What Did She Do Today?

She Finished the Christmas Sweaters! December 17, 2010

Two Red Sweaters with White Snowflake buttons, all made by mama.  I bought the book "Phoebe's Sweater ", to make sweaters for the girls, and give them the warm woolies and the book for Christmas. 

I made Eowyn's first, then finished up Istra's, and I'm glad I did them in that order, since Istra's was smaller, it seemed to whip along, which is how you want things to go, when you are this close to Christmas. I used Cascade Eco+ from Spinning Yarns, of course.  It took 2 skeins for Eowyn's, but I was able to do Istra's with the rest of the yarn from Eowyn's, plus one skein.  Very economical!  I love that yarn.  I working on an adult man sweater...no more details than that before Christmas, with the same yarn, in a different color.

This is Eowyn's Sweater.  Istra's is the same, but needs 2 more buttons, to be officially done:

I love these sweaters and can't wait to see them on the girls.  I found there is now an adult version, available, and I'm seriously considering making one for mama.

How is the gifting going for you?  Are you making anything this year?  I still have a couple things on the needles, and a couple more I'm thinking of adding.  A little sewing tossed in, for good measure, and possibly some preserve making and baking.  So fun! 

Once Christmas is over, I have a list of things to knit for myself!

 

She Rearranged Furniture December 10, 2010

I'm not as likely to participate, as my friend Jessica, her house is different almost everytime I visit, but I do like a good "Furniture Rearranging Session".  Even if it's the same old stuff, it looks completely different when it's in, even a slightly different spot.  Today I commandeered the wardrobe that we've been using for the computer printer and various children's puzzles and games, for my kitchen.  I decided the canned goods need at least a dark place to live.  I don't have a place that is as cool as I'd like, but having the beautiful jars out in the daylight, while fun to look at, oh so fun, is not the best place for storing them, to encourage long shelf life. 

The beautiful jars of summers plenty are now housed in a dark spot.  I still have to make shelves for the wardrobe, to house all the tomatoes and a few other odds and ends.  Once that is done I'll share a picture with the full inventory.

I added to the inventory today.  I finally canned some apple cranberry chutney!  I've been procrastinating for far too long.  I'm not sure why, but I just couldn't bring myself to can one more thing.  This was bad news for the apples, some of which are too soft so heading out to the chickens, or the compost pile, as a couple went beyond soft.  Drats.  I have some apples drying, and early next week I shall find something to do with the tail end of the apples.  I've got quite enough sauce, though I may just go that route.  I'd like to try finding something more fun, and I have plenty that are frozen for pies and the like.  Time to check the canning blogs, I think.

Tonight was the Stores at Calef's Corner Soiree.  Christopher and Eowyn took their book over to sell, and autograph.  Eowyn held up pretty well for a 4 year old, who was "on" for 4 hours of talking and writing.  I'm forever amazed by my kids.  If you haven't checked out the book yet, please do.  Here is the amazon.com link...  Skunk Zoo .  It's a great book for both girls and boys. 

My camera battery died, so today is a post without pictures, but I'll update that when I get the battery charged!

 

Amazon has the Skunk Zoo! December 5, 2010

You can find the book Eowyn and Christopher wrote, on Amazon!

Skunk Zoo

She Celebrated the Skunk Zoo December 3, 2010

I've always refered to my family with nicknames, on the internet.  I read somewhere it's "safer" that way.  Not sure, but seemed uneccessary to use the girls names on here, so why not.  Until now.  My daughter and husband are now published authors, so we shall not refer to my family by nicknames, any longer.  Let me introduce you to my Husband, Christopher, my oldest (Mini) Eowyn, and my youngest (The Baby) Istra...Oh, I'm Amy.  But I think most of you know that.  So, now about the book:

Many months ago, on one of their daily walks, my husband and daughter got into a conversation about going to the zoo.  Eowyn wanted to go to a Skunk Zoo.  Something my husband had never heard of before, so while on the walk, he asked many questions about this strange and wonderful place.  Eowyn was very willing to tell him all about it.  When they arrived home, Eowyn retired to her room for her daily quiet time, and Husband made notes.  He later turned those notes into a rhyming poetic story, read it to Eowyn, who gave critical direction, as she felt necessary, after which, it found it's final form.  Christopher then set out to illustrate the text with cut construction paper.  It was months of work, done mostly during nap/quiet time.  Our author friend helped get us connected with a company to print it, and today we received the proof copy. 

Then we read the book.  Eowyn declared she was so glad we did this, because now all her friends would get to read the book!

You can find out more about the book, on the Publishing Company page, DancingSkunkMedia.com. 

Here is a video of Christopher and Eowyn Reading the book. 

If you want to purchase a copy for all of the small people in your life, or anyone that appreciates a good poem, you can do so here:

Quantity:

This item goes through my online store front, Zooziis.

She Started Indoor Microgreens September 23, 2010

The second pair of mittens for Mini are half done.  I am thinking she needs 4-5 pairs for winter and I am going to see if I can make them all before Monday at Midnight...5 pair of mittens in 1 week.  We'll see.  I'm loving the pattern so much, and this second pair is made with Malabrigo Merino Worsted which is about as soft as a yarn can be.

Microgreens intruge me.  The idea of growing adorable little plants in your house, all winter, giving you fresh green food just seems divine.  A while back I was enamoured with this great little book, Microgreens: A Guide To Growing Nutrient-Packed Greens , with it's delightflul cover, amazing photos, step by step how to, a bio of the most popular microgreen seed options, and recipes!  What more could one want from a Microgreen book.  Add to all that, the fact the authors learned about Microgreens on the farm of Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch, up in Maine. 

In addition to the hoop houses that I'm working on, outside, I'm going to fiddle around with some inside growing.  I started a tray of odds and ends to see how it worked.  I'm going to put in a proper microgreen seed order, but I figured leftovers from this seasons plantings would be a fun place to start.  I have peas, broccoli, basil and I even tried corn.  I read that baby corn plants are sweet.  We'll see.

The book suggests covering the seeds with a thin cotton cloth, instead of dirt, to allow you to more readily assess the moisture level, as well as to be able to peek.  I like peeking, so that worked for me.  in 3-4 days I'll get to see if they germinated.  In a week I should be able to harvest.  I'm excited at the idea of making fresh pesto in the dead of winter, with micro basil.  I wonder if that will work out well... so many experiments left to try!

Husband had a speaking engagement tonight.  He has a fabulous process for teaching and understanding story.  Whether that is written literature, or a play or movie, it applies to any of it.  He gave a talk at the local library to a room full of educators, both teachers and homeschooling parents.  It was a great talk and everyone really seemed to enjoy it.  He's a gifted teacher, and it was so fun to be able to watch him...and push the button for the power point presentation.  He is available for future engagements, so if you are part of a school or group who would like to learn his method for interacting with stories, drop him a line. 

 

 

 

She Felt the Pressure September 9, 2010

The pressure canner came out today, and I had forgotten how much you have to babysit those things.  Keeping the pressure right at 11, all day, was a much greater task than I anticipated.  This kept me out of the office, which was a smidge frustrating, but it did afford me the opportunity to dance a waltz, of sorts, around the kitchen and dining room taking an inventory of canned goods, moving and rearranging those beautiful jars, weeding out some things that we don't need, that were taking up space on the shelves, to make room for more goodies.  All that running around, even if the space is fairly small, was exhausting. 

In the end I canned 50 pints of whole kernal corn, and 14 pints of creamstyle.  I threw in 6 pints of chicken/rabbit stock, and finished off with a water bath of 3 3/4 pint jars, and 9 1/2 pints of Elderberry syrup.  I'm dissatisfied with the syrup.  It has a bitter flavor that I don't like. It will be fine to use as a cold preventer/immune booster, as I intended for it to be, but I wanted it to be sweet and lovely enough to be thickened and put on some ice cream, or waffles.  I don't see that working out.  But I still have some more berries in the freezer, so I can try again, later.

I didn't realize my version of Putting Food By is out of date.  It had me canning corn for 55 minutes at 10 pounds, but online it said 11 pounds.  Some were done at 10, some at 11.  This led me to look on Amazon, and found there is a new edition, Number 5, which I linked to, above, of the book, and is now on it's way to me!  I guess it's good that there is always new information about canning, but it is a little frustrating to be doing what you think is right, only to find out that "Oh, no, you didn't hear the new USDA guideline!?". 

By the way, I love that book, it's the perfect reference manual.  There isn't a lot of fun/foofy recipes, but it has some (like Squash Marmalade...I'm totally trying that one!), and it's great at giving you all the information you need to can, as well as freeze, or dry, safely.  It even has a section on root cellar preservation.  It's a must have, and then you can get a fun, full color photo, foofy canning book, if you want, but be well armed with a good technical book, first.

I am excited to have canned corn.  I hope it's yummy, when I open it this winter.  That is always the risk, but it is worth it.  If I worried about things working, I'd probably never try anything, and really there is a very small portion of the crazy things I get myself into that completely don't work out.  Food is really quite flexible.

My excitement about the corn is slightly overshadowed by my excitiment over the stock!  I really do miss having conveient packages/cans of stock, when cooking.  It's nice to be able to dump a jar of stock into the rice, instead of water, or add it to the pan when cooking chicken, the little flavor boost is fabulous.  Until now, I've been freezing my stock.  This is inconvenient when you want to just throw it in, as well as taking up prime freezer space, which is going at a premium in this house.  I also really like to make stock, but sometimes we eat chicken 2-3 times a week, which would be a lot of stock, if I made it for each bird, but I can't fathom letting that nutritional, flavorful, goodness go to waste, so canning it is the perfect solution! 

Does all that make you wonder about pressure canning for yourself?  If you never have, it's not much more complicated than water bath canning.  Very basically, and you will need to read the instrucitons for your canner, but you put a couple inches of water in the canner, load your jars, put the cover on, heat until steam comes out of the valve in the top, place the little weight on the steam valve.  The pressure will build in the canner, then force the pressure gauge up.  Once the gauge reaches your desired pressure (based on whatever recipe you are following), then you can adjust the flame/burner to maintain that temp. 

The only down side to this form of canning, over the Water Bath is that you really have to watch that guage.  I don't know if it's because I have a gas stove, but I found it hard to find a setting where I could just "leave it".  I was checking every 5 minutes, or less, which is why I spent the time cleaning and organizing the kitchen.  I might move a comfy rocking chair into the kitchen next time, and just sit and rock, and knit while I watch the gauge.  But aside from babysitting the canner, it really is quite simple, and because it widens, greatly, the range of things you can preserve, it's worth the time.  Well, at least I think it is.

Sorry, but I'm too tired to deal with pictures, and really canned corn, not that photogenic, and the elderberry syrup just looks black.

She was Among Three Generations of Canners August 26, 2010

Grandmother, Daughter and Granddaughter were all working together to can Tomatoes.  Mom and I obtained 150 pounds of tomatoes from Parsell Farm, on Pickering Road in Gonic.  We got all they had of Roma and Grape tomatoes.  Great for Sauce!!

Mini was very enthusiastic about helping, when I made the offer for her to join us.  She did a great job of cutting them into cubes.  She used a safe cutter knife from Pampered Chef, but was given proper instructions for using a sharp knife, so that she learns how to be safe around cutting instruments.  This is something I still have yet to learn, as I'm typing this with a very soar finger, having removed the tip with a slicer device, ouch!

When she was starting to wind down, in the area of actual helpfulness, I asked if she wanted to feed the ducks with Husband, which she did, and off she went happy and proud of her accomplishment.  She made a comment, while chopping, that she was helping her mama can, just like Lucy.  Lucy is the main character in two wonderful books, Lucy's Summer and Lucy's Christmas .  They are favorite seasonal reads, around here.

The tomatoes simmered all night, and were jarred today!  For the Roma variety, we peeled and diced.  The smaller, grape, we washed, and cut anything that was not fresh, and then popped them in the Vitamix,  we put the puree in a pot and let that simmer down for sauce.  Then, in an attempt to use as much as we could, we placed the good peels in the Vitamix to puree, then cooked down, to can as tomato paste.  Our total: 42 Quarts of Diced, 29 Pints of Sauce and 12 1/2 Pints of Paste, we'll be splitting that in half, so we are clearly not done, for the year, but this session is over, and the shelves are a bit more full!

My tomato patch greeted me today, with a lot of ripe, red fruit!  More canning to come.

I obtained more elderberries!  Lots of them!  This is  real community effort, I have berries that came from my friend Tina, my neighbor, and my trees.  Then today I picked some up from an accquaintance up the street, who saw me foraging on the side of the road, so offered the berries in her yard!!  I also have some that were foraged from the roadside.  I have removed them from the stems, and just need to clean them up!  I've decided that, in addition to syrup, I'm going to make some jelly, too!  Oh, the fun of August and September, with all the harvest, foraging and preserving!

Oh, do you want to make a rain barrel for your house, like I made the other day? You can get the barrel over in Northwood, on Route 4.  There is a yard of them, for $12.00 each, or 10 for $10 each, I'm pretty sure.  They are located between Route 152 and Route 9, Across from R.S. Butler Antiques.

She is A lot Closer to Being Done the Rabbit Housing! May 10, 2010

First things first...it is Husband's birthday today.  I really am blessed to have the husband I do.  He's a wonderful man and makes my live better, in so many ways.  We spent some time alone together, thanks to some Grammy and Grampa time for the girls.   It was a nice.

This morning, and early afternoon was spent constructing Rabbit housing.  I'm working on two separate units that will face each other and create sort of a Pole Barn kind of look.  One half is done enough that 4 of the does are in there tonight.  It needs a roof, but that can't go one until the other unit is done, so for this evening and maybe the next couple, it has a tarp stapled in place, keeping any rain and sun off.   I'm so excited with how it came together, after some discouraging moments.  In the end it is sturdy, stable, functional and doesn't look bad either.  I am hoping to have the second unit done tomorrow.  I'll be using roofing that is repurposed, if the dimensions work out, so I'm going to have to wait a couple days to pick that up.  But it's getting there!

I find that housing is a hard thing to construct until you have worked with the given animal that it will house, for at least a little while.  Inevitably, I have moments with all of the different housing I've built, that things would be better if I had done something differently.  There are tons of plans online, that can give you some ideas, but until you personally work though the process of your husbandry style, the ideas don't guarantee that the structure will work for you. 

The problem with making housing after you have spent time with the animals is how to house them while you are getting to know them.  The rabbits have been in a couple different spots over the past few months, and while none were ideal none of the animals were suffering discomfort or poor husbandry. 

This does tend to add stress to me, however.  The constant pull to get something done that is ideal, and the pull to slow down and really think things through so the ideal comes to fruition and I don't end up wishing I had done a bunch of things differently.

Needless to say, I'm feeling a great sense of relief with the end in sight for this project, and am so thankful to have the feeling that the end product will be lovely for them, and lovely for me as I care for them!

A lovely little side benefit to the housing was that I was able to fashion the scrap lumber into a duck food shelter.  We have a large dish of food for the ducks.  We had a piece of plywood propped on a tree to kind of keep rain and snow out of the food.  Now the ducks have a little building that fits over the food and leaves room for several to be eating at the same time, while keeping the food dry! 

The camera saga continues.  Best Buy took it back, under the service plan, but need to send it out to be analyzed.  They can opt to replace the LCD screen that is cracked and the lens that is jammed.  I get to wait a few more days to 3 more weeks to find out what they are going to do...fix it or have me head to the store for a comparable camera.  Mom said I can borrow her camera to show you the visual things that are taking place around here.

One of the things Husband and I did today was head over to Barnes and Noble.  I fell in love with 2 books.  Microgreens, which is a simply beautiful book, with amazing photography and easy to access information.  I couldn't walk away from it!  Homegrown Whole Grains is chock full of information, growing tips and recipes for whole grains you can grow in your home garden.  I really want to experiment with such things, and have toyed with buying this book several times.  I finally did.  Husband recognized the cover art, as being by the same person, Nikki McClure, who illustrated Mini's Book, All in a Day, by Cynthia Rylant.  It's a very sweet book that is part of Mini's Summer Book Collection that will be coming out of storage very soon!

She Got a Jump on Spring Before the Snow! February 15, 2010

I want to build some raised beds with rocks from the various stone walls weaving around my property, and while Spring seems like the time to do such a thing, Spring in NH is preempted by the 5th season of the North East...Mud Season.  Every year, we have a week of lovely Spring weather, that does in the last patches of snow and creates a layer of mud over the thawing ground, only to give way to warmer weather that thaws the last of the ice and creates 8" of mud. 

Trying to bring a tractor through that, on an incline, with a full bucket of rocks, is probably unrealistic.  This has been giving me a fair amount of angst since I was unable to collect all the rocks necessary in the Fall.  Today was warm enough that the rocks weren't frozen to each other, but the ground is still solid.  Throw in the fact that I have the day off from shipping orders, due to President's Day, and I was a happy girl.  I love when all factors join forces for good instead of evil!

Isn't this a lovely stoney pile of Garden hope!

I've been investigating my copy of Nourishing Traditions, lately.  I found out that soaking your oatmeal is good for you digestive health.  Last night I placed 1 cup of rolled (not instant) oats in a bowl with 1 cup of water and 2 Tbs of the Whey from my Yogurt Cream cheese (but you can use apple cider vinegar or yogurt instead, if you have that).  I let it sit overnight, then this morning I dumped that into a pan, with another cup of water, and let simmer until hot and soft.  It was delicious.  Creamier than normal.  I added a little milk and some maple syrup.  I will be soaking my oats from now on, when I remember to do so.  I love when healthy food and tasty food are one in the same!

We are hunkering down for a storm tomorrow.  I love New Hampshire, Spring today, Blizzard Tomorrow.

She Got a Fabulous New (Old) Book January 29, 2010

I'm over the moon about the mail that arrived today.  First, I got this adorable postcard from my friend, Maggie.  Isn't that great!?  Thank you for thinking of me Miss Maggie!

I also received an amazing little treasure.  First, I do A LOT of stuff online, I do watch a little TV, I google EVERYTHING, I read blogs, I run an online business, I shop, I social network, I do A LOT online, I even do read online, so when I found "A Little Journey Among Anconas", by H Cecil Sheppard in full print online, via Google Books, I was giddy.  I'm raising a small flock of Anconas and to find a book written by a hard core breeder from 1922 was right up my alley.  But let's be honest, touching a book, especially an old book, with a cloth bound cover, and delightful pictures beats, hands down, any online reading!

So when I found a copy of this very sweet little book online, I had to snatch it up.  It was a little more pricey than I would pay for most books, but I regret not one cent, of this purchase.  It's in perfect condition.  I wonder if it's even ever been read. 

A lovely quote:

"Because of their naturally hardy constitutions, Anconas don't need to be pampered, milk-fed, and babied.  They thrive under sever conditions, where other birds would keel up their toes and die.  They lay eggs in cold, drafty ramshackle houses, when heavier birds would merely exist.  but my experience has shown me that under certain sets of conditions, Anconas will produce maximum.  And I am very glad to pass along to you folks who are taking this little journey some of my thoughts..."  - H Cecil Sheppard.

 

The Caption reads "She Loves Anconas"

A cart of Eggs...I have almost that many...

okay, not really, but it feels like that.

You can purchase this book in a modern reprint  from Amazon, if you are interested in raising Anconas and want to see what Sheppard learned about the breed .  A Little Journey Among Anconas: -1919