Wyatt "shaves"

Wyatt spent the night this past week.  He was soooo excited to get to "shave" like papa.  It is amazing how much fun a little shaving cream and a Q-tip can bring.

Girls make applesauce while guys build

While the guys were building a play set the girls made applesauce.  Carrie and Bayleigh came over on Sunday and we started chopping and cooking down the apples.  I then showed her how to strain the apples with my mixer. In the end we canned 13.75 quarts of sauce.  Some were raspberry flavored and some with cinnamon flavored. She reserved an additional 2 quarts of applesauce to make apple butter. Obviously we can't do that in a day so I gave her 4 of my jars and I will make her apple butter as she doesn't have the capability to do that at her house. When we finished cleaning up we went over to see the progress on the playset.  Everyone was amazed at the progress each other had made.

Bayleigh was delightful all day.  She kept herself busy playing with an assortment of things and just being all around cute. 

After we were all done we went outside to trim up the swiss chard.  If you look very closely you will see a grasshopper in front of Bayleigh. She was amazed with it......until it jumped and fluttered in front of her and flew to the screen. She levitated and screetched.  Her words..."that scared me".  She was still amazed with it though and wanted to see it again. 

The kids have a playset

Patrick and Sean have been building a playset for the kids.  They spent 2 days here in Patrick's shop constructing side walls. Then Sean spent yesterday digging holes and installing the posts while Carrie painted the walls.  Patrick went there Sunday and they installed the walls and built a railing.  They still have some work to do but they have made great progress.

The front will have stairs and a climbing wall. There is a back door which is currently closed off.  The slide will start from this back door and go down the back. Off to the right another post will be added and 2 swings and a trapeze pole/rings will be added.  Notice the cute detail of window boxes. The kids are beyond thrilled.

The ceiling is done

Some projects that keep getting put off are finally getting accomplished.  Because someone else is doing them!!!! That’s right; we hired someone to install the OSB boards on the ceiling of the shop. We had the insulation put up last fall with the plans to have someone put the ceiling boards up soon after.  Well, it was then Christmas and you know how our life changed after that.  So here it is one year later and I noticed the other week that some of the insulation is coming loose.  Without some kind of support insulation can hang all by its lonesome for about 9 months before it starts falling down with gravity.  Well, we didn’t pay someone to install it to find it all on the floor someday so before that happened Bill Elliott came to the rescue. That’s right; he just raced on over and installed the OSB boards. Now the shop is all secure: warmer in the winter, cooler in the summer and quieter all year round.  Yes his name is really Bill Elliott, just like the race car driver, but I am sure he is nicer.  We have a lot in common. He has chickens, a garden, loves to can and is pretty self-sufficient. The big difference? He is a master carpenter. Aren’t we lucky as he is new to town and in need of work.  I can already envision all sorts of projects that he can do for us. So here he is hard at work with his son Tyler. Pat is well pleased with it and is itchin to get back into the shop and get to work on some projects.

 Coming together with all seams caulked. It's amazing how much quieter it is now.

The most time consuming part was finishing the dormers as they were an add on. It's amazing how much additional light these give off once they were painted white.

 Very bright and clean looking

Carrots

This year’s proud garden accomplishment has been carrots.  We got some red carrots at the farmers market several years ago so we started experimenting and searching for seeds.  We use carrots in our salads but also enjoy them roasted with potatoes and other root vegetables.  I grew some last year but not nearly enough.  This year I had some extra space in a free bed so I sprinkled whole seed packets in it: one orange and one red.  Wow did they ever take off.  They taste as good as they look. 

So when another bed became available after harvesting crowders I sprinkled another packet in it. These will over-winter. 

They are so sweet and grew bigger than I ever imagined they would. I will definitely be doing this again next year. The bed with the wire frame over it will overwinter under a cover.  They are the newest ones and still pretty small. The ones int he back will likely all be pulled before hard freezes set in.  

Sewing projects

I have managed to get a few sewing projects in this past summer. It is hard to eek out the time between canning, gardening, and work. I still get together weekly with my quilting friends and additionally attend a monthly quilting guild meeting where we always learn something new. Here is a quilt that was given to the guild as a service project.  

 A friend at work who was cleaning out her mothers sewing closet gave me this shirt fabric. Lucky me. I will put all her donations to good use. Here are the first two. I finished these just in time for the weather to turn chilly.

 Summer dresses are the best. 

Stethoscope cover for Carrie. This si the prototype.  

I am currently working on a few other projects, which I will show at a later date, and Patrick gave me a few other projects that he would like to see me complete during the winter.  Idle hands are not allowed in this house. 

Apple Season

By now we have experienced the first cool nights of Fall; the windows are open and the leaves are starting to turn which can only mean a couple of things: First, apple season is upon us and the nose and the pallet are so thankful.  The first bushel of the season has been processed; specifically into 15 jars of blackberry applesauce, 2 jars of cinnamon applesauce, 4 pints of apple butter and a few meals with the leftovers that wouldn’t fit into a run in the canner. It was an arm workout coring all the apples but it is definitely worth it. You get squirts of fresh apple juice in your face, the counters are a bit sticky in the process but the end product is soooo worth it. After the applesauce was made we got to make apple butter.  This happens when we put some of the apple sauce we processed into the Crockpot and let it simmer all night.  The house smelled heavenly during that process.  Cider, cinnamon, allspice, cloves………….need I say more?

Here is a picture with them all on the shelf, right beside all the fresh peaches we canned the week before. 

New chickens experience freedom

 We are starting to let the new chickens out a bit.  They were quite reluctant to leave the coop when we opened the door but they did find their way to the edge of the woods and seemed to enjoy scratching in the fallen leaves. Hopefully they will merge into the existing flock easily. We are counting on their larger size and the presence of a rooster to help with the integration. We lost 2 of our older birds to a predator several weeks back so we decided that two of these meat birds would get to remain as layer birds. This breed, Black Jersey Giants,  are supposed to be good mothers and we would like to be able to have them raise some chicks.  They are also supposed to be good layers thru the winter. We hope they will start laying soon. Once we get them situated into the laying flock, the other two will go in the freezer. If you remember, we got these 6 meat birds on Memorial Day and they looked like this: 

 Two of them are already in the freezer as they were roosters and started to get rowdy.  Roosters are very territorial and more than one rooster in a small flock is problematic. So we solved that problem.  

The Camper Became a Trailer

After 2 years of not using the camper we decided maybe life was too busy to camp. With jobs that only allow us to get away on the weekends we are limited in our camping locations. As it was a pop-up, weather plays a roll also, as we don’t like to camp in the rain. Last year we had 2 planned trips cancelled due to the extremely rainy season. Our third trip was cancelled due to government shutdown. This year we were busy with grandchildren, garden and life in general. We just never go around to it this summer. Well, the camper gave us 10 years of great memories and still had LOTS of life in it so we decided it should go to someone who could enjoy it. We listed it on Craigslist and within 24 hours we were getting inquiries. Within the week we had cash in hand. Patrick decided that he would reinvest in a trailer. We are always hauling mulch and purchasing long pieces of wood for projects so we thought this would be a good purchase. Patrick’s truck is handy but big stuff just doesn’t work in a 5-foot bed.

Life is Crazy

Need I say more? Yes we went missing for a bit. A quick “emergency” trip to Florida to visit Patrick’s sister; a long weekend to the beach to be with my parents; gardening, canning, grandchildren; you get the picture.
I have made a list of all the posts that I need to write in the coming weeks, which should catch you up on all our craziness. I will try to post something every couple of days. See ya round.