Sunflowers

The NCDOT has graciously planted some beautiful flowers at our offramp using the money received from personalized license plates.  We get to admire the sea of beauty everyday.  The other corners of the exit have purple and white flowers which are also quite beautiful but this section is by far the most stunning.  Every day we see people pulled off the side of the road taking pictures and admiring them.  They remind me of giant smily faces when I come home each day. When we got out of the car to take these pictures you could hear the hum of the bees as they are all over these flowers. God is so good.

Little Workhorse

So this little dehydrator has been on the counter (or the front porch)and working frequently.

Some things in the garden don't lend themselves to canning or freezing so they get dehydrated.We have been dehydrating cherry tomatoes by the jarful.  We also started drying some peppers as we have several bags stuffed already and some in the freezer.  I have dried both poblanos and currently on the front porch are the jalapenos. They are too strong to do in the house. I also dried a bunch of basil and sage. I started blending our own italian seasoning as I have enough of the different herbs that go in it.

Left to right- poblano pepper, sage, tomatoes, and basil

Dried mixed beans which will be great for soups. Towards the end of the green bean season we let some go on and mature beyond eating.  We pulled them out of the pod and allowed them to dry.  We ended up with a whole quart-ful.

Edemame's were ready this week. This is the basketful I picked on Friday night.

This is the bowl-ful they became after I pulled them all off the stalks.

This is the bag that went in the freezer after they were hulled. The cool thing about these vacuum seal bags is we can pull out what we want and then reseal the bag. The vacuum sealer prevents ice and freezer burn.

I stuffed a batch of peppers this afternoon.  This is our third tray this year and this batch got stuffed with sausage, rice and quinoa.  I will freeze or dry any more extra peppers we have.

Progress in the Woodshop

Thanks to Tim who gave me left over insulation (enough to insulate the walls of the shop) and a Lowe's gift card from Mom and Dad Salchow, I now am much closer to having a year-round shop.

After installing the insulation, I installed some 11/16 OSB board. I added a coat of white primer which makes it a brighter work space. The next project will be to complete sheeting the walls and then start on the ceiling. 

A couple of months ago, while visiting at Mom and Dad's in Cruso, I went scrounging for some wood in Tim's Home Depot. I found two boards I thought were cherry due to its deep red color.  The planks were very rough cut and in need of planing. The fact that they were 15 inches wide pretty much limited the options available to me for getting it to a more usable form. A conversation with the owner of Patterson's Amish Furniture here in Morganton got me an invitation to his cabinet workshop where he planed them and ran them through his joiner. Once the boards made a few trips through the planer it became obvious it was not cherry at all but walnut. So much for my tree/wood identification skills. So now, I am ready to start working on Lisa's quilt rack. I think I'll make one out of poplar or pine first to work out the kinks before I tackle making one out of this nice wood. 

The funny looking section in the middle of the planks is actually a feather'd grain that looks really pretty.

 A brief chicken update: the chickens have received a reprieve as they have been laying eggs and have not eaten them in 5 days. If they keep this up, they'll avoid the crock pot for another year. 

DANG Chickens

For the past week this is what we have been coming home to.

One chicken (we think just one) has taken a liking to eating raw eggs.  We think it is one of the black ones.  Now before you get all concerned about our chickens psychological well-being.........we will let you know that this is not unusual behavior when chickens are molting.  They need extra protein which should be adequate in their feed but sometimes they start eating eggs also.  The egg shells become more fragile when they are molting and therefore the shells are more likely to break in the nest.  If this happens they usually taste whatever goo is there and they find they like it.  We think this is what happened originally but now we think one is breaking it on purpose.  We tried a roll-away floor but that did not work. Tomorrow we are going to put who we think is the culprit in an isolation cage (the same cage we used for the injured chicken) and leave her in the general coop.  If the broken egg is in her cage we will have caught her. If the broken egg is still in the general coop we will have guessed wrong and have to start over.  Unfortunately there is no fixing this habit so we will be having stewed chicken this weekend.  :(

Sunday's Work

I had fun today in my "workshops".  I got another round of salsa made. I used mostly tomatoes but added the tomatillos that we had harvested thus far.  Made for a nice batch- 8 jars in all.  Spent some time making 2 loaves of bread and while that was rising I got the better part of a new dress made.  I cut it out the other day and started assembly this afternoon.  Not bad for a Sunday.

After dinner we went outside to plant another row of October beans and while we were there we decided we had had it with the squash vines all over the garden. They were starting to die back so we went ahead and harvested all of them even if it is a bit early. This is what we got.

5 giant pumpkins, 16 green pie pumpkins (?) and 2 butternut squash. Not a bad haul for not planting any of it.

 I washed all of them off in the garden sink and then rinsed them all with a bleach water solution and placed them in this rack to dry.  This kills any bacteria that might migrate thru the newly cut stem and is supposed to help them keep longer.  We are not sure if the smaller green ones will eventually turn totally orange as they do have some spots of orange right now.  If they do go all orange, I will assume they are pie pumpkins and if they are.....we will be blessing you with some of them as I don't need but 1 or 2 pie pumpkins for the year. These jack-O-lanterns and a hay bale will make a nice fall arrangement on the front porch.

This and That

Patrick had a birthday this week so I made him a pie last night.

This has three different kinds of berries, all from our yard.  Blueberry, blackberry and raspberry.  I put a touch of almond flavoring in it and it was delicious.  Glad birthdays only come around 1 time per year.  

On Saturday we ventured out of our usual routine.  After our typical Saturday morning trip to the farmer's market we went to the shooting range.  Patrick wants me to be more comfortable with the little handgun so we went and shot for an hour or so.  He calls me dead-eye. We then headed to Concord where there is a Bass Pro Shop.  as you know, we are not big "shoppers" so this was quite a day for us.  We went to IKEA since it is nearby and then went out to dinner at Carabba's Italian Restaurant. It was a nice celebratory day.  We got home around 8PM, just in time to pick a few blackberries and tomatoes.     

When I was making the pie last night I was struck by the riot of colors these peppers are giving us. Slowly the peppers are all coming in.  We only grow red peppers.  We have 2 kinds planted this year; the big fat ones are wisconsin lake and the longer ones are paprika peppers- both sweet.  We love stuffed peppers so what doesn't go in salad will end up stuffed in the freezer awaiting a "fast food" meal in the winter.  It is amazing how quickly they change color.  when I got up this morning all the peppers were completely red except the totally green one which now has red spots.  

Pat in the woodshop

Patrick has slowly been adding to his tool supply in his shop. He purchased a new band saw for which he has some projects in mind. He has also been spending some time refinishing a gun stock. The color is amazing.

He totally disassembled the gun and refinished the stock.  The above photo is of it disassembled and hanging in the shop after a coat of sealer. The bottom pictures are of the finished product. He is really happy with it, as he should be.

  All done and ready for the new hunting season this fall.

A bit of detail.

On another project......... he found someone who will help him plane his 14 inch wide cherry planks. It is earmarked for my quilt display rack so hopefully he will be able to work on it this winter.

Kayaking

Yes............

This past Sunday we dusted off the kayaks, loaded them up and took them to the lake. We are only about 15 minutes from the beautiful new lake James state park. We paddled around for about 2 hours. The weather was beautiful. It was nice to be back out there, as all work and no play makes for a dull life.

Patrick the chicken wrangler

The chickens have discovered the blueberries. They like to scratch around under them as there must be plenty of things to eat and it is cool under the bushes. Initially Patrick did not like the idea that they were there. I gave up pretty quick as the only option I saw from keeping them out was to keep them in their coop all the time. Not an option in my opinion so they get to hang out in the blueberries. Patrick was also concerned that they were no longer "backyard" chickens. The big problem was at night when it was time to round them up. Since the blueberries are a far piece from the chicken coop, we were having a difficult time rounding them up at the end of the day. One evening Patrick stumbled on this piece of PVC pipe and started herding them like a shepherd. I started calling him the chicken wrangler. All he has to do now is move his PVC like a blind man walking and they head right back to the coop. It is too funny. This little video may not do the process justice but enjoy.

Fun things growing in the garden

Tomatillos

These little green tomatoes that grow in lanterns are really cool. They are just starting to ripen. We will use them in salsa. They come ripe all at different times so we are peeling off the "paper" husk washing them and putting them in the freezer. When we have enough we will make salsa verde.



Edemames

Green soybeans. So delicious and nutritious. Since we have an empty garden bed where we dug the potatoes we plan to plant another run to harvest in the fall before frost. They are a bit of work to blanch and shell but so worth it. We like to roast them with a bit of salt and olive oil and eat them like popcorn.

A Volunteer State- Are We Tennessee?

In the spring we had several plants come up as volunteers. Our theory is if it grows it must be in a happy state so we let it thrive and see what we get. We have had volunteer cherry tomatoes come up for three years now. They are so flavorful and sooooo plentiful. We end up drying a ton of them in the dehydrator. We end up with jars in the pantry which we use on pizza, in lasagna and in lots of dishes that call for roasted tomatoes. They are great but they can take over. We thinned some of them out this year but still have plenty to enjoy in salads and as snacks.

Cucurbits- 5 different kinds grew in the garden in various places this year. We could tell from the foliage that they were different so we let them grow. Here is our guess of what we will be getting

butternut squash- Only a few little ones and 2 good sized ones but that is okay as we had a gracious plenty grow last year

pumpkin????   BIG....... turning orange... I see them as decorations on the front porch. Maybe they will be a variety for a pie??? There are 4 of them.

Decorative pumpkin? Still green and can't really tell. We have 11 of them. I hope they are useful for something as they are wandering all over and taking up a lot of space.

Melon- A variation on a cantaloupe. We have 2 of them. One was ready tonight so I picked it and this is it.  It smells wonderful but the outside is creamy white and silky smooth.

Cantaloupe- 1 measly little effort. We hope it is sweet because it is only the size for a snack. Really cute there among the red bell peppers.  We have had traditional cantaloupe volunteer before and they are really sweet.

What happened to July?

Boy have we been busy. The last post was "the garden waits for no one". This post could be  part  2 of that. July started off with rain, it ended in rain and August is continuing as much the same.  Roads have sink holes in Morganton, rivers have jumped their banks and people feel moldy.  As for us.........we are quite thankful to Uncle Tim for the land contouring he did on our property.  The rock drain needs to be widened a bit but that should be an easy job as Mother Nature has carved it out and shown us where we need to expand.  We have not encountered any flooding but the rain has had an impact on our daily lives.  The grass gets mowed 2 times per week and the garden has done fairly well through it all.

We are frequently asked how we accomplish what we do.  Everyone says what we do is so much work.  My first answer is that we rarely watch TV.  My second answer is that we don't really see it as work.  A fellow blog writer  benhewitt.net sums it all up for us pretty well..........

What is work?  Our culture seems to equate work with labor, and likewise seems to revere labor avoidance technologies and conveniences.  Our perceptions of work-and in particular, labor- are just that: perceptions.  In other words, how we think of those tasks, whether we consider them burdensome, bothersome or whether we view them merely as something that needs to be done, and furthermore, that we are blessed to have the opportunity to do them, informs the attitude and spirit with which we approach them.  

So with that being said, we have been quite busy this past few weeks and have not had the time to keep you updated. But we have been having FUN.  Yes we fall into bed each night exhausted but we get to go to work the next morning and get refreshed so we can come home and as we jokingly say "start second shift".

So here is a brief recap of what has been taking our time:

Blueberries- last year we had none due to the freeze.  This year has made up for it.  We have been picking most days of the week and have hardly been able to keep up.  The birds have been grateful for our lack of time.  We have 12 gallons thus far in the freezer.  Several friends have come to pick, we have taken some to neighbors and coworkers and always have a mixing bowl full in the fridge.  2013 will be remembered as the year of the berries.  Just as amazing have been the blackberries.  Though not as many in gallons, we still have bags and bellies full.

Tomatoes-

 the rain has caused tomato blight for almost everyone in the area.  We have been able to salvage some but we are not as tomato rich as we were last year.  I can't complain though as we have been able to can salsa, spaghetti sauce and eat fresh tomatoes at will.  I will still have enough for another run of salsa but won't be able to put up any tomato soup this year.  Oh well, we will eat blueberries instead.

Potatoes- The rain caused a lot of trouble for potatoes.  We dug them a bit early as we could smell them rotting in the ground.  We planted blue fingerlings, russet, Yukon gold and Kenebecks.  We got a smattering of them all but nothing like we had hoped. I am in the process of freezing some rounds for scalloped potatoes, strips for fries and we already canned some of the baby sized ones with a run of corn.  All in all we can't complain. Just for fun I made some blue potato salad yesterday (sorta purple)which looks cool and tastes great.

Green beans-

nothing like eating fresh green beans for which we have eaten our weight in.  We also canned a couple runs so we have some for winter.  I froze some for soups and we gave some away.   Some from last year were a bit tough so we decided to pick them earlier this year but had to do it between rain showers.We planted some october beans yesterday so that we can harvest them in the fall.  They are grown for the beans inside which we like as bean soup.

Sewing-while it was raining I got to spend a little time in my other workroom, the sewing room. I made a top which I am really pleased with.

and  a skirt which was totally free.

 One of my quilting buddies gave me some fabric that she did not plan to use since it has lycra in it and another quilting buddy had picked up a bag of zippers from a yard sale.  She is not a garment seamstress so she had no use for them but knew I would put them to good use.  So other than thread and time this new skirt cost me nothing.  I like these kind of projects.  Plus it fits great and is super comfy due to the lycra.

I also got another quilt made for the guild.  Most of this fabric was given to me from the Linus project group so I designed, cut, assembled and will return it to them this next week.The 5 squares that look black are really purple.  There is an indescribable satisfaction that comes from doing something for someone in such need.

Woodshop-while it was raining Patrick spent a bit of time in his workshop.  He has been working on some fun stuff but that will be revealed in a post later this week.

So we are still alive....just really busy. I already have some posts in mind for this week so stay tuned.........