home yesterday, so when I finished messing around making egg bites, he helped me get the recycled billboard tarps put out in the garden.

I ordered these from BillboardTarps.com. Unfortunately, they have been sold out of most of the sizes for the past month. I thought that 20’ x 60’ would be perfect for the strawberry bed—and the husband confirmed that—but I ended up having to get two 14’ x 48’ tarps instead. Also, the freight is not cheap, so it’s better to order as many as possible at one time.

That whole strawberry bed needs to be redone. If the husband tills it, the weeds will just pop up again. These tarps are thick and heavy and nothing is going to survive underneath them. They won’t blow around in the wind, either. When the 20’ x 60’ tarps are back in stock, I’ll order one and we’ll move these two to a different part of the garden for the winter. These will be used solely for killing weeds. I’ll keep the lighter black plastic for planting because it already has holes cut into it.

I mowed the grass edgings in the garden one last time and then plunged into the tomato forest. It is so thick in there that I had to put some effort into finding tomatoes. Some of them were hiding in the middle of the tomato cages. I found the first Dirty Girl:

This is the open-pollinated version of Early Girl, a popular variety around here. Monsanto held the patent on Early Girl, though, so I refused to grow them. (I think that has since expired.) Susan got Dirty Girl seeds from California last spring and shared them with several of us in the neighborhood. Only one of my seeds germinated, but the plant is big and gorgeous. We are going to save seeds from our plants and share them around again next spring.

I’ve also got Cherokee Purple, Oregon Star (paste), and Indian Stripe tomatoes. I grow Cherokee Purples every year, but this year, they are really outdoing themselves. I picked a dozen yesterday that were bigger than the palm of my hand. The Oregon Star tomatoes aren’t far behind—I’ve already picked a few of those, too. Everything is getting washed and thrown into gallon zip bags and put in the freezer until I have time to make sauce in November. We are able to keep our tomatoes going until the end of September—even though we usually get a frost by the middle of the month—because we cover them with old concrete blankets when frost is in the forecast.

The husband picked the first watermelon:

I am awful at determining when they are ripe and usually get them too early. I grow them, but he’s in charge of harvesting. This one looks like it could have used a few more days but it was actually really sweet. I had a few bites. I am not a big fruit eater, though. He eats most of the melons and cantaloupes.

And, as promised, a pig picture:

This is an interesting group of pigs. The husband says I have forgotten what pigs are like because we didn’t raise any last year, but I wonder if it’s because these are a different breed than what we usually get. These are Landrace/Duroc and York/Duroc crosses. We’ve always done Duroc/Berkshire crosses in the past. I am happy to see that they have all evened out in terms of size. As piglets, a couple of them were significantly bigger than the others.

I think it’s hilarious that they plow up the pasture and selectively leave the mullein plants standing. I can’t tell if they don’t like the taste or what.

Making Room for New Projects

I am getting near the bottom of the unfinished objects pile. I put this top together yesterday:

This is the Scrapper’s Delight quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts. I made one of these several years ago and it’s currently on our bed on top of the duvet. The original pattern called for thirty-six 12” finished squares, which makes a quilt 72” x 72”, but I wanted a bigger one. This version has forty-eight 12” squares. Obviously, I had plenty of scraps. The squares have been done for a couple of months and just needed to be assembled into a quilt top. Now that’s done.

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I haven’t been out to the garden or greenhouse except to water my lettuce seedlings and check on ripening tomatoes. We’re in a lull right now. In another month, I’ll be frantically trying to get beans dried and shelled, grapes picked, and potatoes dug up. I do need to put up some carrots for using in soups and stews. I just buy a couple of 10-pound bags of organic carrots at Costco for that, which is far easier than growing my own. It’s taken a few years to figure out where to put my gardening energies, and it’s not in carrots.

I didn’t get my egg bites made yesterday—that will get moved to today—but I did spend some time in the kitchen cleaning out the fridge and using up some veggies. I made a batch of Red Lentil Coconut Curry following a recipe from this book:

Simply in Season is a favorite cookbook of mine. One of the authors, Cathleen Hockman-Wert, is the wife of our Mennonite conference treasurer. The Red Lentil Coconut Curry recipe is one I use often because it lends itself well to modification based on what I’ve got available. (I hardly ever follow recipes exactly, which is why I am such a lousy baker.) I’ve subbed in canned pumpkin for sweet potatoes, broccoli for cauliflower, and spinach for cabbage. Yesterday, I cut up and tossed in a patty pan squash that came from Elysian’s garden. This also freezes well, which is good because it makes enough to feed several people.

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The pigs have been busy with a plowing project in the back of the pasture lately. I’ll try to get a picture of them today. I think it is very funny that they selectively plow around the mullein plants. The pasture has entire sections of rooted-up dirt with mullein plants sticking up here and there. I don’t know if it’s because they don’t like the taste, or they know that mullein is useful, or what. They do a great job of taking out the nettles and thistles, though.

And I’ve been listening to roosters for the past hour and a half. It’s still dark, but they start crowing as soon as they see the porch light go on. I am going to go let them out. Hopefully they’ll hush up.

Adding to the Apron Collection

The last time I was in Spokane, I picked up a yard of laminated cotton. It is produced by a company in Seattle called Splash Fabric. They have a special process that leaves the fabric much softer and more flexible than other laminated cottons I’ve seen. A yard of 54” wide fabric was $28, which is not inexpensive, but you can get several projects out of a piece that size. I started with an apron:

I cribbed the pattern off an existing apron. I like my aprons to be substantial, so I backed the laminated cotton with a layer of coordinating green Kona, which also makes it reversible. The edges are bound with bias binding, and the straps are 2” wide black cotton twill tape folded over. The twill tape was probably overkill—plain old Kona would have worked just as well—but I had it, so I used it.

This laminated cotton is supposed to be food safe, too. At some point, I’d like to try out the elasticator foot on my serger and make some reusable bowl covers. That project is a ways off yet, however.

While I was cleaning the other day, I found a pair of men’s jeans that I think I picked up at the thrift store intending to make an apron out of them. That’ll probably be the next project. I do have to get back to the Noon and Night quilt, though, and get those rows sashed and sewn together and the border put on.

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My friend Sunnie stopped by yesterday afternoon with a special gift for me:

Sunnie lives in Texas part of the year, but we get to claim her as a Montanan during the summer months. She is a gifted artist and Glacier Park provides a lot of inspiration for her paintings. I made her an apron last summer, and when she found out we were renovating the bathrooms here, she promised to paint me a picture for the downstairs bathroom. She delivered it yesterday and I promptly hung it up. The bathroom is looking very sophisticated now. Thank you, Sunnie!

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I am going to spend some time in the kitchen today. I want to try out the sous vide egg bites in the Instant Pot and I have a few zucchinis to use up. We’ll see what other trouble I can get into. Cooking isn’t my favorite activity, but I’ve got to get the pantry and freezers organized before fall. I know there is a bag of beef bones that need to be roasted and made into stock, too.

Cleaning Leads to Finishing

The Noon and Night Quilt has been set aside, not because it has problems but because I needed to start cleaning, and cleaning led to finishing some projects that have been languishing. I put together another comforter to tie and donate to Mennonite Central Committee—it was already cut out and just needed to be assembled—but our church’s sewing group hasn’t met since March and I am not sure when or if we’ll meet in person again. I can still tie comforters here at home, but that question has been nagging at me lately. As I am the current president of that group, I should do something about it.

I made the bias binding and bound the inside edges of that Get Out of Town Duffle Bag from a few months ago. I still need to assemble the shoulder strap but the bag itself is now done.

I hate doing inside binding. I would much rather make a drop-in lining. I attached this by machine but sewed it down by hand because I think it looks nicer.

I cut out another apron as I clearly need one for every day of the week. I can’t believe how dirty I get some days. The apron needs to be put together but shouldn’t take long.

It feels good to be moving some of these projects along. In between sewing, there was some visiting with neighbors and discussions with the girls about wedding plans. My mother and I don’t want to accidentally buy the same dress for the wedding, so I enlisted DD#2’s help in finding one for me.

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Tera told me about a place in Utah that sells recycled billboard tarps. She uses them in her garden. I ordered two, 14’ x 48’, and they arrived yesterday. I’ll have the husband help me get those spread out before it snows. I needed some really heavy-duty plastic to kill weeds in a couple of problem areas and these should work nicely.

I was putting together an Amazon order yesterday—I need a good harvesting apron for picking apples and also some black batting for this Noon and Night quilt—when I ran across a company called Palouse Brand. “The Palouse” is a large agricultural area south of Spokane, and this family-run farm grows and sells lentils, garbanzo beans, and wheat berries. Their products are non-GMO and they don’t use glyphosate as a desiccant. They also partner with farms in Montana and Idaho for some of the lentil varieties they don’t grow themselves. (Lentils grow in Montana—who knew?) I was tickled to find them and put in an order for several bulk packages of lentils.

My lettuce seedlings have sprouted:

Now I just have to keep them well watered until they are big enough for me to transplant.

I think (I hope) we’re past the worst of the heat. We’ve had pop-up thundershowers the last couple of mornings and actually gotten some precipitation. (This time of year, the humidity is so low that we often have thunder and lightning, but the moisture evaporates before it hits the ground.) The forecast is for mid-80s for the next 10 days. That’s bearable. I am expecting an avalanche of tomatoes shortly. Those will get popped into the freezer and I’ll deal with them in November.

Quilts and Weddings and an Excess of Roosters

The Noon and Night blocks have all been sashed and sewn into rows. Tera stopped by Sunday afternoon and took a look at what I had done so far. She says we can custom quilt this quilt on her longarm. I am going to send her the EQ8 files and she’ll play around with some layouts.

I may take a break from that quilt today, though, to make masks. Also, I need to begin a thorough deep-clean of the house. DD#1 and her fiancé still plan to get married in October, but the event has been scaled back to just family, or what is being called a “microwedding” these days. The husband’s father and brother are planning to stay with us. I don’t think they want to sleep in the middle of a Joann Fabrics store. I have to do some cleaning and rearranging and I need to start soon.

With all of the disruptions and uncertainty, wedding planning got put on hold and we’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to get things back on track. DD#1’s fiancé was in the middle of his last clinical dental rotation in March when everything shut down and he had to go back to Seattle. The university graduated his class despite the interruption, but then there was an issue with the students taking their board exams. They finally got that straightened out and he received his dental license last week. He has taken a position with the Coast Guard/Public Health Service. The two of them will be moving to Ketchikan, Alaska, after the wedding. I am excited about this—Ketchikan was one of the stops on the knitting cruise JC Briar and I did some years ago and I am eager to go back.

Another one of our employees gave his two weeks’ notice yesterday. I was expecting this, as he didn’t really seem to be into the work and we hired him mostly because he was a friend of our other employee, the one who left to get a desk job. So now we’re down to one reliable employee and one kid who works three days a week but is going into the service this fall.

We’ll see if this guy hangs around for the full two weeks or not. Sometimes these employees give their two weeks’ notice, leave that day, and never come back.

It is what it is. All of the builders are in the same boat.

My friend Susan gifted me with some apricots on Sunday. She doesn’t get apricots from her trees every year, but when she does, she shares generously. I made a batch of apricot chutney with them yesterday. I love Indian food and a little bit of chutney is a great addition.

And I finally bought one of these:

It’s a silicone egg mold for the Instant Pot. I confess to a love of Starbucks Sous Vide Egg Bites. They are usually my breakfast choice when I am traveling. I’m going to experiment with making them here.

I think we’re going to have to integrate the chicks with the rest of the flock soon. The baby roos all had a recent growth spurt and now look (and sound) like real roos. We have six. The pullets are also big enough now to hold their own with the other hens. We’ll have to see how it works having one big flock with eight roosters. The husband reminds me that we’ve had this situation before, but I also know that having that much testosterone in a confined space is a recipe for trouble. The roosters have a hierarchy just like the hens do; the difference is that hens very rarely go full gladiator on each other. I am steeling myself for possible bloodshed.

A Quilt Comes Together

As a result of yesterday’s post, I learned a few new things about some of my Montana friends. Two of them love drum corps and one of them grew up in an Anglican church singing “Lead Me, Lord.” (And her mother was the organist.) Music brings people together.

What else unites—not divides—us?

We’re heating back up here, with temps into the upper 80s and low 90s for the next week. I anticipate additional sewing time, especially in the afternoons. I know that’s not as hot as other parts of the country, but it’s hot for us. The tomatoes, cantaloupes, and watermelon will love it. Me, not so much.

I ran across an interesting post the other day on the Vintage Sewing Machines blog. This woman lives in the UK and writes a lot of great technical pieces on vintage sewing machine repair. She has an Adler 87 sewing machine from 1930 with proprietary needles and bobbins, neither of which can be readily sourced. Her solution was to order a batch of 3D-printed bobbins. She has been using them with great success, but because of a recent heat wave, the bobbins have swollen slightly and are jamming the machine.

A cautionary tale for anyone thinking of getting sewing machine parts 3D-printed.

I went to town Friday to run errands—most of the idiot drivers seemed to be elsewhere, thank goodness—and stopped at the quilt store north of town to fondle fabric. I walked over to the rack of Kona and noted that they still didn’t have any black, but as I turned around, I spotted a bolt hiding on the floor next to the rack. A bolt of black Kona. With a note on it saying that the store was limiting the amount each customer could purchase to a few yards.

I hustled up to the cutting table, the bolt lovingly cradled in my arms, and asked for my limit. “Ah,” said the lady at the cutting table. “I see you found the black Kona. That bolt just arrived yesterday.” (It was already half gone.)

I am using the American Made Brand black cotton on this Noon and Night quilt. It is nice to work with and it would not be a hardship if that were the only black cotton I had available. (Having to use an alternative black cotton definitely qualifies as a first-world quilting problem.) However, there is something about the way Kona feels, which is why I have an entire dresser full of it in my sewing room.

I finished the last of 42 Noon and Night blocks yesterday. While I liked the half-drop setting that my friend Kate suggested, the blocks still felt crowded to me. I could have added some sashing and still used a half-drop setting, but I am balancing quilt design with quilt pattern writing and thought that might get too complicated to explain. Just because I can lay it out with relative ease in EQ8 does not mean that I can write directions to do so in real life.

[I know of one quilt book released recently that has a lot of errors in it, and it seems to be because the designs were done in computer software without sufficient real-world testing. Computer-aided design is just that—the computer is “aiding” the design process, not replacing it.]

I took all the blocks off the design wall and put them back up in a straight setting. The difference was immediate—almost as if all 42 blocks were letting out a sigh of relief. I’ve learned to listen to what the quilt wants. This quilt wants a plain old straight setting.

I am now cutting narrow sashing strips and adding them between the blocks. I did two of the seven rows last night before stopping:

I haven’t yet decided if there will be cornerstones on the sashing between the rows or if the sashing will be plain black. I might have to wait and ask the quilt what it wants. And I have to start thinking about how I want this quilted. My friend Tera is coming by this afternoon. I am sure she would let me borrow her longarm to quilt this, but in that case, I’d probably do an allover design. The other option is to sub it out to a professional longarmer and have them do something custom. I am willing to pay extra for custom quilting, but the issue is the additional time that would take. I’ll have to think about that some more (and see what the quilt wants).

What a journey this quilt design has been.

We Cannot Keep From Singing

This is a post for the musicians and singers out there.

Our church went back to in-person gatherings in the middle of June, but it’s a hybrid format. About 8-12 of us are present physically in the church house. Those who want to join us via Zoom can still do so. We have two computers set up at the front of the church. One is hooked up to the projector and projects the Zoom portion of the service onto the screen at the front. That way, we can see the people at home who are participating. My laptop computer is set up by the piano and gives a view out into the congregation for the people at home.

We’ve had to do some creative tech rigging. The piano isn’t picked up well on just the computer input, so I went to my “box of cables” (we all have one) and pulled out a very old microphone. It came with an educational software package that my kids used almost 20 years ago. The microphone is so old that I had to get a USB adapter for it to hook it up to my laptop. It sits inside the piano. As old as it is, it seems to work well at picking up the sound.

Because singing has been identified as a “superspreader event” for coronavirus, Mennonite Church USA issued a recommendation that churches curtail singing for the foreseeable future. They might as well have asked us to stop breathing. We compromised by having one congregational song at the end of the service, but everyone sings with masks on. I play my usual 10 minutes of prelude before the service, and our pastor has added two more times of music in the order of worship—one where I play a hymn and one where we play a video from YouTube. 

I’ve had to laugh, though, because it’s nearly impossible to keep Mennonites from singing. I can hear people singing and humming along while I am playing prelude. Last week, one of our members sang a hymn on Zoom and everyone around me was humming along quietly, in parts—always in parts. We make up parts if there aren’t any parts.

The day we take off our masks and break into song together again will be a fine day, indeed.

Hymn #580 in the Mennonite Hymnal and Worship Book is “How Can I Keep From Singing?” It’s one of our congregation’s favorites. I’ve got several lovely piano arrangements of it. And my favorite vocal arrangement of this hymn was done by a female group called SheDaisy. This was on their Christmas album, but as an “Easter egg.” The song was not listed anywhere on the CD. The only way to hear it was to allow the final track to play, and then a few moments later, this song started:

Gorgeous.

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DD#1 played the trumpet in high school band, so I got to indulge myself as a “band mother” for a few years. I chaperoned a lot of band trips, one of which was the District Band Festival at Hellgate High School in Missoula. As part of band festival, the kids are asked to sight read a musical arrangement. That year’s selection was an arrangement called “1861” by Jonathan Newman. It is based on a 19th-century Anglican hymn called “Lead Me, Lord.” I was so intrigued by that piece—and that hymn, which I had never heard before—that I came home from band festival and started looking for it. I have a fairly extensive collection of hymnals from many different denominations, but this hymn wasn’t listed in any of them. Finally, I went to the internet. The website Hymnary.org has a search function that brings up every instance of a hymn in just about every hymnal ever published. I typed in “Lead Me, Lord,” and guess what popped up?

“Lead Me, Lord” is hymn #538 in the Mennonite Hymnal and Worship Book.

It had been there the whole time but I didn’t think to look for it in our hymnal.

Somehow, this came up in a discussion between my friend Robert and me. We have been friends since I was 14 and he was 16 because we both played trombone in high school band. For the past decade or so, he has been a low brass instructor for the Akron Bluecoats drum and bugle corps. His big thing is pitch and intonation and listening to yourself and the musicians around you to create the best sound possible. (I know this because I sat next to him in band for two years in high school.)

Robert took this hymn and arranged it as a warm-up piece for the Bluecoats low brass hornline. Because they couldn’t tour this year, the corps had an online telethon a few weeks ago, and Robert sent me this link (it should start at 30:40 in the video):

It’s hard to play this well together in person. The fact that these kids did this virtually is mind-blowing.

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And because I think this is funny, I will leave you with a story about my kids. From the time they were little, we always sang together in the car. We started with a collection of CDs called My Little Yellow Bus, then moved on to Disney soundtracks. (I could probably still sing you every song from “The Little Mermaid”.) If I got tired of kids songs, I made them listen to SheDaisy, Sarah McLachlan, Indigo Girls, Sugarland, the Wailin’ Jennys, or the Dixie Chicks. My mother and sister joined in when they were with us. We once drove down the east coast, from Maryland to North Carolina and back up to Ohio, banging out Miley Cyrus’s “See You Again.” The girls learned how to harmonize. They also learned a few other things on the way.

DD#2 was born in 1997. The Dixie Chicks CD “Fly” came out in 1999, with such memorable tracks as “Goodbye Earl,” about two women who murder the abusive husband of one of the women, hide his body, and go on to live happy lives, and “Sin Wagon,” which includes part of the old hymn “I’ll Fly Away” in it. We were driving somewhere one time with my mother and sister in the car when DD#2—who was probably only about 4 or 5 at the time—said to my sister, “Aunt Beth, what’s a sin wagon?”

Who lets a little kid listen to music like that? LOL. DD#2 has a playlist now with both those songs on it and I just laugh when we’re in the car and she puts it on. Apparently, both girls turned out okay despite their mother’s questionable choice of music.

The Magic of Gardening

Garden cleanup continues, as does harvesting. I brought in five tomatoes and one potato that I accidentally dug up while weeding. The plant was a volunteer that was hiding. It yielded up a respectably-sized Classic Russet, though, my favorite all-purpose potato.

Potatoes are amazing. You put a gnarly-looking piece of sprouting vegetable in the ground, and a few months later, you get lots of potatoes!

There will be beans:

Not as many as I had hoped, but more than I had three months ago.

My friend Marcie brought me some beautiful carrots:

I made carrot salad with them. Yum yum.

Tomatoes fresh off the vine always trigger a specific memory for me: When I had leukemia, I underwent three rounds of chemotherapy at the Cleveland Clinic. In between my second and third rounds, I came home to Montana for the month of September. I had been told by my doctors not to eat fresh vegetables or fruits while I was being treated (just one of many stunningly awful pieces of nutritional advice I received). When we pulled into the driveway, I got out of the car, walked into the backyard, picked a ripe tomato off the vine, and ate it. I’ve done that with the first tomato of the season just about every year since then.

[“Patient is noncompliant” is written all over my medical records, in case you were wondering.]

I cut out some of the spent raspberry canes in order to give the other plants some breathing room and more sun. The pigs got what was left of the broccoli and hoovered it right up. I am allowing the lettuce go to seed and I started another tray of seedlings in the greenhouse to transplant into the garden in a few weeks.

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This book arrived in the mail the other day:

It’s an index to all the Laura Wheeler-designed quilt blocks, compiled by Rose Lea Alboum. It’s important to note that this is just an index, not the actual patterns—which I knew before I ordered the book—but combined with the CD of Kansas City Star patterns I got a few weeks ago, it is a useful resource. I flipped through it the other night and earmarked several more obscure blocks that I’d like to mess around with.

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I am trying not to overload the blog with critical social commentary, but I do have a few more things to say. A friend of mine shared this on Facebook yesterday, attributed to another FB user named John Ferguson:

“Pay the people who are working an extra $400
Watch the unemployment go back to 3%.”

While I disagree with the idea that government should be acting as a nanny state and handing out money in exchange for votes, this does remind me of the basic truth that you tax what you want to discourage and subsidize what you want to encourage. So if you want to discourage job creation and entrepreneurship, you tax and regulate the living daylights out of small businesses. And if you want to encourage people to avoid working, you subsidize their expenses and make it possible for them to do so. This turns that on its head. I wonder what would happen?

I know it’s more complicated than that—believe me, I know how complicated it is—but there is another truth I am reminded of, which is that you don’t simplify a system by adding more layers of complexity. (Health care, anyone?)

I talked to another general contractor last night who is trying to get a foundation put in. People have started calling our home number, which tells me that they are desperate, because most contractors the husband works with know to call his cell phone number directly. I don’t mind fielding these calls—I am happy to run interference for him—but the fact that we’re getting more of them and that I am hearing the same story about not enough help tells me that I am not far off in my assessment. I tell anyone who calls that the husband is not accepting any more jobs for 2020, because he’s not.

And in today’s edition of “We Hate Tourists,” I went to town Wednesday to run some errands. If I had been a cop, I could have issued about a dozen citations to people for stupid and reckless driving, and three-quarters of the tickets would have been given to people with out-of-state plates. If you want to drive like an idiot, please stay home and do it. I have never seen it as bad as it has been this summer.

Stop Here or Keep Going?

I’ve reached a point on the Noon and Night quilt where I have to make a decision. I’ll give you a sneak peek at another block:

I keep “seeing” this quilt in my head with a border. Several borders, actually. I have completed enough blocks that if I stopped now and added a couple of borders, I would end up with a good-sized throw. On the other hand, I have enough pieces already cut to make another dozen blocks, which would give me a twin- or full-sized quilt. I am not sure if I should keep going and make the extra blocks or if I should stop where I am and add some borders. I think this quilt needs to marinate for a couple of days while I decide.

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I’m always happy when fall gets here, for lots of reasons, but this year I am especially looking forward to it. This has been a difficult summer for the husband, and he doesn’t get stressed out easily. The lack of people willing to work for a paycheck has been a constant strain. He agrees to take on work based on the crew he thinks he is going to have, and then people quit. Or their vehicles break down. Or they have personal crises. Our Craigslist ads for help go unanswered. I’ve never seen him this exhausted. He knows he is, and he is working on fixing it, but it’s not like he can just stop and do something else. He’s got to get the current commitments through the pipeline. We’ve been talking to other builders and everyone is in the same boat.

I just love it when people say, “Well, employers ought to pay more and then people would want to work!” Okay, let’s have a little math lesson. The numbers are simplified here for illustration. Let’s say that someone is collecting $3000 a month from the government in unemployment benefits (funded by employers, remember), factoring in the current $600 a week extra payment. (By the way, the husband and I could live on $3000 a month; we could not live extravagantly, but we could manage.) Is that person going to get off the couch and actually WORK for $3000 a month when they can get it for free? Heck, no. So what is the incentive level that is going to motivate them to get a job? Will they work if the employer pays them $4000 a month? Some might. Some might not be inclined to work unless they can get $5000 a month. Is that employee adding enough value to the business to justify that level of pay? Employers aren’t giving out participation trophies. And keep in mind that that is actually costing the employer more than $5000 a month when things like payroll taxes, unemployment, worker’s comp, and other benefits are factored in. The employer has to pay far more—and far more than likely makes sense economically for that employer—to motivate someone receiving unemployment benefits to go out and get a job. The employer may, in fact, decide that it no longer makes sense to stay in business.

You know what motivates people to work? Hunger. Not knowing where the next dime is coming from. And I should probably point out that business owners don’t get to collect unemployment benefits. We fund our own unemployment. It’s called savings.

Call me a selfish libertarian. I no longer care. I am watching my husband work himself into the ground and I am not interested in hearing about what employers “ought to do” from people who have never owned a business and had employees.

Get off my lawn.

It’s supposed to be cool again today before another warmup, and I need to keep working on the garden. You know—growing my own food and taking responsibility for my life and all that.

Grinder Success

I use a lot of ground meat when I cook. We get five kinds of ground pork from our processor—chorizo, Italian, hot Italian, maple, and plain—and after the bacon, it’s the next stuff to get used up. We have quite a few chops left in the freezer, though, and one of the reasons I bought this grinder was to see if I could grind them up and use them that way.

I took out a couple of packages of chops on Sunday evening and put them in the fridge to defrost. The husband has been asking for meat loaf for dinner. I usually make mine with half ground pork and half ground beef, but I didn’t have any pork.

The meat has to be chilled—”crunchy,” as the instructions say—to grind properly. The chops in the fridge had defrosted just enough and seemed to grind easily:

But holy cow! That grinder is LOUD. The instructions say that it will take 5-10 hours of operation for the motor and gears to break in and get quieter. I only used it for about 20 minutes and it sounded like a wood chipper, even on low.

I ground enough pork for meat loaf and made that for dinner. I would change two things next time: I would use one of the smaller grinding plates and I might cut off some of the fat. I used what was on the chops, which did not seem excessive to me. (And the fat is tasty.) For meat loaf, though, it would be better to have it a bit leaner. Also, I need to play around with the seasonings. I’ll often use hot Italian ground pork in meat loaf for a little extra kick. This time, I used regular Italian seasoning when I mixed up the pork and beef. I prefer the extra kick.

I consider this experiment to be a success, enough that I am wishing I had bought this grinder earlier. I’ll pick up casings next time I am at the grocery store and try making some sausage links.

Speaking of seasonings, the little grocery store down in Bigfork has their own house brand of herbs and spices:

They started this a couple of years ago and the list of offerings keeps expanding. I like that they come in these large containers because I use a LOT of seasonings when I cook. I also like that they don’t contain any additives. (McCormick taco seasoning has something in it that makes me ill.) I don’t get to that grocery store very often, but when I do, I try to pick up a few of these containers. I bought cinnamon Sunday night when I went to get frozen pizzas because I’ve used almost all of what I had making zucchini bread.

I plan to make another batch of zucchini bread today and then I’m going to sew. My Martelli rotating cutting mat arrived yesterday and I want to try it out. I need to stay close to home today anyway. A dry cold front with wind is supposed to come through this afternoon. Fire season isn’t over just because we had a little bit of rain.

Why Am I Craving Pizza?

We had some lovely cooler weather this weekend. I mowed the front yard Saturday while the husband was out on a job with one of our employees, and the the two of us finished working on the yard yesterday afternoon. We’ve had enough rain lately that things were starting to get a bit overgrown. I did some garden cleanup, too, and assessed how things are going.

[Our primary residence sits on five acres and the rental house behind us on two acres, so when I say I cut the front yard, I am talking a goodly amount of square footage. I don’t have a riding mower. One of these days I’ll remember to put the FitBit on my arm and track how far I’m walking when I mow.]

We will have watermelons before too long:

A volunteer calendula popped up through a crack in the black plastic:

I had a whole row of calendula in that spot last year. It’s a nice pop of color out by the tomatoes, which are starting to provide their own color:

That’s an Oregon Star paste tomato. There will be more. Some of those tomato plants are 4’ tall.

Maybe it was all the physical activity, but I was craving pizza the whole weekend. Pizza is the one thing I miss most, having given up eating wheat, although there are some good cauliflower-crust and gluten-free crust pizzas out there. (They are not cheap, however.) And I did not feel like cooking. The Crown Vic police cruiser—DD#2’s old car, which we keep on hand as a backup—needed to be driven, so after we finished yesterday, I took a ride down to the small grocery store south of us and picked up some frozen pizzas. Interestingly, that store had Wheat Montana whole wheat flour, but no unbleached white flour.

I had an Amy’s spinach and tomato pizza for dinner. That itch has been scratched.

I missed seeing my friend, Tera, though, thanks to this goofy 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. sleep schedule I’m currently on. She and her husband stopped by after I had gone to bed and my husband didn’t come wake me up. He did give them a tour of the new shop and their dog got to play with Lila. I hope Tera and I can get together soon.

Needless to say, all that outside work didn’t leave much time for sewing. I picked a wagonload of zucchini and cucumbers yesterday and those will have to be dealt with today. I also unboxed my new meat grinder:

It’s an STX TurboForce II. This model came highly recommended by someone I trust, and I want to try it out this week. I’ll keep you posted.

The Little Things

Sometimes it is the little things that make our lives so much easier. I have a hard time keeping track of my fabric cutting rulers on my cutting table. If I lay them down on the table, they are in the way. If I set them on the shelf next to the table, then I forget where I put them.

I bought a Riley Blake Ruler Pal Mini yesterday at the quilt store. What a difference:

Now my rulers are out of the way when I am not using them, but within arm’s reach when I need one. Even my big 9-1/2” x 24” ruler fits in the holder nicely.

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One of our chicks has a lame foot. (See it sticking out on the left side of the picture?)

It’s hard to tell because her crooked foot hasn’t slowed her down any. She wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to get a good picture. I am not too worried about her getting picked on because her mother was a Light Brahma. She is big enough to hold her own against the other chicks. And she is very sweet. She is the first one to come running into the coop when she sees me, because she wants to be at the head of the line for scratch grains.

While it is fun to incubate eggs and hatch out chicks, I’ve really had to watch that I don’t get too attached to this group. We don’t want our livestock to become pets. (I do bend that rule a teeny-tiny bit for my roosters.)

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Something has been chewing on my State Fair apple:

I need to ask Susan what it might be. I got up there yesterday and cut out the damaged branch and threw it into the burn barrel. Hopefully that is the end of the problem. I haven’t had to spray my trees yet, but I might just have been lucky.

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One of the habits I have tried to maintain over the past several months is to spend some time every day processing the changes this year has brought. Sometimes I do that over discussions with the husband. Sometimes I do it while I am sewing or working in the garden. The point of that exercise is to confront the reality I see and not hide in the reality I wish I saw. For example, I knew that there might come a day when my frequent road trips got curtailed, although I assumed that would be because of a spike in fuel prices and not because of a pandemic. I knew there might come a day when we had supply chain disruptions, although I am a bit baffled at the shortages. Bleach and Lysol wipes?—okay, that sort of makes sense. Black Kona?—I did not see that one coming.

I was telling the husband last night that all of a sudden, Wheat Montana flour has disappeared from store shelves. I bought some two weeks ago so I would have it on hand for making zucchini bread, but I’m almost out (and my recipe uses both unbleached and whole wheat). I am particular about using Wheat Montana flour because they do not use glyphosate on their crops. Hopefully this is just a seasonal shortage and not something more dire, but it’s odd to have seen it two weeks ago and now not be able to find it anywhere. (I checked several stores.) And I haven’t run into this problem in the past.

Amy Dingmann, who hosts the Farmish Kind of Life podcast, posed an interesting question on social media yesterday. She asked, “What if 2020 is just the trailer for 2021?” She then went on to point out that people in 1929 had no idea that they were at the start of a depression that lasted for years. What if things don’t get “back to normal” in 2021? Or for the next five years? Or never? I have two choices: stick my fingers in my ears and say, “La la la la la,” or pay attention and adjust accordingly. Humans have an amazing capacity for denial. I won’t allow myself to fall into that trap.

Happy Saturday! As some of my friends say—“Get out there and move that needle!” although that makes me laugh because the needle I want to move is the one on my sewing machine.

The First Friday in August

I made a lot of headway on the Noon and Night pattern yesterday morning, incorporating Joanna’s comments, re-drawing some of the graphics, adding a few more, and including some photos. I am really pleased with the progress so far. Now I just need to finish the quilt.

I ordered myself a Martelli rotating cutting mat.

I have a Fiskars one, but it’s a bad design—the base and the top tend to slip apart when I am cutting. I think this one will help speed up the trimming process on the Noon and Night blocks. It is supposed to arrive on Monday.

I need to rearrange some of my sewing areas. I have stuff in all four bedrooms. I’d like it more centralized, but we have to keep beds in all the rooms for the once or twice a year when we have houseguests. The setup is great from an exercise standpoint, because I am constantly going back and forth from the sewing machine in our bedroom to the cutting table in DD#2’s bedroom. However, the most convenient place to plug in the iron puts the ironing board right in the doorway of our bedroom.

When the husband has some time to attack the honey-do list, I’ll have him help me move furniture around to make the space more efficient.

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One of our employees—the guy who has worked for us for many years—gave two weeks’ notice. He wants to get an inside desk job. This puts the husband in a bind not only because he’s down a person, but because this guy knew enough that the husband could leave him in charge of one job while he went and worked at another job. We put an ad on Craigslist, but everyone here is in the same boat trying to find workers.

A lot of people are trying to get houses built right now. We funnel all foundation inquiries to the husband’s cell phone, but occasionally someone will get our home number. I talked to one guy the other day who is trying to get a foundation poured for a shop. He said some contractors aren’t even answering their phones, so he was very happy to get a live person on the line, but then I had to tell him that I am not in charge of scheduling. The husband said that there are quite a few homeowners who are trying to pour their own jobs. You can imagine how that works out. And one of the concrete companies had to fire a mixer driver because he was driving down the highway last week, not paying attention to the mixer, and discharged a load of concrete that damaged several dozen vehicles.

Add to that the real estate market….the husband reminds me that when we moved here, in September of 1993, there were people moving out because they thought it was getting too crowded. If only it were still like that. I checked Zillow the other day—I know it’s not necessarily a good measure of reality, but it’s a useful data point nonetheless—and it noted that our primary residence had appreciated $15,000 in the last 30 days. It’s just nuts. My concern with all of these out-of-staters moving here is that they will try to turn Montana into the places they left. The first person who moves into the neighborhood from California and complains about my roosters is going to get an earful, and not just from the roosters.

Everyone I talk to is praying for a hard winter. Truly, I think that is the only thing that will keep Kalispell from turning into another Jackson Hole or Aspen. And even if the climate keeps the population down in the winter, we’re still going to have to contend with tourists during the summer.

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My liberty-minded blog readers might be interested in a new podcast called Unloose the Goose. (Try not to let the grammar irritate you.) It’s a group of some really deep thinkers including Nicole Sauce of Living Free In Tennessee (probably my favorite podcast ever), Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast, Curtis Stone (The Urban Farmer), and half a dozen other contributors. They also livecast the podcast recording on YouTube; sometimes I find it easier to watch the YouTube video because it’s hard to tell who is speaking when I am just listening.

That front came through and brought cooler and windier weather, and we even got a nice soaking rain overnight. I’ll get out in the garden this weekend and start doing some cleanup work. The corn stalks can come out and I might be able to move a few more loads of compost from the pile into the garden. I’ll also start another tray of lettuce in the greenhouse.