An invisible man sleepin' in your bed

Happy Halloween!

 He's roaring, if you can't tell

He likes to see all the islands, so island-hopping he goes

HAPPY WEEKEND!

We're excitedly gearing up here for a weeklong trip to the San Juan Islands, to celebrate my parents' (40th) anniversary. We're looking forward to exploring a new place and spending some time around trees!

While letting the chickens out yesterday, I noticed that a Meadowlark

had built a nest under the eave of the chicken coop - it appears to

be made of polyester stuffing and feathers and holds 3 beautiful little eggs

Something delicious: I got super excited about these when I read the article at my parents' house a couple of weeks ago. I don't know about pretzel dogs or hot pockets, but a good soft pretzel is a beautiful thing. I'll bet Silas would like them too.

Something neat: This is a story about how one of my dearest college friends, and incidentally one of the most brilliant women I know, runs a creative, inspirational, and (deservedly) very popular business. She has worked amazingly hard to create something truly special and beloved, and I admire her immensely.

Something to read: This is a totally fascinating article about studies into how microbes and their colonies in our bodies benefit our daily lives, specifically those in our gut (sidenote: I love that gut is the scientific term for our digestive system). He especially focuses on this currently running study, sampling gut microbiota around the country, with the hopes of eventually drawing correlations between these colonies and our overall health. Such, such interesting ideas and so much we don't yet know.

Something to make: We got our first strawberries this week (yippee!) and I've got a batch of this underway in the fridge. I have at least three other strawberry jams I'd like to try this year - hooray for the onset of jam season!

Chocolate will cure most of what ails ya

Sauerkraut is bully*

Well, it's official: I just put the last jar of sauerkraut into the canner, thus completing this year's food preservation. Admittedly, I should be using the remainder of naptime to clean the kitchen, but instead, I thought I'd write a little update on what we've been doing this past month.

This guy's busier than ever, walking over to investigate
and explore everything he comes across

While I went down to help my parents with a painting project, Tres and Silas bought 100 pounds of apples. The following weekend, we (S-L-O-W-L-Y) made them into 31 quarts of applesauce. We went with McIntoshes again, as we were really happy with the sauce we made from them last year. As usual, our handy dandy slicer/peeler was worth its weight in gold (even if we have use a clamp to attach it to the table) and I discovered that, since the Macs are so soft, we could grind them without an initial cooking. Despite our time saving, it still took us the better half of the day to get through them all. I'm excited for a winter's worth of delicious applesauce, though. 

75 of our 100 pounds

That same weekend, Tres shredded enough cabbages to fill his birthday crock with this year's batch of sauerkraut. It fermented for about three weeks before today's aforementioned canning.

Don't mind the small photo bomber on the left

There are some new babies around here these days too. A few weeks ago, we received 25 Plymouth Barred Rock chicks from the hatchery. They've been hanging out in a cozy box in the shop, Tres has sold 11 thus far, and we're hoping to end up with a flock of 8 (9 on the outside) hens ourselves. Silas has been very excited about the new arrivals and likes to watch them, while hooting loudly - they might not be quite as excited about him . . .

These are photos I took a few days after they arrived - 

they're in full on gangly awkward mode these days

They have plenty of room, they're just not huge fans of the camera

* Found this while googling Sauerkraut - oh, you Nova Scotians.

To everything, turn, turn, turn. . .

You know the weather's turning, when:

• the cats look like this,

• you can plant your tomato and pepper starts,

• you get sunburned while doing aforementioned planting,
• the farmer's market opens,

• you finally take your winter hat out of your purse,
• and you start cooking dinners that looks like this.

Turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes

There hasn't been a whole lot going on around here house-wise, as we've been coordinating between various contractors and (as I mentioned earlier) hooking up the water, sewer, and electricity. Happily, we have completed those tasks and they have passed inspection. 

water and electricity headed to the house

This week, it's been the wonders and unexpected delights of having a fire sprinkler system installed. A thorn in our side since the permitting process,


***Begin angry digression: Surprise! You have to install a sprinkler system, since your house is in that weird no man's land of within city boundaries, but not within 60 ft. of a fire hydrant. Of course, you'll have to pay for it out of pocket, since you didn't know this before you submitted all of your expenses for your loan, AND it'll slow your permitting process considerably, since you'll have to wait for a bid from a sprinkler company and coordinate with various city departments. Delightful. End angry digression***


we've just been waiting for the fun and games of installation and, let me tell you, thus far, it has not disappointed. Getting them out to install the basic system was relatively manageable and they finished in just a few days.

control center

sprinkler heads

Today we learned, however, that we are responsible both for hooking the system up to our water and for wiring in a warning bell, not to mention having ANOTHER inspection before it is considered complete. Now, these tasks may not sound like a big deal, but they will mean getting contractors back out here and paying additional fees (since none of this was mentioned to us earlier). The best part, I've only obtained all of this information by calling and asking them questions, since they left today without giving us any further instructions. So, that's the sprinkler saga. Sorry for excessively ranting.

In better news, spring is up and running around here. The hens are laying like crazy (we're averaging 5 eggs a day from the 6 ladies) and their eggs are lovely and full-sized, occasionally giant. I love the variations in color.

the cat is also a fan

We've also been enjoying our first salads from the garden. Starting with micro greens (as someone chic-er than I might term them) we'd pulled while thinning, we've graduated to what might be considered baby greens and they've been super delicious. The arugula, mustard, and lettuce have really started going gangbusters and we've also enjoyed our first radishes of the season. Pretty soon, it'll be full-on salad time!

arugula

lettuce

See, even focusing for just a bit on those things within my control helps me to put those other pesky issues into perspective.

When I hear that robin sing, well I know it's coming on spring

We've been having our first spring-like weather around here this weekend and the animals seem to responding right on cue. First, this from our chickens:

It's hard to get a full sense of scale, but it's super tiny, maybe half the size of a large egg you would buy at the grocery store. Suffice to say, we're super excited and hope this means we'll be starting to get a regular supply soon. Next, the neighbors' first pregnant goat (of 3) had twins on Saturday and we got to see them when they were about an hour old. Unfortunately, I did not think to bring my camera, but you have my word, they were the tiniest, cutest goats I have ever seen.


Tres and I planted the first plants in the garden on Saturday - garlic we had started up by the pump house. He also put up an electric "fence," to keep out the jackrabbits and next weekend we will get serious and plant our first seeds. We should also get our building permit this week, which means we can start pouring the foundation in the next week or two.

I won't lie, a small part of me wanted to title this post after a certain

"Ren and Stimpy" song, for those of you who came of age at that time

Hooray for new beginnings!

Everywhere there's lots of piggies, living piggy lives

So, this just happened. . .

Apparently, when Tres went over to return the neigbors' tractor, she came running to the door and he couldn't resist bringing her over to say hi. She is ridiculously cute and really curious - god knows what she ate off of the floor while she was exploring. The cats, needless to say, were not impressed (regrettably, I was not quick enough to get one of him nose-to-nose with the pig; it was amazing).