The Wildlife Refuge

We had our first frost last night, so we fired up the pellet stove. It was nice to wake up in a house that wasn't chilly.  Those in-between days when it is pretty cold at night but hit mid-sixties in the day are challenging, too warm for the pellet stove and too cold to be comfortable.

I did my final harvest of warm season veggies last night in anticipation of the frost.

There are enough peppers to make a new batch of (mostly) jalapeno pepper jelly. With my canning frenzy, I have come to the realization that I need more shelves in my pantry, yet another project to conquer.  The chill has also reminded me that I haven't found the right fabric for curtains in the kitchen/dining area.  I've been carrying around my yardage calculations for a few weeks  since I'm trying to pair it with another errand into the areas. The fabric shops seem to claim a certain radius around themselves, I can drive west 45 minutes to one (Hancock), northeast about 55 minutes to another (Hobby Lobby) and due south for 55 minutes to another (Jo Ann).  Many of the fabric sellers on-line do not seem the have the yardage required to cover four 62 inch long windows, which comes to 10-12 yards.  Gotta drive!


I'm looking out those exposed windows to the bird feeder, which I just filled for the first time this season about two days ago.  The chickens love whatever the squirrels spill, but the wild birds have not yet discovered it. I hope we have the variety that we had in the past year the usual chickadees, robins, sparrows, blue jays, titmice, nuthatches, cardinals, juncos, wrens, then there are (spring and summer) bluebirds (they like the posts we put in for the blackberries), blue gray gnat catchers (had to look them up, again spring/summer), Baltimore orioles, flickers, red bellied woodpeckers, pileated  woodpeckers, mockingbirds, catbirds, brown thrashers, and when a deer gets hit on the road (they have a crossing nearby) the black and turkey vultures (nasty, stinky things), oh yeah, wild turkeys (mom and five babies).  Then, of course, we have mammals deer, bunnies, a big possum, saw a fox once, a bazillion moles that make the lawn squishy. The moles are the reason some of the hawks (red tailed and red shouldered) come--they sit on the "lawn" and wait--then pounce on a mole when it comes up).  Nasty little moles ate the roots of my parsley!  Go Hawks!

The other day in the back yard we had two deer, a  crow and a bunny all just sitting on the lawn near each other, my husband said that it looked like it was an idyllic scene straight out of an old Disney movie and that we should hear perky music in the background.  Much of the land around us platted for development and now the recession is easing the 500K houses are going in, so our wildlife refuge of a backyard will probably be short lived.

Time to fill the feeder, I hope the squirrels will save a little for the birds today.

Apple Butter and Politics

The bag of apples is gone.  It is now proudly displayed on the pantry shelves in jars of applesauce, apple chutney (which tastes like a mincemeat from the Indian subcontinent), apple butter (my daughter thinks it is a full slice of apple pie with a crumb topping per spoonful-must make more), and  the make-do (scorched) apple BBQ sauce which has been given the thumbs up by all tasters.  While I was on a roll and all the equipment was out I made jalapeno jelly from the 3.5 lbs of jalapenos still hanging on the plants, pumpkin butter and toasted pumpkin seeds.  There are more pumpkins left, I need to find more to do with them now that I have discovered that it is not recommended for home canners to can it because of the severe variations in acidity--it can turn very nasty-so we have a freezer full of pumpkin butter. (Remember the photos of the pumpkin patch gone wild in the front yard?)

A little stress can make me very productive, you see, I'm married to a government worker.  The paycheck/no paycheck issue hung over us for a bit.  We knew he would be working--he works no matter what is going on, even during hurricanes.  I just felt better knowing that even if we were going to eat beans and rice for the second half of the month we could have some applesauce with it and spice the beans up with jalapeno jelly.  We'll believe in paychecks when one gets deposited into the checking account,  the HR managers and clerks are furloughed.
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With all of the strange and violent behavior that has occurred in the area (DC Metro) I have been waiting for the conversation to  turn to our neglected mental health system, it seems that folks touch on it for half a sound bite and then run the other way.  The Reagan administration pretty much took apart the US mental health system and we have been puzzled by some of the strange happenings since then--school shootings have become a regular occurrence, the shooting in the movie theater, the Navy Yard shooting, the car chase around the Capitol with a baby in the back seat, and today a man immolated himself on the National Mall.  These folks needed help, some had received some help, but clearly not enough. 

I remember a few years back when a coworker was struggling to get her teenage daughter some treatment, but there weren't any pediatric beds available anywhere in the state.    Instead the family spent many evenings in the emergency room whenever the daughter turned for the worst.  They were always sent home after the situation was stabilized, there were no beds. The only way her daughter might have been admitted was if she had attempted suicide.  There are many steps before a kid tries to kill themselves that the healthcare system could help, if there isn't a near complete absence of facilities for youth.

We, as a nation, need to start talking and doing something about re-establishing our mental health care system.  We need everyone to have access to the mental healthcare system, rich or poor.  There is a way to do it that is already law, but by the rhetoric it is hard to discern that.  After more people have access to the system then it is time to build some infrastructure (this is backward, but the capacity needs to be shown to get the funding) and provide real mental health care to our nation for the first time in nearly thirty years.  Otherwise, we can keep putting the folks who need help in prison or  cemeteries, which doesn't sound civilized to me.

Applesauce and Triplets!

I sit here with the ticking of an old fashioned timer keeping me in check.  There is a kettle of apples cooking down to mush on the stove, and I have a tendency to zone into whatever I'm doing and lose the rest of the world, including the soon to be applesauce and apple butter.  I bought the timer because I thought it might be low tech enough for my daughter to ignore it, she makes all my timers disappear into the blackhole of her room.  It seems to be working.

About the apples-last week I missed the farmer's market, but I wanted some of the apples from the orchard that is just a couple of miles from my house, most of the markets they sell at are around DC, and that makes it harder for us in the 'burbs to get apples from around the corner.  I spoke to them on the phone and they encouraged me to come the next day at a time when they knew that they would be around.  I arrived to find two women running a machine cleaning apples, one was one of the owners. I chose some Johnathan apples, Asian pears, and a jug of cider.  I mentioned that eons ago my family used to buy drops for making applesauce and asked if those days were gone due to issues of food safety.  It turns out that I could get drops, and that if I picked them off the ground myself they were free.  My favorite price, free.  Her husband had promised me the 25cent tour over the phone the previous day, and he soon showed up with his jeep to give me a look around the property, so while he was giving me the tour we picked 3/4 of a bushel of apples off the ground.

The bag, almost empty!

I was giddy at scoring the big bag of apples.  I had thought the days of being able to afford to make apple sauce were gone until our own apple trees mature.

As soon as I arrived home I pulled out my canning kettle,

the canning jars and the food mill.

 Washed everything and started chopping, simmering and squishing.  The second batch is on right now, but I think I scorched it a bit, maybe I'll make that chutney or an apple BBQ sauce to hide the smoky flavor...hmmm.

On the goat front, the goat lease is moving forward and the mamma  goat delivered her babies on Tuesday morning.  The triplets are adorable and their mom's milk will be available in a few weeks, yaaay!

Predatory Salt and Vinegar Chips

For the past year and a half I have been making great efforts to get into shape and lose a bit of weight.  I have slimmed a bit while gaining a couple of pounds.  During this same time my thyroid decided that it was done and now I have to combat the slow metabolism that comes with hypothyroidism.  Sigh.  I ran for a little over a year, if you could call it running, on some days jogging would have been an over-optimistic term.  I never enjoyed running, it did what I needed it to do, but that is it. I turned to swimming at the beginning of the summer, something I greatly enjoy.  I swam all summer until we took our vacation a couple weeks ago, during the time we were gone the local pool closed for its yearly maintenance, a total of three weeks.  I figured while we were away in the mountains I'd hike daily and then when I returned I would run for the last couple of weeks until the pool was open again.

All Wrong.

The beginning of the trip featured quite a bit of rain, it was relaxing, but it wasn't calorie burning.  My fellow vacationers helped to maintain a pretty high level of junk food in the cabin, so even if I had been hiking every day there was no way to burn off all the s'mores and chips.  One four mile hike on a mountainside, a few short walks and pedal boat races on the lake were all my activity.  (It was a wonderful trip, we all enjoyed the trip and would probably do  it all again.  It wasn't great for my waistline though.)

I returned home, the residual junk food stowed in the house, taunting me. I was ready to run to burn it all.  Then the evening after we returned, I was walking to say goodnight to my daughter, and tripped over a suitcase waiting to be unpacked.  The "OW!" I let out must have indicated that this wasn't just the ordinary trip, because both my husband and my daughter immediately asked if I was okay with a touch of alarm in their voices.  I saw stars for a moment.  It wasn't too bad, so I said goodnight to my daughter, read for a bit and headed to bed myself.  During the night my little toe throbbed and throbbed.  My husband suggested that it might be broken and I knew he was right. A few hours later it turned a splotched purple and continued to throb, so the next day I limped into a store and bought some first aid tape and buddy taped it.  I know going to the doctor would get me a co-pay, an x-ray and a little clean tape, but that is all.  You can't splint or cast a toe. It isn't a horrible injury, just achy and annoying.

So much for running, I aggravate it doing chores around the house, never mind a three mile jog.  Now, I wait for the pool to be open again, there is still one more week to go.  I have excess energy that needs to be used up, but moving around too much on my feet makes my toe ache.  I just need a little patience, will power, a healed toe, a new thyroid and to walk into the pantry to chuck all the sweet and salty-crunchy foods still lurking there. (I need a cartoon of  predatory looking bags of salt and vinegar chips and Indian Boondi Masala plotting an attack with a package of sadistic Oreo's and to insert here.)

DIY -- Doing a Great Deal for a "Great Deal"

Where has the summer gone??
I've had blog ideas accumulating, but I just haven't had the moment to write.  I have a few minutes, let's see what I can get on the screen.

I haven't talked about the garden lately, but it is doing quite well.  Tomorrow, I will put my pumpkins out to cure in the sun, I haven't counted them, but there seem to be quite a few.  The tomatoes have been making up for last year's poor showing.  This year's favorite is green zebra, nice and tangy. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, that is a nickel under the tomato(es).  These are two tomatoes that merged to form one massive tomato, (fraternal conjoined twins??) it was 5.5 inches across:

It was yummy, we ate it within 20 minutes of it being picked, most of the 20 minutes was spent trying to get a good shot of it.

The goat lease is moving forward, here is the goat who will be providing out milk. I should have taken a bird's eye view of her, she is is probably carrying triplets and from that view it really shows.

One of the reasons that I haven't had time to write is that after getting a "great deal" on a dining table and chairs, I had a great deal of work to do.  The chairs needed new foam and upholstery, the whole set needed a good scrub and a coat of paint.  The couple I bought it from referred to the set as "Nana's table".  Well, it appears that Nana was a two pack a day smoker, the chairs had a thick coating of tar and nicotine.  Some of it came off and some of it didn't.  The mustardy colored set appeared to have originally have been off white, with off white seat covers.

After washing

The deconstruction, the beginning

Hadn't seen a chair put together like this before.

STAPLES!!!

 After spending an hour or so washing the pieces, I spent about 10 hours pulling all of the staples out of the seats (not kidding, there were thousands of them). 

Making progress with a little company.

Nasty Chair Cover

Cup-O-Staples

Then I had to order foam on the internet for the cushions, find fabric, find the right color paint and...a month after I started I have now finished, this is how I spent my summer.  This is why I haven't had time to write.

Next  the window treatments, eventually.

For the vicarious poultry keepers:

11 weeks old

Rent-A-Goat?

We've taken a step back from buying a goat.  As I said in the final line of my last post, I was feeling like this goat was taking over my life, and I wasn't liking that feeling.  We were talking to a goat farmer who mentioned that we should register any goat we bought in my daughter's name, because she would be showing it in 4H.  Later my daughter took me aside and asked quietly if having her name on the goat meant that she had to take care of it.  It gave me pause.  She clearly does not understand the meaning of showing animals through 4H and everything that entails, because, yes, she would need to care for the goat. 

I realized that my daughter wants to be the goat's "auntie", not "mommy".  She wants to play with it, brush it, shave it and trim nails (if she feels inclined that day) and then leave it with someone else to clean the barn, nurse it when it is sick, and to do the drudge work of feeding and watering it every day. If we boarded it most of that would be taken care of, but the farmer did note that most people end up taking the goat home, because they get tired of driving back and forth all of the time.  I knew that I would end up the primary caretaker, even if my daughter did do much of the physical care, it  was going to be up to me to provide the necessary nagging to insure that it actually happened.  Goats can live 14 years, my daughter will probably be home for seven more and then be sent off to college.  In order for goats to give milk they have to have babies pretty regularly, I could see the future, the passionate pleas to keep the cute little babies,  and me left with a full herd to care for.

I spoke with the farmer and let her know that I needed more time to think about it and that I didn't think that we were ready to make the jump.  She suggested that we lease a goat instead, we can legally drink milk from a goat we are leasing.  I haven't seen any paperwork yet, but it sounds interesting.

As I said before, all this for pudding!

All this, for Pudding

Before I dive into my topic today, I just thought I would note that we were very happy to discover that the baby bunnies are alive despite all of their early trials.  My daughter and her friend spotted them hopping out of the zebra grass onto the lawn yesterday evening. 

Onto my topic:

I would really love to have a glass of milk, but at the moment I cannot.  A glass of milk will probably cost me in the neighborhood of $200-350, to start, and I will have to wait a year for it.  I haven't had cow's milk since 1995 when I discovered that the reason I was always sick was that I was flooding my system with a food that I loved, but sending my immune system into the stratosphere.  My sister's allergist suggested that she give up milk to see if it helped her and within a few days she was on the phone with me saying, "You have to give up milk, just for a few days, to see what happens!"  I did.  Within three days I realized that I was making myself sick with cow's milk, my energy returned, my skin cleared, my head stopped hurting, the fog lifted...it was a revelation.

I'm allergic to cow's milk and anything with the slightest trace of cow's milk.  It took a while in the early dark days of the internet to find all the secret names of cow's milk that appear on food labels and all the sneaky places that it turns up--canned tuna for example, who would think to check canned tuna for cow's milk products??? Frozen whole chicken breasts? Whole turkeys (injected with broth and whey for moistness)?? Pepperoni?  French fries? Salt and Vinegar chips??  It was goodbye to most of the processed foods in my diet.

To get real milk, I have to have goat's milk, which isn't easy.  The goat's milk and goat's milk powder available in grocery stores tastes like the smell of a male goat when the females are in season, "musk" is too nice of a word for it, "rank" and "stench" are getting closer. 

I know from experience that goat's milk directly from the farm can be glorious, in Florida it was pretty easy to find.  I just had to tell the farmer that it was for pets and/or livestock and they could sell it to me, in the state where I live now that won't work.  There are no dairies that have processing facilities in the area, so to have a glass of milk I am going to have to buy a goat.  Since we don't have the facilities or experience of raising goats and since we can't afford to buy two (or more) and equip a mini farm, I am buying one and it will board with a farmer not too far away.  She'll provide the care it will need and lots of buddies to hang around with. 

I'll get the milk.  I'll be able to make pudding that sets, a white sauce once in a while, my decaf will taste better and it goes really well with Oreos (thank you Nabisco for taking the milk out of Oreos a couple of years back, I had missed them) and big slices of cake (the couple of times a year that I have them).  I will make my own yogurt and cheese and not have to drive nearly thirty miles to the closest health food store.

I like the idea that it is not a highly processed food like soy milk and almond milk, that the calcium in it is not just calcium supplements ground up and blended into it.  It has significant protein, unlike rice milk and almond milk. 
Best of all it tastes like milk, cow's milk drinkers might disagree, but it tastes like milk to me, a person who hasn't had milk (on purpose) in 18 years.

My daughter, who has spent many of her weekends over the years on goat farms is ecstatic, she loves goats.  In Florida, it took about two hours every weekend to buy our milk. She loves the fact that we will go visit our goat regularly, she has been helping the farmer already trimming hooves and shaving them.  We haven't even picked out our baby yet, we need to look at some that have been born already on another farm and decide if we want one of those or one that will be born in September from one of the sweet and very pregnant goats we have met so far.  My daughter is all ready to show it in 4H, we just found a group nearby...this goat may take over our lives.  All this for pudding.