Sewing and Mowing

Have you tried wearing a mask to the grocery store yet?  I did it, even though I felt silly going shopping like a bank robber.  It helped that there were lots of other silly looking folks wearing their masks too.  Some people had home-made masks like me - one lady even had a white tube sock pinned to her face!  

Brandon and I spent nearly all day on Saturday sewing face masks.  We cut up vacuum cleaner bags and sandwiched them between cloth, with the hope that the vacuum bags would filter better than just cloth.  These masks can't be washed, but we figure as long as they are only used once, then left in the sun on the dash of the car for three days before being used again, they will be virus free.  

The most time consuming part was cutting, ironing, and sewing the straps needed to tie it to your head.  Now that I've used the mask, I think shorter straps would have been fine.  The worst part about wearing a mask, other than pulling my hair when I tied the straps, was having my glasses fog up when I exhaled, especially if my head was tilted down.  I tried really hard not to touch my mask, face, or glasses while I shopped and I couldn't wait to get out of the store and take it off so I could breath freely without foggy lenses.  Turns out, if you try to stop breathing so your glasses don't fog while you pay at the register, you start to pass out.  Now I know!  

I ran the sewing machine and Brandon cut and assembled all the parts, and we managed to make a mask for everyone in our close family.  Despite all the warnings about avoiding travel, we make a big circuit on Sunday and delivered masks and eggs to our family.  It was nice to see folks, even if we did have to say hi from the driveway and couldn't stay for a visit. 

Brandon managed to squeeze in some mowing between bouts of sewing.  The newly mowed grass smelled wonderful, and Wendigo and I wandered all over enjoying the tidy green carpet. 

The sidewalk project isn't complete yet, but already think it's really going to tie the lawn together!  

Fixing Chairs

 

I wanted to make new seats for some cool, tall outdoor chairs that were given to us when someone moved to a new home.  Our friends and family know that I take in homeless yard furniture, so we have quite a collection of chairs and tables now.  Brandon was skeptical that I would ever fix these chairs, and gave me looks every time we had to move them about.  I could tell he had doubts about my chair repair motivation or abilities, so I was determined to finish this project in time for pool season and the firefly party.  

One of the chairs that needed a new seat is this nice lounger.  I love a good lounger for pool side relaxation, so I hated to see it go to the trash if I could repair it enough for a second life at our house.  

I did some reading on the interweb, and shopping at the amazon, and purchased a roll of lawn chair webbing, and five spools of different colored parachute cord.  

After some experimentation with wrapping techniques, I settled on three long wraps alternating with three short wraps, and used nearly two hundred and fifty feet of para cord for each chair!  The cord is supposed to be strong enough to hold seven hundred and fifty pounds, so unless we all pile up in one chair, it should hold.  The cord is flexible and comfortable to sit on too, so the chairs don't need seat cushions.  

I didn't get as fancy with the lawn chair webbing for the lounger, and just wrapped it around and around until the whole seat was covered, then I tied the end to the chair.  

It works!  

The first chair was a struggle to wrap because I didn't have my technique established.  The second chair was fun because I knew what I was doing.  The third chair was a bit tedious to wrap, and by the fifth chair I was very thankful that it was the last one.  Done! 

Wendigo, don't they look pretty?  

Each chair has about twenty five dollars worth of para chord tied up in it.  I think the cord would last longer if I could find a way to keep the chairs out of the weather when they aren't being used.  We have a tall table given to us because the glass center piece was broken.  Brandon cut a wood replacement and I painted it so it will last longer in the elements.  My newly fixed tall chairs work wonderfully around my newly fixed tall table!   

Past Time for Pie Time in the Kitchen

 

It's past time for pear pie season to start, for sure, but with most of my energies focused on my new goat and donkey friends, I haven't dedicated much time to kitchen projects lately.  With my parents here for a visit though, we managed to pick some pears right off the tree, slice them up with the handy apply corer machine, and bake them into buttery crusts.  

I made these crusts with that delicious Kelly Gold butter, and they were some of my best so far.  We made a pear and cinnamon pie with a crumble topping, and a pear and vanilla custard pie, and took them both to a family Oktoberfest party.  I didn't get a picture of the final pies before we decimated them, but these pies were so good they were inspiration for more pie.

Sometimes our kitchen is such a disaster I have a desire to take it's picture and show you (is that Grimace in the window?). By the end of every day, after cooking breakfast and packing lunches (three cheers for cutting back on eating out!), and all the other things we're doing, every surface in our kitchen is cluttered.  I like that our kitchen is a work place, and it's small enough that I can get it back in good enough shape to fix a simple meal pretty quick, but we can clutter it up even faster.  How do two people who are gone most of the day make such a mess? Brandon and I once gave each other New Years resolutions.  I resolved that he should throw garbage in the garbage can instead of leaving it on the counter, and he resolved that I would close the drawers and cabinet doors after I open them.  I was never that good at resolutions.

The kitchen isn't exactly finished either.  There still aren't handles on the cabinet doors, and there aren't even doors on all the cabinets! Despite the kitchen's small size, our storage is better here than at our old house, but there are shelves that we planned for that haven't been built yet.

Whew, I can breath a little easier once I get the kitchen picked up and wiped down, and ready for the next mess to be made.  

One of the messes I've been making this week is to boil rice in too much water to make rice water for Wendigo to drink.  Wendigo had an upset stomach for a couple of days, and I read that one way to help is to do a rice water fast for twenty-four hours.  

Wendigo has a big appetite to match her ever growing giant puppy body, so denying her food for a whole day was a little like torture for her, and us.  Also, she does not like Pepto Bismol, so in my struggles to squirt it in her mouth, we would both be splashed with bright pink spots.  But, she's all better now without a trip to the vet or any medicines, so hopefully it was worth it.  The chickens enjoyed all that mushy rice.  

Pickle Dreams and a Fence to Keep A Donkey at Bay

I've always wanted to try making fermented pickles, and now that our good neighbor has a cucumber patch that's producing faster than he can eat, my pickle dreams are coming true.   

Once again, our little kitchen was a cool oasis on a hot summer day.  An oasis filled with piles of overgrown cucumbers!

The fermented pickle instruction that I found on-line said to use grape or oak leaves in the brine to add tannin to preserve crunchiness.  I picked a few wild grape leaves, but most of them have been devoured by Japanese beetles, so I added a handful of green oak leaves from our big oak tree.  The leaves had lots of spots.  I hope oak leaf spots don't taste funny.  

Most of the cucumbers are much bigger than the average pickle, but I put the smallest ones into some cold water to soak for a while before I put them in a big glass jar with the leaves, some little onions from the garden, a few spoonfuls of dried dill, and some really salty water.  After the first day, little bubbles started to form along the top of the jar, so I knew there was some bacterial action.  On the second day we tasted the first one, and it was pretty good!  Crispy, and salty.  On the third day we tried another, and it was a little more bitter and made my tongue feel tingly.  Still crunchy though.  At some point I need to put them in the refrigerator to calm the bacteria so they don't go soggy.  

In my quest to figure out how we can use more of our cucumber hoard, I stumbled upon several references to cucumber water.  How fancy!  I loaded a jar full of ice, cucumber slices and water and took it to Brandon, who was outside working on the fence where it was sweltering.   

He was so hot I probably could have handed him ice water with old banana peals floating in it and he would have drank it, but after a big gulp of cucumber water he said "Hey, I like that!"  We've been having cucumber slices in water ever since.  Cold cucumber slices are a nice snack once the water is gone too.  And, they feel nice on my eyelids when I want to pretend I'm at a comfy spa instead of a hot barn yard.  

Even Wendigo likes to munch a cold slice.  

Can you see how Brandon is tying the corners and braces together with wire?  The wire it attached to hardware pieces that ratchet it really tight.  This is one intense fence - the posts are braced and then tied tight together with wire.  Surely, as our neighbor said, it will keep a miniature donkey at bay!

The fence officially has four complete sides now.  The longest side was no problem with the fence pulling method we are using, which employs to hand wenches to get the top and bottom of the fence really tight.  Because the ground on the long side had a slight dip, once the fence was pulled tight, I had to stand on it to bring it back to the ground so we could attach it to the posts.  The next step before the fence is done is to install some gates.  Once the gates are in place, this fence with be donkey capable!

Freezing Bountiful Corn

Even though our own garden is less than bountiful with human food so far, thanks to generous friends and gardeners, we've been gifted a bounty of corn and cucumbers.  

Brandon and I were having grilled corn for as many meals as we could, but we weren't making much of a dent in our pile of cobs.  Time to test out my new kitchen for bulk food preservation!  Exciting, right?  

The cats were very interested in my pile of husks, and couldn't understand why I didn't do that messy job outside.  I've never loved my air conditioner as much as I have for the past two weeks.  It's so hot outside, and humid!  Like a sweaty jungle.  The windows are dripping with moisture every morning.  It rains a little every day, and sometimes the sun glares while it's raining!  It's steamy out there, cats, so I'm husking corn in the air conditioning and watching the jungle grow through the windows.  

I remember my father-in-law cutting corn from the cob and cooking it with margarine before filling freezer bags.  

I cooked mine briefly with some butter and a few onions and a red pepper.  If I remember, my father-in-law's corn was creamier, I think, but this corn is very tasty.  Maybe I was stingy with the butter?  

I've been sneaking corn into all our meals.  Even adding it to soups, beans, or just as a side dish to sandwiches.  All sandwiches get cucumber slices these days!

I froze the corn in pint sized freezer bags.  Now I can thaw, heat, and serve - how handy!  The kitchen handled this messy food preservation task with ease.  Next up - pickles.

Like Waves Washing the Shore

I've got things to tell you.  Projects that are advancing.  Chicken news, even.  The wiring in the workshop is underway (three cheers for lights!), the stone pathway from the back yard is looking good (five cheers for getting our feet out of the mud!), a hen is sitting on a nest of eggs, and the rest of the garden has chicken proof fencing now.  There's nothing stopping me from planting my store of seeds.  So many good things!  But, one of the most exciting things for me, at least on sunny days, is our new clothes line.

Having a sturdy clothes line that doesn't wobble in our intense wind is so much fun that I find myself sitting in the shade watching the clothes wave as they dry.  It's relaxing, like watching the waves wash the shore at the beach.  Plus, since I'm technically doing laundry, I deserve a tasty beverage while I work.  Whew, it's a rough life, right? 

To build the clothes line, we scavenged up some long landscaping poles and some short pressure treated square posts from our collection of building supply cast-offs, and Brandon showed me how to make lap joints.  He marked the square post where he wanted the pole to fit, and made a serious of cuts with the skill saw.  

These cuts went about half way into the piece of wood.  

Then he took a hammer and tapped them in several directions, which made them loose.  

A solid whack on the side, and they easily came flying away, leaving a nice square hole.  Aha...I wondered how he was going to do that!  What a neat trick.

He had to use a chisel to smooth some of the rough bits, but then the other pole slid easily into place. 

He cut some pieces at angles, to support the top, and wha-la, a clothes line is born!  

We can't do any project without making mud, so of course we had to dig some holes and put concrete around the base of the poles. 

Instead of mixing the concrete in a wheel barrow and pouring it in the hole, instead we put the dry concrete mix in the hole and then added water.  By using a stick we were able to mix the concrete in place.  

Before the poles had the rope, I thought they looked interesting, like sculptural symbols, or totems.  

But once I hung a basket of petunias and added clothes pins and colorful towels, the clothes line looks less like sculpture, and more like a clothes line.   I think I have less feet of clothes line length with this system, versus the collapsible umbrella type that I had before, but since those couldn't stand up to our strong winds and I found my clothes laying on the ground more than once, I'm happy to be only able to hang a few loads at a time if that means they will stay standing.