Post-Thanksgiving Wishes

I'm going to overlook the horrible things I've read people have done yesterday and today all in the name of a "good deal" (but SHAME on all of you) and just say I hope your Thanksgiving was...
.....filled with people you are close to and love

 .....comfortable and cozy

 

......and truly made you happy.

See you in December, my friends!

Cleaning up the Mess

Last week I said goodbye to the bees for the last time, in that I cleaned up the havoc the bear had wrought. 

The picture above is after the first time the bear visited and brought destruction.  I set the hives to rights afterward, got stung twice, (which took 2 weeks to go down) and left the bees alone.  When the bear came back, the scene was much worse and the bees were done for.  Total destruction.  Between that, and the fact that I've become quite allergic, it was time to give it up with the bees.  Disappointing?  Yes.  But necessary.  Twice I have tried, and twice I have failed.  I can take a hint--this is not for me.

So I cleaned up.  I picked up all the pieces that were widely scattered about and thought about any way at all to make the situation turn out to the positive.  There was no honey.  The bear had seen to that.  But there was wax, and I use the wax to wax my cheese with.  Hmmmm....if I could harvest that, I wouldn't have to buy wax, and then I could use it and the bees would not be a TOTAL loss (just mostly a loss).  So I spent several hours scraping the frames that were not completely shattered into a pot like so:



This is a messy, sticky job

And piled all the "cleaned" equipment neatly.

Definitely better than pieces strewn all over the yard, no?

I have rendered beeswax once before, and I remember nothing about how to do it.  What I do remember is what I will tell you here:  Never use anything in rendering beeswax that you want to either keep clean or use for something else.  Beeswax is so sticky, you're pretty much guaranteed to ruin anything you put it in.  That I knew.  But the rest?  I made up as I went along. 

First I put the bits in a pot that I will never use for anything else ever again.  Unfortunately, it was a small pot, so this all had to be done in many stages.  But I put the wax mess in the pot and added water.  Then I heated it up.

Why add water?  Wax burns, baby.  On top of that, there are so many disgusting things in the wax from a hive that you don't want in the wax from your hive, and all of it makes the wax stickier and then it won't separate out.  When the water is in there it will keep the dirt, and the the wax will be clean (presumably) and float on top of all the muckiness.  So it's a helpful thing.  Basically, you take this yucky mixture and heat it up to boiling and then let it boil for a while.

 

This smells pretty bad.  It's all full of dead bee bodies and icky bee stuff and probably larva and icky stuff like that, and it smells like beeswax (which is nice) and hot dirt (which is not).  But you can see that the wax is starting to separate here and cling to the spoon that I'll never use again for anything else ever.  Eventually, when you see a lot of yellow wax sort of floating in the mess, you pour it into your separator.

 

This is a highly technical tool, consisting of a piece of old window screen alligator clipped to a disposable turkey roasting pan.  Neither thing which can ever be used ever again for anything other than beeswax harvesting--trust me.

Anyway, you pour your smelly, messy goop into this, and the screen catches all the bee bodies and dirt and cooked larva bits, and the wax and dirty water go through.  Then you wait until the wax hardens on top of the water, and you scoop it out.

This wax is mostly clean, but still has some icky dirty things sticking to it's underside, so it's necessary to warm it all up and filter it again.

This time, don't use water.  Just break up the wax sheets and put them either in a double boiler, or just use a low, low heat.  Melt the wax and then filter it through here:

 



 This fine piece of craftsmanship is a plastic container from something someone ate once, with a nylon stocking over it.  It is very fancy.  The wax will drain through, like so:

And it will leave the mess on the top, like so:

 

 But through the stocking, all the nice beeswax will drip, and then you will have, after you have waited impatiently and stuck your finger in it a number of times, a nice cake of beeswax.  Taa daa!!

And that's how it works.  This a long process, and I can see why beeswax is so expensive to buy when I do this.  But I am happy that I did, because now I have more cheese wax, and the hives were not a TOTAL loss--just MOSTLY a loss.  It's so much better. 

The only thing I cannot tell you is why beeswax that I've rendered is so much yellower than anything I've ever bought.  It's probably got something to do with pollen in there or something, but I have no idea.  Either way, it's super yellow and smells nice, so that's alright with me. 

And there you go!  Now you know how to do it, so go on out and render some beeswax today!



And PS--I finished a little table runner yesterday.  It was a kit given to me by a friend, which sat unopened for 3 years.  I finally opened it, and all told, it took me about an hour to make.  3 projects down!!

 

A Challenge For Myself

Every year I say the same thing: "This winter, I'm going to get some projects done." 

And every year it never happens. 

The projects I'm talking about are the kind of things like quilts and sewing projects that have been waiting for a long, long, long time.  I need to go back a little to tell the story, so if you'd indulge me for a moment, here it is.

Back when I was a suburban stay at home mom with two small children, I lived in my sewing room.  Every day I turned on my sewing machine, and I completed one quilt after another after another.  I spent the whole day in that room many times, because, other than taking care of my children (who were in school and preschool), gardening outside a bit on a small patch, and cleaning the house, I had nothing else to do.  It kept me busy, so it was good.  It was like my job, and I really enjoyed it.  I bought a lot of fabric, I tried a lot of new things, I was very creative. 

Fast forward a whole bunch of years and a lot of upheaval, and here I am, on a large patch of land with a lot of animals and a gigantic garden, and I spend no time in my sewing room.  There's no time to spend!  Between working, taking care of the animals and working the land, ha!  Sewing doesn't get done.

 

But there are many projects that I started long ago that moved with me and now hang out in the corner of this room, taunting me.  They have for years.  In fact, I figured it out last week, and the newest project of my unfinished project pile is 4 years old.  Others I don't even want to know how old they are--many, many moons.  It bothers me that they are there, incomplete.  And every year I decide I'm going to whittle down that pile, and every year I don't.  So this year, I am issuing a challenge to myself:  I WILL get that pile down!

So from time to time, expect a picture or two of a project that has been finished.  And yes, I will admit how long it's been sitting.  I'm going to start myself off here, and show you a couple I finished this past month, when things started to "slow down" for me.  Ready?

This one I started last year, so it's a young'un!

Nice, crooked picture.  :) 

Embroidery patterns were freebies from Red Brolly.  The rest I made up.

This one is 3 years old, and was waiting for embroidery and quilting.  I'm happy I got it done when it's still Autumn!!!

 

And now for a work in progress.  I should tell you that I can't just sit.  I have to have something to do with my hands, so usually I crochet or stitch.  I have been cross stitching since I was 11 or 12, so that's usually my fallback.  I don't do it too much anymore because there is never enough time when the days are long for me to sit and get into a large project--or there are just too many other things to do.  When I do do a cross stitch project, it's usually a small one.  However, this one I have wanted to do for maybe 6 or 7 years.  Finally I started it, and I am going to finish it by December 2nd, because I have a framing coupon I want to use on it.  If I miss that deadline, then this project is going to go with the many others that have been finished and will never be framed.  That's a sad place to be, so I'm trying to get it done.  Anyway, I started 2 weeks ago, and this is where it is now:

 

I will get it done!  Or die trying.  :)

And that's it.  Definitely not my normal post, but if you see a picture of a finished something on here from time to time this winter (and you will!), you'll know why!

Looking Back to Move Ahead

Today I get older. 

Ok, ok, we all get older every day, I know.  But today it's "official", as it's my birthday.

I usually spend the day (or part of it) thinking about what I've done this year, how many things I've accomplished, what went wrong, what went right.  And then I'd share it with you.  But I'll be repeating myself on New Year's, most likely, so I think instead of giving you a long, long list of highlights and lowlights, I think I will:

• Have more coffee
• Listen to Christmas carols in the car (because I'm not allowed to in the house--YET)
• Clean the house a bit
• Bake some chocolate chip cookie bars (before my children and husband eat ALL the chocolate chips)
• Go outside and sit with my goats (It's my birthday--just pretend I don't do that every day, ok?) 
• Work on a little quilt that's been waiting
• Scritch a purring kitty or two
• Look back and be proud
• Look around and be thankful
• Look ahead and be hopeful

And I think that'll about cover it.  I hope you all have a wonderful day as well!

Putting My Ducks in a Row

QUACK!

My long-ish term sub assignment ended on Wednesday in a flurry of activity.  The job was always very complex, but Wednesday was super busy on top of all that.  This is pretty typical for me, and I think anytime I've ever been leaving something or ending something, I will have lots and lots of quiet days UNTIL the last day, which will be completely insane.  I never seem to go out quietly.  :)

 Anywho, the job I did was complicated, and except for a little previous experience when I had subbed for the same woman here and there, I had no idea what I was doing, and made it up as I went along--and I asked a lot of questions.  As time went on, I figured it out, and then I wasn't as lost as I was in the beginning, and then the job got fun, and the people warmed up to me, and I to them, and it got to be a really nice place to work.  And in the end, I was sorry to go.  Most surprisingly, they were sorry to see me go, and my last day I came in to find that I had flowers and a lovely card waiting for me on my desk.  I got hugs from everyone.  I was beyond touched, and yes, I cried a couple of times.  They grew on me, that group.  They really, really did.  I miss them already.  Luckily, I will be back there from time to time, and we'll see where it goes from there!

So yesterday I was back home.  I decided to take yesterday and today off, since Monday is a holiday, and take the 5 days to catch up.  Yesterday I ran some errands and moved furniture.  Actually, that's not the truth.  My husband moved the furniture because he "felt like it", and I just cleaned it up and worked on a project that needed working on--the hooks we use to have our kids hang their school stuff from.  Despite heavy duty wall-anchors, the hooks ripped right out of the wall, making a hell of a mess.  I have repaired the tears, and am working on getting the hooks mounted to wood, drilled right into the studs of the wall, so it doesn't happen again.  I'm about done, and will finish today, I think.

 In addition, I made some cheese--pepper jack!  I dehydrated a few jalapenos from the garden, a small bell pepper, and some cayenne that I had hanging in the dining room (doesn't EVERYONE have cayenne peppers hanging in their dining rooms?) and cut them up to teeny pieces and put them in the curds before pressing.  It looks gorgeous, albeit a bit lumpy, because monterey jack tends to settle fast, under small amounts of weight.  With the fancy brick method I use (ie: putting bricks on top of the mold to act as weights--it's very technical), I usually wind up with a somewhat lopsided monterey jack, as the bricks sit more on one spot than on the other, and the curds are very soft and can settle unevenly.  But it's my birthday next week, and a little bird has told me that there may be a cheese press in my future.  That would certainly solve that problem!

.....And my son was just reading this over my shoulder and said "It's your birthday next week???".  Aaaaaaahhh, I feel SO loved.

OH boy.

Today I will finish that hook project and then go outside to clean out the coops, because the chicken coop is about a month overdue for it's heavy duty fall cleaning and NEEDS it.  I also need to get to the ducks and geese and their houses as well.  So I'll be busy again, but it'll be good busy, as always.

In other news, Cynthia hits the big 8 month mark on Wednesday, which would mean time for breeding.  However, Cynthia, my little free goat who was given to me as "payment" for work I did for someone, has not grown ONE iota over the summer and is nowhere near the 80 pound mark that I use as a yardstick for breeding readiness.  (All right, maybe she's grown 1/2 an iota.  But she's still nowhere near the right size).

Old picture, but she's not much bigger than this now

Cynthia has grown a bit, but at 8 months, she is smaller than the three "Nupines" born this June--even the bottle fed girls, who are always smaller than a dam nursed baby, like Tallulah.  So methinks I have a "Minimancha" on my hands.  Cynthia was one of two, and first born.  It makes her unlikely to be a runt.  Cynthia's mom was small, and her dad seemed very small to me, especially knowing the size of other bucks.  Dulcinea, who is also a LaMancha, is not as big as Minerva and Lilly, who are Alpines.  However, she was never this small.  Either Cynthia is going to have a HUGE growth spurt over the winter, or daddy had some pygmy in him (which is what I thought when I saw him), and it came out in little Cynthia.  My bet is on the latter.  Either way, if Cynthia doesn't surprise me by growing a huge amount in a short time, I'll have to start looking into finding her a male her size.  My boys are too big for her, and that won't go well.  If she never gets big, though, I will always have a lap-sized goat to cuddle.  And let me tell you, that's not a bad thing.  I love my Min, but 110 pounds of goat on one's lap is no pleasure.  Mostly she's all front knees when she tries.  But having a little 50 pound dumpling sit with you, that's a sweet thing.  She's like a REALLY big cat.

And speaking of....  

Thank you for all your kind words about Icky.  He did come in, and it was the right decision.  Icky's natural state of being is "purr".  He can be picked up and hugged and the motor runs right away.  You can stop and pet him, and the motor starts going.  He always wants to see where we are going and usually will either follow, or wait for us.  He has stopped fighting with everyone, except for when they all feel like fighting, which cats sometimes do.  He's not singling anyone out, though, and honestly has blended in like he's been here forever. 

And it feels like he has.  It's funny, but I do think that cat knew that this was going to be the way it was.  When you call his name he turns and looks at you, and he will hold your gaze while you talk to him.  He's a special one, that's for sure.  I feel very lucky I came upon him in the road that day.

And I think that's about it.  I'm off to finish one job and start another.  Have a great day, my friends!!

Ichabod

Icky

 

Ickers

 

Ickaboo

 

The Ickmeister

 

Cat-I-Found-by-the-Side-of-the Road

 

Yup, this'd be he.

 

 

The Ick himself (well, Ich would be more correct, but it looks wrong--unless you speak German) learned his name by day two and comes when you call.  Odd, because what are the chances his name was anything like Ichabod before we got him?

  ...............Exactly. 

When you pick him up he purrs non-stop, and then sits in your lap like he meant to all along.  Ick has tried very hard to convince me that he's really an indoor cat.  He loves to chase chickens, but you know....really....he's just meant to be inside.  And he shows us all the time by throwing himself at the door and meowing.

And so we've let him in (after a really good flea bath).  Since then he's eaten a 1/8 of a loaf of fresh baked bread and gnawed the top of a monterey jack cheese I was letting dry.  So we've learned to hide food, and he's leaned not to climb on the counters and table--maybe.  And though he fights with Phynn and Charlotte a bit, we're going to let them work it out.  We're hoping the fighting will cease after Phynn and Charlotte are neutered/spayed on Wednesday.  Then, of course, it'll be Icky's turn. 

And hopefully peace and harmony will reign.

But I will still have to hide the cheese.

Oh, Oh, Oh, Who's that Kid with the Oreo Cookie???

I have no idea why that's stuck in my head.  None.  But don't you find it weird that they "discovered" that Oreo cookies are as addictive as cocaine?  Not sure why they did a study on that, to be honest with you.  That was kind of the most interesting part about it.  Hmmmmm........anyway......

Let's get down to it, shall we?  Things have been hopping here, as always.  First, there are the kids.  We are up to the whole "What are you going to be for Halloween?" thing again.  My son knew pretty much right away.  He is a GIANT fan of Minecraft, and wants to be an enderman, which is this thing:

I have no idea what the heck that's supposed to be.  The entire game looks like bad Atari to me, but he loves it, and has bizarrely learned some interesting things from it (like what an ingot is).  It's a building game, it seems, and he loves Legos, so it just works for him.  So he's easy, as all he needs is black clothing and a box for his head.  Love it!  Done.

My daughter, on the other hand, had a hard time.  She always wants to pick what she thinks others would find "cool", but then she's never happy with it.  She 's been happiest when she's chosen something that she would like to be, just because SHE would like to be it, which is really the point in the first place.  So after a lot of deliberation and flip-flopping back and forth, she has decided to be Sam Sparks from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. 

 

THAT one I can get behind.  So we're going with it.  I'm proud of her for picking something (someone?) she wanted to be, not what or who she thought others would want her to be.  Good for her!

In other news, a couple of weeks ago that bear came back again and finished the job.  The bees are D-O-N-E.  I had put them back together, gotten stung, put up a number of "bear preventing" measures, and none of it worked.  The bear guy (or girl) came back and tore both hives apart--there's just no coming back for them.  I am very disappointed, but slightly relieved, only because I had become so allergic it was getting dangerous.  I have begun the cleanup and will salvage any wax possible and then sell the equipment piece by piece.  I guess I'm sticking to maple syrup.  I hope that others will have better success than I did and will keep the bee population up, as it has become so endangered in recent years.  It certainly does not seem that I can help out on that front.

Further on the food front, I have harvested quite a bit of peas from my fall planting--in fact, more, I think, than I got from my spring planting.  I set my son at shelling the last batch I harvested (peeling them, he called it), and it took him over an hour to do it--with help from me and my daughter.

 

Pea peeling boy

Though I can see that the vines are getting tired and thinking about being done, I am hoping that we'll get another nice batch beforehand.  I am happiest that I seemed to have discovered the variety that works best for me here.  I'm hoping it will perform as well in the spring, and then I'll have a winner.  I have been trying to choose varieties that perform fantastically here, and then stick with them year after year.  This is a complete opposite from what I normally like to do, which is try a little of everything to see how it goes.  But, I have come to the time where I'd like to be able to have one or two varieties of a crop that produces very well and that we like to eat so that I'll have more food to put by, instead of lots of little "experimental" crops.  Ahh....the evolution of the homesteader. 

On the cheese making front, things are chugging along.  Can I just stop here for a minute and tell you how MUCH I love making cheese?  I have no idea if I'm any good at it at all, since most of what I've made lately still has a month to age before testing, but OH!  I love making cheese. 

Beautiful curds

Oh my goodness.  I just do.  It's like magic, you know?  Big pot of milk becomes beautiful chunk of cheese. 

“Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.”
―Clifton Paul Fadiman

 

Sage Derby, before the final pressing

Magic!  It's funny, because I do so many things that are so "old", in a way.  I grow food from seed.  I bake bread.  I make soap.  Etc, etc.  Many transformations from one thing to a totally different thing, and many techniques that are old techniques (of course, somewhat revised for today).  But there are very few things that I do that have the ability to transport me back in time the way cheesemaking does.  Working with raw fiber does the same thing for me--sends me right back in time.  Cheesemaking....well, it's just special.

I have decided on a cheese press, I think.  Despite the fact that I really like stacking 50 pounds of bricks up on top of a homemade mold, it's gotten stupid.  Just ask the couple of coffee mug casualties and the flower vase that have bit it since I started with this.  Playing the "when's that going to fall over" game is getting old.  So, though it will have to wait a couple of weeks, I think I have decided to purchase a Dutch cheese press. 

 

Link

This one, I believe.  I really wanted one of those spring ones, because they are more compact.  However, when I really looked into it, I discovered that the tension doesn't stay the same all the time.  As the cheese compresses, the spring relaxes a bit, and then the weight is off and you're not pressing at a consistent pressure.  Therefore, the spring would have to be adjusted fairly often to maintain the correct pressure on the cheese.  I press my cheeses overnight.  I don't want to get up every few hours to turn the pressure up on my cheese.  Dutch presses are apparently a "set it and forget it" kinda deal.  So yes, they are bigger and kinda oddly shaped, but I think it's the way to go.

Speaking of raw fiber (which we weren't), I am going to the Wool and Fiber Festival tomorrow in Rhinebeck!  Squeeeeee!!!!!  A day to myself!  Just me, no kids, no husband.  I will miss them, but I need a day to myself.  I think one a year is fair, no?  Just me and some sheep and hairy goats and lots of stuff to touch and see!  If you remember, I went last year, had a wonderful time talking to myself all day and just looking, and brought home a bunch of rabbits.  This year?  Still planning on the wonderful time, still planning on talking to myself (can't help that one), but no rabbits.  I love my fluffy bunnies, but I have plenty.  This year I am going to look at yarn and spinning wheels and touch everything, and that's how that's going to go.  I will take pictures.  Stay tuned!

And in closing....

Well, I should tell you that the cat population has increased by one this week, and in an odd way.  Here's the story, which is so odd, it could only happen to me, because odd things happen to me all the time.  I was at work on Wednesday, and was heading home during my lunch break to check on things at the house.  I had 1/2 an hour left, and figured I'd just swing by, make a quick check, and then go back to work.  Ha!  As I was going over a bridge, I saw a cat carrier in the shoulder of the road--a busy-ish road, mind you.  The carrier had the word "free" on it on a card.  I thought "Woo hoo!  A carrier!  I should go get that!".  People chuck out stuff all the time.  A lot of it is junk, but sometimes there's something good.  No, I'm not above picking up someone else's junk, especially if it's usable un-junk.  We could use a second carrier, and this one looked nice.  I pulled over where I could and walked back to it. 

As I got closer, I could swear I heard meowing.  I thought that was odd, but as there are some grasses and stuff around there that are tall, and some houses near, it could have been coming from anywhere.  It was hard to tell through the car noises.  However, I got closer, and through the noise of the traffic, I could hear the meowing was coming from inside the carrier.

Yes, friends, someone had put a cat IN the carrier and left it on the side of the road with the word "free" on it.  Oddly enough, behind it, in the tall grass was a litterbox, a scooper, and a single can of cat food.  I know I'm a sucker. But I'm not going to leave a cat to die on the side of the road in a carrier.  It was only a matter of time before someone sideswiped that carrier and killed the little one inside.

I didn't really think and I had no idea what to do next with the cat.  I picked it up, took a look at the little one, and popped him in the back of the car. When I got to a side street, I pulled over and took a look at him (as I discovered, he is a he).  He's young, under a year old, I'd say, and black as pitch.  That is, except for the little white spot on his tummy. His eyes are pumpkin colored.  He is supremely cool, and seemed to realize I was there to help because he curled up in my lap like we'd known each other forever, and purred like a maniac. 

I eventually got him home and set him up in a very nice, spacious crate in the garage barn, so he would feel safe and not have to compete with the other cats.  He's afraid of all the other cats, but follows people around like "Hey!  Where're we going?  I'm coming with you, ok?".  Like he's known us forever.  Because he's black with pumpkin eyes, and it's near Halloween, his name is Ichabod.  We've been calling him Icky.

Time will tell as to whether he'll hang with us, but I'm hoping so.  Dang boy seems to be magical, because though the crate he's in is wire and fairly open, I don't think he can fit through the bars.  However, I'll see him in there, he'll stay in there for a long time, and then I'll turn my back and he'll be out and behind me.  Realizing he can't be "caged", I opened the door for him, but left the crate as a safe haven.  It is not unusual to see him in one place, however, and then look down suddenly and he's right beside me.  He's very sneaky.

And there you go.  Funny enough, I was thinking a couple of months ago that it was too bad we only have one black cat (a big boy named Percival), when I like them so much.  Then Sarahcat gave birth to a second black cat, and now we have Icky.  Very interesting.  Possibly I should muse on the fact that it's funny that I've never won the lottery?

'Till next time!