Labor Day

With today being Labor Day, Patrick and I figured we ought to labor some.  He went to help a Morganton businessman move his shop from near the farmers market to smack dab in the middle of downtown (A great location).  He operates the Amish furniture store where have purchased several pieces.  He is a great guy and the opportunity arose so Pat is off helping him move today.

For me, I have canned the last of the tomatoes.  I had frozen them throughout the summer as they ripened and now that the harvest is complete I decided to make the tomato soup that we love. It has fresh basil and onions from our garden in it along with some celery. I ended up with 7 jars of soup and leftover tomatoes were just canned as tomato sauce.  While the soup was boiling down I cleaned out the garage.  It is amazing how messy it can get in a short period of time.  So I swept the whole thing and reorganized it.  It looks great.

I also made a meatloaf for dinner.  I made enough that we have some for tonight and enough for another one to go in the freezer.  That will be a quick meal on a night I don't want to cook.

In between all these activities I worked on Emily's quilt.  It is sooooo cute. Sorry no pics yet.  The reveal of it will be later in the month after her baby shower.


So all-in-all it was a busy day. I think I see a wine cooler in my future.

Tomorrow....PESTO

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.