We've had a gloriously long Autumn season... which is about to end later this week.
Over the last several weeks, I've been making sure the pre-winter chores are completed. That means, the barn is now full with hay...
The sprinklers have been blown out.
The gutters have been emptied of leaves, but first I had to take in the view. :-)
There are still some leaves to come down. However, they are sufficiently far from the house, so I don't expect them to find their way into the gutters.
The de-icers have all been set out. I generally don't feel fully comfortable with the de-icers until we've passed our first hard freeze. Once that happens, they generally work for the entire season.
Happy Late Fall. I hope you are enjoying this lovely time of year.
Keeping the water free from ice is always a concern for me, especially until we get past the first real test... which happened last week, Thursday-Friday.
We got both a little snow and a hard freeze.
In the morning, everyone's de-icer had worked. Hooray!!
We have simple sinking de-icers for the alpacas and goats, that I put in place about a week earlier. No one has pulled it out or messed with it, which often happens when I first put them in place.
Ruby, the barn cat, has an electric water bowl. The dogs have access to everyone's water along with several buckets that are indoors.
The chickens got a completely new watering system.... I introduced this to them about 10 days earlier, using this method, in order to ensure they all understood how to get their water.
The six birds are drinking about a half-gallon daily, which is consistent with what they were consuming prior to the new waterer.
Hopefully this solution keeps the water both clean and flowing.
Hay Delivery Day is one of the best days of the year.
We've been getting hay from our current Hay Farmer for the last few years.
He grows a high quality hay, bales in small squares, delivers, stacks, and arrives at the pre-arranged time... and if that's not enough, he checks the bales as they are being offloaded and removes any that don't meet his standards of quality.
The alpaca are always excited for Hay Delivery Day. This year, I noticed the dogs were excited too.
Rather than putting up a defense, it was more a happiness to see a friend. I'm sure my body language contributed to the welcome, but also the fact that the barn was set up and ready for his arrival with the doors left wide open.
Hay used to be my biggest worry.
Thanks to my Hay Farmer, it's no longer a stresser.
Our apples have been ready to be processed since August and our tree was especially full this year. Which is nice given all of the hail we had over the summer.
Normally the apples are not ready until October.... which I think is predicting an early and harsh winter.
We've given a lot of apples away, since I haven't had time for processing. But I borrowed my neighbor's orchard ladder (now on my to acquire list) over the weekend. I picked 8 grocery sacks-full, gave a few sacks away and processed several batches.
I started with our favorite applesauce and tried apple pie filling and pickled apples.
I'm super excited about the pickled apples! I wish I had time to make more.
In the last week we've had our first snow (10/10), first frost (10/12), +60F shorts and flip-flops weather (10/13), and first hard freeze (10/14). It's back in the 50's-60's for the next several days.
June has been almost entirely consumed with finding a new job... I have a lot of feelings about this, most of which I'm not ready to share publicly. So here's my June installment for the Slow Living Project. :-)
NOURISH: Make and bake as much as possible from scratch. Ditch overpackaged, over-processed convenience foods and opt for 'real' food instead. Share favourite links/recipes/tips from the month here.
Hubba continues to take the lead in this role. If it wasn't for him, I would probably be starving. lol
We did make it to the Farmer's Market a couple of times. It's a great socialization opportunity for our dogs. We love talking to the farmers and bakers and eating their delicious foods.
PREPARE: Stockpile and preserve. Freeze extra meals or excess garden/market produce. Bottle/can, dehydrate or pickle foods to enjoy when they are not in season. Aim to reduce dependency on store bought items especially those known to contain BPA and other suspect additives. Stocking up on dry goods when prices are low counts too.
We had hay delivered early in the month.
The alpacas love Hay Delivery Day almost as much as I do. You can see all of the girls standing at the fence watching the guys unload the truck.
I always feel better having a well-stocked barn.
REDUCE/Reuse/Re-purpose/Repair: Cut down on household waste by re-using, re-purposing and repairing. A ladder into a strawberry planter? A sheet into a dress? Share ideas and project links here, allowing others to be inspired.
Continuing with the Using What We Have idea and the fact that I haven't been travelling much, I went through my travel bag and used up the hygiene products along with several samples that had been collected. Also a few old and ill-fitting t-shirts have been turned into rags.
GREEN: up our lives. Start (or continue!) using homemade cleaners, body products and basic herbal remedies. The options are endless, the savings huge and the health benefits enormous.
With it being spring and shearing season, I have been using my Neti Pot quite a lot.
Deodorant experiments? Thank you for the comments and advice last month... I have not yet looked into any deodorant recipes, but I will be looking for ones using Mango Butter or Shea Butter as well as lotion bar and soap recipes. The apparent reason for coconut oil in these products is that it is solid at room temperature and melts at body temperature.... but with my sensitivity, I've been reluctant to try it and am looking forward to trying these other options.
I started a comparison between traditional Incandescent Lights and the new LED lights. So far, (~1 month) I like the LED version equal to the Incandescent version. If these LED bulbs really last 7-22 years, I will be ecstatic.
GROW: plant/harvest. What's growing this month? What's being eaten from the garden? Herbs in a pot, sprouts on a windowsill or and entire fruit/vegetable garden -opt for what fits space and time constraints. Don't have a backyard? Ask a friendly neighbour or relative for a small patch of theirs in return for some home grown produce, they may surprise you!
I was hoping for more time to spend in the garden this month. I did not get it, but my cotton seedling is doing well and my apples are growing.
My cherries got aphids and possibly Hover Fly Larva. I don't know for sure, but they appear to be eating the aphids and not the tree.
I have also added every Lady Bug I've found to my Cherry Tree because anything that eats aphids is a friend in my book.
CREATE: to fill a need or feed the soul. Create for ourselves or for others. Create something as simple as a handmade gift tag or something as extravagant as a fine knit shawl. Share project details and any new skills learnt here.
A small bit of hat making, but primarily creative Cover Letter Writing and Job Searching.
DISCOVER: Feed the mind by reading texts relevant to current interests. Trawl libraries, second hand shops or local book shops to find titles that fill the need. Share titles/authors of what is being read this month.
Thanks to the dogs finding a pair of baby skunks this month, I have learned a few things:
Baby Skunks are called Kits
Skunks are a primary predator of Honeybees
The Great Horned Owl is the primary predator of skunks
I also learned about and joined a Shearer's Only group on Facebook which is becoming a great resource. One of which is learning about a few sheep shearing schools. I've not sheared sheep before and hate telling the sheep people that I am unable to help them... hopefully one of these courses will work with my schedule.
ENHANCE: community: Possibilities include supporting local growers and producers, help out at a local school/kindergarten, barter or foodswap, joining a playgroup or forming a walking or craft group. Car pooling where possible and biking/walking instead of driving. Even start up a blog if you haven't already - online communities count too! Or maybe just help out someone trying to cross the street! The rewards for your time are often returned tenfold.
I do like this category a lot.... it's so great to stop and think about how we've helped or have been helped by others... At the land fill, which is the sort of place you get in and out of as quickly as possible, someone offered us the use of their de-thatching rake. We had not brought the right equipment to unload our truck and were having trouble. We returned the favor by letting them use our broom. :-) Also my Day Job Search has been a near-full-time activity. Several friends and colleagues, many of which I did not expect, have gone out of their way to help me find a job within their companies or within companies where they have contacts. I've had a few nibbles so far and am feeling optimistic that my new employment relationship, when I find it, will be a good one.
ENJOY: Life! Embrace moments with friends and family. Marking the seasons, celebrations and new arrivals are all cause for enjoyment. Share a moment to be remembered from the month here.
This has been a tough month, but there are a few little gems... a trek for The Best Fried Chicken, going the "back way" to get dog food, happy puppy faces at the fence, and shearing season.
Our neighbor participates in a fund raiser every year that involves Palisade Peaches. The peaches that come from Colorado's Western Slope are so delicious. Really, the best, in my opinion. The program she works with provides college scholarships to women which we are very happy to support.
Back in February, Hubba placed our order. She wasn't even taking orders yet, but Hubba did not want to miss out. He committed us to three Lug Boxes... one more than last year.... at 18 pounds each, I was faced with putting up 54 pounds of peaches before they got too ripe.
We went over on the ATV and strapped the boxes to the front to get them home last Friday. A few were consumed before we even got to the door and I've been processing peaches in most of my spare time ever since.
I decided to not use spices in the butter this year. Last year's peach butter didn't taste much different from the apple butter. So this year's was made with only peaches, water and sugar, no spices. It's yummy.
The jam I make uses honey instead of sugar and is soooo delicious. I thought about entering it in the county fair this year, but missed the deadline by a couple of weeks. Note made for next year... perhaps this is Blue Ribbon Jam? ;-)
My dad's wife has fond memories of Pickled Peaches from her childhood, so I thought I'd give those a try... All I can say is, "How did I not know these were so delicious?" I made two batches.
The last batch of peaches were made into Peachsauce. Since we like Applesauce so much we thought it might be fun to do the same thing with peaches. I used a Peach Butter recipe, with a little less sugar and did not cook it as long.
So again, with 50% more peaches than last year, I still did not have enough for freezing or a simple hot pack. I guess we'll be having 4 Lug Boxes next year. ;-)
When we moved to our farm a few years ago, there was a huge parking area in front of the house as well as a smaller parking area behind the house that added up to regular parking for 11 cars... for 2 people.
If we were having a party, and wanted to park cars several deep, I bet we could fit 21 cars (7 wide x 3 deep) just in front of the house and still not block the road.
Every time I went out front, I heard Joni Mitchell...
It apparently looked like a cul-de-sac to everyone who thought they could get to the neighborhood to the north of us even-though there's a "no outlet" sign at the entrance of the road.
It's hot and miserable on summer afternoons and pretty much only grew puncture vine, which is not nice to puppy paws, wheelchair tires or even bare feet when the seeds make it into the house. ouch.
This parking area was one of the things we would address later and later is finally here. :-D
I called a 800-number that our state has set up, told them what our plans were and they coordinated the marking of all of the potentially buried lines in the area. It only took a few days to get everything marked.
Hubba hired a contractor who agreed to come over and scrape off the top 2 inches and haul it away, then break up the soil to about 12-inches deep and till in our alpaca manure.
He got started last Tuesday.
Yes, that's smoke from another wild fire in the background. :-(
They found a concrete wall buried in the middle of the space, so we made plans to jack-hammer it out.
Then got stopped for a few days due to rain and snow. Not too much as far as either was concerned, but enough to make the work very difficult.
Our contractor decided to clear out around the concrete wall to make sure he knew what he was up against before starting the jack-hammering, only to discover a U-shaped foundation with a concrete floor that had been filled with concrete pieces. Then directly to the East (to the right in the below photo) another rectangular shaped foundation full of more concrete pieces.
Our contractor thinks that they must have used this space to wash out the concrete trucks when they were building the neighborhood to the south of us. All of the houses were built in the 1970's, as was our house, and I have heard that all of the land around here used to belong to the same family ranch. So, I suppose it's possible... but seriously, what were they doing? If they were just planning to bury waste concrete, why would they go through the effort of building two separate foundations?
He brought in 2 loads of top soil and then tilled that in with our manure. I didn't get a photo, but the tilling attachment on the skid steer is pretty awesome. It's now on my To Acquire list.
I put in a few T-Posts with baling twine to keep people and their cars off our our freshly tilled garden until we can get to a more permanent fence. I had planned to put the raised beds for the berry bushes along the road, but am now going to put them over the newly discovered foundations.
I am so happy to have the bulk of this project done.
I've been making applesauce pretty much every weekend for a month. It's been slow going with just 4 or 5 pints per session since the first weekend.
So my Momma came over last weekend to help me make a dent on our apples.
Over 2 days we think we peeled more than 30 pounds of apples. We aren't exactly sure since we only did the weighing after the peeling and trimming had been completed.
We made 4 batches of applesauce, 1 batch of apple butter and 1 batch of apple jelly that over-jelled and became apple candy instead.
making pectin
one jar of over-jelled apple jelly
saved and turned into powdered-sugar covered apple candy
I had a good time spending most of the weekend with my Momma.
19 pints of applesauce and 12 1/2pints of apple butter
I've been saving apple peels for the last couple of weeks.
I followed the instructions to make Pectin. I was planning to can it, but I'm still not sure about the conversion rate between homemade liquid pectin and commercially produced powdered pectin. So I wasn't really sure if it made more sense to can in pint-sized jars or half-pint jars. So I decided to make Apple Jelly instead.
The 4 pounds of apple peels turned into 10.5 cups of salmon-colored pectin.
I added 7 cups of honey which is a little less than the recipe called for. Then I boiled the mixture for nearly 3 hours and it was still very runny.
So I gave up and canned 9 1/2 pints of Apple Syrup. I think it's a beautiful color and it's quite tasty.
Earlier in the day, I also made 5 pints of Applesauce using a different recipe than last time. So Hubba has to decide which sauce recipe he likes better. ;-)
I have plenty of apples left, so I should have the opportunity to try pectin or jelly again.
I returned to Colorado in 2009 to live a more simple life. Right now that means finding my way as a solo business owner after an unexpected divorce. I am still raising Alpaca and Tibetan Mastiffs. This blog is about these and the other things going on in my head. I hope you find it interesting, useful and inspiring.
