Britesea - Living the good life in rural Oregon

[Britesea]

I finally got around to taking a picture of the greenhouse. We still have some work to do- such as trimming the door so it fits better (you can see where it stays open just a bit at the top there) and we still have to cut the opening for the window at the other end and install the automatic window opener (love that!)

We are snugged in, ready to weather a storm that promises to dump at least a foot of snow on us tomorrow, and we already have about 6 inches on the ground. Brought in enough wood to keep us for a few days, and made sure we had plenty of food for us and the animals, so we don't have to leave the house unless we want to. Tai Chi and swimming aren't until Friday. We have a heater in the tank house in case the temps drop really low, but right now it's hovering around refrigerator temps so that's all right.

I announced to DH that we are having leftovers, so he opted for the Ham and Mac and Cheese, while I am going for the Spaghetti with Shrimp and Asparagus. We'll use up the last of the fresh lettuce, along with some sprouts for a salad, and I think I'll bake some Snowball Cookies for dessert.

I've been working on a cardigan sweater for DS for the last few months. I've got the back and one side of the front done, about halfway through the second front and then the arms to go. I'm getting tired of it though... the colors are kind of a camo look and my eyes want to look at something else for a change. After this I'm gonna go ransack my stash and see what I have in a short-term project like a hat. I don't have a nice hat for myself. I seem to recall a really pretty teal wool in there somewhere.....

 

[sumi]

I miss the yellow peaches we had in S.A. We get apricots, plums and nectarines from there and elsewhere in Europe here, but no decent peaches. Talking of peaches, I saw this pic of a hummingbird's nest on a peach on FB yesterday

 

[Britesea]

I spent about $198 dollars yesterday on large cuts of meat on sale at Cash N Carry, walked away with about 95 pounds of meat- mostly beef with some pork and chicken thrown in. I have them frozen in portions suitable for pulling out and either freeze drying or canning over the next several days. It will be nice to have that sitting on my shelves!

So today, I'm processing about 10 pounds of chuck (some of it will end up as pot roast for tonight's dinner). I'm debating whether to make corned beef with the brisket. Then I have a huge stack of cardboard to flatten and add to the compost pile (the worms will love that) and the guys will continue to add wood chip mulch to the paths in the garden so the weeds don't take over.

 

[Britesea]

Been working hard to get the place fit for guests. My daughter and her family should arrive on the 12th- just a bit over a week to go. The house is almost all done, although every time I look around I see something else... like the untidy pile of STUFF on top of the bathroom cabinet. That should take less than half an hour to take care of today. We need to fill the water tanks on the travel trailer (aka guest quarters) and make sure everything works in there. Plus I need to find a better place to store the sun oven when I'm not using it other than the trailer's shower stall. There is still a lot that could be done to the outdoors. I'll keep chipping away at it, but I'm not going to sweat it- it looks pretty good now.

The strawberries are pretty much done, but the raspberries are doing pretty well. This is the first year that we're getting a decent harvest from them; increasing the water schedule seems to be helping. Of course, it also helps the weeds, but so it goes.

We pulled out the fava beans; I don't know what went wrong, but lots of the pods were either empty or only had one bean in them. Very disappointing harvest.
The cicherias gave us a lot, but the *&%$# ground squirrels got to them; a lot of the pods had been chewed into and emptied. Also, they would have done better on a short trellis. Next year, I'll put up the trellis and also an A-frame of chicken wire, like I did with the strawberries.
I only had room to grow 6 cabbages. Two of them are making 1 1/2 gallons of sauerkraut, 1 was freeze-dried for future soups. The other 3 were used for various dinners- Egg Roll In a Bowl, and Cabbage and Sausage.
The broccoli is pretty much done-- I can't find enough little heads to even feed one person at a time now, so they will be coming out this weekend.
Lettuce is done, of course; and what remains of the celery is bolting now. Time to cut a bunch more Basil to make pesto for the freezer. The Swiss Chard is still going strong, but I noticed a couple of blossom spikes on some...
I've pulled most of the beets, but the rest could come out at any time now.
So that leaves me with a bed full of rampantly growing Delicata squash, another of Green Beans, Bell Peppers, Tuscan Kale (which even the aphids can't bring to heel) and Collards. Two beds of tomatoes (that's 7 plants) that give us a double handful of beautiful red globes every day. 2 Tommy Apple melon plants with over a dozen 2-fist sized ovoids, 1 Yellow Squash (that's enough, thank you). and about 2/3 of a bed of Serrano chilies, which I'm not sure about--- compared to the bells, and previously grown chilies like Jalapenos and Hungarians, these look kind of spindly. They are just coming into bloom too, which seems kind of late.

So, I have 4 empty beds, and 2 others that could be emptied (beets and broccoli), and about 2/3 of another bed (or the full bed if the chard is bolting). I didn't get my act together so I don't have any transplants of brassicas ready; and it's a little late to start another batch of green beans. I can, however, still plant beets and carrots! Radishes, too, in a couple more weeks. I bought a bunch more beet seeds. Considering how much we love them (even though they are NOT keto friendly)... I figured I can cook and freeze dry them. They will be great for winter borscht (we had summer borscht earlier this week, Yum!) or simply as crunchy snacks. I have a good supply of pickled beets so I probably won't do more of those. At least one bed will go to carrots though. Also, I just read that Queen Anne's Lace greens (and I would assume her more pedestrian domestic relative) are good for gout, which DH is prone to; so I will be drying the greens as well.

I also have some seeds for a chinese "fruit radish." It's apparently so sweet they use it as a "fruit" during the winter months, when fresh fruit is scarce and expensive. The reviews mentioned that it bolts quickly in warm weather, and one person said it wasn't sweet at all but more of a spicy taste like horseradish (maybe because the weather was too warm?) but I want to see how it does in my unheated greenhouse this winter.

And it's about time to start the chicories and endives and other winter-hardy veggies that I will be growing in the greenhouse for winter salads

 

[Britesea]

Daughter and family are here! I'm online for just a few minutes while they wake Samwise (yes, just like in Lord of the Rings) and get him fed and changed.
We had the Gazpacho last night and it was delicious-- even the baby loved it! I went to the Farmers Market before they came, and found they had the first peaches of the season in... with a long line to get them, of course. That's what we had for dessert- just fresh peaches. Tonight is grilled NY steaks, green beans from the garden, and Wild Salad (purslane, goosefoot, mallow, pigweed) with a vinaigrette. Fresh berries and cream with shortbread (not shortcake, I haven't found a low carb version I like yet) for dessert.

I got a load of beets freeze-dried, I just boiled then peeled and sliced them and ran them through. They taste delicious and crispy- a nice crunchy/sweet snack. I also freeze dried a bunch of spaghetti sauce that I found in the fridge- it was still good, but I didn't think we'd be able to use it all before it turned polychromatic. Now I have a quart jar of powdered sauce that just needs to be reconstituted with hot water to provide a quick meal. The best part is if I only need a few tablespoons of sauce for a mini pizza I don't have to open a whole jar again (I think that's what happened before, only someone didn't see the jar that was already open in the fridge, and I ended up with THREE open jars)

Everything is going great, but the dominant Tom Turkey has decided to turn aggressive. He and I had a dominance session yesterday morning after he pecked me HARD in the leg when my back was turned. It took several rounds of me grabbing his head and bearing him to the ground to get him to finally acknowledge that I'm bigger and badder than he is. I wonder if he'll make it to October or if we'll be butchering him early. I was hoping to get him up to 50# or so for maximum meat, but not if he continues to be such a jerk. Right now I have both Toms locked in the closed yard instead of letting them free range with the chickens and Trudy (the hen turkey); I can't allow them to be out and possibly hurt Samwise.
He is so cute! He's 18 months old now, and a lot more personality than when we went to visit last year at this time. I hope we'll be able to arrange visits at least annually now- maybe if we trade off who visits who it won't be so hard. Our problem is finding someone to take care of the animals if we all go. Last year DS opted to stay home, so that wasn't a problem, but I don't want to get in the habit of us taking trips and he never leaves the house.

Ok, see y'all later!

 

[Britesea]

Visit is drawing to a close-- they're leaving tomorrow morning early to continue northward to Eugene and eventually to Vancouver. We had a lovely time together; got to know the son-in-law a lot better, and Samwise is so much fun now- he's not just a little grub anymore. Our dog was absolutely thrilled to have a "puppy" to take care of- they hit it off beautifully. Our garden stepped up to the plate and gave us veggies and fruit galore for the whole week. We are sending them off with a care package of freeze-dried fruits and veggie snacks, and spiced apple fruit leather too.

We finally got the dud eggs out from under the broody, who was still trying to hatch them, and stuck some fresh new ones under her. I keep hoping we'll get a batch of chicks this year; otherwise we'll have to buy some more, because some of them are getting pretty old now and we hardly get any eggs from them anymore.

Right now I'm pretty tired so I'll catch up with y'all later

 

[Britesea]

Got a bunch of tulips and dutch iris planted today. I put hardware cloth down on top of the soil to keep the chickens from scratching in the nice, soft dirt. I'll pull it off in a week or two, when they have forgotten about it (I hope).

I dehydrated several trays of comfrey and garbled it (love that word; it means crumbling the dried leaves away from the tough stems)- it filled half of a gallon sized ziplock. I still have tons more, as well as a small mountain of catnip, horehound, peppermint, bergamot, sage, thyme, tarragon, dill seed heads, and parsley. Most of the herbs will be dried, but I'll be making chimichurri sauce with the parsley. I also have the larger green beans that were too big to be tender in the dehydrator on very low heat (about 95F); I hope to be able to harvest the seeds for planting next year. This is only the second time I've tried saving seed, so I hope it works. I also need to get the seeds from the melons I have in the fridge (I sure hope keeping them cold won't hurt the seeds) as this variety is the first one I've been able to get fruit in my very short season

After going through the freezer, I found a full month's worth of various meats in there. So I made up a month's worth of menus to use them up. Tonight is Shrimp Creole, looking forward to it!

 

[Britesea]

DH accidentally threw a whole bucket of serrano chilies to the chickens because I told him to throw out the last few tomatoes in a bucket (they were too gone for use)... he grabbed both buckets and dumped them. *sigh* at least I had already freeze dried and frozen at least a year's worth before he did that.
I finished up the bell peppers in the freeze dryer last night. I still have some cucumbers to do something with, and I need to finish the herbs. I've got plenty of calendula, comfrey, horehound, peppermint, bergamot, dill seed and catnip laid by now. Need to make some tarragon vinegar which is DH's favorite, and the thyme needs to be garbled and packed up. I didn't get much sage or lemon balm out of my plants this year because they were new plantings, but I got some. The verbena is happy so far in the greenhouse with a cloche on for extra protection-- but she needs to come into the house for winter. I forgot to cover the oregano with a cloche too so it's not looking too happy; I'll try cutting it back and bringing it into the house too.
We made some room for a couple of cilantro plants in the living room too; I hope I can get them to grow.

I use the calendula and comfrey for an antibiotic salve that we dip into for every little boo boo. DH feels it works better than Neosporin or any of the other OTC's. Horehound for coughs and bergamot for fever as well as tummy upset along with peppermint. Dill is supposed to be good for bronchitis and other lung complaints, though I've never needed it (I mainly use it in cooking), and catnip for calming and mood elevation. I also gathered a fair amount of shepherd's purse this summer which is good for stopping excessive bleeding (internal as well as external). Thyme is a powerful antifungal and antimicrobial, as well as apparently being good for cholesterol and hypertension (have some thyme tea!) So my medicine cabinet is expanding.

Doing the Happy Dance! At my annual medical exam, the doctor was so impressed with my lab results that I am now officially OFF my statin drug, and my metformin dose has been cut in half! She does want me to get another blood test in 3 months to make sure the cholesterol and A1C don't start climbing again, but I think I'll be ok. I reduced my daily calories by another 300 a day, and the weight - which had been plateau'd again - is coming down once more. It took a couple of days, but the stomach has shrunk again so I feel full even with slightly smaller meals. I'm now down to pretty much what I think needs to be my permanent daily calorie goal so if I plateau again I need to up the exercise instead.

The chickens have been allowed into the garden now that the cold weather has mostly closed down the growing season. All I have in there now is a bed of beets, another of garlic and shallots, the kale, broccoli and collards. It was funny to see the chickens stretching up to grab bits of kale- they've stripped the bottom half of the stems now. The stinkers wouldn't touch the kale when I threw some to them during the summer, but now that most everything else is dying, they are going after that and the comfrey and the mallow weeds.

Still eating down our freezer meats; we had Fajitas last night (using romaine lettuce leaves instead of tortillas) and tonight I'm cooking up some Rockfish in a creamy shallot sauce. Haven't decided what sides to have with it... maybe green beans and garlic.

 

[Britesea]

 

[Britesea]

We didn't get to the turkeys because both of us got some sort of bug. Feeling better now. I got a different kind of bug and spent some time emptying the chest freezer. I found an entire box of 12 pounds of ground grass-fed beef, as well as numerous other loose meat packages like chicken, salmon, pork tenderloin and corned beef. All hiding under things like half-empty bags of frozen veggies and a huge bunch of those little freezeable bags that you get when they ship you insulin (my friend's DH is on insulin and she kept giving me the bags for use in ice chests and stuff). DH is gonna try to finish defrosting the ice sticking to the upper sides of the freezer (thank goodness it's cold today)- the bottom had been packed solid and is virtually ice-free. I'm heading off to the hardware store to pick up a bunch of "milk crates" that will fit in there. I figure if I stuff each one with a variety of meats, we can empty a crate without getting tired of one kind of protein; when it's empty, lift it out and there's another one. I can't think of any other way to keep things from getting lost in the corners. I also have my huge restaurant sized stock pot about 3/4 full of soup bones and water- gonna make a bunch of stock and can it so I have more room in the freezer.

Back to work!