Falling Leaves and Saving Seeds

September 29, 2014

I’m back.  It took me a bit longer to get back to writing than I had originally thought it would.  The main reason for this is because it’s been a bit hard for me to even look at my blog as it’s chock-full of pictures of Max the Wonder Dog. 

On August 14^th, Charming and I had to make the extremely difficult decision to put our beloved Max to sleep.  As it turned out, Max had cancer and didn’t respond to treatment.  Since then both Charming and I have been a little out of sorts.  We found the adjustment so hard that, after the first couple of weeks of mourning, we both started trolling petfinder.com in a vain attempt to find another dog just like Max. 

Of course there can be no other dog like Max and both Charming and I realize that.  I think I now understand why, in the “olden days,” when a woman lost a child her friends and family would encourage her to have another child as soon as possible.  Although we all know fully well that you can’t substitute one child with another, Charming and I were open to the idea of trying to find another dog to fill up our time and immediate thoughts in hopes that we would be able to move forward.

So to make a long story short…a couple of weeks ago, we got another dog from a rescue group in Kentucky.  The pup is (by our vet’s best guess) a little more than a year old.  He is a lab-pit bull mix; the same as our dear Max.  He was in a high-kill shelter in Kentucky when he was rescued by the Bourbon County (Kentucky) Rescue League.  We arranged to “visit” with him when the rescue group made their regular trek to Petco in Germantown, Maryland.  (That was a two-hour drive for us, but it was an enriching experience to see so many dogs and cats find their “fur-ever homes”.)  Our new little guy is a bundle of energy who does take up quite a bit of our time and energy.  He looks a lot like our Max, but he’s much smaller and probably won’t weigh above 50 pounds when he reaches full maturity.  He has one lab ear and one pit bull ear, if you can believe that.  We’ve named him “Jax” and there are moments…like when he’s stretched out on my lap with his legs up in the air, waiting for a belly rub…that we realize that he is a true gift in his own right. 

Moving on…I have been busily canning up the remainder of the vegetables in our garden.  I’ve also been drying and saving seeds.  If you’re an avid gardener, working towards self-sufficiency, or a Prepper then you’re always planning for the future.  The seeds that I save from this season should be viable for the next two or three years.  Saving my own seeds allows me to start the seeds indoors, often before seeds and gardening paraphernalia even show up in the stores.  It also ensures that I get strong, healthy plants that are not genetically modified and have not been exposed to harmful pesticides.  I like to know what I’m eating.

Below are pictures of my seeds saving process as well the finished product, complete with my hand-made seed envelopes.

Dried Napa Cabbage and Large Bunching Onion seeds that
have been drying for about a month in a warm, well-ventilated
room in our house.

Seed packets that I designed, using the "draw" and graphics
features in my word processing application.  (I "drew" in lines
to make it easier to cut uniform lines and then folded and taped
the edges.)

Voila!  Seeds for my garden and extra for family members.

Our Jax is a bit camera shy, but...

I was finally able to snap a picture of him before
he got away.

Breaks Are Good...

August 11, 2014

Due to Max's illness, frequent visits to the vet, and trying to keep up with canning the bounty from my garden, I  need to take a break from blogging for a week or two.

Will hopefully be back by the end of August.  Take care and enjoy the rest of your summer!

I Wonder If This Ever Happens To Martha Stewart...

August 4, 2014

Last night I gathered some beautiful tomatoes out of our garden, in anticipation of making and canning spaghetti sauce today.  I washed, cored, and chopped the tomatoes and cooked them up so I could get a head start on my canning this morning.  Everything went according to plan.

This morning I got up at 6:30 a.m.  I fixed Charming’s breakfast, packed his lunch (he’s still helping my brother finish up a construction project), kissed him off to work (this closely resembled a Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead episode as I hustled him out the door while simultaneously giving him instructions and handing him his lunchbox, a towel for drying off in the mid-day heat, and two fresh t-shirts in case he feels the need to get out of his sweaty shirt).  I then fed Max the Wonder Dog, made the bed, washed the dishes, and took a quick walk with my sister who has just moved in down the street. 

Upon coming home, I began to prepare my spaghetti sauce.  I took the previously cooked tomatoes out of the fridge, ran them in batches through the blender, then through the Foley food mill, and finally dumped the pulp-thickened juice into the biggest pot I own.  This went along fairly quickly and I moved effortlessly around the kitchen, singing a happy song in my way-way-off-key I Love Lucy voice.  Cooking and canning are two things that make me happy, so I sing when I work.  My sister calls me “Martha Stewart, Jr.”

With the big pot of tomato sauce on the stove, I turned the heat to up to get the ball rolling.  Figuring I had a few spare minutes, I zipped to the bedroom for a big armload of laundry and headed for the laundry area in the basement.  Our black cat, Walker, was hot on my heels meow-ing all the way.  (He has been clingy and more needy than usual since our other kitty, Powder, ran away on June 1^st.)  After throwing the laundry into the washer, I glanced at Walker’s bowl and figured I had enough time to top it off since I was down there anyway.  Meow! Meow! Meow!  Ok, so it wasn’t fresh food that he wanted.  A brief thought about the sauce on the stove flitted through my mind, but I figured it would only take a few minutes to clean the litter box as well…Walker is pretty finicky about his litter box.  After I got that done and he seemed much happier.

I sprint back up the stairs; thinking that my sauce is happily bubbling away…which it was…away, away, away over the top of the pan and all over the stove!  YIKES!  I rushed to the sink and quickly wash my hands then raced to the stove and turned off the heat.  Tomato sauce was EVERYWHERE, so for the next 30 seconds, I said almost every swear word I could think of.  Then, because the heat and tomato sauce eruption was somewhat subsiding, I composed myself and simply started groaning…oh, no, No, NOOOOO…ohhhhh, no.  What’s a Martha to do? 

After several minutes of just standing in front of the stove and staring at the mess, I slowly walked to the sink, grabbed my Handi-wipe dishcloth and a mixing bowl of water with a squirt of dish detergent, then I mustered all the Queenly grace I could find.  I walked back to the stove and mopped, and mopped, and mopped.  In my mind, this is all that any Martha can do.

This is what happens when you try to do too many things at once.

The stove as it looked 2/3's of the way through clean up...yes,
it was much worse than this before I started cleaning it up.

Starting over...which proves you can sometimes screw up in life,
but start over with a clean slate.

Now That’s A Tomato!

July 31, 2014

I picked my first batch of tomatoes for canning on Tuesday evening.  As I picked the different kinds of tomatoes (Amish Paste, Mr. Stripey, Mortgage Lifter, Pink Brandywine and our own “Mystery”), I brushed against the leaves and was blessed with that strong, sweet tomato plant scent that is every gardener’s favorite aroma.  Not that I consider myself a true gardener…I just plop seeds and plants into the dirt and they somehow grow into lovely edible jewels. 

The “Mortgage Lifter” tomatoes that we are growing this year seem to be doing well.  I picked one last night and it was huge!  Although not completely ripe, I was afraid to leave it on the vine for fear it would split.  It measures six inches across and over three inches tall!  We will probably save this one for seeds to plant next year.  We’ve been saving seeds from our Mortgage Lifters for the past few years and they never disappoint.  We ordered the original seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Mineral, Virginia.  This is a great small company that offers heirloom seeds that are well-suited to the growing environment in the Mid-Atlantic States.  They also offer hard-to-find seeds that you can’t find at the big box stores, such as the Asparagus Beans that I was bragging about a few posts ago.

My first batch of tomatoes for the year will be made into salsa.  Charming loves the stuff and will eat almost a pint with one taco salad.  That’s why I’m canning this batch in quarts.  Otherwise, I would waste a lot of time running to the basement to grab another jar of salsa.  For salsa, I use the Mrs. Wage’s method.  I don’t care for growing cilantro nor do I care for eating it.  Therefore, as far as salsa is concerned, I’ll leave the spices to the professionals.  It’s quick, easy, gluten-free and Charming likes the taste.  That’s an all around winner for me!

Although I do not really like salsa, I do find it to be palatable in casseroles.  I make a “Mexican Casserole” that is layers of corn tortillas, grated cheddar cheese, and a mixture of canned chicken (boneless chicken thighs that I can myself), rice, salsa, and a gluten-free substitute for condensed cream of chicken soup that I concoct myself.  Charming loves this casserole and will ask me to make it on special occasions like his birthday.  Neither I nor Mrs. Wage can ask for a higher compliment than that!

Oh…one of my readers brought it to my attention that, using Internet Explorer to access my blog, she is unable to “see” my e-mail address and unable to access the “Comment” section.  (For some reason it is visible to those who use Google Chrome as their web browser, but for not Internet Explorer.)  My e-mail address for this blog is virginiarealblog@gmail.com if you should want to comment or contact me.  I’m sorry for this technology glitch.

This "Mortgage Lifter" heirloom tomato measures six inches across
and over three inches tall.  I placed it beside these quart cans of beans
(that I canned Tuesday night) to give you a sense of the tomato's size.

My...or, rather, Mrs. Wage's...salsa.

Canning the salsa.

Seeds of Progress…

July 28, 2014

My onion seeds are ripening and I’ve started harvesting them to save for next year.  This year, we planted yellow onions, white onions, and some large “bunching” onions (bunching onions are attached at the bulb…you may get three or more onions in a bunch). We pulled up the onions and they are now hanging under the porch roof of our garage/storage shed.  (We let the onions hang to “cure” for several weeks because we plan to store them for later use…not sure if everybody does this, but my family always did it so I do it, too. )

Onion seeds can be saved by letting a few of your onions develop flower “heads” (little puff balls of white flowers at the top of the plant).  We let these plants grow until the tops fall over and then pull the onions up and cut the seed head off.  We put the seed heads on a tray and let them sit in a location that is dry and has good ventilation.  After a couple of weeks, a lot of the seeds will have fallen out onto the tray.  To be sure to as many of the seeds as possible, I simply tap the seed head against the tray and watch the shower of large black seeds fall onto the tray.  We try to save as many seeds as possible as the germination rate for onion seeds is fairly low.  While it is easier to just buy onion “sets” (tiny little onions that someone else has started from seed) and just stick them in the ground to grow, we get personal satisfaction from beating the odds and coaxing the onions to grow from our seed.  When you live the simple life, you learn to take great pleasure in life’s little triumphs.

On another topic, one of the big hurdles in our kitchen renovation has been cleared, due to Charming’s creative and engineering mind!  When we moved into our “run-down ranch,” we inherited a cabinet from the previous owners.  The cabinet wasn’t in good shape, but it did have a white enamel top on it…like the ones that the old Hoosier cabinets have.  (My Momma had a Hoosier-type cabinet when I was little and she used to roll the most amazing pie dough on that cabinet top.)  Shortly after we moved into this house, Charming was loading the cabinet onto the truck to take to the landfill when I yelled…“STOP!”  Not surprisingly, Charming has developed a healthy fear of my deep and abiding affection for all things old.  However, he patiently asked me what in the world I wanted with the cabinet.  “Not the cabinet,” I replied.  “Just the top.  We’re going to use it in our future kitchen renovation.”  Poor Charming!  I remember that his shoulders actually slumped when I said that.  Bless his little heart; he removed the top and stored it in the basement where it has been these many years. 

So, when Charming decided to make cabinets for the new part of our kitchen from scratch, I saw my opportunity.  I started planting the seeds (with my gardening experience, I’ve gotten good at planting seeds…ha, ha!) first by saying, “I wonder how that enamel top would look on part of the new countertop.”  Then when we were discussing the cost of the renovation, I slipped in the comment, “Well, you know if we used that enamel top on part of the counter, we could save the cost of about four feet of countertop.”  After strategically planting seeds like this as often as possible, he started to formulate plans to make the top work with the new kitchen counter’s design. 

He cut wood strips and fitted them to the underside of the enamel top and then added more strips to the cabinet…all the while mumbling something about counter-sinking screws, adding shims, and needing stronger wood glue.  Before I knew it, he was lugging the enamel top up the basement stairs and fitting it on top of the cabinet.  After positioning it into place, he seemed surprised that his plan actually worked, but finally he said something about being “proud of himself”.  I have to say that I’m proud of him, too.

Even though the progress on this project is very slow, I know that the kitchen renovation will eventually look “AWESOME!”  I’m just hoping the enamel countertop will help me to make amazing pie dough like my Momma’s!

A previous picture of our garden...You can see our "bunching onions" on top, left
of this photo.  The white seed heads on top of the onion plant contains the seeds
for next year.

These are the seed heads that have been drying for a couple of weeks.
The picture shows me tapping the seed head against the tray to release
more seeds.

With Charming's ingenuity, a plain enamel top from an old cabinet
becomes a functional part of our new counter top.  The cabinets above
will house my baking supplies, while the cabinets below will have metal
pull-out shelves that will corral my mixer, mixing bowls, and baking pans.
The counter top also gives the kitchen the "retro" look that I love.
YAY!

Is It Asparagus or Is It A Bean?

July 24, 2014

Usually we don’t have very good luck growing green beans.  We plant them in the spring, the plants come up, and the bean bugs take over soon afterwards.  However, this year our beans are doing great.  I like to attribute it to me quitting my job, which has allowed me to concentrate on growing food, creating craft projects (which I see as a real “need”), and keeping the house clean enough so that the health department doesn’t declare it unfit for human occupation.

Last year we ordered some beans called Asparagus Beans from a company called Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.  (This is a great company, by the way, as they offer many heirloom seeds, which is what Charming and I prefer to grow.  Their seeds are from the same stock as what our ancestors grew in their gardens…long before Monsanto and DuPont started fiddling with the genetic make-up of American seeds.)  As I recall from the description in the catalog, the beans actually originated in Asia and although they look like green beans they are really more closely related to cowpeas.  They are often referred to as “yard long” beans.  Not surprisingly, last year’s crop did not do as well as we’d hoped.  We harvested just enough to save for seed to use for this year. 

Not expecting much from the seeds that we had saved, but not willing to give up on them, we planted them again this spring.  Well, they grew up their trellis in no time and are producing like gangbusters.  Either last year's plants adjusted to our planting environment or our more diligent work on the garden paid off.  I’m not sure how long the beans would get if we left to grow, but I generally pick them when they are less than two feet long.  So far, they have been resistant to bugs with very few spots or blemishes on them.  After picking them, I mix them in with our Kentucky Wonder pole beans and cook them.  We really like the taste of them.  I have frozen about eight 1-pound bags of them and, barring unexpected extreme weather, expect to get at least that much more to freeze.

I’m already saving some of the beans for seed stock for next year.  Not only are these beans good to eat, they are a curiosity for neighbors and family members.  I guess the old adage that, “bigger is better” holds true in the case of these beans.

You can see the beans growing in the middle
and lower left quadrant of this photo.

Here I'm holding six or so of the beans.  They usually
grow nice and straight, with very few imperfections.

This picture really shows how nice the beans are...
straight, almost perfect, and lots of them.

As you can tell by the tape measure, a few of these beans
have reached the 2-foot mark.  Doesn't take many to make a meal.

Mountain Girl Pearls...

July 21, 2014

I’m the kind of person who likes to be productive for as many (awake) hours of the day as possible.  Maybe it’s because I am a “Type A” personality.  Maybe it’s because I grew up in a family where the saying “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop” was ranked right up there with the Ten Commandments.  I don’t know, but what really matters is that I believe that God only gives us so many hours on this Earth and I want to make the most of every minute.  I like to think I do this by channeling my creative energy into making things that are useful; things that could quite possibly make it into the next generation or even into the next century.  I love anything that can stand up to the wear and tear of daily life like braided rugs, quilts, knitted items, stained glass, etc. and actually improve with age.  I tend to gravitate toward making things that are durable as well as functional…and it gives me a tremendous amount of self-satisfaction if those items are pretty as well.

Recently, I crocheted some necklaces that I affectionately call, “Mountain Girl Pearls”.  So far, I’ve made them in pale blue, off-white, mint green, red, and am currently working on one that is pink.  The base of the necklace is crocheted with scallops on the bottom edge.  I sew matching colors (or not matching colors) of buttons of varying sizes onto the scallops.  The necklace fastens with another button that fits through a crocheted opening.  My first off-white necklace turned out to be fairly attractive.  Then I envisioned what a red one might look like.  After that one was finished, I thought about using paler colors and they turned out nicely as well.  Before I knew it, I had a collection of six necklaces and was churning them out rather quickly as I moved through the thread colors that the craft store had available. 

I came up with the name “Mountain Girl Pearls” because, in times past, most mountain women saved everything they possibly could.  This included fabric, zippers and buttons from worn out or outgrown clothing.  Buttons were a precious commodity to mountain women.  I recall when I was young that my Momma and my Granny both had “button boxes”.  After I grew up and moved into my own place, I started my own button collection.  I have buttons that I’ve removed from the wool clothing used to make my braided rugs, buttons purchased at yard sales and thrift shops for almost nothing, and buttons that I’ve bought from the clearance bins at fabric stores.  My collection has, over the years, somehow morphed from one small container to one jar and two good-sized tins of buttons.  I will probably never use all of these buttons in my lifetime.  However, I hope that they will eventually fall into the hands of someone who will treasure them just as much as I do, and as my mother did, and as my grandmother did.

For now, I’m content with recycling some of my precious buttons and turning them into sweet little necklaces.  (Charming says that I need to consider parting with these and selling them on etsy.com or some other venue…at the rate I’m churning them out, I think he fears that if I die first he’ll be stuck with a dresser drawer full of ‘em!  I'm trying to convince him to think of them as an "inheritance" not a "burden".)

My button stash...about a half-gallon in the jar and the other
two containers are full to the top of beautiful buttons in every color of
the rainbow.

Six completed necklaces.

All six necklaces...laid out for better viewing.

The original "Mountain Girl" (me!) modeling my Mountain Girl Pearls.
(Hmmm...could that be a new wrinkle on my turkey neck?????)