Critters

The boys buried in snow gear. Teen is holding one of our ladies.  We hope to have eggs from them starting in  February.  
Leroy Brown Goat and his homies the Barred Rocks
Button on the left, Zipper on the right, SplogeBob WoolyPants in the center and Emily in the Back enjoy some morning hay in the barn. SplogeBob is the newest member of the flock. He is a romney/ corrieadale mix.  Such a sweet boy. We call Zipper Rama-lama and Button gets called Ewe Girl sometimes.  They are Dorset/ Southdowns.  Emily is a Shetland.

Snow!

This face says it all!  We got about a foot of snow AND warmer temps. The sun was shining. It was a beautiful day diggin' out.

To Do list... Spring Cleaning

Spring Cleaning?  Well, yes, I am sorta doing the spring cleaning because there will be no time to do the spring cleaning when spring arrives.  Who wants to be indoors when the weather gets warm....cleaning. Ugh.  

But things pile up, cupboards get cluttered, clothes get outgrown, spiders spin in drafts, dust gathers. The rest of the year is busy with the garden, canning, and holidays.  This is the work of now.  

Taking care of these chores now, makes the summer to do list easier to figure out.  Do we need to build that shelf in the kitchen?  Do we think about building the addition this year or do we take care of another project instead? When we get rid  of the dead dryer in the bathroom do we put a cabinet in its spot or do we put a shelf?

To do:

Clean off the top of the refridgerator, clean the inside of the fridge and freezer.

Organize the cupboards in the bathroom.

Move knitting machines and accessories into spare room off the workshop. Set up knitting studio.

Make bread, yogurt, cook up some winter squash.

Find a way to keep the kitchen counter by the back door from become a catchall for EVERYTHING.  Ugh clutter ...

Finish painting the freecycle dresser I found for the teen and put on the handles.

Sew window quilts for the back door and front door.

Make a bulk food order for buying club.

Well, that seems more than enough to keep me busy.

I NEED TO KNIT WITH WOMEN!

Okay, maybe the need isn't so great that it requires capital letters and exclamation points but I really do need to knit with other women. One of my New Year's Resolutions was to take more time for myself. One way that I was able to to do this was to join a local knitting group at our local library. 2 hours a week, on a Monday evening, 5 minutes down the road.

Up until this group started, I had been sneaking away on rare occasions to my favorite yarn shop ( insert shameless plug here), but that required a 45 minute drive and a balancing act between what needed to be done around here, hubby's availability to hold the fort down here and my need to have sometime for myself. My favorite yarn shop has a lovely sun room and a great group of women who congregate there. I can drool over yummy fiber, have a good cup of coffee and work on whatever project I am in the middle of, uninterrupted.

Fiber Fellowship.  Knitting with other women, I can get inspiration for the next project. Such as this lovely scarf.  We share our hopes, joys, and concerns and more than enough laughter.

There used to be a time in my life when I was living the writing life. Nearly 20 years from those earnest poems of my teen years to the full bodied poems of a life lived.  I had a regular writing routine, I labored over poems while waiting for the right words to fall from the pen. I belonged to writers groups.  I used a lot of paper.  I frequented poetry readings and submitted poems for publication.  I actually had some local success with the whole endeavor. 

 And then...one day it just stopped.  Writers block? Maybe.  But I also reached a point where I didn't feel the driving need to write.  At one time I heard a story on NPR about Harper Lee and Henry Roth.  Writers who had one great novel and that was it.  The essence of the story was that even though they only wrote one novel they were creative people at heart and had found other outlets for their creative drive.

 Writing can be very solitary. Unlike knitting, it is hard to see how your poem fits a loved one. If the color is flattering or if ;while your hands were moving, you were daydreaming about the prospect of the next pattern, yarn and color you would like to work with.   

So, I create still, I weave still. Wool not words....

Happy BirthDay Tristan!

Sweet sixteen? Is it sweet sixteen if you are a boy? Dude? This is the teen and his art work; now showing at the Maine Discovery Museum in Bangor. The photo above was some of his photography. It is so great to watch him  come into himself and discover what he enjoys.  Ahh earnest youth!

Close to home

I am feeling an uneasy sadness today that is hard to put my finger on. 

 This morning we went to church. As part of the ceremony we have candles of communion;  where we share joys and concerns with the rest of our community.  I lit a candle for the 90 folks who are going to lose their job in the next week at a local factory.  Another woman lit a candle for her son who just lost his job.  Another woman; a single mother of 2, said she lost her job 6 weeks ago and has 35 dollars to her name.  

The service was sponsored by the Social Justice Committee.  There was a brunch afterward to help raise funds for the church's emergency heating fuel fund.  The fund was able to give 100 gallons of heating fuel to folks in need last year.  This year, we are only able to give 50 gallons; with the hope that these folks in need can get LIHEAP heating assistance. 

I left the house this morning with a bag of non- perishable foods and outgrown sweaters and hats for the food cupboard at church.  Our fund for the food cupboard is empty and we rely on donations ,only, now.

All of this hits close to home.  It is not just that the headlines report another half MILLION jobs lost in December or that billions of dollars are getting sucked up in the black whole of banks' balance sheets.   It is the small stories of how this financial crisis hits closer to home. 

My memories as a child in the seventies during the hard recessions was of standing in line at the surplus food stores.  My mom saved green stamps.  I remember waiting for her to be seen at the welfare office.  We bought our clothes at the Goodwill.  My grandmother made some of our clothes.   But I was young and these experiences had no context.  As a kid I thought that was just the way the adult world worked.  

Later on in the early 90's when the recession hit Maine, there were hard times.  Downtown Portland became the picture of many downtowns.  Empty Storefronts.  But my economic situation was stable.  I had a minimum wage job. I was poor but living with roommates.  Everyone I knew was in the same boat but we always had a few dollars for beer and our look was retro thrift store. We worked in restaurants so we could be fed for free.  

Tech bubble burst.  No problem.  I was struggling but for my own reasons that had nothing to do with Sun Micro Systems or that Dude with the Dell.

These times are different.  My husband is a public employee.  He is a teacher.  This past week the one school that provides our health insurance said that not only have they frozen the budget;but, although they promise jobs for next school year, there will be no promise for the year after.  Another school is trying to avoid mid-year layoffs this  school year.

We grow our garden.  We stock our pantry.  We look after our neighbors in any way we can.  There but for the grace of god (dess)....

Food dehydrating

Emma asked about dehydrating zucchini in Inventory's comments so I thoughtI would discuss what I know about food dehydrating.

A couple of years ago my father-in-law gave us a Ronco food dehydrator. It seemed a very basic model.  5 trays and a heating element.  The trays were made of plastic and not really made well enough for the amount of use that we have given it.

 For the last few years we have used it for drying the following veggies and fruit: strawberries, blueberries, herbs, apples, raspberry and strawberry leaf for tea, zucchini, eggplant,  kale, spinach. 

 I dry the spinach and kale and crumble it into breads, sauce and soup because I have a 2 year old that does not  eat many green foods.  This way I can give him the goodness of the veggies under the guise of a sandwich.  Other veggies can be rehydrated in water or throw them into soup and they will soften.  We eat the fruit dried as a snack or put into granola or bowls of oatmeal.

The trays finally fell apart this past year.  I was able to find 5 more trays of a stronger plastic through Freecycle. A neighbor gave us Sunbeam dehydrator with a fan. So we will be trying more veggies this coming growing season.  Plum tomatoes are on the list.

I have heard that you could dry foods in your car in the summer time when it gets really hot. There are plans on line for making your own solar food dehydrator.  And the Cadillac of dehydrators is Excaliber.  I have used my oven in the past to dry leeks and to start some foods when there was no room in the dehydrator.  If you use an electric oven put the food on trays in the oven on low.If you have a gas oven you can just put the trays in the oven with the door cracked.

You should use fresh just picked veggies, fruit and herbs in order to keep all the healthy goodness in the veggie.  Store the veggies in airtight containers. A book I would recommend is Dry It You'll Like It byGen MacManiman.

I like dehydrating because it is so much less energy and labor intensive than canning.