Playing catch-up

On August 29th, we traveled to the Veterans cemetery to say hello to Michael's father, on the second anniversary of his death day, and took Irene out for lunch. The next day, we met our daughter and her husband at the Minnesota State Fair.  

The Big Pig

Monday saw us complete a number of mundane chores, which included beginning the process of ordering floor trusses and buying building supplies. Today we began sealing the basement of walls.  

And they talk about working in the trenches... 

We hope to finish this particular project tomorrow. Slopping mastic on block walls while avoiding slipping in the mud and wiping the sweat out of your eyes is only so much fun. So we celebrated finishing off the first bucket by fixing dinner (brats and salad), and then engaged in some chicken therapy. Ah. 

Blessings journal: our first anniversary on The Land

One year ago today we arrived with our U-Haul, kissed Irene, and set up an electric fence for Zealot. We spent the next several days emptying garages and the basement, putting together shelves in the newly emptied spaces and promptly filled them again. We bought and installed a wood burning stove, put plastic over the single-pane windows, and really haven't slowed down much since. We aren't sleeping double on a single bed anymore, and there are walls for a basement, even if the floor isn't in yet and the moat remains. The wood and tractor and chickens all have a place to reside this winter.  

Back door and window of the new shed are done. May cover the tractor doors with tarps. 

We are busy making big ones into little ones before tucking them in for the winter.  

The first wood shed is working so well Michael tripled the storage space in the newest version.  

I haven't felt this physically fit since I graduated from law school. Irene and Zealot have become fast friends. Michael frets about the addition, but wakes up happy and eager to see what the day will bring...as do I. We can hardly wait to see how things are a year from now. Happy anniversary indeed!

Construction journal: touchdown!

The Housemover Guys were here yesterday. Michael and two burly guys got the LVL beams in place while I frittered away my time making the frame for the second door on the chicken shed.  

West corner sitting on original 6" joist supports

East side sitting on new LVL beam

There's an LVL beam in the middle as well. The floor levels between the original house and addition will be different, by about 6"...although that may be more or less depending on what we decide to do with the sill plate. Right now, we are trying to figure out how to get close enough to put sill plates on! 

Still a sea of mud  

Here's to the next phase! 

Harvest journal: three down, two to haul

It's been a rainy week in Western Wisconsin. The sun made an appearance two days ago, at which time Michael started building the new wood shed.  

Yesterday we went out and Michael felled the last two of the trio of trees on the edge of the far field.  

Michael wearing his chainsaw massacre face.  

Today will be spent creating stove-length pieces to be split later. While Michael has been doing high-visibility work, I've been dinking along on the chicken coop part of the shed. Nothing much to show yet. More later! 

Bonus photo of the day: Persephone holding Mr. Green Jeans: 

August visit from the Iowa crew! 

Construction journal: it's a half an inch of water and you think you're gonna drown

More like two inches of water in 36 hours.  

Maybe we just built a very expensive reflecting pool.  

Mid-August is normally dry in this part of the country. Alas for normal.  

We will soon be stocking pike in the moat

On the bright side, we got 7 quarts of tomatoes canned in this cool weather.  

Livestock journal: first cock crow at 6:41 am

A scraggly crow at 6:41 am.  Our babies are growing up!  We think Mr. Green Jeans may be the rooster who crowed this morning, but we weren't peeking in when it happened.  

Mr. Green Jeans with Pavarti in the background. He's a Giant White. She's a some type of Wyandotte.  

The roosters have been displaying for a couple of weeks.  Having grown almost as big as the ducks, they muscle in on garden leftovers we set out. Go chickens! 

Livestock journal: first cock crow at 6:41 am

Our babies are growing up!  We think Mr. Green Jeans may be the rooster who crowed this morning, but we weren't peeking in when it happened.  

Mr. Green Jeans with Pavarti in the background. He's a Giant White. She's a some type of Wyandotte.  

The roosters have been displaying for a couple of weeks.  Having grown almost as big as the ducks, they muscle in on garden leftovers we set out. Go chickens! 

Nature journal: golden mushrooms of the sun

Driving along at 50 MPH when I say "whoa!"  Michael: "what?"  Me: "Mushrooms!"  Fastest stop ever.  

Sulphur shelf on oak stump

There is a certain color that catches the eye, even at high speed. Sometimes sulphur shelf mushrooms are woody (if it's been dry) or wormy ((if it is old); this one was perfect.  

It is one of the few wild mushrooms we will eat, and relish. Makes the best cream of mushroom soup ever.  

Even my children, who don't care for mushrooms, will eat sulphur shelfs. But if you don't know your mushrooms, don't try this at home! 

Construction journal: slo-mo in mid-August

The cores have been pored.  

Now we wait for the spaces for the LVL beams to be cut, the last blocks laid, and the house set down. Then we will wait for the floor trusses. Sigh. I the meantime, we did get walls and a door up on the chicken coop portion of the tractor shed.  

Door shut  

Door open.  

Who knew doors could be so tricksy?  Oi.  

Harvest journal: holy nightshades Batman!

Finished digging potatoes yesterday. Have them drying for a day before tucking them into a dark cool corner.

Oh wait. Those other nightshade family members are trying to steal the show. Tomatoes featured in three meals a day, as well as snacks in between, are not too many. 

The bonus photo of the day: guardian of the squash universe: 

Harvest journal: oh no! Don't slay that potato!

Mid August and the tops are dying. Time to dig before we lose track of where the tubers bunch. 

Russets  

A friend of mine in Maine had never seen where potatoes come from. Nanon, this one's for you! 

Red Pontiacs and Michael

We dug half the patch before we got rained out.  

Seneca on her way to bed

And as a bonus: a gratuitous photo of one of our two Black Rock chickens.  

Fiber journal: rainy days and tired evenings

Western winds brought us over an inch and a half of rain in the past day or so, making any outside activity unduly muddy. A perfect time to clean house and work on fiber projects!  The clean spaces will be dirty again, but the fiber only becomes more beautiful.  

Scoured fleece

Michael and I purchased a number of raw fleeces last summer and scoured (aka washed) them before our move to Wisconsin.   He bought me a carding machine, well used!

Carding machine. 

This is a great job for after dinner movie watching time. It keeps my fingers limber and the residual lanolin moisturizes wonderfully.  

Raw and opened locks.  

This is what the same fiber looks like once it's been through the carder  

Batt lengthened and wound into ball.  

This will eventually be spun into yarn, then knit into a vest. I'll post updates as the project progresses! 

Harvest journal: reaching out to the larger garden

The hay field having been recently mown, we spent today on the edge of the woods, where a trio of elms have been displaying their naked splendor.  

Now only two stand tall, if dead. 

Michael wields the chain saw and I carry the rounds to the trailer. That tractor isn't just for show!  We purchased a wood-burning stove last September, as the portion of the house we live in had no heat. It also has single-pane windows. We learned the cabin had no sheathing when we installed the stove, which detoured our fast window replacement plan. We put double layers of plastic over the windows to keep Jack Frost from moving in with us.  

One tree worth of wood.  

The stove heats our space, as well as the rest of the house. We cut Irene's propane consumption by about 2/3rds...and she keeps her thermostat turned down!

We built a wood shed this past April. It fit the wood we cut, but did not burn last fall. We need another wood shed or two. Better to burn seasoned wood--which I figure means it's sat for a couple of seasons before you burn it.  

I tend to be the wood stacker and Michael the wood cutter.  

If we harvest dead, but standing, trees from our "larger garden" (the woods surrounding our fields), use it efficiently, and promote new tree growth, I figure we are at least breaking even on the carbon front. 

Construction journal: the 16 D challenge

One of the challenges of re-creating our house into a livable structure is bringing it up to code. Having the house on stable supports was one of the motives of putting in a basement. The block is almost done.  

Michael did get the old joist supports off from under the house and we received the LVL beams yesterday. However, we needed to make 4 beams into two by nailing them every 6 inches, 5 nails in a row, both sides. The beams are 28 feet long.  

That's 1120 nails Michael and I hammered today (and yes, Michael did more than I...but I am getting a little faster).   We hope the house jackers come and get these in place before Irene returns from Michigan on Wednesday, since we appropriated her garage as the only flat space available. Eee!

Garden journal: golden onions of the sun

Happy August 1st!  We have all the onions out of the ground, washed, set in the sun for several days, braided and hung. Just in the nick of time!  If they remain in the ground too long they begin to liquefy. Out of the 600 onion sets we planted, we harvested about 175 # of onions. About 160 of those are hanging in the tractor shed. 

The few onions (if you consider 2 lbs to be "a few") that weren't fit to braid went toward making an onion quiche.

And yes, those are our VERY FIRST ripe tomatoes winking at you in the background.  Update on the basement project coming soon! 

Culinary journal: supper on a stick

Late July and the living is humid. The challenge comes in making something other than PB&J for dinner in order to avoid heating the house a degree hotter. The solution?  Grilling. Yes, burgers are part of the mix, but some days you just need to expand the repertoire. So here goes:

Cucumbers and salad from the garden. Onions too. Red bells from the store (growing season not long enough here without a greenhouse...the stuff of dreams right now). Venison marinated in soy sauce (light and black), brown sugar, sesame oil, and Grey Poupon mustard.  

Chicken marinated in olive oil, herbs de provenance, rosemary (fresh), and garlic salt, red onions and bells, potato salad (first potatoes from the garden) and more salad.  

Anybody have suggestions for other suppers on a stick?  Please share.  

Larder journal: squirreling away stores

Late summer in Wisconsin and the land begins to ripen. Basil blooms and must be cut and dried.  

The garlic basked in the sun sufficiently to allow it to be bundled and hung.  

Tomorrow we work under the house, attaching a sill plate to the joist supports that will be set down on the west side masonry wall. We will remove the joist supports from the east wall of the original house, which will be replaced by an LVL beam. We will saw off the bolt ends of the middle joist support so that an LVL beam can be sistered onto that support. Hope to have things in shape so the masons can finish the basement walls this coming week. High summer is in high gear!

Learning curves and fast balls

Yikes. The block layers arrived at 6 am. They are muscly fellows who handle 60 lb blocks and hods of cement in an amazingly precise manner.  Tomorrow they should complete the basement, which means we had to take off the rest of the posts the house jackers failed to remove. 

While they were hard at work, so were we. Got another wall up to separate the tractor shed from the chicken/duck winter coop.  

Also began to harvest onions. They need to bask in the sun before I can braid them.  

Took a break to have a fabulous dinner of grilled chicken livers, onions and red bells, followed by CAKE!  Yep, we celebrated my getting a year older.  

And yes, there were cards and presents. Alpaca fleece!  Natural dye materials!  Songs! Wine!  Who could ask for more?  

Garden journal: garlic harvest comes when the bergamot begins to bloom

Michael built raised-bed gardens many years ago.  As Irene and Clyde aged, the gardens grew more portulaca than tomatoes. One of the first projects we undertook when we arrived last August was to reclaim these gardens so that we would have a place to plant the garlic strains my sister Mariluz from Washington and Friend Dave from Maine Had fostered for us in our garden-poor days.  Garlic should be planted in the fall. It ripens mid-summer...which is NOW!  

We planted German Red, Rocambole, River Giant, Siberian White, and French  Germinador.

We rub the dirt off as we harvest as the dirt sticks if allowed to dry in place.  If the garlic sits in the ground too long, the protective "paper" deteriorates, impacting storage quality.  Contact with water also affects the "paper."

Just as blueberries ripen when the butterfly weed first shows, harvest garlic when the bergamot blooms.

Walking Journal: Green

Sunday morning out with Zealot.

This is our neighborhood. Beyond the tree line the land drops into the St Croix River valley.  I’ve been remembering how this walk looked in October and January. Beautiful in all seasons.