Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Lemon tree very pretty

Woof, this past week's been a real doozy. The small one has readjusted his waking time to 5 a.m. and no amount of otherwise manipulating his schedule (new naptimes? fewer naps? later bedtime?) has changed his mind. To be fair, there's a lot going on with him right now - he's started walking (he takes 5 or 6 steps at a time and is pretty Frankenstein-y with stiff, bowed legs), looks to have 2 new teeth coming in, and has officially outgrown most of his summer clothes. While it's very exciting, none of that changes the fact that I'm seriously sleepy. Therefore, in lieu of a new entry today, I leave you with a photo essay from making lemonade earlier this summer.








I've still been keeping myself plenty busy and will have a more informative entry to share soon; here's a preview:

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Old friends, new friends

We've done some good visiting this past month. While Tres was away for two weeks for work, my mom came up to visit for a few days and we constructed Silas's Tripp Trapp (my childhood chair), made jam, and did our best to stay cool.


Trying out his "new" chair

I didn't get one of them during the visit, but
here's one from the wedding this summer

The next week, Silas and I then made a quick trip down to see the folks. We had a dear friend and her son, who is just one month older than Silas, over for a visit. It was pretty funny to watch the little boys play "together" and of course a welcome opportunity to do a little catching up with each other's lives. The next day, Silas and I met another old friend (she and I met in Camp Fire in 3rd grade!) for a lovely walk and picnic in the park.

Silas and Landon last November

And a few weeks ago

The following weekend, we had a quick visit from good friends from Seattle - I taught Z for two years (first in preschool and then Pre-Kindergarten) and, in the process of getting to know her, also became friends with her mother (and later the rest of their lovely family too). They came bearing gifts, sweet dears, of a hand-me-down bed for Silas (it's super sweet - it has a slide!) and a hat for me. We tried to repay them slightly, with some tasty treats from the garden. It was really wonderful to see them and share a bit of our life here and I hope that there will be another opportunity for all of them to come out and stay with us sometime.

I (foolishly)failed to take any photos of our visit,
but you can admire my sweet hat!

Over labor day weekend, we had a visit from one of our oldest friends. We kept her busy, hiking, visiting an outdoor music festival, cooking, and making peach butter (and of course, the ever popular emptying the dishwasher), but still had plenty of time for visiting and hearing about her exciting future life changes too.

Regrettably, this is the only photo that
I have from her visit (silly!)

A few days later, we had yet another old dear friend (I know that those adjectives are becoming repetitive, but I can't come up with any as appropriate) and his new fiancee stop by. It was really fun to show them the house and the property, hear about their recent road trip, and for them to see how much Silas has grown and changed in the past few months. Added bonus: banjo time!


Learning to play the banjo

There must have been something
interesting on the ground. . .


Finally, Tres's dad was out this past weekend to finish our deck, by building a bench in one corner. It turned out beautifully and we promptly put it to good use, eating dinner on it that night. It is most excellent and I look forward to many more family meals on it.

Trying out the bench

Since moving out here, it's been my hope that (despite being a significant distance from all of our friends and family) our home could be a desirable weekend destination. I feel like we finally got a taste of what that could be like these past few weeks and it was really great. Life can feel pretty isolating out here sometimes and there's nothing like having some guests to rekindle your social skills and, most importantly, reconnect you with people you love. While many of them live near each other, it is rare that we get to visit everyone when we are nearby and it's been really nice to be able to focus our attention on individuals while they were here. Hosting visitors can really give a wonderful perspective on what you love in your life too. While I can often feel overwhelmed by the seemingly never-ending process of moving in and setting things up (we have been in the house for over a year now and still have almost nothing on the walls, except for in Silas's room), our house is comfortable, we get to do lots of things that we love to do here (cook, preserve, garden, raise animals, eat, spend time together), and it really is slowly coming together too. So, thank you everyone for coming out to see us and if you're reading this and haven't made it out yet, what's keeping you?

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Yes, I can, yes, I can!

Ah summer, you're the busiest time of year and thus most blog-worthy (or at least full of the most fodder) and yet also, due to said busy-ness, leave so little time to actually write anything down. Case in point, I started composing this entry on August 9th and it is now, well. . . no longer August. It's been a good month and I'll do my best to talk about all that's gone on, although likely not give it quite the focus it could/should have. To begin, the garden has been a little slower this year than last, in that we've only been completely overwhelmed by tomatoes, eggplant, melons, and pumpkins for the last few weeks, rather than for the past two months. Tres is talking about downsizing a bit next year, as two years of trials have given us a pretty good idea about which varieties we like and do well here. Perhaps he'll want to talk a little bit more about that on here sometime this fall/winter.


A few minutes picking yielded a bowl full of tomatoes (my favorite, "Katja")


I tried to make and freeze cucuzzi bread again, but unfortunately was a bit behind on my harvesting. I got a biggie I was sure would yield lots of bread, unfortunately it was way too far gone. It was well on its way to gourd-dom, with skin so hard it was virtually impossible to cut and full of big seeds on the inside. As we're up to our eyeballs in pumpkins right now (or rather the garden is full, but it will be time to harvest them soon), perhaps I'll try to make and freeze some pumpkin bread instead. 



giant cucuzza, incredulous face

As the garden winds down, the pantry continues to fill.  Two Saturdays ago, Tres picked about 100 pounds of tomatoes for us to can. With Silas in the mix, we were definitely slower than in years past, but we finished by mid-afternoon and still had some time for other work and even a little relaxing at the end of the day. There are more tomatoes still ripening, so we will likely do one more batch in another week or two.

Time to do the tomatoes



33 quarts of tomatoes

A few days later, we headed to the local orchard and picked about 45 pounds of peaches. We ate and baked with a number throughout the week and the following weekend, with the help of a visiting dear friend, we turned them into 17 half pints of peach butter and 8 quarts of peach halves in syrup. I managed not to take any photos of the peaches or, more importantly (and sadly), our visitor, but here's what the pantry's looking like these days and a current inventory:


So, from the left to right, we've got the aforementioned peach products, 11 half pints of amaretto cherries, 6 half pints of  blackberry/raspberry jam, 6 half pints of blackberry jam, 7 half pints of blueberry jam, a few quarts of last year's leftovers (including sun-dried tomatoes in the foreground), 14 half pints of strawberry balsamic syrup and jam, 13 half pints of nectarine jam, and, of course, the tomatoes up above. Toast is going to be exciting this winter!

Also, two giant squash and about 7 more down in the shop, not to
mention the many, many still waiting down in the garden.
Time to get roasting and pureeing!

Despite the above evidence to the contrary, we've been up to a bit more than cooking and preserving this month, but I think this is plenty long, so I'll write a bit about our visitors and visiting in another entry (and post it before another month goes by, I promise). In the meantime, even though the time has flown by, I find myself looking forward to fall and enjoying the feelings of change in the air.