Quick weekend recap

Grapes, grapes and more grapes!

While I had to put off a few things on my list, I'm pleased with what we accomplished this weekend.

We completed quite a bit of painting. We now have the front, both sides and half the back painted. There is still quite a bit of trim that still needs to be done on one of the sides and on the back, but I'm feeling like we are making good progress. We have not done the back part that surrounds the deck, but we feel like we need to do that with paint brushes. I think we may get sun next weekend, so we may still get this task done this year! We have decided to put off painting the deck. It's butt ugly dark teal, but it's painted...so winter rain won't damage it. It can wait until next summer.

We purchased a chest freezer!! I'm so excited. We decided to put it in the basement instead of in the laundry room, so it's not as convenient as it could be, but that's ok. I think I'd rather have the extra room in the laundry room anyway. We went with a 7.2 cu ft freezer - we were originally going to get the smaller one, but if we end up raising our own chickens for meat next year, we'll need the extra space. We just got it downstairs this evening. so tomorrow morning (once it's cold), I'll get to move some milk and meat down there. Yay!

We trimmed the goats hooves. That was an adventure! First we had to level the goat's shed, so while I watched the level, my H jacked it up. When we got it level, he propped it up. Then we decided that since we were both right there, we'd try the hoof thing. We started with Buddy since we thought he'd be the most difficult one. He wasn't loving it, but it wasn't too bad. He did cry out a few times when he was getting frustrated (it took us awhile), but there was no pain for any of us. Buddy did pee on my H though! I did Buddy's hooves first, and it was hard because he's so small. I should have started with Sass. Anyway, once I figured out what was what, it wasn't too bad. My H had to take over for me at one point because I was having trouble clipping and Buddy was getting restless. He actually did better with me holding him and H working on his hooves. Then we did Sass and that was harder. She is much stronger and she doesn't like her feet messed with! Her feet weren't as over grown though...so it was quicker overall. I'm so proud of us! Both goats are now happily groomed. ;-)

On Saturday we went to an apple tasting at the Portland Nursery. I'll write more about the apples later, but the event was neat. We met some friends there and had a nice time. My H tried apple cider fo the first time in his life (I was stunned!) and he really liked it. We asked about renting a press and the guy wasn't much help. I'll keep looking though! Afterward, we went to a local brew pub and had the worlds most garlicky hummus and some hard pear cider. It was interesting, but not something we'd want to drink a lot of... It was fun to hang out though...it's not something we do enough on the weekends and it helped us feel a little more "normal".

Lastly, we got up close and personal with a mass quantity of grapes. Many of the grapes we had picked last week were spoiling, so we had to use them up pronto. We destemmed the entire lot, separated 16 cups for a recipe that I'm going to make (Cinnamon Grape Preserves), and then juiced the remainder. I tried using a juicer that we'd gotten as a wedding gift (and never used!), but it pulverized the grapes. I ended up going with the food mill instead. We would have had about two gallons of juice if I'd used all the water we boiled the grapes in, but I dumped most of it before realizing that I should be including it. Oops. I did keep the last of it....and I figured that if the resulting juice is too concentrated, I can always add water. Right now, the juice is resting the the fridge. I'll pour off the clear part (leaving behind the sediment) tomorrow night and can it then. I'll also do the preserves then as well. We also filled a dehydrator full of apple rings, tomato slices and grapes (raisins). I did not get to make more apple pie filling, but I will do that this coming weekend (or maybe this week). Our neighbor gave us a big bag of apples from her tree (Jonagolds, we think)...and they will make delicious pie apples.

Lastly, I did not get to the greenhouse. I'm ok with it, though. Next weekend, perhaps. :-)

Friday stress

This photo was taken about a year ago when we rode our bikes to the farmer's market in North Carolina to buy pumpkins. Now this is the bike that I ride to work when I can. My how things change in a year!

How many people do you know who get to Friday and start to feel the stress setting in? Seriously, what does that mean? That I try and do too much on the weekends? That I set my standards too high? That I perhaps should stop trying to work a full time job and a farm? UGH.

So yes, it's Friday and I'm already stressing about everything I need to get done this weekend. The list is too long for two days, but here it is anyway:

Paint the house - we should have decent weather, so we need to get more painting done. This means hand painting the trim and then covering it and the windows and renting a sprayer to spray the walls.

Trim hooves - both goats are in need of a hoof trim. This should be about a quarterly task and we've had Sass for about 3 months now. We have instructions and the tools...but neither of us have done this before. It should be an interesting experience.

Build 'green house' - The weather has warmed a little, so we've been able to put this off, but I have the materials necessary to build a green house of sorts over one of our garden boxes. The plan is to build it and then plant lettuce, spinach and other colder weather items in it. This is definitely an experiment, but it's one we have to start very, very soon!

Process grapes and apples - we are still up to our ears in grapes and apples. I got a neat grape preserve recipe that I'm going to try - and we are going to juice as many as we can. I also need to keep working on putting up apples. My goal is to fill two dehydrators full of red delicious and to do at least one (if not two) canner loads of apple pie apples.

There are lots of other little things (like buying dog food), but these are the BIG ones. Let's hope that we can knock a few things off this list!!

Fruit preservation adventures

Wild grapes - growing up a tree on one side of the yard...

So, do you want to guess what our weekend was about? Yep - fruit preservation...again! We realized this weekend that we are in fact lucky that our first attempts at gardening in the PNW proved to be only marginally successful. If we had ended up with bumper crops of any veggies, we'd be in deep trouble! We'd probably have to let it go to waste as we just wouldn't have time to put it all up. As it is, we are collecting HUGE bins of fallen fruit to share with our grass-fed beef and pork suppliers down the road. Some how, we are going to have to figure out a way of making this work next year. Canning and cooking on the weekends only is NOT going to cut it when we add veggies to the mix. We are barely keeping up with just the fruit right now!

Anyway, our plan was to keep processing the pears. The apples are still holding steady, so there is no real rush with them, just yet. The pears, on the other hand, are fast becoming too ripe to keep! Luckily, when we returned from our Saturday morning trip to the hardware store, we found a big box at our door. Our food dehydrator arrived!! Yay...a new way to save food!! So we unpacked it and set it up. We did a quick read of the instructions (pretty funny...they need a better editor!) and set to work filling it with pears. I had help this time as I made a point of noting that my H hadn't yet helped with food preservation yet. ;-) He was happy to help uot and he peeled while I cored and sliced. We filled all 10 trays and it took about 35 pears to do so. It actually made the house smell really yummy as the slighty sweet smell spread from the dehydrator.

Slicing pears and arranging them on the trays

Pears on the trays in the dehydrator

Dried pears!

Then we headed outside to clean up more fallen fruit, finish picking the rest of the pears left on the trees, and to let our chickens free range. The fallen fruit we put into bins and boxes to take to the pigs down the road. The pears I picked got separated into groups: pears to can, pears to save for another week (still green), pears to dry and pears to sauce. We took care of the pears to dry with a second dehydrator load on Sunday. The pears to can will be done this week (I should be able to do this in an evening with help from the H). I don't know what I'm going to do about the pear sauce. Maybe I'll make it and then put it directly into the crockpot to make pear butter. We'll see. We have a slight issue in that we are almost out of quart jars. There are no more to be had locally, and most of the online retailers are out as well. I guess this is normal for this time of year as these are a seasonal product - but we didn't think we'd have so much fruit to deal with!!

In order to let the chickens free-range, we decided they'd have to go into the goat field. We didn't feel safe letting them run free with our neighbor's dogs running around. So we went into the coop and grabbed them one by one tossing them over the goat fence as we went! Eventually, all 11 were in there and then we got Seven from her 'hospital' kennel and added her to the group. It was interesting to watch how they all interacted when not confined by the space. Maple was the most fearless of them all. She was unfazed by us, by the goats and by the cat (who was outside the fence). Seven was definitely a loner and while she was clearly happy to be outside and roaming around, she had no interest in hanging out with the other chickens. She did occasionally socialize with Maple when she was away from the flock, but that's about it. Sassy had no real interest in the chickens and Buddy was curious but well-behaved.

This is the RIR that is most agressive - I think we should call her Attilla. She's the only RIR with her full tail feathes!

This is poor Seven. Notice the lack of tail? At least it is healing and isn't a bloody stump anymore.

This is Bonny in the goat pen - they were all having such fun that it was hard to catch any of the chickens not moving!

When it came time to put them back, we pulled the big dog kennel into the pen, set it open between the fence and the goat lean-to and then hearded all the chickens behind the lean-to and directly into the kennel. It was surprisingly easy! Then we carried the kennel back to the coop and let them walk right back into their home.


On Sunday, we decided that between a run to the grocery store and Cosco, we were going to try preserving something other than pears (though we did fill the dehydrator one more time). We went outside and began picking the wild grapes. These grapes are small and dark purpleish-blue. They also have seeds, so we figured that juicing was in order. We picked 2.5 big buckets full and you should have seen us. There are big vines growing up the tree branches on one side of our yard. To reach them, H was using a tall tree trimmer extension. He'd clip the vines and I'd stand underneath and try to catch them to avoid smashing all the grapes on the ground. By the time we were done, I was covered in grape juice! I'm sure we were a sight to see....him with his head cranned all the way back and a big pole waving in the air...me, runing around with my arms wide open trying to catch huge falling vines loaded with grapes! This barely making a dent in the crop, too. We juiced half of it with my food mill and a 'grape spiral', and ended up with a gallon of tart but tasty grape juice. We'll finish up the rest of the ones we harvested this week but we had to stop as we ran out of places to put the juice!

Wild blue grapes (they looked like blueberries when off the vine) and green grapes that we think are a type of muscodine.

Grapes in the food mill - juice coming out the bottom!

Pouring juice into saved OJ bottles - thank goodness for being a pack rat. Had I not saved a couple of these, we'd have no place to put the juice!

Growing things

Grapes - white variety. These are sweet and will probably be excellent table grapes in a week or two.

Unknown plum variety - this is a HUGE tree in the way back of the property. We think it's likely older than the house. These plums are tiny little things - but taste pretty good (they aren't quite ripe yet).

One of our two first watermelons! We planted 3 varieties and so far, this is the only one producing.

Our first full sized tomatoes - about to turn red! (we've already had some grape and plum tomatoes to harvest)

Grapes - this is the red variety - we have way more of these than the white ones. I forsee grape juice in our future.

Pears - the pear harvest will be HUGE this year. I picked the first 4 ripe ones today. The cold wet spring that affected the apple harvest apparently did not bother the pears!

Plums - these are prune plums. We need to harvest them and dry them as they taste weird in their current state - should be interesting!

These are one of 4 or 5 apple varieties we have. This one is very small. Small trees, small apples...but they taste a little like Cortlands (if I remember correctly).

We also have identified two red delicious trees, three tress of a variety that looks like fuji and one tree of a totally unknown variety that is tart and makes a good baking apple. That particular tree ripened well ahead of the rest of the apple trees. Lastly, we have a tree on the other side of the property that is well behind the other apples. The variety is yet to be determined as the apples are still small green things with only a slight blush on a few...

I also harvested our first potatoes last night. I've never grown potatoes, so I wasn't sure what I was doing when we started. We basically just took a regular potato that had sprouted in a few places and cut it into smaller pieces. Then I planted these pieces in the garden in a row. H said that his father used to cover the potato sprouts with dirt, so we did that for awhile. They bushed up nicely:

Potatoes on the right, corn on the left.

Eventually though, the potato plants started looking sickly. I'm not sure if it was lack of water, lack of sun (the corn kind of shadows them now), or some bug issue. They never flowered (I thought they were going to) and now they look sort of dead. Last night, I picked the worst looking one and pulled it up. I then dug into the mound. There were no potatoes in the mound at all, but there were 5 or 6 under the ground (below where I first planted the spud). How easy was that? I'm definitely going to leave the rest of them where they are for awhile yet. And we also have two types of sweet potatoes planted that don't look sickly or dying at all so we should be harvesting potatoes this fall. We definitely have plans to expand next year - both corn and potatoes.