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.

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.