Construction journal: it’s beginning to look a lot like it might get finished

But don’t hold your breath!  As some may recall, we broke ground on the (second) addition project in July, 2015. Being starry-eyed neophytes, we thought we could get Irene in her new digs by Christmas 2016. Ha! She will not be in this year either, but the move is just around the corner. 

To explain some of the challenges: my daughter, her husband, and several of their friends surprised us by installing all of the ceiling and much of the wall drywall in Irene’s new bedroom and living room areas while we were visiting friends in Alabama in April. It was very thoughtful, but as with any project you don’t have to face in the future, some problems you ignore in the present. 

Taping doesn’t cure a half inch level change.  

This particular problem probably began with a warped stud, and then was amplified by having a butt edge matched with a beveled edge.  However it happened (and it happened in several places...this was just the worst), making the walls look flat became an interesting challenge. 

Same wall with primer coat.  

I began taping that wall on July 31st. I finished the job on December 16th. Not that I worked on it every day in between...but there are about 30 coats of taping compound on that wall. You can still see a small hump if you look closely. I recommend not looking closely. I purposely left some fingerprints in the compound in other hidden places, for nostalgia’s sake. It is so good to be getting paint on those walls!!

I never previously worked on drywall and learned how to do so by watching a You Tube video. That was good for basics (thin that taping compound before using it), but didn’t address other problems. For instance, in the addition Irene currently occupies (which was built by professionals) all the corners are cracking.  

A typical corner in Irene’s current living room

I noticed that my corners were cracking as well, which happens anytime you try to spread joint compound on too thickly. The problem with corners is that the corner tool always leaves a thickness in the very corner, which cracks. I have tried to cure this problem by using a beveled sanding block to thin out the corners and then spread a thin coat of compound over the crack (if any remains) with my finger. We will have to wait to see if this actually works long-term.

Another problem is having the paper tape not stick, and then it bubbles up. I cured this by cutting out the bubbles and spackling over the holes.   There is a type of self-stick tape available (and I have used in certain places) but it made of a mesh that shows if you have one of those butt-bevel joints to cover. So far, my curative is looking pretty good...which means you can’t see it at all (so no photo!)  

Sanding drywall compound is a dirty and thankless job.  

I had to remove my safety glasses in order to see my camera... 

Because I am not a professional but simply a Type A person, my taping job looks a lot better than the one done in the first addition.  

My friend Nancy came to get taping lessons. She is a lot more acrobatic than I am!  

Michael and I have been painting the last couple of days. Primer is not very exciting (except to me!!) so I will save photos of painted walls for another day.  We hope to have the walls done by day after tomorrow, so we can set beds up in the construction zone for family!   

I can hardly wait until she is trying to pull over OUR Christmas tree!   

Fiber journal: the easiest baby cap ever

I spin and love working with my own yarn, but I do not (yet) spin sock yarn. I received a number of skeins last Christmas and have slowly been using them. One skein was a “Hotsox” that knits its own pattern, which keeps a body entertained through the boring parts of a sock. I had some leftover yarn and decided to knit a hat for my granddaughter. This is what I did. 

First, I took a length of different sock yarn and loosely crocheted about 60 stitches. I then picked up 50 stitches on #2 double pointed needles from the back of the crocheted chain. No reason to use double points, but I had them handy from my sock adventure.  The “back” of a crocheted chain is the side that looks like a series of dashes.  The “front” of a crochet chain looks like a series of “v”s.  

I had measured my granddaughter’s head circumference with my hands and did a stockintette stitch (one row knit, reverse row purl) until I had the measured length of what looked like the beginning of a scarf. I also slipped the first stitch of every row, and knit the last stitch of the purl row.  This gives you a nice finished edge as you go  

It would have been easier to have a flexible tape to measure her head, but I didn’t have that tool when I had her head available.  I also didn’t have a tape measure with me when I was knitting her hat.  

When I was close to the required length, I made sure I was ending with the same color with which I began and on a purl row. I  snipped off, leaving a very looong tail.  I then started to unravel the crocheted chain from the starting end and picked up the stitches one at a time. 

The red variegated is the crocheted chain, the green my starting color.  

I had 50 stitches on two separate knitting needles, one at each end of the “scarf”. I threaded a darning needle on the looong tail and sewed the two ends together, imitating a knit stitch.  

My imitation of a knit stitch is picking up two stitches on one side, then on the other side begin with one from the prior two stitch combo, plus a new one. It makes sense when you look at regular knitting and see how the stitches fit together.  

So now I had a tube with a hidden seam. 

Yes, I was doing this on an airplane.  

The next step was to transform the tube into a hat. My sock yarn had a nice pattern for this, in that it naturally gave me six stripes of green. That meant that I could sew all the green stripes together at one end of the tube, giving me a charming pattern at the top of the hat. 

The bottom rolled, but that was a nice touch too.  

I, of course, had no way to know that this hat would actually fit its intended victim.  

Success! 

Perhaps I am posting a success today because it is the first day in a long time that I have seen glimmers of my youngest daughter showing again. I think her medication is beginning to help her come down out of her manic cycle. She isn’t back to base level, and may never be. But it’s is so good to see her good sense of humor reappearing.  

Serenity Journal: you do what you must when it’s needed

Walking Orlaith.  

A lot has happened in the 19 days since my last post. My son in law and daughter came to visit for the gun hunting season, and Matt shot his first deer, and then another just to prove the first was not a fluke. We processed about 160 lbs of venison between our deer and his.  

The tractor shed doubled as a cooler.  

They brought their daughter, who is the light of all of our lives. At 5 months old, she has her two bottom teeth, is gnawing on everything she can get her hands on, and is rolling over to get her hands on more things to gnaw.  

The last carrots from the garden met with approval.   

Her five month anniversary fell on the same date my youngest daughter was committed to a mental hospital as she is bipolar, in a manic phase with psychotic features, and unable to be safe outside of a controlled setting. She came to visit us on November 4th, and I called 911 on November 8th because she was going to hurt herself, and had hurt Michael. I am writing this as Michael drives us back from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where our daughter could hold it together for 15 minutes of visiting before needing to go. She is somewhat less delusional, but still manic. We would drive the 10 hour round trip to see her for another 15 minutes, trusting that doing so lets her know we love her and are here for her. This is her first psychotic break and we are all learning as we go. 

Nobody wants to be mentally ill, or to have a child be diagnosed as bipolar. It is terrible to see her in a locked ward. It is worse wondering if she is going to do something that will kill herself, or you, or someone else, because her perceptions are impaired by her own body. So we do what we can and that is all we can do.  

I have to say that we invited her to visit because we suspected she was bipolar, due to her behavior. We hoped that being in a safe and stress-free place would allow her the space for her body to wind down by itself. That didn’t happen, and her doctors all agree that the only thing that will help her regain balance is medication. I have started to think of them as anti-rejection drugs...necessary just to remain functional. We are now waiting for her to become functional.  

In the meantime, we appreciate the moral support we are receiving from friends and family far and wide and local. We will work to get Irene into the addition by Christmas, hoping that our daughter will also be able to come home, and we will have room for her to do so. We take daily walks with her dog, whom we are babysitting long term. It is good for us to start walking again and we promise to start lifting weights any day now. Taking care of ourselves allows us to continue to care for others (not to mention all those ducks and chickens...we love our ducks and chickens!). 

Garden journal: putting the garlic to bed

Yesterday was November 2nd. The high was 41°. It snowed again (lightly) today. So yesterday, despite muddy conditions, was a good day to put the garlic to bed. 

I felt guilty because the garlic should have been in the ground mid-October, but then read my own blog from 2015, which reminded me that I planted at about this time and still had garlic in 2016. Whew! 

Michael and I hauled in several loads of compost this summer but didn’t have time to dig it in. Along with the new dirt came new weed seeds, which sprouted and grew and were well on their way to flowering when Michael turned them over while I was in Iowa.   If you study the above photo, you will see that we are experimenting with different methods of tillage. I re-dug the area in which I planted the garlic, removing as much greenery as I could. Michael re-dug a different patch and chopped up the greenery as much as possible. There is a strip in between where the dirt is just turned over and nothing is chopped up. We’ll see how the different methods of foreign weed control works in the springtime. 

It may not be a fair experiment, as the garlic gets mulched and the other areas don’t. We also mulched the carrots, which will save in the ground until it freezes. 

We have yet to clear out the dead tomatoes and other garden maintenance. We hope to get there before snow truly covers it all. Then again, we have been doing a lot of triage this year: whatever needs attention the most gets done first, and the rest just lumps along. Good thing we like volunteer tomatoes! 

Joy journal: all the “icky” parts

Michael and I recently harvested 5 geese and 3 ducks. It was hard work, and fabulous to do it together. Part of that fabulousness was sharing all the wonders of of the bodies of these birds who will nourish us and others. Some may consider some of this “icky,” so if you are one of those (not mentioning any names Katherine) stop reading now. 

Feathers. I love feathers.  

Starting with the least icky are the wings, how the feathers are layered, how they treat light. Fabulous. 

Goose palate. Great for shearing grass.  

Duck palate. Can shear grass but not as well as a goose.  

Ducks, geese and chickens all eat grass, but geese derive about half of their calories from grass, more than ducks, and much more than chickens. 

Their bodies reflect their diets.  

Goose foot.  

Duck foot. 

Both ducks and geese have wonderful pads and, of course, webbing, but ducks have this extra flap and geese have extra padding. I have no idea why.  I speculate that geese may be more terrestrial, but I really don’t know...but I’d like to find out.

Lungs and fat (the fat is in the background).

Goose lungs look much like duck lungs, only larger. The fascinating thing about geese is the amount of fat they have. Fat, like a lung, is an organ.  It has its own blood supply and gets the goose through winter, when grass is scarce. 

Corn and grit.  

The gizzard is where geese, ducks and chickens grind their food before they digest it. They use rocks and grit in a very muscular organ to break down their carbs to a useable form.  

Cleaned gizzard  

The inside of a gizzard is covered with an amazing thick covering that can withstand the abrasiveness of the grit, but can expand and contract with the quantity of food available.  You never get to see this covering in the giblets provided with processed birds, as it is inedible. But it is Fabulous!   

Not a duck or goose, but fascinating all the same. She found her feet!!!  Fabulous!

This green jewel is a gall bladder. 

We eat livers, but in order to make them edible, they have to be separated from the gall bladders, which work with the livers to digest fats. Gall is bitter, so the trick is to keep the bladder intact. Then the livers are...

Duck tales and other stories  

Apropos of the end, a story of tails. Drakes develope curly tails, but ganders do not. None of our ganders were sexually mature upon harvest, but the ducks were. We will have to figure out how to separate the ganders from the geese once we have winter quarters for geese. And that is all the fabulous photos I have for today. 

Season journal: first snow

This is the photo I took just before leaving to visit my daughter in Iowa City. I am hoping to restore a little order to her house, if not her life. That part is up to her. I think she will find her way eventually...it is all any of us can do.  

I love the snow. I was reminded of how snow-competent I have become in the 27 years I have lived in snow country when I cleared my car windows and hood before starting on this journey. I had my water, emergency rations, and candle in a can. Winter coat, gloves, extra blanket.   Kept an eye out for ice on bridges. Slowed going into curves. Made it safely and in good time. 

Remembering (and being reminded) that nature really is trying to kill you lends perspective to everything else.  

It is good not to be dead yet.  Rejoice in the snow.  

Harvest journal: learning how to do in geese

We finished the siding on the addition on Monday; on to the next order of business!  We got eight goslings this spring. 3 succumbed to raccoons and 5 grew up. We have been too busy to build a new outbuilding for the geese, so all of them were destined for freezer camp. For all of our other birds, we have used a pillow case with a hole cut in one corner. A big chicken can rip a pillow case. We needed a better sack for the geese. So I made one.  

Tastefully tailored.  

My mother put me on to making yarn out of plastic shopping bags. It is strong and washable. Fit the ticket. Michael bent a threaded rod to hold the heads. A U-bolt could do as well.  

The bag keeps them snuggly, the bent rod is set into the stump to keep the head secure. One swift whack with a very sharp ax and the goose is gone.  

The next piece of equipment we needed was a scalding pot. Michael bought me a 15 gallon pot for my birthday.  

Another perfect fit! 

Geese. Down. We couldn’t just throw it away.  

They are soooooo fluffy!!!!! 

Lucy, who was 24 weeks old, weighed in at 10 pounds.  

The rest of the geese were 17 weeks old and weighed in around 8 pounds.  

All are now safely stored for the winter. We have 3 drakes who need to join the geese, and then we can finally get to the garden. I need to plant garlic before the snow flies.  

Cleaning up after the last of the siding went on.  

And because I can’t help myself, an image of my mother meeting my granddaughter.  The things are good, but the people are the best.  

Construction journal: finishing the outside of the addition

October. First hard frost a week ago. This week promises to be sunny and warm...which means we are working away trying to button up the house before true cold sets in. This entails putting siding on the house...finally!

Measure 4 or 5 times, cut once

Michael and I decided to put metal siding on the house as it is inexpensive and lasts well. The windows had to go in before we could put siding on, which left us not enough time to hang siding last year. Before the actual metal goes up, the trim goes on. We are also hanging more house block material because the bottom half has suffered from exposure to the sun. 

Ooooh. Shiny. 

We decided on galvanized because we knew we would scratch any painted surface due to the inevitable learning curve. Yes, we have put painted metal on our out buildings, but there aren’t as many windows and doors on the out buildings. Good call on our part. We had one really narrow space between a window and door that had us grumbling out loud.  

Our house changes colors with the sky! 

It takes us about 3-4 days to get a side done...and there are 3 sides. We haven’t done the corners yet because it’s been too cool to have the sealing tape stick. We hope to get corners on tomorrow. In the meantime, we put in our front door.  

First, Michael cut a hole in the wall.  

After the addition was framed in, we decided to change the location of our front door. Luckily, we could do that!  

Then we wrestled in the door. Hopefully we now know how to deal with that narrow space between window and door. 

I will need to paint the door while warm weather holds as well. Steps are next year’s project. Snow is not far off when the trees turn to flame. 

One of the best parts of this month is the long red light.  

And we aren’t the only ones getting ready for winter: 

She’s always on the move! 

Construction journal meets harvest journal: preparing for deer season

September fades into October, soon to become November. Time to ready ourselves and our land for the 10 days of firearm deer season. Our children have become interested in joining in the harvest, not the least due to the price of ground venison in the stores! 

Yikes. And I thought beef was expensive.  

A lot of work goes into preparing for hunting. Given that we needed to have a new blind for Matt to use, it was appropriate that he was here to build it with Michael.  

Matt developed a new respect for digging post holes by hand... 

We have a corner of our land which contains a variety of deer hiways, but did not contain a deer fort. No more. 

Fort Ettsen. 

Matt, who climbs rocks for fun, did not like the aluminum ladder, preferring to climb the cross bracing. Yet, once snow flies, that would not be a good way to get him AND his rifle safely into Fort Ettsen. 

Heck, even I might be able to climb that ladder! 

Michael, as usual, solved the problem by making a ladder of 2x4s, and even put in the little entry platform so toes have somewhere to go instead of hitting the side of the fort. 

It even has a handrail for wimps like me! 

Now that the Fort is operational, he is reloading bullets for everyone’s rifles.  

Finally found a combo that works for my rifle.  

For the next 6 weeks, I will have to don my hunting coat and practice with my rifle and the new load. I will clean my rifle before the season opens, and after as well. We will also sharpen knives (a continuous requirement in our house...which means we always have knives to slice tomatoes!), and make sure the hunting clothes are aired out and any number of other details.

Hunting doesn’t mean just getting a rifle and heading into the woods. There is a bunch of prep work that goes into it, and then the packaging afterwards. But it’s so much better, and a lot more fun, than paying $13 a pound for ground venison! 

Egg journal: soft shell, yellow whites, chocolate mousse

Eggs.  I love eggs. I love all the weird things about having birds who lay eggs.  

Squishy!   

Every now and then a shell will not form all the way. This is different from having a thin shell, which means your birds need more calcium. We keep track of how many broken eggs there are to gauge if we are needing to check the quantity or quality of the oyster shell bits we put out for the birds. Sometimes the shell pieces are too big, and so are unavailable as a supplement, even if they are sitting right there!

 A soft shell, however, usually is a sign of stress. Sometimes it is either heat or cold, and sometimes it happens when we change their pasture. And sometimes it just seems random.  

Yellow egg whites! 

Another interesting phenomenon is the color of the whites. I was making a frittata and noticed the pullet eggs had very yellow whites, whereas the new duck eggs were the normal clear. It doesn't show well in this photo, but all the eggs, being fresh, stood up really high!   

Given the surfeit of eggs in the house, Artemis cajoled me into making chocolate mousse.  

Sugar, eggs, chocolate, butter, coffee, rum, and a lot of whipping! 

We had to take time out and watch The French Chef episode for mousse. Worked like a charm.  

Lilith, however, said she preferred her thumb.  

Varmint journal: comparative ecology

Between getting my daughter and her family packed and shipped off to Colorado, appellate work, and construction, I haven't had much time to update my posts. I currently am sitting in a waiting room in Santa Fe, waiting for my father to come out with a new lens in his left eye, and so will see if I can get caught up.  

These are not gopher mounds! 

After having a couple of relatively mild winters, we noticed these small hills of dirt connected by shallow tunnels. Walking in the duck pasture felt like walking on sand just after a wave has gone out: you sank a bit with every step. 

Mr. Mole! 

I do not have the same antipathy for moles as I do for gophers, even though they both dig up my yard and garden. The difference is that moles eat worms and grubs and insects, while gophers eat roots and potatoes and dill.  

Same dirt-digging claws. Different snouts and teeth.  

Neither can be allowed to destroy our mound-type septic system, and so both have been removed from that area. Irene was concerned that Michael and I would be kidnapped by the gophers proliferating by the driveway.

Lillith didn't like the sound of that! 

But then I explained that those were only mole hills.  

My reputation as protectress of the realm is intact!   

Livestock journal: pullet eggs and more

Corn that grows to the same height. Soybeans that ripen at the same time. Eggs washed and graded fit in stackable cartons. Uniformity allows a level of efficiency that makes food widely available. 

Our birds are a wide variety of breeds, ages, and, at the moment, species. This makes for many things, but uniformity and efficiency aren't among them. 

White Leghorn eggs, the light brown from Wyandottes and the dark from the local brown "egg layer" mix (Rhode Island Red and something else I think). 

An egg we found in the duck enclosure reminded me that even your old birds can surprise you. 

Our first striped egg. Duck...but which one? Arthur, our only runner duck who is of age, lays a green egg, but this would be his second for the day. (Michael named him as a duckling.) All our other ducks lay cream or tan eggs. 

Our new chickens have begun to lay as well. They have "pullet eggs," which are wee things.  

In this household you get to estimate how many eggs REALLY go into a "3 egg" recipe: 2 duck, 3 Leghorn, or 6 pullet!

And speaking of wee ones: 

Our oldest and newest household members: may they be as non-uniform and inefficient as they care to be. We love them!

Harvest journal: battling the birds

Michael and I are sitting on the deck after another day on this lovely land. I have an unparalleled view of our elderberry bushes. They are looking pretty bare at the moment, but just two days ago they were loaded. 

Elders, being mostly wild, tend to ripen over time. These were planted by birds. We simply failed to mow them down.   A bird-stripped umbel is in the bottom left of this photo. 

I was walking down to help Michael put the birds to bed when I noticed a flock of Cedar Waxwings fluttering about the elders. 

Sated, this young one was catching a nap. Almost all the umbels at the top of the bush are bare. 

Instead of heading down to the bottom pastures, I went back to the house and got a paper sack and clipper. Michael found me stripping berries when he came up from bird care duties. He joined me and we finished getting berries separated from stems at about 10:30 PM. I put them in the fridge overnight and juiced them and made jelly yesterday. 

Elderberry jelly looks like grape, but tastes much better.  

Michael made more jelly today, having finished digging the potatoes yesterday. 

Artemis must be telling Lilith about what fun she will have picking berries with her grandparents...or at least that's what I like to think has evoked this beautific smile.  

Or maybe she's extolling the creaminess of home grown potatoes.  

Harvest journal: onions onions ha ha ha

I love onions.  

yellow and white

yellow and red

Michael planted 700 onion sets. We harvested less than 500 mature onions. Our garden has suffered from lack of attention and less rain. It's not as if we have been slacking. Rather, a certain amount of time and attention has been diverted by little Miss Devine. 

Unlike our onions, this wee one is growing at an amazing rate, and is really happy about it all. 

We have also been spending a fair amount of time and energy putting up wallboard and getting it taped. 

Michael installs. I tape. Those cake decorating skills come in handy!   

I have been working on several appeals. We both work on keeping us fed, the chicken and ducks fed, all of us in clean clothes and bedding, transporting compost from town to our garden...and other general maintenance. It is a glorious existence!  Onions add depth of flavor. 

Harvest journal: Garlic. I love garlic.

I planted garlic last October and am reaping the benefit of my labor now.   It seems early for the garlic to be lodging, but this year has been drier than last year. 

The ends are withering and the stalks are beginning to fall over. It's ripe! 

Harvesting garlic is not very tricky, but there are some steps worth noting. 

Fresh out of the ground.  

First, it's nice to not wait too long to harvest, as the bulbs will start to separate from the stems at some point. You can still get garlic out of the ground, but it's hard to find and won't save as long. 

Rubbing the dirt off takes a little time, but is worth it.  

When we first grew garlic, Michael would pluck it all and then do a massive washing with water. Our garlic would rot. Avoid letting your garlic (or onions) get wet after harvest. If you do it immediately, the dirt just rubs off. If you wait, it gets glued on and you have to peel off layers of the outer skin to get rid of the dirt. That same skin is what helps the garlic keep its moisture longer and not dry out as soon. If you are growing garlic, you are probably saving it as well. We are just finishing our last braid of Germinador, and it is still good!  (It is also known for its ability to last...). 

Look Ma, no dirt! 

We don't have a good place to hang our garlic out of the sun and dry it. We set it out in the sun for a couple of days, turning it so any fungus gets some hard UV before I bundle or braid the garlic. 

Different garlic strains do variously well depending on the weather. I planted 105 cloves of 5 different types. So far, I've had a low of 82 bulbs and a high of 105.  

I like the stems to have dried somewhat but not entirely, which makes braiding/bundling easier. 

Soft neck garlic can be braided/hard neck must be bundled.  

We grow more garlic than we can eat, but that means a select few also get to enjoy our garlic.

I like to think this is Lilith dreaming of garlic.  

Season journal: we are jamming!

Nankin cherries: hardy but tiny

When fruit ripens, it's time to start making jam and jelly. Cherry jelly is precious, if only due to the work that goes into pitting them. They came ripe about the same time as the currants-red and black.  

Red currants, bright and tangy

Black currants, dark and velvety  

We had a break in fruit production of two or three days and now are in the midst of collectiing Manchurian Apricots as they ripen and fall. They are tarter than eating apricots, which make them perfect for jam. 

So happy to have apricot jam again!   

We took a trip out to the sand barrens to see if the blueberries were ripe, but the bears beat us to them. 

 Butterfly weed blooms when blueberries ripen.  

We still have elderberries and apples and wild plums, but those are fall harvests. If we are lucky, we will find choke cherries in August. 

I figured that it costs about $1.50 to make a jar of jelly, if you have to buy the jar. That does not include the fruit we grow or forage, or our time. An equivalent amount of jam at the store costs about $3. The difference is: you can't readily find black currant, elderberry, wild plum (which doesn't taste like anything in the store!), choke cherry, or the wonderful apricot jam we make. So we make more jelly and jam than we could possibly eat, and if you are lucky, you might have a dab on toast, or yogurt, or as a glaze on pork or duck...or maybe just a small spoonful straight from the jar... if the bears don't beat you to it. 

Fishing journal: we aren't the catch and release types

I spent most of yesterday slaving over a keyboard. Michael rewarded me with an afternoon spent fishing. (He had been slaving over a hot stove. More on that later.)  At the boat ramp we chatted with a family just coming off the lake. They reported they had caught a lot of sunfish and crappies, but threw them back. We aren't that way. 

18 crappies, 4 sunnies and 1 yellow perch

I don't understand people who fish for fun but don't eat the fish the catch. But I've also fed fish to people who say they don't like fish...but like mine. Maybe it's because I fillet them, so there are no small bones to battle. For anyone interested, here is our method of cleaning pan fish: 

Equipment is important. Two sharp knives are handy-a filet knife and a chef's knife. A scaler. Two bowls and two buckets, all with water in them. A table to work on.  

Michael starts the process by taking the heads and fins off with the chef's knife, and gutting the fish.  

The yard chickens get the fish livers and roe. 

He then scales the fish into one of the buckets, and the other bucket is to rinse off in between fish. 

Some people would consider this the end of the process. Not us.  

The exception to the scaling step is the yellow perch. They are armored against northern pike and do not willingly give up their scales. So they simply get skinned. 

Yellow perch are cousins to walleye

Michael puts the scaled or skinned fish in a bowl for me and I fillet them.  

First run the knife down the backbone and slide up the dorsal bones.  

Next slide the knife in across the end of the gut cavity and slide against the bones toward the tail end.  

After a bit of practice, you can do these two steps in one smooth motion.  

There are a set of small bones running laterally down the rib cage. I cut down to them, then slide the knife under them and cut toward the skin until they release, then finish separating the belly meat from the ribs. 

This is all it takes to make a boneless fillet. Repeat for the other side.  

8 fillets makes dinner for 3, which means we processed enough for about 5-6 dinners, one of which we had tonight!  

You know you've done well if what remains looks like this: 

I suppose we could make fish sauce from the heads and bones, but Michael buries them in the garden instead.  

It is difficult to find anywhere to eat out that has better food than we have at home.  Maybe it is because when I eat fish at home, I relive a little of the sunshine, scent of wildflowers and new mown hay, and the gentle rocking of the canoe.  

Construction journal: water in/water out

You've seen the water out. Here is the water in: 

No leaks! 

PEX. We love PEX.  

Now to get the wallboard in and taped, the shower walls built, the fixtures installed, the towel cupboards constructed, and the finish work done. Alas, Brother Daniel has his own life to return to, so we are on our own again. But as a reward for all his hard labor: 

Three generations of beautiful and talented people (says she who admits to absolute bias).  

Construction journal: Brother Daniel, plumbing wizard

Our addition is truly becoming a family project. Michael's brother Douglas saw us through transitioning from 100 amp to 200 amp service. My brother Daniel is now the brains behind getting the new bathroom plumbed.  

El Maestro conducting connections.  

Michael had put in a vent pipe last year, and we were laying flooring in the bathroom when Lilith made her appearance last week.  

Pergo: trickier than they make it appear on YouTube.  

The boys started locating where tub, potty, sink and shower will be located and started drilling holes, then laid pipe downstairs.  

Looking up from the basement.  

Then came the decisions regarding exactly where to run the sewer pipe. 

Yay!  Missed the core filled portion of the block wall!! 

Yes, the sewer pipe runs right in front of the new basement window, as predicted, but gives enough space to use it for egress in any emergency. 

This is where the basement door used to be...but is no more. It hasn't been flooding since we had it blocked in.  

Et voila: hooked into the existing sewer outlet...and doesn't leak!   

Next step: getting water into the bathroom!  (This is the manifold that will service the bathroom fixtures.) 

And because I cannot help myself: 

Lilith at one week old.  

Oh!  We also received our second batch of goslings and ducklings today (to replace those who succumbed to the raccoons). Our raccoon depopulation efforts continue apace, with five 35-40 pounders having become vulture and eagle fodder. We love feeding the wild birds. 

Solstice journal: welcome Lilith Ida!

Born at 4:40 pm

7 lbs 11 oz

19.5 inches tall

loooong fingers and toes

Parents are tired but doing well at learning to be parents.  

I have been dreaming of this little girl and now she is here, better than anything I could have conjured.