Friends at the Farmers' Market

Fall!  My favorite time of year.  The last of the delicious garden goodness is coming in, the apples and pumpkins are in full swing, and that lovely autumn chill makes me want to eat donuts and drink apple cider.  This week we tried something new, selling some of our harvest at the farmers' market. 

I spent the week canning my secret spiced apple sauce, unsweeted apple sauce, and apple butter.  I also baked some pumpkin chocolate chip muffins that were not only a hit with customers, but with Keith too! 

I brought along some of our bumper crop of sugar pie pumpkins as well.

We had a wonderful day, and sales were brisk.  I'm hoping to add pumpkin rolls and hot pepper jelly for next Saturday.  If I have time, I might bake bread too.  Since I enjoy canning, and we will eat the whatever doesn't sell, it's a great way to spend a Saturday.

It's a great way to spend the day especially when there are so many great people at the market.  Our neighbor today was our actual neighbor, Raynell from Crackling Pine Farm across the field on top of the hill.  And so many people we know stopped by our table to visit. 

That autumn chill was extra chilly this morning!  A cup of hot chocolate helped get me through until the sun warmed things up.  Next week I'm bringing a blanket!  Brr!  Poor hubby hid in the truck and slept.  He is not an early bird, and he is always cold.  He won't tell, but I think the other reason he hid out in the truck was so he could read my new copy of "Country Woman Magazine."  It isn't manly enough to read in public.  But he had better not have done the crosswords or there will be an ugly scene!

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I'm definitely looking forward to all the preparation this week and another fun day next Saturday  We are already dreaming of Spring and a full seaons at the market next year.

Saving money?

I went to the grocery store a couple of weeks ago and had a shock!  The cheap, yucky bread went up 12 cents....that's 89 cents for a loaf of yuck.  And the bread we actually like is too much to even think about.  So then and there, making a loud, indignant scene, I vowed to start making my own bread.

After doing some planning, I came up with about 50 cents a loaf if I make it myself.  That price includes all ingredients, as well as electricity for baking if I make four loaves at a time.  So my adventure in weekly baking began.

The first two loaves turned out like little bricks.  The yeast I had on hand was old.  So, determined to make bread that day, I rode my bike to town for yeast.  This is where I discover how far away The Village Food Pride really is, an hour round trip, unlike the car which takes about five minutes.  And I also discover that Village Food Pride only carries small, expensive packets of yeast.  There was no way I was going to ride all that way, totally out of shape without buying what I went for in the first place, so my first two successful loaves of bread actually cost about $1.50 each.  Oh well.  It tasted wonderful, and I felt very proud of making it all the way on my bike without keeling over.

Eventually, I found yeast in a larger jar, which cut the price back to about 40 cents a loaf.  I was full of pride at all the money I was saving, figuring I saved about $50 dollars a year.  That was before my husband and father got a taste of homemade bread.  Now we are going through about six loaves a week!  Savings are down the toilet and I guess at least we are breaking even.  I am hoping that once the novelty of fresh bread wears off, they will be back to two or three loaves a week. 

Last night I experimented with a new recipe.  The loaves turned out soft and fragrant.  Two loaves came out of the oven, but only one was left when I went to bed.  So, baking bread has been a huge hit at our house, even if our budget hasn't felt the effects yet.

Here comes the Harvest!

All the hard work is beginning to pay off...with more work!  This is my favorite time of year, canning, making kraut, stuffing the cellar full of all the good stuff the garden is producing. 

Cucumbers and hungarian hot peppers are keeping me busy.  I've got two gallons of sour pickles put up and am reving me engines in anticipation of an afternoon of bread and butter pickles.  The pickled peppers turned out just like my grandmother's (sigh of relief).  75 peppers turned into only 4 quarts of pickles, but it will be well worth the effort when we enjoy them all winter.  And those 8 little pepper plants are loaded with little peppers and blossoms again.  I'm hoping to get at least 8 more quarts before the plants poop out.

Green beans are going gang-busters!  We had quite a few jars left from last years harvest, so I'm not going to kill myself canning tons of beans this year and will consentrate on other things we are out of, like tomatoes.  It was a nice surprise to get my glorious green beans mentioned in my brother's blog yesterday though.

And our cabbage deserves a blog all it's own!  We harvested 103.5 pounds of cabbage on Sunday.  I spend most of the day Monday shredding cabbage for kraut and kimche by hand.  Seven hours later....six gallons of kraut, the real kind in crocks with active bacteria, in all it's sour-salty goodness, and a gallon of my version of kimche with two heads of garlic and killer jalepenos. 

On a different note, I'm working on some new things for my etsy shop.  I've got a couple of pillows, some scarves and a fall purse in the works.  I'm contemplating a couple new skeins of yarn as well.  Also, I got my first custom order this week, for  a  wedding. Thrilled that someone would include me in a small way on their special day.  And  both my spider purse and my fish purse where picked as featured items in Etsy treasuries last week.

Here Fishy Fishy

My To-Do list is growing and the days are getting shorter already.  Loving every minute.

The soap opera that is our flock!

Several of the hens now have names.  It is hard to not give them names when we get to know their personalities.  And all the drama of them trying to establish a pecking order is like watching a made-for-tv-mini-series.

Ron the Rooster, the smallest of our flock, is, unfortunately, at the very bottom of the pecking order, though he doesn't know it.    Yesterday most of the chickens were in the coop.  We hear, "CACKLE,CACKLE,CACKLE!"  Out shoots Ron at top speed!  It happened several times.  Then when they went in to roost last night, Ron wanted to roost on the highest rung, but it was already full.  So, he climbed on top of the hens already up there, then down he came in a flurry of feathers.  I have to say he is persistent though. This morning he was on the top roost.

 

We  have one very beautiful girl who is almost all white that we named TAPS...white/ghost/ghost hunters...  Shofar has a little bump for a comb, like a horn. She is very friendly and likes to peck at my toes.  Hillary is named after Sir Edmond Hillary, since she is the adventurous one who often goes off by herself.  Jezabel is the big, golden bully who is shooting for top hen.  She enjoys putting Ron in his place.  Penny, as in Henny Penny, is the littlest golden and just a little dingy and scatter-brained.  She is always running around in a tizzy.

The four others haven't been named yet.  I'm sure the kids will come up with some crazy names.  I'm just hoping we don't end up with a "Barbie" or "SpongeBob". 

 

They're here!

Our ten little chickens have arrived.  We were planning on 10 pullets and 1 cockerel, all silver laced wyndottes.  That's not exactly how it turned out.  The lady we bought our little flock from had some serious raccoon problems last week, so we took what was left.  We have 6 silver laced wyndotte pullets, 3 golden laced wyndotte pullets and 1 silver laced wyndotte cockerel.

We loaded them into the pig's old kennel in that back of the pickup.  They road well, piled up on top of each other in the back corner all the way from Ionia.

I don't think we will be naming all of the girls, but our little dude has been dubbed "Ron," because we are Harry Potter fans.  Harry was too obvious, but Ron was just right.  Keith insists that his middle name will be Mohawk.  So, Ron M. Weasley!  He's smaller than all the clucks in his harem, but I guess he'll grow into them.

The coop was reinforced today after I read on line last night all about evil, murderous raccoons.  We are obviously not finished with everything, but it is secure and dry, as we found out in the storm that caught us unaware this evening.  We were trying to get the chickens in before the storm hit hard, but they had not been in the coop yet and would not go in!  We finally corralled them all, and Keith and I had to take cover with them.  Everyone stayed dry and happy.

Mom and Dad enjoyed riding the golf cart out to the chicken coop this evening to watch all the action.  Amazing how enthralling all that scratching and pecking can be.  So, the flock is in to roost and everyone in our coop is in bed.  Looking forward to getting up and visiting our chickies in the morning.

Here come the girls

The girls arrive tomorrow.  The coop is almost ready.  Keith and I were on a roll a couple of weeks ago. We had our plan, materials list and tons of can-do.  After lots of reading, research on the web and discussions with everyone who had an opinion, we started. 

The first trip to the lumber yard went very smoothly, but notice I said "first."  We got a good start by finishing the floor that first day of building.  I was feeling very confident as a foreman.  The next day went just as well.  The front wall went up and the front wall was framed in with a door and window.  I actually got the math right!

Then we realized that the material list did not account for framing in more than a door, so back to the lumber yard.  Then I cut a board wrong, so back to the lumber yard again.  But it all came out fine, until I found out I needed advanced trigonometry to figure out the angles of the side walls.  That one "whoopsie"  threw it all out of square.  The walls were up, but none of the rafters fit right!  Ugh! 

Thanks to my brother, Joe, who came to our rescue, we actually got a roof on.  I didn't even want to look at another nail.   He and Keith got the roof on, felted and the shingles started just as a huge storm hit.  Keith and I holed up in the chicken house for half an hour while the worst of the storm came through.  Not a drip of water! 

So, now we have it moved into place and only a few finishing touches until we are ready for the girls to move in!  It isn't pretty yet, but chickens don't care if the siding is color coordinated.  I do, so it will be cute by the time it is finished.  We have a recycled door from an old farmhouse and great arched windows.  I think we will do board and batten siding.  American Gothic meets Foghorn Leghorn!

And I have to say that even with the little mistakes, I am proud of us.  Without any building experience, I think we did pretty good for our first try, and thanks to my brother's tips and tricks, the next project will go much smoother.

Tonight I dream of fresh eggs, little "ladies" gossiping under the apple tree, maybe some meat chickens next spring, and being that much closer to a self-sufficient life.

SALE!!!!!

SALE! CHRISTMAS IN JULY!

From now until the end of the month get up to 15% off any item. I will give 5% off to every Facebook follower, 5% off to every blog follower, and 5% for refering one friend who becomes a follower on either Facebook or my blog. That equals up to 15% off any purchase all month long!

Plan ahead for Christmas giving, or give yourself something special.

Also, I am adding a line of hair accesories.  I have three posted already and several more on the way.  They would make great stocking stuffers.

summer continues

We turned over a new, exanded garden plot behind the tractor barn this spring.  Keith had fun trying to plow for the first time on the tractor that my parents gave us for a wedding present.  The first attempt was less than perfect, but the tiller covered up the little mess!

Now the garden is in,  and we are in a constant battle with weeds.  The front garden is 30 X 85 and the back garden is 30X 25, so we have a lot of ground to cover.  I let the weeds get ahead of me. Now I am paying for it. 

Also, I gave up on weeding the carrots because they came up so spotty I couldn't justify all the time in weeding them for such a bad showing.  Then on Saturday I went out there to till up the whole mess and found all kinds of carrots up in amongst the weeds!  Dumb carrots!  Now I have to clean them out.

We are very excited about getting chickens in the next month.  Keith's grandmother had chickens when she was a girl.  So when we talked about getting chickens, she jumped right in and offered to pay for us to build the coop and get a small flock started.  We have a good start on materials for the coop from sifting through the barns and sheds.  We found some great old windows with character and wood we can plane down for siding.  We went to the Habitat for Humanity resale store and found some new shingles and a beautiful door.  We will buy new for the foundation, frame and flooring.  

The chickens are ordered and will be picked up from a farm in Ionia.  Our girls, Silver Laced Wyndottes, will be ready to lay around the last of August.  I did quite a bit of reading before deciding on Wyndottes. Wyndottes are very hardy in our climate.  They are layed back and easy to handle and more importantly, they are a great dual purpose bird.  We can get good egg production, but they also make yummy meat birds, so the cockrel will keep our little flock growing so we can have meat too.

I'll be posting pictures as we start building.  We are not carpenters, but we will have some help from friends and family that have a little more experience.  I bough a book, the librarian thing to do, but the hands-on help will make things go smoother and the end result much better.

We finished planting the garden last weekend, well that is not exactly true. The first rotation of crops is in, but we are looking forward to a second planting of beans and putting in a few crops like chard and bokchoi for fall. But it isn't too early for me to begin dreaming of the canner jiggling away on the stove and the musical ping of jars sealing.

This last week I actually got a head start on canning. Seeing strawberries in my future, I froze 9 quarts of rhubarb in preparation for jars and jars of strawberry/rhubarb jam. Last fall my father insisted on juicing gallons of grape juice so I could make him grape jelly, 27 pints of grape jelly to be exact. Now he refuses to eat grape jelly and only wants strawberry jam....go figure!

We are completely out of canned tomatoes. 24 tomato plants will get us caught up, but we have salsa coming out our ears from last year! I think that has something to do with my husband getting on a habenero kick and making the salsa so hot he is the only one who can eat it! This year I will have to be vigilant in guarding the salsa while making a MILDER recipe.

Then there are the green beans, the peas, the cabbage to be made into kraut....on the endless, wonderful list. Starting a root cellar this fall too.

So while the rain comes down today, and I have to stay inside, I can dream of rows and rows of jars to be filled by the growing veggies come harvest.

Shibori experiment

I've been experimenting with shibori knitting. I did a pillow top first, and I loved the results. I am still working on beading the pillow and choosing a backing.

The scarf turned out really fun. At first I wasn't sure if I liked the results, but once I added the holes...fabulous! I tied in buttons from my vintage button box to create the bobbles. I was so excited to see how it turned out I sat in front of the washing machine for 20 minutes waiting for the end. Then I used a hair dryer to speed up the drying. I could hardly wait to pull out the buttons and see the final results. I'm very pleased with the end product. I think I will be doing more shibori. I have ideas for several other projects.

reuse and recycle

A couple of months ago I made a total failure of a bag. The colors didn't work. The design distorted in the washing machine. The yarns did not felt evenly. Everything went wrong. But never throwing anything out, I shuffled it around while I tried to come up with some way to salvage this disaster. Then, an epiphany on Wednesday! (que angelic choir)

On Monday I made a little turquoise bag to go with some lining I had bought in a random moment at the fabric store. I happened to set this new bag down on top of the disaster, and there was a Bob Ross moment ~ "In my world, there are no mistakes, just happy accidents". I cut up the disaster purse to make applique flowers, and suddenly a plain, little purse with okay lining, made perfect sense design-wise. Woo Hoo! And...I got to use some of the vintage buttons I dug out last week!

The good purse mojo continued this morning when my first box of wholesale yarn arrived. So, I off to grab my needles and go crazy.

Button Box

Glad to say my shoulder is back to normal, and I am knitting again! My recovery prompted a visit to my mother's button boxes for some inspiration in finishing the little, cream purse that has been sitting dejectedly on the dining room table for a month.

My mom and I spent an enjoyable couple of days sifting through all of the buttons. We found some really interesting vintage finds that may be inspiring some new designs in the near future. I am please with the little collage we came up with after several failed attempts at embellishing this latest bag.

The name is not really what I was going for, but it works. I wanted to name it "Lunch at Woolworths", but everyone said that was too obscure. I guess the bright red buttons reminded me of the red of the Woolworths decore. But "Dancing Barefoot" was a pretty good compromise. The buttons reminded me of Mom making me a new dress when I was little and the excitment of getting to model it for Dad before church on a Sunday morning.

Now I am back to knitting. Working on something new ~ a neck warmer made from some of my handspun yarn. I know it isn't the time of year to be thinking of winterwear, but the mood struck me....

Roots

Keith and I went for a drive one evening last week and ended up on a winding dirt road far from our usual trek. Around one curve we came upon a broken down barn and an overgrown farm yard. Back in the brush was what was left of the farm house surrounded by an over-grown garden of flowering trees and bushes.

It made me wonder about that homestead. Who had built the house? What hopes did that farm wife have when she planted her yard with forsythia and roses? I wondered about their dreams for a good life, their family, their marriage. I wondered why a home that had been so obviously loved had been abandoned and not passed on.

It made me realize how blessed my husband and I are to live on the farm my grandfather and grandmother purchased in 1930. We live in the house my aunt was born in, my great-grandmother died in, we have all gathered in for holidays and birthdays. We preserve fruit from the orchard my grandfather planted. We grow and can vegetables just like my mother taught me. Even my love of the homely arts comes from my grandmother. (Someday I will learn to weave baskets in her honor, since it was something she always dreamed of doing.)

Keith and I have our own dreams of a more self-sufficient and sustainable life, but those dreams are built on the dreams of others before us.

No Great Flash of Artistic Insight

Keith and I went for a walk though the back fields this morning. The sky was a perfect springtime blue. The turkey were parading through last years bean-stubble. The wild apples made the fence rows a strip of white lace. I was feeling very poetic and creative. Ideas of yarn wrapping into perfect confections swirling through my head....and the pain shooting through my arm, reminding me that knitting or beading are out of the question for the next few days! My body and my brain are not in sync. I have tons of new ideas, but can't do much about it for a while.

So the above pictured purse may be the last listing for a week or so. I am pleased with how this purse turned out, but it was not some great flash of brillant, artistic insight. Orange is my favorite color, and I wanted to use up the Squiggle fringe in my stash. I found the beads on sale at the local craft store this weekend. Sometimes using up odds and ends brings about very satisfying results. I am sort of proud of the name too, Fawks in Felt. A little tribute to J.K. Rowling.

Hopefully my arm will be better in the next few days.

New purse and new pain

Finished "Purse Formerly Known As..." last night. Remember going to see "Purple Rain" when I was in high school. We all piled in to someone's clunker and went to the drive-in in St. Johns. The projector wasn't working, so we actually didn't get to watch most of the movie, but had to listen to it instead! I even remember that I had nachos with pickled peppers that night!

The drive-in was torn down years ago. Our little group has been spread all over; I've lost tract of several of my high school friends. So this purse is a little tribute to a random memory that has stuck with me for some reason.

The Beginning

Even though I've been knitting, spinning and making felted purses for several years, this seems like the beginning, all over again. It is exciting to be creating again after several months off with a pinched nerve in my shoulder and a little bit of designers block thrown in for good measure.

Last week I spent lots of time sewing and knitting, coming up with new ideas, shopping for supplies, all that artsy stuff I love. But this week has been different. This is the first time I have really looked at how I can use the internet to get my purses out there. It is all kind of overwhelming... FB, Twitter, blogging, creating my site on Etsy. Everything is coming together, but my brain is getting tangled!

In my ideal world, I would spend my day doing all that artsy stuff, but this is the real world. And there are pluses to living in the real world. I have met some very interesting people via twitter and facebook. I enjoy getting feedback from other artists I would never have met without a computer. And the internet is opening up a new market for my bags. So, jumping in with both feet into cyberspace....