As often happens on Sundays, I am mending. One of our king size sheets got a hole in it. We only have two, so I have been using this sheet while DH is in Alaska, putting the holey side on his side of the bed. Gradually the hole has gotten bigger and bigger, so today I decided to mend it. I used a back stitch as I want it to be strong and hold up, but I don't care about it being pretty. I will still only use that sheet when DH is away, because I don't think it will hold up too long to his tossing and turning.

I know that I could just go out and buy a new bottom sheet, but sheets have gotten ridiculously expensive over the last several years. I have a hard time paying $40 for a good sheet or $100 for a set. I suppose when this one wears out I will do that, but for now this will do. Once it wears out I will make it into linen napkins as it is a very pretty turquoise color and does not show four years of washing. I will also save the elastic for some future project.

I also sewed a couple of buttons back on to a couple of shirts and rethreaded the ties through a pair of DS's sweatpants that had come out. That's an easy fix. Just take a large safety pin and pin it on one end of the tie. Then push it through the hole and work it all the way around the sweats until you can push it out the other hole. Easy peasy.

So 3 items of clothing and 1 sheet have been returned to usability with less than a half hour's effort on my part. Not bad.

There is a quote that goes "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." Lately I've been having to make do or do without paper towels. This wasn't an actual choice on my part, I just apparently get a brain cloud whenever I go to the grocery store and keep forgetting to get paper towels. This probably has something to do with having a case from Costco that lasted a year so I never even had to think about it for months.

I don't use them too much, just mostly to drain food that has a bit too much oil on it or collecting out the hamburger fat. We use wash cloths or linen napkins at the table. For a while now I've been using napkins instead of paper towels for draining food. We don't eat out that much here, but there is a drive-in we go to about twice a month and they give us enough napkins to clean a small country.

Well, I finally made it through my stash of those napkins and I've been looking around for what I could use in place of paper towels. It needed to be something absorbent and that got me to thinking. Flannel. I had a small stash of flannel that had never been used left over from my mother's cloth diaper making years ago for my sister's last child. They had been cut to diaper size but never hemmed. I took one and cut it in half, did a couple quick hems, and washed the two pieces. I tried it out when draining my homemade French fries. It works very well. And once used can just be tossed in with the towels to be washed.

I'm not sure I'm ready to switch completely away from paper towels just yet, it's one of those non-frugal things I've held onto, but until I remember to actually buy them, this is working out fine. Plus I had a lot of fun teasing my kids when they asked what I had drained it on and I said, "Oh, just some old diaper...material." They totally freaked with my pause. But once they realized the material had never been used as a diaper they were fine. Yes, sometimes Mama has a slightly twisted sense of humor.

I think once the flannel sheets go on clearance this year, I will pick up a twin top sheet, and make it into non-paper toweling and we'll give it a shot for awhile. I need more practice hemming anyway.

What do you make do with when you find yourself without a convenience item easily at hand?

I wasn't sure quite how it was going to go when SIL and her daughters didn't show up until 3 hours late and then elder neice walked in with an attitude and an angry outburst with her mother. I talked to her the way that I always talk to my own chldren when they get upset, and managed to soothe her down into agreeableness for the rest of the night. I honestly don't think that most of the adults in her life actually talk to her, ask her about what's going on in her life and then listen. She has always seemed to appreciate the fact that I do take that time with her.

Younger niece is just as gorgeous as ever. I think she's 5'10 now and she's really got the looks for modeling. She wants to be an actress though. She's been in quite a few local productions and she hasn't even turned 14 yet. She's super smart though, taking a couple high school classes in the 8th grade. I'm sure she'll go to college. Not sure about her sister.

Everything went pretty well. We ended up using our bird after all as making it earlier didn't work out. This was the best turkey I have ever tasted. It's miles above even the organic ones from the supermarket. It was a heritage breed, sustainably raised on organic feed and allowed to free range and graze for bugs and worms and grass. We got it at the same farm we buy our beef, chicken, and pork from, Skagit River Ranch. We got a 14 pounder. Next year I think we will get two turkeys and aim for 17 pounders. We'll be saving up for it, that's for sure.

I can't wait to make stock with the bones tomorrow and then turkey noodle soup and turkey vegetable soup the next day. It is going to be so good. Stock made from their chickens is excellent and since the turkey had such good flavor I know it will be even better than that.

We sent quite a bit of food home with SIL. She says she ought to get a week's worth of meals out of it for herself. The girls don't eat turkey though they both tried this one and proclaimed it better than the other ones. And we left quite a bit with FIL and MIL, too. But there is still plenty for us to have a few more meals out of it. We shouldn't need to do any grocery shopping this week at all. In fact I'm hoping to extend that to the New Year.

I was happy with the gifts they gave me, 4 albums downloaded and an additional 5 songs to my ipod. This kitchen gadget that makes cake balls. It's sort of like a George Foreman grill. Kind of weird but it might be kind of fun to use. And the book Surviving Off--Off Grid Living: The Decolonizing of the Industrial Mind by Michael Bunker. I've been wanting it for a while and the library doesn't have it.

Everyone liked the gifts they were given as well and we had a really nice time. We even told the Christmas story which I don't think has ever happened at MIL's before. AND FIL said grace. Wonders never cease.

December broccoli!!!!!! What is with this weather system? I am grateful for it as it means less money spent on produce, but it is downright weird. And the sprouting broccoli is still making new heads. We had a smattering of snow yesterday (didn't stick) and yet I am still harvesting broccoli.

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I went to the dentist today and they had the permanent crown ready so he took off the old one, cleaned up the adhesive then put in the new one, took it off and adjusted the bite, repeated this for four times and then finally it was right. I did not choose to have novacaine. I probably should have because it didn't stop hurting for 4 hours. But I didn't want to spend my day with a frozen face. And it was uncomfortable and a bit painful, but not something I couldn't deal with.

After that he adjusted my night guard so that it wasn't resting weird against the new tooth. I ended up paying $200 at the dentist and will be making another payment in January and one in February. Then on February 7 I'll be having the cracked molar on the other side taken care of. That should give me about a month with the new crown before we go to Disneyland.

After the dentist I went to the vampires and had two tubes of blood drawn. I had a great phlebotomist. Found the vein first try and everything. Now that I'm showing no signs of the UTI infection I can have all those blood panels done and see if we can't get to the bottom of my exhaustion and tremors.

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Lady the duck has gone to live at another farm today. The woman had lost one of her ducks, and she had a very lonely drake as well as another mated pair, so if all turns out well, Lady will adapt to the new place. If she does not we'll take her back. But she's got two different creeks to swim in and a bigger area to roam. I will miss her, but I think she will be happier there. Plus they have a dog trained to protect their ducks and 21 chickens from predators. It's a sad decision, but she really was missing her dead flock mates. As much as she got on with our flock of chickens it wasn't the same for her. I am sad and I will miss her, but it seems like the best thing for her.

Just call me Procrastination Girl. Unable to leap tall paperwork with a single bound. I guess insomnia is good for something. This is the first night I've had it since the new meds. Ugh. Anyway, bills paid out of last Friday's payday were:

$1500.00 to BoA Visa
$1000.00 to Mom
___90.00 Physical Therapy
___31.44 Prescriptions (mine)
__225.00 Chiropractor Monthly Family Plan
____6.09 Prescription (DH)
-----------------
$2852.53

I also spent $196.43 on groceries. We aren't going down to the ranch this month because we were so sick the last month I was mostly making things like soup and spaghetti, all things that would go down as well as back up easily, so we didn't eat much of our meat from November. There is enough to get us through until January 14th so the $300 we usually spend on sustainable chicken, beef, and pork I am using to stock up on some staples. Flour, sugar, corn meal (organic, non-GMO) canned green beans, canned corn, wild caught canned tuna and salmon and a few jars of peanut butter. I also bought some pears since they were down to .79 a pound since this is their season and we are a big pear state (not like apples or berries, but still pretty high up there) and I am out of home grown ones.

DH wanted bananas (so not in the 100 mile foodshed), but they were cheap so I let him get some. I grabbed a couple of oranges, too, since I won't make it to Costco probably until this weekend and we were out. There is not much we need besides gas, but I will get a couple cases of oranges and a case of toilet paper while we are over that way. Oranges aren't one of the fruits I worry about getting organic. With their thick peel it is difficult for pests to get at them, hence low pesticide use. I wish I could grow my own citrus, but that is not likely in a maritime climate without a heated green house or sun porch.

I didn't buy any veg. We still have around 15 broccoli plants and 2 kohlrabi I haven't harvested yet. I love brassicas. They take the cold so well. I also still have a cabbage in the fridge and plenty of potatoes from those we harvested. The carrot supply was getting low but they didn't have any organic ones and I will not eat a non-organic carrot since carrots soak up anything that was used on that ground even if it was used decades before. In some places that were heavily damaged with pesticides they plant carrots on purpose to clean the soil. Takes a few years. Those ones do not go to market, but because of that habit of the carrot it's going to soak up any conventionally used "safe" herbicides and pesticides. So definitely a must be organic food for me.

When I was putting away food I noted that I need to revive the celery. Hopefully I'll remember to do that tomorrow.

Now everyone wants to wait and have the turkey at Christmas. It came frozen and as yucky as I feel, I've decided it's fine with me. I am not up for cooking a fancy dinner right now. Heirloom heritage turkeys sure look different from the broad-breasted turkeys sold in grocery stores. They are longer and not rounded or compact. They have more dark meat and less breast, the way nature made them, which works great for my family since no one really cares for the white meat and it always ends up an ingredient in something else while we eat the dark meat straight.

I love the little packet that came along with it. It has thawing instructions, brining instructions, cooking instructions, a recipe for turkey stock, a recipe for turkey soup, and a recipe for stuffing.

It also has a page with a photo of the turkeys when they were about half grown and says this:

[i]You have purchased a healthy and happy turkey which was raised in sunshine and clean pastures during their growing season (never on fertilized pastures). Diet: A turkey will eat 25% of its diet on grass. Your turkey ate an organic mixture comprised of: Spelt, Emmer, Wheat, Peas, Camolina, Seaweed, and Sea Salt. We guarantee that we never buy grain or corn from China.[i]

So it makes my sustainability goal and it makes my 100 mile foodshed goal, since the ranch is about 50 miles away. Hopefully it will make my flavor goal as well when the time comes to cook it. It also came with a large, insulated bag for free. That will come in handy for our monthly trips there. They gave us another one last week (also for free) that is a little smaller.

Since I won't be making a big old Thanksgiving dinner after all, I've decided on roasting two Cornish game hens. That will give each person a half a bird (since DH will not be here). I will make a small pan of bread stuffing and we will have roasted potatoes and green beans. A mini-feast, I suppose.

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DH goes back to the slope tomorrow and he will be working for 3 weeks. Then he will be off for three weeks and return to the slope on New Year's Day. Then it's highly possible he will be doing a 3 and 1, before resuming his normal 2 and 2 schedule.

Christmas Bonuses usually come out around the middle of December. Last year it was on the 16th and anyone who wasn't there received those checks in the mail a couple of days later. I am trying not to anticipate it, but it's hard. I am a planner and I like to know what is going to happen. Last year it was 5% of DH's income. This year it is rumored to be 10%. I can't help hoping for the 10% because it would wipe out the rest of our credit card debt. But even 5% would do a huge amount of payoff and then our income tax return would finish it off. It will be quite high because we get to claim the full HSA deduction.

I've calculated what it will cost us if the payroll tax thing is not extended. It will be $170 a month for every four week pay cycle, or about $2040 a year. If they do reduce the child credit from $1000 back to $500 per child, it won't really affect us much. We couldn't claim one of our kids last year and only half of the other one because of income eligibility. And DD will be 17 next year, so we wouldn't be eligilbe to claim her in 2013's tax return anyway, as I understand it.

We can absorb it, we will be fine. I'm not so sure about many others though. I'd like to continue to have that money, but I don't resent it. I mean, my mother is on social security and Medicare, my SIL is on food stamps, and my BIL (my sister's husband) is on disability and before that was on unemployment for the full term allowed. I like to look at it as our taxes going to support the programs that support our family members. And we help directly as we can.

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We looked at a couple of houses. 1 beautiful 1756 square foot rambler, 3 beds, 2 baths, on one acre with an enormous shop and a smaller shop with attached office, for $239,200. It's just outside of town and mid-way between my Mom's house and my in-laws house. It's a funny piece of land, though, shaped like a pie wedge and the train track borders the property. Since trains go through at least six times a day, I think that would be too disruptive.

We looked at another really nice two story house about ten minutes out of town that has 5 bedrooms, 4 baths, a shop, a barn, and 3 acres for $299,000. It's set up so that the one floor could be used as a MIL apartment.

Then just for fun we looked at a $500,000 house with a lake view and a mountain view. It was spectacularly beautiful and had most of my dream house wants, like a baker's oven, a huge kitchen with lots of storage, a wrap around porch, gables, 1 acre grounds, hard wood floors, beach access. And it had a lot of DH's wants as well, with the shop and four car garage (makes me laugh as we are a one car family). If we could afford it, it would be big enough that we could house my mother, MIL and FIL and SIL and neice on top of our own family. But I do not want to mortgage our lives away. That is not in my plan for future happiness. It sure was pretty, though.

I think we're still a year away from househunting for real, to be honest. The repairs on the old house go slowly. I am hoping we will be able to put it on the market by spring, but I am not holding my breath. If it doesn't sell, we do have a solid tennant willing to rent it for $1000 a month. Average rents out there for that size home are $932, so it'd work out all right, we just wouldn't have money for a downpayment like we would if selling, so we'd have to save up for that, although I'd want to pay off the mortgage first. It'll be under $15K after the next payment. I don't want to have two mortgages on two houses, I'd rather own the possible rental outright.

Hopefully it will just sell though and we won't have to worry about it. There is an investor who is interested in it, but most investors try to lowball and I don't want to deal with a lowball investor, though I will if I have to. Mostly I just want to be done.

The weather this fall has just been the weirdest weather I remember having. It's been unseasonably warm. 2 nights ago we finally did have a frost overnight and a temp of 28, but it has bounced back up into the high 40's at night. The frost didn't do any damage at all that I can see. The kohlrabi is fine, the green onions are still green and of course the cold-loving broccoli is doing great. All I can think is that because it is next to the house, maybe that is a warmer area and somewhat protected.

I've almost finished the broccoli that I have harvested. I think I'll need to cut a couple of the plants by Friday, but the rest are fine to continue their slower growth. It is nice not to have to purchase broccoli, but harvest it as I need it. I really wish I'd gotten some more lettuce into the ground in late September because we'd be eating it now.

The potato outcome is 107 pounds. These potatoes were all volunteers, too. So I've topped $1000 worth of organic produce harvested this year. Remember this is after the cost of starts and seeds. Just goes to show you really can grow a lot of food in small places. And if all goes well, I will still have twelve heads of broccoli to harvest and possibly some side shoots.

The tomatoes wrapped in newspapers continue to ripen as do the ones on the kitchen table. There is enough ripe to add to my spaghetti sauce this week.

As for the chickens and duck, we continue to average six eggs a day. Lady continues to bunk with the chickens. She has resumed her egg laying so I think she is over the trauma of the racoons eating her nest mates, except she won't go anywhere near the new Fort Knox duck den.

Mom is talking about getting ducklings in early spring to put in Fort Knox when they are big enough, but even if she does, Lady may have nothing to do with them. It can be interesting introducing new flockmates, to say the least. As long as she puts herself in for the night with the chickens she is welcome to stay in the chicken coop. If we have to chase her down all bets are off, but I don't think that is going to happen. She's convinced herself she is a chicken and I won't disabuse her of that notion.

I never, ever thought when I planted this garden in early June that there would any chance of harvesting anything in November, let alone tomatoes. I can't even remember a year where we hadn't had a hard frost by Halloween. Not only have we not had even a light frost this year, but the forecast for the next ten days is in the mid-50's with rain. And I picked a whole lot of tomatoes.

I wrapped this set in newspaper and put them in the garage to ripen.



I brought in all the paste tomatoes and anything that was slightly turning color and anything that had split or bruised. They are sitting on my table to ripen.



And the red ones are here along with some last gasp green beans and the surprise of the fall, a bit of cauliflower.



I pulled up the spent broccoli and cauliflower plants and the bean plants and gave them to the chickens and ducks. The six tomato plants can't go to the birds (the leaves and stems are poison to them, but they can eat the fruit) or to the compost. Even though there is no blight on them, I practice prudence in not ever adding them to my compost bin. Into the trash they went (since the yard waste recycling is done for the year). I could have let the tomatoes go longer but the rain was really making things split and that doesn't bode well for wrapping and storing to ripen.

In the main garden I have four broccoli plants left growing, two kohlrabi, and the zucchini plant which is flowering. On the other side of the house I have several more broccoli plants that are heading up and 3 bunches of green onions yet. And there's plenty of chard for greens. I really hope this means we are going to have a mild winter. I'm still not over how much snow we had last winter. Mild weather would be great for the grocery budget.

With a definite chill in the air, the garden has slowed way down. It was quite cold this morning when I got up to take DD to school. I think if it hadn't been raining we might have gotten a light frost. Tomorrow is supposed to get down to 37 F.

Here is today's harvest:




I decided to pull most of the kohlrabi and just left two out there. I cut three of the Romanescu broccoli and pulled up their plants since they won't produce side shoots. The chickens were very happy with the freshly disturbed dirt. They grow more like cauliflower, but are supposed to taste more like broccoli. There are several more out there that just need to gain size so I'm going to let them go for a bit longer hoping the weather will cooperate.

I pulled all the tomatoes on that side of the house though. They were just volunteers anyway. That side is less protected and will get a frost sooner. The other tomatoes I pulled the yellowish ones, but decided to chance it a little longer on the green ones. I also left the bunching onions in. It's a gamble trying to beat the first frost.

There will be plenty of delicious home grown veggies this week just with what I did harvest, no need to purchase any. And the kohlrabi will keep for quite a while if I cut off the leaves, so they can provide veggies for next week.

I checked my spreadsheet and I have saved about $800 on produce by growing my own this summer. That is after taking out the cost of the sugar for making jam and the salt and lemon juice for canning tomatoes, the cost of the rings and lids and jars for canning, and after the cost of the starts I purchased. We harvested about 400 pounds of organic food and that does not include the potatoes I'm going to dig tomorrow. I reckon that will be about 100 pounds of potatoes if it did as well as last year.

I think that's pretty darn good considering the space and time constraints and only doing a halfway job of gardening. I think I can probably double that next year by starting earlier and watering more often during the worst of the summer heat. And my main garden helper won't be dealing with a concussion like he was this year so it won't fall mostly on just me and my wonky leg. Plus I'll have lots of homemade compost to ammend the soil with come spring.

Today's harvest basket:



I guess that title fits the garden as well as me. Everything has slowed down with the onset of cooler fall weather, but much continues to grow. Today I harvested a big head of broccoli and a side shoot that I left to grow on the one I harvested last week, which was pretty big now. I had five tomatoes, a kohlrabi, a cucumber, and 2 handfuls of green beans. There are still blossoms on the green bean vines so I may very well have more if the weather stays mild.

I'm watching the forecast pretty sharply, keeping an eye out for the first predicted frost, as I will bring in everything that won't survive it. I am hoping it stays off for a while though. I could get a lot more harvested in the next two weeks if frost doesn't hit.

I haven't actually done my meal plan for this week. I need to. I know that I will make pork burritos in the crockpot to use up some of the tomatoes and maybe some salsa. I have about 8 tomatoes total now. I need to sit down and plan it out tonight. It's hard when 3 out of 4 people have sore throats, to make something that will appeal to all. Of course I could just hand out ice cream and mashed potatoes and be done with it. Not healthy at all, but very easy.

DS is 3 days behind me on the sick train. I'm letting him sleep a lot more, even if it means we get behind on homeschooling this week. We can catch up by the end of the month. So far we are not behind, we are actually ahead for the month so slacking on a couple of days while he heals probably won't effect much of anything. He wouldn't have gone to school today if he'd been in public school anyway. At least DD is almost well. I'm several days behind her, but there is an improvement in symptoms so hopefully I'll completely shake it off soon.

I've been watching an old British series through Netflix called Good Neighbors (The Good Life) that takes place in the 1970's. It's all about this couple, the Goods, who decided to drop out of the rat race and become completely self-sufficient. They plow up all of their grass and plant a massive front and back garden. They bring in chickens and pigs and a goat. But they live in suburbia on an average size lot, not the country, so you can imagine what the neighbors think. It's funny, heart-warming, silly and serious in turns. Their next door neighbors provide quite a bit of comic relief and support despite their disapproval of the situation.

I'm finding it really interesting in regards to the fact that it was filmed 40 years ago, but the exact same issues discussed are relevant today. And they also have "that trouble in middle east" and other things that made me think twice. They talked about the stuff going into the food even then.

Another thing I've been watching is called Wartime Farm on youtube. It's all about how in Britain the department of Agriculture basically took over the farms and told the farmers what they had to plant and what it was like to live under the conditions of the war. They could keep the dairy cows but had to eliminate the sheep and the beef cattle because raising crops could feed more people. A female historian and 2 male archeologists are living for a year, running a farm the way it would have been run the year the war broke out.

They showed what the butter ration was for one person for a week. We use that amount in a day for the four of us. That really made me think. And the bacon ration was 2 slices per week per person. All meat was rationed and fruit, but the veggies were not.

I'm learning a lot of things I never knew about and picking up some possible skills along the way. I liked the austerity Christmas. It really showed that you could do a lot with very little and how much we take for granted today.

...or five prescriptions later... Well, okay probably not the actual flu, just Super Bad Sinues: The Sequel. And one of the meds is for sleep, because with the super cough (codeine cough syrup, I love you) I haven't been doing much of that. At least everything was generic and I only shelled out $17.81 for all five. Nice.

As for the chickens, well, we have had several escape artists as of late. They are determined to be free range all of the time, and not just part-time. But holes have now been patched in the fence, the gate has been fixed, and wire has been placed higher. Only two of them, Curious and Georgie, got out today. They are the lightest, smallest birds. They fly the easiest and the furthest and we will likely never be able to keep them in. Despite Georgie getting her tail feathers clipped by the neighbor's dog not too long ago, she is still determined to range, though she is sticking to the yard.

I suppose I won't complain too much about Curious and Georgie, since they are the two best egg layers in the bunch. Still, it's not like they have a small enclosure. I have seen yards that are not as big as their huge pen. But the grass is always greener and the bugs are always bigger and the slugs are always...sluggier on the other side of the fence. Well, thank goodness for patient neighbors who are charmed by them and like the free eggs they get slipped now and then.

We have been letting the ducks out a little bit to free range during the day when doing garden work, but they don't really seem to like being out. They like the fenced area and they like their miniature pond and they absolutely do not like the neighbor's dogs. They are too fat to fly and never try to escape, although Lady Henry Inigo Montoya does go off away from the other three quite a bit. She has very little tolerance for Patches and his romantic overtures.

Egg production is starting to slow down as the days get shorter. Well, the 3 female ducks are still laying pretty consistently, but we are only getting about five chicken eggs a day from twelve hens. We are thinking about putting in a light, but 8 eggs a day is fine for our needs and we will probably only do so if it slacks off to a lot less than that.

The garden is still plugging along, but the days are getting cooler. The forecast is looking in the lower 60's for the rest of the week, with rain on Friday. I can't remember the last time it really rained, June maybe, and we are in for a stormy weekend. The nights are still staying above 50 so the tomatoes are still going. Not sure how much longer I can expect that. There are tons of green ones just starting to turn color. I guess if I need to I can pick them and wrap them in newspaper and let them ripen inside. Not a big fan of green tomatoes or I'd just dehydrate them.

I have five ripe tomatoes sitting on my table that I need to figure out something to do with. Maybe I'll make chili this week. In the crockpot so I don't have to put out any effort. Or I suppose I could can a single pint. Just in a smaller pan, not my full-size canner.

I did up what I think is the last of the prunes and they are on a tray in the freezer. There might be a few more, but I'll need DH at the top of a ladder to tell me if there are anymore on the tree and he won't be home until Wednesday. I am too short to reach, but I think I still see a few up there. I was right and ended up with about 8 quart bags full (or will do when the rest of these get packed into the last bag).

I'm still getting a couple handfuls of green beans every three days or so. There are a couple of yellow zucchini struggling along and I may get two more cucumbers before the weather turns. I should be able to harvest another broccoli by week's end.

I really need to do up a meal plan for the week. I am kind of doing the whatever is easiest route right now, but that way leads to overspending. Dinner tonight was scrambled egg sandwiches and stir-fried green beans. Simple, easy, not too much effort.

DD is going to try to go to school tomorrow after being out sick for a while. Ugh. 7 a.m. Even the chickens don't get up that early right now. DS felt good enough to do all of his lessons today, though he is still feeling yucky. The nice thing about homeschooling is he is able to sleep in when he doesn't feel well and it's okay if we don't finish lessons until 7 p.m. I am not, nor ever will be a fan of Algebra, but it's really not fun when your brain feels like it is full of snot. Still, we beat it (the algebra, not the snot).

When our ducks were little they went into the chicken coop right along with the chicks and hens, but as they got older they had difficulty climbing the ramp with their big webbed feet. Also, since the ducks didn't perch at night to sleep, once the chicks learned to perch the ducks ended up sleeping on the floor underneath them. Chickens poop a lot at night and this was not a happy or healthy situation for the poor ducks. They would either stay there or they would move into the nesting boxes, contamintating them.

Our first solution was to take an old desk and an old vanity cabinet from before the bathroom remodel, take off the doors, put hay in the bottom, herd the ducks into the desk half and then push the two together so that the openings were closed off.

Eventually they got too big for this and wanted more space so we expanded their den. We moved the desk to the right like so:



And the vanity went to the left like this:



We ran chicken wire along the back, stapling to one end of the desk and one end of the vanity.



We filled both the floors of the desk and the vanity with hay. Across the top of the vanity we placed one of the stripped down box springs salvaged from those awful ones that came with our mattress set and broke 3 days after the warranty was up.



At night we place the other box springs in front of the opening to the den.



We use bungy cords to hold the front box springs to the top box springs and the chicken wire to the top box springs. This seems to racoon proof it. I've seen racoon scat around it over the past two weeks but they haven't been able to get in and dine on our ducks.

We place sod and hay in the center section that is open the ground. The ducks love it and they love their new den, too.

In the winter we will use the thick cloth coverings that used to be on the box springs for extra warmth over the chicken wire. We will staple it into place and then remove it in the spring.

On the back side of the desk we cut a little hole and placed an old wire shelf over it. It is easily removable by us, but not the racoons, and we can reach in and get the eggs they lay before we let them out in the morning.



The whole contraption works perfectly for us, and we didn't have to pay out for new materials. We simply recycled what we had on hand, keeping it out of the landfill, and giving it a new purpose. It's not pretty, but it's more than functional and our ducks are delighted to have the extra space and an area open to the ground.

When our ducks were small they stayed in with the chickens at night, but as they grew it became harder and harder for those big webbed feet to walk up the little ramp into the chicken coop. Plus, they didn't perch at night, which meant sleeping underneath the chickens. And chickens poop a lot at night. It was obvious pretty quickly that in order to maintain a happy duck flock we'd have to do something different.

The immediate answer was that we had an old wooden student desk and an old bathroom vanity cabinet. We took those out into the poultry enclosure took off the cabinet covers and took out the drawers. In the base we put hay. At night the ducks would go into one of the open cabinet spaces and then we would push the vanity and the desk together, blocking any openings with the cabinet doors, a piece of plywood, and on old screen door.

Eventually this became too small for them as they hit maturity, so we decided to use the bad box springs we had gotten from our mattress purchase in January (they broke right after the warranty was up) to make the duck den more roomy. We opened up the desk and the vanity and turned them parallel to each other.

Looking right, the old desk:



Looking left, the old vanity from before the bathroom remodel:



Chicken wire runs along the back between the desk and the vanity. It is stapled on:



On top of the open space rests one of the srtipped down box springs:



Then at night we put the other stripped down box springs in the front opening.



We use bungy cords to hold the top box spring to the front box spring and the top box spring to the chicken wire at night, just in case of racoons. In the winter we will place a piece of plywood over the chicken wire in the back for more warmth.

Out of the back of the desk we cut a hole and then covered it with an old wire shelf. The shelf comes off and we can reach in to gather the eggs the ducks lay before we let them out in the morning.



The den is open to the ground in the center and the ducks love that. We put in strips of sod and hay. We've had this new contraption going for a couple of weeks now and they couldn't be happier with their expanded home. And I love that we recycled things on hand and didn't buy anything new to make it. And despite seening racoon scat nearby, they have not been able to get in and put our birds on the menu. Heaven help us if a racoon ever learns to work a bungy cord, though.

It's not pretty, but it works.

So far I have preserved a basket of Italian prunes. About half the basketful fits on one cookie sheet. I washed, pitted and halved them (no need to remove the skin) and arranged them like so:



They take about four hours to freeze solid and then you can bag them up. One cookie sheet filled two quart-sized baggies.



I tasted one to make sure I like them prepared this way. It's like eating a popsicle made out of prunes, so good. Better even than frozen blueberries or grapes. So far I have preserved 4 quarts. I think I may end up with about 8 quarts so I will need to be stingy with these throughout the winter, handing them out only when someone has a very sore throat, or the digestive issues the prunes are known for fixing. We have lots of frozen blueberries and raspberries as well as tons of jam, so I think piecing them out as needed is the best option. I really don't want to buy much in the way of fruit out of season so this will definitely help to extend what we have.

There are a bunch of windfalls on the ground, too, so I might make jam with them if there are enough. They will be well-cleaned and skinned since they are on the ground. I think I would make it a chunky jam with some good-sized pieces in it for the full effect of the fruit in this case.

DS got a hold of one of the ducks today.



This is Henry Inigo Montoya aka Lady Henry Inigo Montoya because she grew up to be a girl instead of a boy. Lady is the gentlest and friendliest of the ducks and best egg layer. She's a real sweetheart.

Today's harvest, about 50 Italian prunes, 2 big tomatoes, a couple of little ones (including one green one that got knocked off the vine), a little cucumber that the plant died on (death by chicken), another handful of green beans, and my very first broccoli. I also got brave and cut some grown chard. I am going to saute it. It is generally treated as an ornamental around here, but it does so well I decided it was time to try cooking it myself. I have had baby chard in salads and I've eaten it in soups, but I've been ridiculous about eating it any other way.

I am going to freeze the Italian prunes. The nice lady at Throwback at Trapper Creek told me how she freezes hers and I will use that method. I just really don't feel like canning and this way I won't be adding any extra sugar.



This was part of my mother's corn harvest. She didn't take care of it at all, basically planted it and forgot it and since it didn't rain more than twice this summer, her lack of watering majorly stunted it. Yet it's a testament to her soil that it still produced some tasty kernals (we ate it for lunch) even if the ears were tiny. If it hadn't we would have just tossed it to the chickens.

This is my first year gardening in this climate since, oh, maybe 1989, other than fruit harvest, and while I gardened at the other house, we always had our first killing frost before October. The only things I ever saw there were pears and apples after September. The difference between a climate in the foothills of Mt. Baker and a maritime climate are quite wonderful to me.

I've definitely got some changes I will make next year if we are still living here, or ideas for whatever house we end up buying if we sell the old house and can buy before spring. It will be in this climate no matter where we buy, pretty much. Most of the houses on smaller lots in this town tend to have the best sun in their front yards. I have no issue with mixing vegetables in all the flowerbeds if that is my only way to do it. It is actually becoming quite common to see front yard gardens here these days. They are usually in raised beds, but they are there.

My biggest thing is to get the stuff into the ground sooner than June instead of letting it languish in pots, then putting it in the ground and hoping really hard. I knew better than this, but um...well, we all get lazy or sick or keep putting it off and these things happen. It just can't happen next year if I want to plant enough green beans for the year.

I also will have some diatomaceous earth on hand to deal with the slugs and I absolutely will not listen to my mother about using straw mulch. All that was in the rains of spring was perfect slug habitat and they decimated my cauliflower crop to the point that I didn't get to harvest any of it.

I need to keep my seeds in one location so that I am not frantically searching for them a month or two later when I am ready to plant them. I swear I lost my packets of green bean seeds no less than five times (bought more twice) and ended up planting starts instead, which is why I don't have any to preserve this year as they were close to sold out when I got the ones I have and so I only have had enough for about 2 meals a week.

So basically, the last week of April and the first week of May, I need to be organized, not get sick, and not get lazy. And also hope for a somewhat cooler, but still hot, July.

Yesterday was tomato day, as in I spent a good amount of it blanching, peeling, cutting up, and blending 25 pounds of tomatoes that had been sitting on my kitchen table for over a week. I put them in the crockpots. It filled the 8 quart to the top and then the 4 quart 3/4 of the way full. I left them to cook down on low for 24 hours and then just combined the two crocks together. I did not notice a difference in consitancy between this batch, where I peeled the skins off, and the last two batches when I didn't. What I did notice was it didn't take as long to cook down, closer to 24 hours than 36.

I currently have the 8 quart one full to the top. I bumped it up to high to make sure that it would boil. In about an hour I will put it all into jars and can them. I should have at least 15 to 16 pints if it doesn't cook down too much more in the next hour. That should put me up to half a year's supply of homemade and canned tomato sauce. I don't know if there will be any at the farmer's market next Saturday, but if there is I'd like to do at least one more batch. I've got a few ripening on the vine and whatever is ripe I always throw in with my farmer's market buys.

Once they are in the canner I can clean out the crock and start my pears cooking down for pear sauce and can that tonight. I wonder if pears will cook down faster than apples since they are a softer fruit? I will need to check the crock sooner to be on the safe side, I suppose. I'm not sure I'll get any of the baking done that I wanted to do this week, except for the cloverleaf rolls, but that's okay. My ear is completely pain free now, but I'm still kind of slacking in the energy department.

I would really like to can pear chunks as well if I have the time to do it this fall. I don't much care for the consitancy of canned peaches, but canned pears I enjoy much better and it'd be nice to have some on hand for when the pear season ends in December. And it's easier to find organic pears for a reasonable price, anyway. I'll have to buy more lemon juice. Between the tomato sauce and the pear sauce I will wipe out what I have on hand. Pears don't have enough natural pectin to not put it in. Tomatoes probably do, but all the recommendations suggest its safer to raise the acid content of them with lemon juice if you are using a water bath canner, which I am.

My chicken noodle soup that I made tastes even better today after sitting in the fridge. The flavors have just melded even more beautifully. I knew that happened with chili and stew, but I'd never had it happen with soup, usually because it's gone so fast. It's nice not to have to make lunch right now when I'm so busy with preserving, just pour out some soup and heat it up.

One of these days I really need to make up stock in my giant stock pot instead of the crockpot so I will have enough to can it. It doesn't seem worthwhile to get out the pressure canner to can two jars of stock, or three jars of chicken/turkey and vegetable soup minus the noodles. But I really want to have some on hand that I can just add noodles to it later on as I use it, so I'll have to get with that in another couple of weeks. I want to do it while organic carrots and organic celery are still in season. Organic onions and garlic are always cheap.

We'll need to roast and eat some whole chickens between now and then so I have the carcasses to work with and maybe some turkey thighs as well for the meat for the soup since I have some in the freezer. I have two whole chickens in the freezer, so we'll definitely have one of them for dinner one night this week.

I will have to stop at the farm stand tomorrow and pick up a cabbage and a lettuce. That should be all the produce I buy this week for my weekly menu planning. The rest will be from food on hand in the fridge, the garden, and the freezer or pantry.

Well, I cancelled my dentist appointment for tomorrow. My ear still hurts too much and my throat as well, to sit through a cleaning and after having been on antibiotics for over a week with no progress, I'm sure this is a nasty virus. I didn't want to get them sick there, so I've saved or at least put off, the cost of a cleaning this month. I go three times a year due to some damage caused earlier in life and the third appointment is not covered. I've rescheduled to mid-October, which shifts the payment to a better month and hopefully that gives me enough time to get over this forsaken thing.

Oh, it is better than yesterday, though so hopefully that means I'm on the upswing. Yesterday was "oh my gosh, I think I'm going to die from this ear pain, will it never end," and today was "I think I'll live but I'm not going to enjoy it." LOL So a tiny bit of progress. At least I have my sense of humor back, right?

I have missed three weeks of seeing the woman who works on my leg due to her car accident, so that $90 a week has eased things a bit. She called me today and we've tentatively scheduled for Monday, but with the understanding that either one of us was likely to cancel depending on health or injury status. It was good to hear from her. She's become a dear friend over the last couple of years and we chat non-stop when we have a session.

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Homeschool has gone much, much better this week. We are getting through things better. Math and literature take more than the allotted time, but the other subjects go faster so it all evens out. Today we only put in a half an hour more than the required time and I can see that things are beginning to go more smoothly on DS's end as he gets into the swing of it. I am pretty sure neither one of us is going to go crazy now.

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The garden continues to chug along. Today I picked green beans, tomatoes, a kohlrabi, and some more prunes. The broccoli is getting bigger right on schedule and there are several tomatoes getting red and another kohlrabi that will be ready soon.

The pears on my table are now ripe so I will try to make and can the pear sauce tomorrow, though all I want to do is just bite into those lucsious things and eat them straight. Must resist. There will be more for that.

About half the tomatoes on the table are ripe, too. I hope the rest get there before I need to do something with the ones that already have because I don't want to make two small batches of sauce I want to make one big one.

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I am making chicken stock overnight in the crockpot. I've got 4 chicken carcasses and a bunch of vegetable peelings that I've been saving in the freezer as well as a fresh leek and some sad looking but still decent parsley and other herbs from the garden. In the morning there will be beautiful, delicious broth for mere pennies. I may end up doing chicken noodle soup tomorrow instead of pizza because of my throat. I have some diced, cooked chicken in the freezer I can throw in to make it pretty easy as well as some fresh veggies I can chop and let simmer all day tomorrow. If I have enough leftover stock I will can it, otherwise I will freeze it.

And I think that about covers it.

The garden seems like it really ought to be slowing down. The days are in the high 60's to low 70's and the nights have been in the high 50's. Still, things continue to grow and some things are just coming into their own. We are eating as much from the garden as possible right now. I am buying no produce this week. It is nice to keep the grocery budget lower by making use of the bounty, but not have to skimp on what I feed my family.

I will need to get on a ladder to get the prunes off the higher branches this week. I've pretty much picked the lower branches clean. So far my plan to can has been thwarted by the fact that everything is getting devoured fresh. Ah, well. Maybe once I get those tall ones down.

Here is today's harvest:



The kohlrabi will be eaten at breakfast and lunch tomorrow. I'm pretty sure the prunes are probably gone, consumed to the kids. The green onions will be used tomorrow in a lunchtime low-carb meatloaf and the green beans will be in tomorrow's dinner.

Over half of my table is taken up with produce ripening. I will be making pear sauce in a few days with these:



And I hope that these will be done ripening by the weekend so they can go into the crockpots for sauce and then to be canned.



I am hoping to harvest this broccoli by the end of the week:



And in the patch on the far side of the house I see that the Romanesco is finally heading up. It'll probably take more than a week for these to start to be ready, but at least they finally are producing.



I've never eaten this type of broccoli before. It's an heirloom variety I guess and supposed to be very tasty. Let's hope so because I have quite a few of them planted.

I still have quite a few tomatoes coming on. I pulled the blossoms off several of the plants so they could focus on sizing up and ripening the remaining green tomatoes between now and cold weather. Anything that is a blossom now would have no chance to become anything before first frost so it makes no sense for the plant to split its energy.

This lovely pink rose is growing up through the center of the blackberry brambles. It is a gorgeous spot of color.



There were only five chicken eggs today and 1 duck egg. The days are getting shorter, which means they may not lay as much, but they may be hiding their eggs again, too, since most of them can get out now.

Georgie has managed to get herself up on the roof of the house several times now. She flies to the top of the tall gate and then from there flies to the roof. It is so funny to see her walking along up there. Of course by the time anyone can get a camera she is back down. No one else seems to be following her example, not even Curious, the hen that is Georgie's twin and was always the adventure leader up until now. But then they are both mischief makers or they wouldn't be named after an adventurous monkey, now would they?

We have this really ancient apple tree in the backyard. It has Bramley apples on it, which are probably the sourest apples I've ever tasted. These are cooking apples, not eating apples. They do make a good applesauce, but you definitely have to adjust to taste. I thought I'd walk you through my process today, since making applesauce is one of the easiest things to make. You don't even have to can it if you think you can eat it up fast enough. But it's one of the simplest things to can, too.



Pick your apples (or pick them up if they are windfalls). For this batch I did as many as would fit in my eight quart crockpot, 14. Wash them well, particularly if you don't know where they came from. Peel them and cut them into pieces, cutting out the core. I end up with about six pieces. You can use one of those apple cutters that cores, but I've found that on oddly-shaped apples, or ones as large as Bramleys that it doesn't work well. It's faster just to cut them. Set aside your cores and peels. You should have a pretty large bowlful like this:



Fill the crock with your cut apples as you go. They'll discolor pretty fast but that doesn't matter as the cinnamon will make them brown anyway.



For sour apples start with a cup of sugar. You can adjust this later to taste if you need more. Sweet apples generally don't need sugar added at all.



Add the cinnamon. I use a TBSP.



I don't mix it around at this point, I just put the lid on and set it for four hours on low. After 2 hours I mix it up. The apples will be softening and it is easier to stir.

After 4 hours take a potato masher and mash the apples into sauce.



It'll be thick and goopy. Taste it and see if you need to add more sugar. We did to these super sour apples and ended up adding another 1 1/3 cups for a total of 2 and 2/3 cups. If there are still some hard apple pieces that can't get to mash you can let it go another hour or two until they do mash. If they all mash and you want it to be less chunky you can give it a quick spin in the blender. I just usually stir it after mashing it to get it to a better consistency.

Make sure your jars are hot and your lids and rings have been boiled for 10 minutes. Put sauce into jars making sure to run a knife through each jar to get rid of air bubbles. You want to have an inch of headspace from the top of the jar. Wipe the rim well to make sure there is no residue on it. Place on lids and tighten rings. Place in your boiling water bath canner and lower the rack down. Put on lid. Process for 15 minutes for half-pints or pints. Remove from the canner and place onto a towel on your counter and leave them alone for 24 hours. They will seal (usually in the first 30 minutes but it can take a big longer), sometimes even when you're taking them out.

I got 9 half-pint jars out of 14 apples. Your outcome will vary based on the size of your apples and the number. I've got 16 half-pints on the shelves now and 4 in the fridge. My shelves are looking nice.



I'll be making pear sauce later this week using the same method.

Now there are things you can do with that bowl of peels and cores. Making apple jelly comes to mind:

In my quest to find foods locally or produce them myself, I've been wondering about things like spices. Most spices are fairly easy to grow, some a bit harder, and a few you really wonder about. The one that I've been thinking about the most is salt. I know you can evaporate and re-evaporate salt water, but my access to salt water is around the port. Not exactly the cleanest place in the world to get salt. So I looked around to see if we didn't have naturally occurring salt flats around here. We don't.

So then I started wondering about other sources off and on, but it wasn't really percolating in my mind too much. However, yesterday while DS and I were doing literature, we're reading My Side of the Mountain, the boy in it talked about using hickory limbs to make salt. So I did some research and it seems there are two methods of using hickory to make salt. In one you burn the limbs and use the ashes for salt and in the other you boil the roots and the salt crystalizes on the side of your bowl. I think I'd definitely prefer the second method.

It's not like I'm going to stop buying salt, but I do want to see if I can make it. Of course we don't have a hickory tree, but I am going to start looking around for one and see if I can't get a bit of root or branches to try it with. It seems like a nice exercise in frugality.

I have broccoli! I know that is a silly thing to be excited about, but I really did not think it was ever going to produce heads and what do you know, it did. Or at least two of them have and I think the others can’t be too far behind them. They have been taunting me for ages with big, lush leaves and were well past the 90 days it should have taken. Maybe the weird weather in July messed with it or something, but at least it looks like I am going to have a harvest.

I need to make some space in the freezer for some of it just in case each plant does actually produce. I planted an awful lot of it and I’d like to have some in the freezer for December to June when it’s expensive. It’s super cheap right now, even the organic, because it’s in season summer to late fall, but once the price jacks up it will be nice to have some frozen the day it was picked broccoli for meals.

When I was out watering tonight, I spied 3 cucumbers growing, 2 slicers and 1 pickling. The 4th plant is a pickling cucumber that has never even flowered. It was nice to see some cukes because I adore them and there is nothing like them freshly picked. I’ve only gotten 1 cuke so far this summer so I was really happy to see them.

I’ve got some red tomatoes that need a couple more days on the vine and I picked another kohlrabi
today. I also filled the harvest basket with Italian prunes and picked a few more handfuls of green beans. This green bean teepee has the little plants that could, I tell you. It will be ready to pick again in two days.

I’ve had enough produce picked this week that I haven’t had to buy anything from the grocery store except milk and pure maple syrup. And my mom gave us some lovely sweet corn that was delicious.

I am gearing up to do another major tomato sauce canning session this weekend. I am hoping to buy enough to finish our sauce needs for the year, but that may take another weekend as well.

I’ve nearly filled two big shelves with home canned food this summer and I hope to still do green beans, of which I’d like to have 52 quarts, total. That might not be possible, but it sure would be nice not to have to worry about our major low carb vegetable for a whole year. Canned green beans have gotten quite expensive in the store, to the point where it’s much cheaper to buy them fresh in season and do it myself. And it would sure make my future grocery budgets that much lower.

I’d also like to do corn, but I can still get corn for .79 a can from Trader Joe’s and it’s a BPA free can liners so it’s pretty low on the agenda. Plus, I haven’t been able to source organic corn. Not that corn is on my list of things that should be organic. I just prefer them to be not GMO, and that can be pretty hard outside of places like TJ’s or food co-ops. One of these years I’ll start growing some heirloom Bantam corn, but that’s also pretty low on my list of priorities. I have potatoes for the starch gap so as much as we like corn, it’s such a space hog and needy feeder that so far it’s not been worth it to grow much of it.

We built a new duck den today. Mom and I recycled the box springs that broke (right after the warranty was up) from the new mattress set DH and I bought in January. We were able to expand their habitat quite a bit and they seem happier having more space. There were Bungie cords and zip ties involved, because we are women and don’t believe in “man tools” like drills and screws unless we have to use them, but so far it seems very serviceable. And I’ve never met a raccoon that can undo a zip tie, while I have seen the results of one that managed to unscrew a screw. Part of the fence still needs repair, but hopefully that will come soon.

Mom managed to do a face plant at the end of the day, tripping over a windfall apple. She seems to be doing okay, though, but I imagine she’s going to be one big bruise in the morning. This is one of the reasons I am going to worry about her when we move out. She takes a lot of tumbles. She seems no worse for wear afterwards, but one of these days she’s going to break something. Well, once we’re going all I can do is make sure I check up on her every day so that I know she’s not laying out there helpless. And eldest sister might just move back in when we move out. She’s 11 years older than me, on her own, and she gets lonely. I would feel better if she did come stay with Mom. Mom’s 73 now and she needs someone around, but I have two other sisters and I can’t do it all myself forever.

Remember that itty bitty spider plant start my chiropractor gave me a few months ago?



Well, now it looks like this:



Not bad for free. Not bad at all. I am going to have to transplant it into a bigger pot soon. I am trying to find a ceramic one amongst all of my mother's old pots. I don't like cheap plastic in the house or terra cotta inside, either. If she doesn't have one I will look at Goodwill. I don't want to buy a new one if I don't have to. I think my free plant should have a free or second hand pot to grow up in.

Here is today's harvest basket:



There are about 30 Italian prunes, enough green beans for a meal, 2 tomatoes that were on dead vines so I went ahead and picked them to finish ripening inside, the last bell pepper because it looked like something was trying to eat it, and a kohlrabi. Still no sign of broccoli on the big, lush broccoli plants. I'm still hoping.

It was cold this morning, 45 degrees, but we had a high of 82 at 4 p.m. There are more tomatoes ripening. I am hopeful tonight won't fall below 50 as it is 8:30 and only at 60. If it gets too far below 50 too many nights the tomatoes will be done. The squashes are doing well, the zucchini is slowly producing and I've still only gotten one cucumber from four plants.

We figured out where the ducks were getting out and patched the hole in the fence. Thankfully it is not them flying out or the gate, though the gate still needs to be replaced with something more substantial. We got 11 chicken eggs and 2 duck eggs today. They are really trucking along well.

DD has a severe enough sinus infection that the doctor put her on antibiotics for three weeks. Now if I can just get her P.E. teacher to quite defying me on the orders to keep her inside and not make her go outside during 1st period this week when it's 45. They are supposed to be doing basketball and volleyball only, inside the gym only, but this guy got it in his head to go off syllabus and make them play softball. She has too many health problems for outdoor P.E. I am so tired of school employees not listening to us. It was bad enough when their errors caused my son to be badly injured last June, but if they give my daughter pneumonia on top of it I am done with them and she can homeschool, too.

Oh, and Snafu asked for an update the other day on DS. Although he has healed from the majority of the symptoms from his brain injury, he still has balance problems and some minor focus problems. He cannot yet balance on a bicycle. And he's still jumpy as heck if someone comes up behind him unexpectedly like the boy who attacked him did. But homeschool is going on pretty well now that WAVA finally got its act together and we could actually start it. He's really enjoying it so far.

The ducks have finally figured out how to get out of the enclosure. I think they have been taking lessons from Pipsqueak (who thinks she is a duck). They are learning to fly a bit. They aren't very good at it yet, and they may be a bit too heavy to get much height anyway.



I have had to chase them back where they belong a couple of times. If they just stay in the yard it is okay, but if they wander much further they might run up against some dogs. I'm not sure how they are getting out. If they are squeezing through the gate or if they are flying. No one has actually seen them do their Houidini act.

The chickens get out all the time, but they don't wander far. The older ones have trained the younger ones where to stay and also they keep a wary eye out for the neighbor dogs. And they can get back in on their own, but the ducks can't seem to figure out how to get back in, only out. It means keeping the windows open and my ears open, too. Hopefully I can convince Mom to raise the chicken wire higher on the fence and to fix the gate before the weather turns cold.

I have several tomatoes ripening right now and the raspberries are still plugging along. One blueberry bush is finally done. The other has a paltry amount still on it. I should have several kohlrabi ready in a couple more days. Today I picked enough green beans for dinner and there are more sizing up. I also picked enough Italian prunes for dinner. The are ripening a little slower with this 68 to 72 degree weather than they were with the higher temps so I may not be able to can any for a week yet. Of course we are fresh eating a few every day.

Tomorrow I am going to pick apples and make some more apple sauce and can it. I have enough jars to do ten 8 ouncers, so I will do 12 apples. I am doing a different variety this time that is not so tart. DH will be around when it's time to adjust the sugar content to what he likes, but he was really happy with the last batch. He could definitely tell it was made with different apples, but he has liked both so far.

All of my diced tomato pints sealed. I have still not had a canning lid fail to seal, so I guess all tha attention to making sure the rims are clean has paid off. I have them all up on my shelves now. I love looking at my canning stash. All the pretty colors make me happy.

Next Saturday I want to buy more tomatoes for making sauce and maybe some pears, too. DS still wants me to make pear sauce. We are going to go out this week and check on the progress on the house and I will check our tree out there and see if the pears are any good. The tree has not been watered all summer so they may just be wooden. But it does rain more up there so it's possible they got enough water that way. I will also check on the apple tree, though if I remember right it is usually ripe at the first of October.

Because really, if you're going to do the raw pack method you're going to get that. As long as you bubble your jars, no worries. And who wants to make it any harder than you have to by doing the hot pack method when it's 75 degrees out. Oh, yeah, guess what I did today?

I spent most of the afternoon and evening turning this:



...into this:



And I feel an extraordinary amount of satisfaction from it. That's a pretty good number of jars for five hours of work. 21 pints. My goal for the summer was 24 pints of diced tomatoes. I don't know if I'll do more diced or not. I'd need about four more pounds to do that. 3 more pints is probably not worth the effort of getting out the canner and going through the whole process. I think 21 is probably close enough to call it good.

I do need to do a lot more sauce though. I spent $57.25 on organic tomatoes at the farmer's market today and then threw in at least a pint's worth of my own tomatoes. Not bad for a year's supply.

I ended up with 2 pounds of waste just in skins and cores, but the chickens will be happy to eat that with their breakfast tomorrow. I was careful to keep any green bits out, which was probably an additional 2 ounces of waste. That's really not too bad starting with 28 pounds (only 1 of which was mine).

This was my first trip to this farmer's market. It was nice, but not enough shade when the sun is so blaringly hot. It was more blinding than anything. I found a couple of new small, local, organic farms that I will be patronizing in the future.

The woman who does the therapy on my leg was in a car accident this week. Not horribly serious, but she was rearended and it still hurt a lot. She was hoping to be good enough to come today, but she had to cancel. I feel really bad for her. She has come to be a great friend to me over the last couple of years and I credit her methods for allowing me to walk almost normally again. I really hope she will be okay.

Because she cancelled, the $90 that I normally pay for each 1.5 hour session won't be used. I budget this amount weekly, but in skipping a week of therapy I obviously won't be needing it for it's original purpose. I am debating what to do with it.

I could use it towards buying organic tomatoes for canning. I'd be able to purchase more than I planned on Saturday. Or I could put it in the freezer fund and be that much closer to buying a chest freezer. Either one of these things is an investment in the future food needs of my family, albeit one in a more long term manner than the other.

I should probably aim towards the tomatoes because we won't be buying a beef until June or July of next year and there is plenty of time to get the freezer fund up to snuff. At the same time, it sure would be nice to have the freezer purchased well before we need it. But the tomatoes won't be around for much longer and it really does save a good amount to buy them in season. Argh. This shouldn't be a difficult decision.

DH is home now and I totally caved on the no eating out thing. It was early dismissal at the high school and it already felt like a long day when we picked DD up at 11:15. After running a few errands we ended up getting pizza out. So NorthGeorgiaGal, you are not alone in not only eating out, but choosing pizza! We must totally be on the same wavelength. I don't feel as bad about it as I might. It's been about 4 weeks for me of no eating out and I plan to go the rest of the month without doing it again. I had to rearrange some money, and I'll pay it back on Friday. Progress, not perfection, right?

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WAVA finally has taken its head out of its backside and we should be able to get into the system within 24 hours. I'll believe it when I see it. If all goes well we could be doing lessons as early as Friday, but I am still not holding my breath.

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I harvested a pint of green beans, 2 strawberries, 4 blackberries, a handful raspberries, a half pint of blueberries and a half gallon bag of Italian prunes from the garden today. And there were 2 duck eggs and 9 chicken eggs.

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I've been looking for ways of using beef heart, liver, and tongue for when we buy our beef. It seems silly to me to pay for an entire beef and then leave several pounds behind just because we've never eaten organ meat. I was thinking we could just have it ground and I could mix it with ground beef and pork to make sausages. But then it occurred to me that even if we don't like it, the chickens are omnivores and can eat any meat but chicken and they would eat the ground beef organs happily, so it wouldn't go to waste.

I am also planning to get the fat for rendering so we have it for cooking and maybe for soap and candle making, too. But at least for cooking. It would be nice not to have to buy cooking oil anymore, although I'd still have olive oil for some things.

I'm still trying to track down a farm that will sell a whole hog. Most places seem to just do $300 boxes of pork. I'd like a whole one or at least a half, and the fat to render into lard. That's still quite a ways off, even further off than the beef, so hopefully one will turn up by the time I need it.

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This Saturday I hope to make it to the farmer's market so that I can buy the rest of the organic tomatoes I need to finish off our diced tomato needs for the year. I need 25 pounds of tomatoes to do 24 pints of diced. If I can get those put up next week then I'll see about making more sauce. The greater value for me though is in putting up diced ones.

I still have a ton of green tomatoes, but I just don't think I will have enough of them ripe before the first frost hits. Anything is possible, but it's just been a weird year for growing tomatoes. We've had the heat, but...I don't know. And now nights are around 50 and if they drop much lower than that we won't see a lot of these making it to red, at least not on the vine. It's too bad June was constant rainfall. I think that is half the problem. Still if we don't frost until mid to late October I might get enough to put up. We'll see.

I barely bought any produce this week. The garden is doing pretty well. It has paid for itself about six times over now. All I bought this week was lettuce and melon.

Today was the first day I had ripe Italian prunes. Another couple of days and there will be a lot more ripe. They are all purple now, just not completely and they are softening nicely. They are beautifully golden on the inside and very juicy. I think these are probably the best of the plums/prunes varieties out there. Definitely time for me to start washing jars in preparation for canning.

The everbearing strawberries continue to chug along. They may not produce much right now, but what they do are very sweet.

I am getting several tomatoes a week, but no really big flush ever happened. Considering how much heat we had this summer, it surprises me. We still may, fall is still a bit off and it's looking like we may have an Indian Summer anyway.

My bunching onions continue to do great and have supplied all my green onion needs for the last few weeks. I usually use two bunches a week, so that's pretty good.

The green beans have produced enough for 3 meals a week for the last few weeks, so that's nice, too. But again, surprisingly, no big flush. I am thinking that maybe the spot I gardened in was just not rich enough in the soil department despite Mom's reassurances. There will be some major ammending next year as I am composting quite a bit right now and the chicken manure will have had plenty of time to mellow but give good results.

I'm still not sure what's going on with the broccoli. Huge, lush leaves, but it never made heads. It looks healthy, it's gotten enough water, and all I can think of is that heat wave in July just really screwed with it.

The Hubbard squash is chugging along. So is the kohlrabi. I have one pepper left that is turning red. The lettuce isn't sure what it's doing. The potatoes are ready to dig at any time now. Just a matter of getting out there and doing it.

There were 2 duck eggs and 8 chicken eggs today so all seems well on that front. All in all, though I could be happier with some things, there's been enough food produced to make it worthwhile. And I know what to change for next year.

Today was our trip down to Skagit River Ranch to buy our organic, sustainably and humanely raised protein. Originally we were going down every four weeks, but it's spread out to about every six weeks now as we realized the amount of meat we were buying was lasting that long or a bit longer. Today I spent $290 there. For that amount I got 4 2.5 pound beef chuck roasts, 1 4.5 pound chicken, 18 pork chops (each pack of two chops averages 1.2 pounds), 3 packages of bacon, 4 1 lb packages of hamburger and 2 1 lb packages of ground pork.

I still have some bacon, hamburger, sausages, stir-fry beef, a chicken and a couple of steaks from previous trips, so it will definitely be a good six weeks before we go down again, I think. I think I probably could have waited another two weeks, but the kids and I just really needed to get out of the house today and away from the misbehaving nephews for a decent amount of time. Thankfully they go back home tomorrow.

I have decided we will likely not get a turkey from them this year. The smallest they are figuring on having is the 15 to 20 pounds range and I don't like to buy a turkey more than 12 pounds and that's hard enough to get used up even with my various recipes for soup, enchiladas, cacciatore, quesadillas, subs, turkey TV-style dinners, etc. And at $7.85 pound we're talking $118 for the minumum weight. I can get a good, organic, turkey locally for $50, so I can't justify the cost out of our current budget. Beef maybe, but turkey, no. No one likes it enough for that kind of cost and we are trying to do this sustainable thing without breaking the budget completely.

One of the things I am considering is maybe getting a larger turkey and asking the butcher to cut it in half and wrap each half and then maybe making one for Thanksgiving and the other for Christmas. It would be a way of not having so many leftovers all in one go and seems like perhaps a more economical solution than buying two 12 pound birds, since the meat to bone ratio is better on a larger bird. Either that or maybe we'll just have duck for Christmas. No, not one of our ducks! But a $20 organic duck would leave us with very little in the way of leftovers, plus provide a carcass for soup that will reasonably fit in the crockpot.

We have a duck in the freezer that we should try before the holiday and make sure we like it. Wouldn't want to ruin the holiday with a meat no one will enjoy. Another solution might just be two large chickens with all the trimmings. I'll have to think on it.

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I am making the attempt to get myself back off the soda. Even if the cola I am drinking does not have high fructose corn syrup in it, that doesn't make it good for me. I've felt tired ever since I started it up again. And it does get to be an expensive habit at 2 cans a day. So today is day one. So far I still really, really want it.

It's Day 2 of the September No Eating Out Challenge and I spent a grand total of 2 hours arguing with myself (off and on) about ordering a pizza. *sighs* I did not do it, and I have a roast in the crockpot for dinner and had chili for lunch (even though I really wanted pizza). I have decided that pizza is on the agenda for tomorrow. I will go ahead and make the dough tonight though so all I have to do tomorrow is roll it out. Well, I say roll. I really just push it out with my hands.

Anyway...the applesauce I made yesterday turned out well, though I did end up having to add some more sugar because those apples were really tart still with only a half cup. I ended using a total of 1.5 cups altogether. More than I wanted to use, but far less than what goes into jam. And I don't think anyone wants to eat sour applesauce, so it was the best thing to do. Next time I make it I will do it with different apples than the ones from that tree.

I ended up with 8 half pints. I thought I'd get at least 10. You just never know until it goes in the jars though. Everything processed just fine. I have yet to have a jar not seal properly for me. I have now filled one entire shelf with home canned food, stacked three jars deep. I'll probably start another batch of tomatoes cooking down tomorrow, since I am using one of the crocks for tonight's dinner. I want to make up some mustard this week, too, something slightly spicier than the last batch.

I need to sit down and figure out my meal plan for this week. School starts for DD on Tuesday so I have to plan her school lunches as well. All I know for sure is that tomorrow is pizza.