Making Yer Gut...

I spent some of this past winter thinking about my general state of health.  (Since my personality leans a bit to the hypochondriac side...not to mention the obsessive/compulsive side...I think about my health....A LOT.  Oh yes indeedy, I'm a really fun person to live with...just ask Charming.)  Anyhow, getting back to me thinking about my health.  During my "Winter of Contemplation" I realized that I'm not a fun person to be around without my daily dose of Vitamin D.  I've also realized that in order to get the most out of the Vitamin D, I also need to balance that with a small daily dose of Magnesium.  In fact, in my most recent issue of "Better Homes and Gardens", there was a small blurb on Page 130 that indicated that women should take 320 mg of magnesium per day if their doctor has suggested that they take a Vitamin D supplement.  

I have a theory that those of us with a sensitivity to gluten do not get the full measure of vitamins from the food we eat.  In my case, if I eat anything that contains gluten, you can bet that I'll be in the bathroom within twenty minutes...and it won't be to brush my teeth.  Since gluten makes me run for the bathroom at a frantic pace, I reason that the food doesn't get a chance to stay in my system long enough to deliver the vitamins.  Even though I now stay on a gluten-free diet, my body has been low on vitamins (probably all of the vitamins) for years.  Oddly enough, several of my siblings also have low Vitamin D levels.  I wish medical doctors would get a clue and start testing all of their patients for all of the main vitamins.  I believe that when the body is starved for nutrients, then all kinds of diseases begin to show up.  As I said, this is my theory...and I'm sticking to it!

In an effort to get and stay as healthy as possible, I started making my own yogurt, fermented vegetables, and kombucha back in December.  I would have never guessed that making these foods would be as easy as it is.  I drink kombucha and eat either yogurt or fermented vegetables on a daily basis and I really do believe that I feel better as a result.  In addition, I either take a quick walk, mow the yard, or work in my garden every day.  My gauge is that I've been able to work in my two gardens this year without nearly the amount of difficulty as last year.  My joints don't complain as much as last year and it doesn't take me days to recover from the work.  (I'm talking upper body work here as I was at somewhat of a disadvantage last year after my ankle surgery.)  All in all, I'm very happy with the progress I've made health-wise over the past year.  

On the chance that I drop dead tomorrow, at least I can say I'm doing all I can to give my body the chance to work as it was intended.  That's my "official" medical advice, please pay at the desk on your way out.

My fermented concoction of carrots, turnips, & apples. 

Sounds a bit strange, but actually quite tasty on a hot dog,

ham sandwich, or mixed in with tuna and eaten on crackers.

I make about a gallon of yogurt every couple of weeks.  Simply

heat fat-free milk (or your preferred level of fatted milk) to the proper

temperature, add yogurt culture (a few spoonfuls of yogurt from 

previous batch) and leave in a warm place for at least four hours,

maintaining a temperature of about 110 degrees and...boom...home-made

yogurt!

When I first started making yogurt, I'd put it in the oven or toaster oven

and try to maintain the temperature by turning the oven on and off, but

I found that it was much easier to make the yogurt at night, pour the cooled milk 

mixture into pint jars, lining a chest-type cooler with heavy towels, putting the 

jarred yogurt into the cooler and covering with more towels is the easiest

way to make yogurt.  Close the top on the cooler and come back in the morning

to yogurt that is as good as any you can buy in the grocery store...just sweeten 

and add fruit, nuts, or chocolate chips.  Yum!

For kombucha, I was able to buy a bottle ($2.59 from the grocery store)

and grew my own SCOBY...that's the weird-looking whitish scum-type

of stuff that you see in the jar on top of the liquid.  (I know, I was a bit

grossed out at first, but now it doesn't bother me at all.)

Here's a close-up of the SCOBY after it had been growing for

about four weeks.  (Charming said he was growing a bit concerned over

the state of my mental health as I hovered over the growing SCOBY for 

five minutes at a time, many times a day...for an entire month!  I'm

sure he's wondered many times what kind of kook he married.)

Now I have multiple batches brewing at any given time.  I stagger the

brew times so that I always have a steady supply of kombucha.

This is a batch that is on it's "2nd fermentation" where

I add fruit and let it sit for two days.  Almost any fruit can be 

used to flavor the fizzy drink.  Tastes similar to a sweetened

apple cider vinegar...but has a slight fizz to it.

On another note, I've found so many rocks in my garden that I 

decided to use them to practice my painting skills.  So I made these 

garden markers for each row of vegetables that I plant.  This is just

a sample. I also have cucumbers, cabbage, several types of tomatoes,

green beans, corn, and "Candy Roaster" squash.  (When life gives

you lemons, make lemonade...When your garden gives you

rocks, make garden markers.)

Emerging From Hibernation...

It's been a while since I've taken the time to blog, but with a touch of spring in the air I think it's time to get back into the swing of things.

The renovation on the "homestead" is just about complete.  The only things left to do are spot painting and a few electrical covers that need to be put in place.  We have been living in the house almost continuously during the winter.  The cold and unpredictable weather that we anticipated seem to be the norm here.  Although we didn't get a lot of measurable snow, it seemed that every time we turned around there was sleet and/or freezing rain coming down.  During these times we just stay inside and work on small inside projects.  We have Internet and television, so there are times when we just sit back, watch a movie, and enjoy the heat of the wood stove.  The electricity does go out frequently here, but that's to be expected when you live "out in the country" so we just hook up the generator to keep the refrigerator, freezer, and computers running.  During these times, the wood stove does double duty in that it keeps us warm and cozy as well as cooking a pot of stew or beans.  To sum it all up, we are really happy here on our little plot of land.  If all goes well with our health as we age, we should be able to be fairly self-sufficient on what we can raise on the property.

We went to a local festival a few weeks ago just to see the community in action.  The festival was one of the best I had ever attended.  It was spread out all over the county, which allows most of the community to get involved.  The crowd numbers were expected to be around 10,000, but because it was spread out over the whole county, the numbers we're oppressive (I don't do well in situations where there are wall-to-wall people...which is probably why we love living way out here). We had a wonderful time and got a chance to carry on conversations with members of the local community and were very impressed with the friendliness of the people.  We spoke with one of the local radio personalities and another lady even invited me to her house to see her business operation.  We also visited another neighbor and got a tour of their farm operation, which was very impressive.

One of the main things we do on clear and relatively warm (meaning above 40 degrees) is to cut wood, then we cut more wood, then we cut even more wood.  We only work an hour or so at a time, but it's amazing how much you can do in an hour's time.  To most people this would get old after a while, but we find that it's good exercise and keeps our home warm and cozy throughout the winter.  We try to keep our stockpile of wood big enough that we're at least one year ahead so that if one of us has a medical issue (like my ankle surgery last year) then we have enough wood to last through that time period.  The wind blows a lot here and nature tends to take down the trees that are old or weak, so it's almost a necessity that we heat with wood just to use up all the downed trees.  The fact that it saves a ton of money when we don't use the electric heat to keep warm is a huge bonus.

We've also been working on other projects, which I'll continue to share in upcoming posts.  All in all, we're having a great time, keeping busy, and living the good life!

Jax inspects the big tree that fell in our yard.

And he does his part to help with the fire wood.

He also performs quality control inspections on the wood that we split.

Charming built this nice wood bin to corral the wood and help to keep

 the area cleaner, which makes my life easier.  (I just love that guy!)

A cheery fire burning in the wood stove allows us to ignore the

 cold wind, sleet, and snow outside.

I made this cover for our generator out of dog food bags sewn together.

I crocheted a length of plastic baling twine into a "chain" to cinch the

bottom snugly to prevent the wind from blowing it off.  It's worked 

well so far.  (Nice of Purina to put dog food into bags that resemble

light-weight tarps.)\

Walker & Powder take turns watching out the window from their perch

on this footstool given to me by my sister Joyce.  (Perfect height to give

the "inside kitties" a view of the outside world.)  Sometimes they both

sit on the stool at the same time.

A favorite perch for my kitty cat, Powder.

I crocheted a bunting set for the newest baby in the family.

My nephew, Billy & his wife had a girl.  (Set 

includes the bunting, a headband, & a diaper "soaker".)

The curtains I made for my craft/guest room needed a little something

more, so I crocheted this valance to fill in the blank space between

the curtains.  

I took this picture in the dark to highlight the pattern.  I think

it lends a bit of country charm to the window.

Are We There Yet?

The answer is...No, but we’re a lot closer than we were when we first began this wild ride and we do expect to spend our first winter in the house this year.

Currently, Charming is installing flooring and things are looking much better.  The flooring that we chose is an almost scary match with the kitchen countertops.  It also goes well with the faux stone that we installed behind the wood stove.  The color of the flooring is “Timberland Oak,” which is fancy talk for a dark brown, mottled look.  We like it, but I’m reminded of my former work supervisor who good-naturedly chided me because my favorite color choice was either beige or brown, which translated to boring in her opinion.  While it is true that I love, love, love browns and beiges I think she would be extremely proud of me for venturing outside of my color box by choosing colors like “Mesa Yellow” for my living room, “Southern Peach” for my craft room, and “Oriental Ivory” (which is really an icy mint color) for the master bedroom.  Choosing anything other than beige for room colors was a bit scary for me, but I’m really happy with the color choices. 

In addition to the progress on the flooring, I’m happy to report that our garden is producing a bit better than I had expected.  Since we’ve had so much rain this season, many of the gardens we’ve seen have been already been cleaned off and put to sleep for the year.  For the past two weeks, I’ve been getting quite a bountiful harvest from the garden.  We’ve had a continual supply of lettuce the entire summer.  I sowed my second planting a few weeks ago and it is coming in nicely.  We have plenty of tomatoes and Candy Roaster squash (dare I say, almost too many Candy Roasters) with a few Sugar Baby watermelons, acorn squash, and cucumbers.  The deer feasted on our crop of green beans early in the season, but luckily I still have plenty of green beans in the freezer from last year.  We also planted corn, but something got into it and knocked it all down.  At first, we thought that the culprits were our deer friends; however, when we saw that the ears of corn had been shucked and eaten off the cob we realized that deer would not be able to shuck the corn.  That left only one other animal that would totally knock down all the stalks, shuck the corn, eat it and toss the bare cobs aside…a bear.  A chat with our closest neighbor, who verified sightings of a bear with two cubs at her place (the bear demolished her honey bee hives), leads us to believe that we are most likely correct in our assumption. 

We are learning that farm life is not always easy and there will likely be frequent disappointments, but we are choosing to live by our motto, “We’ll do better next year!”

The floor in the kitchen that Charming is installing (old on the left, new on the right).

Countertops match the flooring nicely.

It also matches the faux stone that surrounds the woodstove.

A view of the master bedroom, which is just off the living room.

2nd view of master bedroom...bathroom door was removed to install floor, hence the pink fabric.

An up-close look at the floor (with new heating vents).

Our woodpile is getting bigger and bigger!

Part of our harvest...lots of tomatoes, Tom (candy roaster) Squash, & Sugar Baby watermelons.

The squash are many and huge (between 5-7 pounds!) will need to get creative in the kitchen.

Rembrandt's Got Nothing on Us (well, maybe a bit more than nothing)…

August 12, 2018

Not much to write about, but wanted to give everyone a quick look at some painting that’s going on around the house.  Charming has finished painting the living room although he still has to put trim around the windows at some point.  The color of the living room is called “Mesa Yellow”.  He also started painting the master bedroom.  The color for this room is called “Oriental Ivory,” which is a really pale mint color.  I’m hoping the color will be a calming influence, as I often find it hard to relax and fall asleep.  I have always lived in houses that have had beige walls.  While that particular color is extremely practical and goes with everything, I decided this house needed more color.

I’m also including pictures of the mock-up of the refrigerator door.  I used black “Duck Tape” to hold the mural on the door, but both Charming and I agree that it does look a bit “trailer park”.  Although I sometimes refer to myself as “The Queen of the Double Wide,” we decided that the mural would look much better if we take some time to brainstorm and come up with something that’s more wood-like to make a frame.  I expect that to take place after the rest of the rooms are painted and the flooring has been installed, but I’ll post more pictures when we come up with a solution.

The "before" picture of the living room with new drywall installed.

Not quite the same angle (use windows as focal point), but much more cheerful looking.

At left is an alcove for a small phone table & a shelf above for computer stuff.

Hallway to other bedrooms...one is my craft/guest room, the other is Charming's den/guest room.

Before installing the mural on the refrigerator door, I had to fill a good-sized dent.

The mural taped in place w/duck tape.  Worked well; just doesn't look as nice as I'd like, but we'll fix that.

A chicken wire overlay made the pictures appear more realistic.

Hot Chicks...

August 5, 2018

Since Charming has completed most of the work in the kitchen at the farm and has moved on to painting the other rooms in the house, I decided it was time to work on the mural to cover up the dents and scratches on the refrigerator that my brother Jeff gave to us.  You might recall that I wanted a chicken theme for that project, so I got serious last week and put what little painting talent I could muster to work.  I had originally thought I could simply use big sheets of cardboard leftover from large appliance purchases, but the cardboard warped after it was painted.  I considered and discarded many other options including store-bought artist’s canvas, construction paper, and poster board.  All of these options were rejected for various reasons such as cost, available sizes, weight, or warping after they were painted.  Then I had a brainstorm, we had quite a bit of Tyvek house wrap left over from re-siding the house so perhaps that would work.  It is light-weight, stable, and flexible which made it easy to cut.  I’m sure that most serious artists would never consider using Tyvek, but it worked perfectly for this project. 

First, I measured the refrigerator door, including the cut-out for the icemaker.  Then I measured it again.  And just because I’ve been around Charming for so long and have picked up some of his work habits, I measured it a third time.  I cut the Tyvek to match the door measurements and used Charming’s square to mark off the space for the icemaker.  After cutting out the space for the icemaker, I painted the entire piece of Tyvek with leftover kitchen paint.  To make the mural resemble the walls of a chicken house, I streaked it lightly with black paint and drew vertical lines for the “boards” at 3-inch intervals with a Sharpie marker.  Next, I painted brown “nests” for the chickens.  Then I lightly penciled in chickens on the nests.  After that, it was just a matter of mixing paints and slapping the paint on the mural.

This week I plan to cut chicken wire to go over each chicken and frame it all with black Duck Tape.  Using the Duck Tape will keep the mural light and hold it firmly onto the door.  I’m hoping it will turn out o.k. and will be a relatively inexpensive solution to cover up the dings and dents on the refrigerator.  Also, in the event that the used refrigerator dies in the near future, I won’t have a lot of money invested in the project!

The first layers of paint on the inside of my "chicken house" mural.

Had to use the kitchen countertop as an easel since the mural is about 5 feet long.

Chicken #1 is my favorite...all fat and fluffy.

This one looks a bit odd, but it won't be as noticeable behind the chicken wire.

Another fat and fluffy chick...too much chicken feed, I guess.

While I worked on the mural in the kitchen, Charming worked on painting the living room.

The first layer of paint in the living room...I'm sure he'll add at least one more layer, maybe two.

A small shelf that Charming made from kitchen cabinet doors...so talented!

The utility closet holds washer, dryer, and freezer...so convenient!

 

Long Time Gone...

Boy, time surely flies when you're not looking.  We've been so busy at the farm that it's hard to know what day it is, let alone the time.  The renovation, garden, mowing, and other miscellaneous things (like cats and dogs) keep us busy from daylight until dark.  I do have to say that these are some of the best days I've ever had, though.  I'm convinced that keeping both the mind and the body occupied is good for the soul. 

Charming usually gets up around daylight, fixes his coffee and immediately goes to work on the renovation.  I normally get up sometime between 6:30 and 7:30 am, depending on when I can drag myself out of bed.  I fix breakfast (usually oatmeal for Charming and a muffin & fruit for me), then I go to the garden for a couple of hours to try to beat back the weeds and murder as many potato bugs as possible.  After that, I take Charming a cup of hot tea then take a quick shower as, after working in the garden, I’m literally dripping with sweat.  (Not really the romantic picture of country life that you see in the movies.)  After I tidy up the camper then it's time to think about fixing lunch.  Charming is pretty much chained in the kitchen as that's the most intensive project we have left.  He is taking great pains to get things right because (bless his heart) he wants to make me happy, but also says he never wants to renovate another kitchen as long as he lives.  Luckily, this kitchen is a bit easier as he doesn't have to install any new water pipes as with our last kitchen project.  He is coming along with the work nicely, though, and it looks absolutely wonderful and stunningly close to what he did to our other kitchen.  He's added a couple of small features that were not possible with the last kitchen and it looks like I'll have even more storage space.  I have to admire Charming's work as almost all of the cabinets were recycled from cabinets that my brother gave us.  Sis also gave us a huge pantry cabinet that Charming re-painted and added handles that match the other cabinets and that turned out wonderfully.  The refrigerator and microwave was given to us by my brother as well.  Charming polished the stainless microwave front with car polish and it looks practically brand new.  Using the car polish was a great tip that I had never heard before, but it worked really well and prevents fingerprints from showing.  Less cleaning for me…Yay!

The garden was growing really well until this week.  During our evening walks and drives, we'd noticed a marked rise in the deer population (five in our yard, when we walked outside one day).  I was almost heartbroken to find that the deer had been sampling (or rather devouring) my green beans, squash, and even onions.  So we made a special trip to the store to purchase cayenne pepper to put on the plants.  I'm also putting the hair from my hairbrush directly into the bunched-up leaves of the squash plants.  We're also putting other stuff around the garden to try to keep them at bay.  I realize that all God’s creatures need to eat and I am willing to share some, but not my entire garden.  Charming says things will even out when deer season comes and we get some deer meat for our freezer. 

I also continue to work on knitting/crocheting/spinning projects.  My niece, Lisa, still keeps me supplied with a lot of yarn from the recycle shed at her county landfill.  I try to come up with ideas to turn the yarn into usable and/or somewhat attractive items.  I'm grateful to Lisa for thinking of me as it's saved me tons of money with not having to purchase yarn.  She also recently found what looked to be a new blind hemming machine that just happened to be the same brand as my serger.  This was a huge find as a new one costs $599.  It did not have a cord/foot peddle with it, but the cord/foot peddle from my serger works perfectly with it!  Lisa is a great forager and I'm so lucky to have her as my niece.

So as time goes marching on, we keep plugging away.  Charming hopes to move before winter time…but I’m still not betting on that!

The north wall has a tiny "coffee counter", stove, microwave, & sink.

The south wall with Sis's pantry, baking center, cabinets & fridge goes at the end.

Charming added a nice little "cook book nook" between the pantry & cabinets.

My "Charming" electrician installs the ceiling lights.

My garden hoe made from a metal lumber strap, hose clamps, & $ Store broomstick costs $2.00

Our half-runner beans prior to what I refer to as "that dastardly deer attack".

Jax amongst the daylilies...how much cuter is this dog gonna get????

An up-close of one of the daylilies.

Lisa gave me a great selection of yarn from the landfill, so I made this Topsy Turvy Doll.

The back side of the doll with a mass of "French braided" hair.

Undignified as it is for the doll, you flip her dress up and she turns into a sleeping baby.

Sleeping while standing up?  Yeah, I've done that.

Poor Jax got bit by his girl friend & was hating life for about a week.

Maribelle eats breakfast then naps under the camper step.  (My kinda girl.)

Similar to squirrels, we're already preparing for winter.

I'm spinning this lovely wool & silk roving into...

...more lovely yarn!