Waiting for a freeze...

How about a little canning and wild crafting glam??

Fox grapes along the creek gathered while standing in a tractor front loader...

 

become an itsy weeny grape pie... 

Scrappy abandoned pears become... 

cinnamon pears for a winter's day salad....

and fall berries become a mantel centerpiece... 

Fall is here, although the calendar and the temperatures don't quite support that declaration... The leaves are dancing in the breeze and there is a certain crispness in the mornings that hints to the knowledgeable that sweaters will soon be the order of the morning. Dew hangs heavy on anything left out overnight and it is later and later in the morning before things dry out.

Hay is coming to the hay barn and, at last, the tomato vines have decided their work here is done. I have one or two more canners of tomatoes and we will be finished with them. Thank. Goodness.

Apples were not quite ready last week, so they are still on the horizon and the pigs, Hammie, Sausage, and Bacon, will be processed October 26. We treat them to all the leavings from canning and have started adding a little corn and higher protein food to help them put on a little fat layer. Yorkshires are quite trim, by nature, so any fat on them just adds to the flavor of the sausage.

Soon, we will watch the snow fly and wonder where the summer went. Until then, I sip my morning coffee on the porch as the sun comes up casting diamonds through the air and welcoming all creatures great and small to another beautiful day.

No LZ Bees Here!

Where to start?

This is what's been going on at LZB...

Lots of canning and putting by for winter... Tomatoes, potatoes, beets, cukes, beef, chicken, broccoli, and cabbage, to list a few... I tried dehydrating tomatoes, mangoes,kiwi, cranberries, cherries, and bananas this year. To be honest, it is brain dead easy putting by and takes such a small amount of space. I caught bananas on sale at Aldi's for 22-cents a pound and couldn't resist putting up enough for banana bread through the winter!

Finished all the interior house renovation projects -- all the closets needed painting as well as a complete remodeling. When I first built the closets with my brother 22 years ago, the only shelving available was wire. I have fallen head over hills in love with Ikea's Algot closet shelving system and have redone each closet, including the pantry, with it. The cleanliness and ease of getting things in and out makes keeping house just That Much Easier for me and THAT makes me quite happy! Believe it or not, I was able to match the paint on the right using just this photo! Now, the trim matches in the bathroom! Yay!

 Keeping the farm stock has continued to be a lot of fun and not nearly as challenging now that all the fencing is complete!! This summer I had the last eight acres fenced along the creek bottom to protect the stream bank remediation project we had done over the last two years. Now, we are waiting for the watering systems to be installed since the well is in! Next spring the does will move to the bottom pasture and give their paddocks on the hillside a little rest. Piglets didn't fare well this spring due to the extreme weather conditions. Our supplier lost 14 of 17 piglets overnight due to the extreme cold. We ended up with three of the porkers and one contracted Tetanus from the castration process done before we picked him up. We assumed he had his anti-toxin prior to the castration, but he hadn't. Fortunately, the anti-toxin was administered quickly enough that he not only survived, but is the largest porker in the lot! They go to the processor in November.

And, of course, there has been needlework. Lots of it! This is a friendship quilt from blocks I received in an exchange. I thought I would love this pink fabric, but when I got it nearly set, I wasn't in love with it... so out it goes and I am working on replacing it with a fantastic lavender, which you know makes me more than happy!

Of course, we done much more, but for now, we'll just say we have been very busy bees... and I have missed writing terribly. The break has done my spirit good and helped my perspective of how I want to continue this blog.

Welcome back!

The Best Medicine....

Six hundred pounds of pork...

If laughter is the best medicine, I should be the healthiest person you know...

Today, we delivered our pork. We had 600 pounds to deliver and 2 friends were picking up theirs from the processor at the same time we were. A short time later, my phone rang:

C: I have a head.
Me: A head? What kind?
C: A pig head.
Me: They were picked up by G and T to make souse meat. How do you have a head?
C: I don't know. But I have it. BTW, I wish had a picture of me when I opened the bag. I was okay until I turned it around and saw the snout.

By this time I was a puddle.....

A bit later, the phone rang again. 

C: Are you coming to get this, um, this, um thing in  my car?
Me: The pig's head? Yup. I'll be there in a bit.
C: It's in a cooler; will it be okay?
Me: I don't think it will go anywhere. If it's cool, it'll be fine.
C: I can put it in the dumpster....
Me: I'll be there in a bit. G and T want it...

Again, I was a puddle... It wasn't that she was so funny, but the background music in my car was killing me.... Mister kept whistling the theme from "The Godfather..."

And, so, it goes... 

Here, piggie....

July

Joyfully, the pigs are headed to the processor tomorrow and will return in lovely vacuum sealed bags for the freezer. Frankly, I am tired of carrying food to the, er, pigs... It is true that they do... Eat. A. Lot. All. The. Time. We are up to nearly 75 pounds of food per day... It's exhausting!

These porkers came to us in April and weighed all of 35 pounds. Now, we estimate they are close to 300-350 pounds. They are so large that we could barely get the trailer ball on the truck without both of us pumping the lift.. Now that is Some Pig. 

Three are sold, on hoof, to friends who will pay for the pig once it is dressed, but not finished, by weight. Then, they will pay for the processing and pick it up. One is ours that we will split with my parents. And, the last will be shared between a number of relatives, and, I hope, some left over for us. 

Pork is one of those things that if you haven't ever had pasture raised, you have been cheated from savoring a flavor without description. The stuff that comes from the grocery pales in comparison. Our porkers play in the mud, stretch in the sun, dig holes and wallow in the water, root and eat grubs, and have non-GMO feed for their entire life. We tell them from the beginning of our relationship what their fate is and that we want them to enjoy a fine, wonderful life. We scratch them, hose them, and chase them (or they chase us) in a game of tag. I gather apples for them and find them scraps, such as corn cobs when I can corn, so they have treats. They really have a marvelous life. 

Once they are loaded on the trailer, which we do gently and not with a prod or anything that will hurt them, we feed them corn one more time and tell them how we honor them for providing us with good meat for the coming year. We thank them for being sweet piggies and for the pleasure we have had with them. 

This past fall, when it had rained for eleven straight days and Mister was out of commission with a neck injury, I was out feeding them. Their lot was slick as goose grease and I was having trouble walking with their feed bags (they weigh 50 pounds). One pig got on my right and another mirrored that one on the left... and they started scratching their backs on me... until I slipped in the mud and fell flat on my face... and they continued scratching until I got up... I was mudlicious from left to right, top to bottom... and had to hose off in the yard... If I could have stopped laughing, I would have been annoyed... but somehow, the visualization of a 60 year old woman being scrubbed by pigs cracked me up... 

And, you ask, after loving on them, playing with them, and enjoying them, how, how can we eat them? Easy. We name them Pork Chop, Tenderloin, Sausage, Ham, and Roast.... 

 

Projects, Pigs, Pals...

Pigged!

Feeding and watering the pigs is always fun! They are so cute and have such interesting personalities....and their favorite thing to do is to rub against me to scratch their backs. This means I leave the pig pen covered in mud. Sometimes, they put their noses against my legs to smell where I have been and I leave with a perfect oval with two small holes from their snout. Trust me. If pigs had thumbs, we'd be working for them...

Clara, more faithful than the pups... and won't be still...

Out of the 21 goats, Clara is the most faithful. Where ever I go in the pasture, she is right by me and will knock the others out of the way if they dare to get closer than she!

Me, 18, Monterrey Beach

Been cleaning out pictures this week during the particularly hot and steamy parts of the day. I found this picture and could taste the way the day felt to me.... Isn't it funny how a photograph can trigger such a tangible memory? I spent the better part of two years, three months of it on beaches, bumming around the country starting when I was 18. This day was cool, by beach standards, and the sun was sparkling, the sky astoundingly blue. Delicious...

Cutest booties ever...

Finished the baby blanket and sweater and had enough yarn left to make these adorable booties. Honestly, they knit up in less than 30 minutes and are the cutest things ever! And, since they took so little yarn, I see that these might become my go-to project for leftovers! I like to give pregnant students a little something handknit for their babies and these would be perfect -- fast, inexpensive, and useable!

Evening walks..

Every day ends with a lovely walk. The pups love the swimming that comes with the walk... I love the stillness to bookend my days...

Equipment repair

And, as always on the farm, one repairs rather than replaces. Installing new handles, a little scrub of a wire brush, some oil, and these are good as new. This week, I am teaching myself to change the oil in my tractor. It won't be today, however. The rain has poured all night and we have flash flood warnings. So, it is a "finish in the house" day -- touch up some paint in the upstairs bath, finish the three doors in the dining room, rough up the trim in the downstairs bath and repaint.

What are you into this week?

A few snaps ...

... from my evening walk.

I love how Day lilies turn to the sun, don't you?

Pork Chop has been in the mud; pigs do this to stay cool and to keep from sunburn.

Queen Anne's Lace lines our road

Moose gets a cool dip.

The bottom pasture is full of these lovelies... The Soil and Water folks planted them... Aren't they charming?

They just make me smile....