Sunday, January 20, 2008

bucket lid


Forgot to tell you about this gamma lid I found! It has 2 parts--a ring that fits onto a 5 gallon bucket, and then the lid, which is screwed onto the ring. It's quite brilliant, actually. So I've been going to the local wal-mart and buying buckets for a buck, and using them to store my whole grain berries so they stay nice and fresh.

They are around $9 each, but I think they are totally worth the money!

-7!



It's really cold out there this morning! Probably the coldest we've had all year, and yet when I woke up this morning, the house was still relatively warm! I just have to do a little house praising thing here. I filled the wood stove before I went to bed, but certainly could have put more wood in there than what I did. I shut everything down as tight as possible so that it would burn fairly slowly, and there were a few coals left in it this morning. By 8:30 I had a wee fire going, and it is starting to warm up more now.

But really, without the wood stove, or my rock wall, I think this place would be absolutely freezing. When I've run the propane furnace before, it would be cold in here within a few minutes of it turning off. Of course, the fact that it has to blow cold air out at the end of each cycle doesn't help any. What are those people thinking? I know, safety and all that.....burning wood for fuel is terrible on the environment, but I have to say, there is nothing like it. And I can keep the house a bit colder because it feels warmer in here--it's a different kind of heat. The "to your bones" kind of heat.

Anyway, eventually, I'd like to get a third insulating layer put in the front windows. That would really make a difference in here.

In the meantime, here's a few pictures from this morning and of all the new snow we've gotten! Even though it's cold, I think I'll have to take Vanna for a snowshoe sometime today!


Saturday, January 19, 2008

more pix....

Amalia:



Newspaper Dan:



Travis and Vanna:



Justin, 2-fisting it--at least I think that's what they call it! A beer and other hard liqueur! (Did I spell that right?) And I just noticed that Newspaper Dan is doing the same thing!:



I guess this is what happens when you do too much 2-fisting!:



At the end of the evening, Justin started receiving calls from drunk roommates, meaning that not much sleep would be had at his pad for him and the grasshopper. So they crashed on the floor here, although I'm pretty sure that Grasshopper didn't get much sleep since Justin decided to snore most of the night. Sigh....thank goodness for my ipod! But I totally loved it that they stayed since I was able to have breakfast with them. Very nice.

And then Grasshopper was off to school again. Way too short of a visit, but seeing that it had been a year since he had been here, I was more than happy to see him period!!! Definitely wish he was around more. But such is life. At least the rest of the gang is around!

goat pix continued...

Grasshopper:



Justin:



Nancy and Diane and Travis:


Amalia and Vanna:

pix from the goat..

It seems that I totally missed taking pictures at Judy's house. Bummer! Rhiannon and I walked to the goat to check on the food, and I forgot to take my camera to Judy's. Great soup and salad to be had there! But here are some pictures from the meal at the goat!

Diane, Julie, Amlan, Justin, Rhiannon:



Justin, Dan, Amlan:



Amlan, Rhiannon, Chris, Grasshopper, Diane:



Travis and Anton:

progressive dinner pictures: at diane's

Rhiannon, Chris, Alex, Justin:



Chris and Rhiannon:



Alex, Bo, Justin, Grasshopper, and Doug:

progressive dinner in liminga

So it's been a couple of weeks again! Not too much going on. School has started, and time is once again taken up with academic pursuits. Well, you know, as many as can be fit into everything else going on! As usual, I find it difficult to balance everything, but that's ok. It's all part of the game, I reckon. At least I am reading the stuff I enjoy reading--this weekend it is about writing, though. My proposal needs to get finished, and soon! It's all interesting, for sure.

It's cold here--below 0, although I just looked at the temp and it's actually reached 0. At least 3 degrees warmer than this morning. We're expecting 0 degree temperatures through Thursday. I'm not all that happy with weather this cold--the animals' water is always freezing, and they aren't too happy, either. Even so, we're getting at least 8 eggs a day, sometimes a dozen. It's nice to start being able to sell the eggs to pay for their feed. Woohoo!!!

Ok, here's some pictures from the progressive dinner. It was quite the blast. A few adventures mixed in the deal, along with great company and great food, and you know, you have the typical Liminga neighborhood snowshoe!


Here's Vanna running back from welcoming Diane and Nancy!



Doug and Amalia:



Doug:



Doug on top of the mountain!:

Friday, January 4, 2008

dough bowl!

So I finished the dough bowl! It turned out ok, I think, although there is a soft spot that I am a bit worried about. It's the thing with using wood from the property and not really knowing what I'm doing! But it looks cool, and hopefully it will dry without cracking. It is, of course, uneven and square. Sigh....

And what a mess!!! Holy smokes. Not sure what possessed me to do this in the entry way, because now I've got some major cleaning to do. Sometimes I wonder about me. The good news is that I will be able to use the sawdust for the floor in the house. Jessica mentioned I should mix some with glue and press it in between each board. After it's dry, I'll be able to poly the floor. It might actually look clean and we won't get splinters in our bare feet! Woohoo!

And the shavings are really beautiful. Some are even red. Very interesting.

Here's a before and after picture. It was actually easier to carve then the smaller bowls.


bread

I forgot to mention that I have been experimenting with different grains for bread making. The guy I bought this place from had left a grain grinder for the champion juicer, and I ground some rye berries and oat groats for bread. I used about 4 cups of rye berries that were pretty chunky, and cut them with regular wheat flour. Then I substituted the corn syrup for agave nectar. There is very little oil in the bread now, too, because I am using lecithin granules. It is seriously tasty stuff, and very healthy. I just ordered some bulk spelt berries, rye and oat groats from the co-op, and will use the spelt instead of whole wheat flour. I'll grind those myself, making them a bit finer. (I think I'm also going to start adding protein powder!) The bread is so filling and so filled with fiber this way! And a loaf goes a really long way, unless you are me and can eat a whole loaf directly out of the oven! Warm bread with butter and honey. I can't think of many things that are better than that!

Going to cut a huge log in half this morning so that I can start working on my dough bowls. These will be long and shallow, and I can mix and let the bread rise in them. It's hard to use a chainsaw to cut with the grain, but I'm hoping that if I go slow and am careful, it will work out ok. We'll see!! If I break this project up with my reading, I'm betting I get a lot done!

more wooden bowls



I've been trying to figure out the best way to secure the wood for the bowls to a bench of some sort so the thing doesn't go flying around when I'm working on it. The tools are dangerous, and I don't want to be cutting off any fingers since this is really about having fun! I came up with this idea for the bench in the entry way after Adam showed me a picture of the way another guy secured his wood. If the pcs of wood are big, I think it will work great. Each support can actually fit on the top of the wood pc and hold it in place. It means I'll be moving the pc around a bit, but that's ok. For the smaller pcs of wood, like this one, I tightened the frame to the bench and kind of squashed the wood in between it. This kind of worked, but not well enough, especially once I trimmed off the sides a bit and made them more round. I'm thinking I need to have another pc of wider wood pushed up against the bowl, kind of like having it sit in some sort of box. Otherwise, I have no idea what else might work. If you have suggestions, please let me know! I've wrapped the bowl in plastic and will drain the water off every few days. Hopefully this will eliminate the cracking that happened in my other bowl.



But regardless, I really like it! I can't seem to get it round like "normal" bowls and they are really crooked, but maybe it will come to me with practice. That, or I have just developed a unique line of bowls that are shaped more like squares on the outside! That might look kind of cool! And why not, really? Hmmm.

Another great picture of Vanna!



And now it is time to be thinking about school! I've got lots of great stuff to read and a couple of classes to prepare for. Just so many things I want to do! All a matter of being smart with my time, is what I'm thinking!!!

happy new year!

I hope everyone is having a great start to the new year!!

It's been a while since I've been on here. Not too much going on, really, and it's already the 4th! What's up with that? How time flies. Most of my time this break so far has been spent researching and planning the garden for summer. I've got some seeds ordered and will be ordering more soon. I've decided to plant in jiffy 7's this year, and think it will save an enormous amount of time and space, not to mention mess. I've got designs for plant benches that will sit in front of the south windows, and those will probably go up at the end of the month. I was going to make them this week, but we'll be having a progressive snowshoe before school starts, and figure that there will be more room without them. And I probably won't start planting until February anyway, so it only makes sense. Hopefully I'll have time to build them then.

I've decided to do a lot of raised beds, implementing the square-foot gardening techniques and combination planting together. In planning the gardens for this year, it was pretty interesting to read about the plants that don't do well near each other. I hadn't followed this last year, and sure enough, the crops that were next to each other that shouldn't have been didn't do well at all. THe ones that thrived were by the plants that aided them. Pretty interesting stuff. I'll actually grow quite a lot of plants this year to see how it goes for starting a CSA officially next year. There are a few people who are interested in fresh veggies, so I should be able to sell them regularly. It's pretty exciting!

Oh, I also sent out an email asking if people were interested in having me raise meat chickens for them this next year. I am so not into butchering, but have been reading all this info on eating locally and supporting sustainable farming. I've realized that I can be a part of this by offering pasture-raised meat. So far, the support has been overwhelming. Orders are in for 150 meat birds, and about 50 layers. That's a lot of eggs if I plan this right! At least a dozen turkeys and a few pigs, too! I've decided to build small shelters with moveable fencing for the chickens. They can be spread out all over the place and still be safe from the coyotes and wolves that got so many of our chicks in the past. I'll probably space out the ordering of the meat chickens as well, so that most of them can spend the majority of their lives in the pastures. It will be too cold for them to be out much earlier than May, which means being inside for a while. We'll see how it all goes. I think people will be patient with me knowing that we'll be learning as we're going.

Here's a few xmas pictures. The guys loved the Drunken Goat Shenanigans book, so that's excellent. I think it's been the best gift I've ever given them!



Little Guy xmas day:



I ended up redoing some of the chimney--I just didn't like how it was looking on the sides. Here's what it looks like so far. I'm hoping to finish most of it this weekend:

It's hard to see, but there are cup handles that are glued into this side for coat hooks...