The Sorting

This week we finished harvesting our heirloom corn. After collecting and shucking comes the sorting.

The smallest ears are fed to the chickens. We save the largest and best looking (making sure that we save some of each color) for seed.

I pulled about twenty that I will use in my K-2 art class. I'll have the kids do a macro drawing of the corn with oil pastels.

P has filled a basket with ears that are pink. She plans to plant the pink kernels next year to see if she gets all pink corn.

We'll make corn meal from some of the corn for our Little Red Hen Bread, a family favorite.

What's been keeping you busy? 

Fall Fun

We had a beautiful and busy weekend here. We got the inside of the playhouse painted. P says it looks like a dorm room inside now - small and white.

P also did a little fall decorating. She put pumpkins on the porch and decorated the house with leaves.

She did this while the rest of us were on the other side of the house. I don't know where she gets her ideas, but I like it.

We also harvested some of the heirloom corn, put our pumpkins by the road for sale, and made progress on a few other outdoor projects.

I hope we have another good weather weekend coming up. D will be home for fall break.

Italian Pear Cake

We have a bumper crop of pears again this year. After eating, freezing, and canning three bushels of purchased peaches we now have lots of pears from our trees. Yesterday, we tried this Italian Pear Cake.

It used quite a few pears and tasted pretty yummy.

We could possibly be getting lots of raspberries too but we haven't battled the pumpkin vines to find them all yet. The pumpkins have grown from their patch up and over all of the raspberry plants.

I am busy cooking and canning tomato sauce every couple of days and this weekend will be trying my hand at canning pears. The canned peaches turned out great so we thought we would try the pears.

Ahhh. This is August.

How the Garden Grows

We didn't get off to a great start with our gardens this year. The mosquitoes and then heat wave meant that I didn't spend much time fighting the weeds. We only got a handful of peas earlier but now we are having a little better garden success. We have onions ready for harvest

and have already pulled all of the garlic.

We have some green tomatoes

and the promise of more to come.

Our chard is doing well but the carrots and beets are still small. Patience. We just need patience.

In the mean time the local u-pick farm has some really great blueberries!

On Aging

Why do people fight the aging process when it can be very beautiful? We try to hide the effects of the passage of time with make up (first to look older and then later to look younger), dye their hair, and have cosmetic surgery. We try to hide wrinkles and keep everything looking the same.

Why don't we embrace the aging process? It is inevitable.

I have noticed that things usually develop a beautiful patina when allowed to age naturally.

With aging, light is allowed to shine in and light up parts not exposed in youth. Aging adds interest, depth, and character.

The bumps, bruises, and scars life left on my grandparents made them very interesting people. I hope I can age as gracefully and naturally as them.

On a related note, we recently watched the documentary. "Young @ Heart You're Never too Old to Rock". I highly recommend it.

Thoughtful Sunday

"A seed is wonderful. It grows. Something comes out of the ground. A green stem comes out. Little leaves get bigger."

Seeds and More Seeds, Millicent E. Selsam, 1959.

Flowers, Fabric, and Floors

I would love to spend some time outside, maybe sitting by the garden reading a book while sipping something cool.

I would even enjoy getting caught up on weeding in the gardens. But, sadly my time outside the past few weeks is spent in the following way. I look out the window and think, oh, the flowers look so pretty, I'll go take some pictures. I grab my camera and head outside.

I take a few good shots and then the mosquitoes find me. I hurry to make the complete route around the house but I can't hold the camera still to take the pictures.

I end up with some hastily taken out of focus pictures and run screaming into the house while swatting the biting bugs. Next time I'll have to start going around the house the OTHER direction. I didn't get any pictures of the flowers blooming on the south side of the house. I keep encouraging the chickens to eat the mosquitoes but I think they are eating their eggs instead.

My solution to the bug problem today will be to sit at my new sewing machine and do some quilting while watching the wood part of the wall in my sewing room come down.

The wood will be used for flooring upstairs. Twenty years ago we took up flooring in what will be the new bathroom. We used those floor boards to patch and repair the floor in the rest of the house. We also purchased maple flooring for the bathroom.  Since then, we have changed our plan and the bathroom upstairs will not be as big and some of that space will go back to what is now P's room. In working on the new plan we have found that flooring made from yellow pine today is very different from what was made 100 years ago. Today it is all flat sawn. Most of the flooring in our house is quarter sawn. B went to the lumber yard and could not find a single floor board that was vertical grain.

Here you can see a section of our old flooring. Most of the boards are vertical grain with straight parallel grain lines. There is one board here that is flat sawn and shows the face grain as curvy ribbons of color. This is what ALL of the new floor boards look like. A whole floor like this would look like a zebra! So, we are using the old wall boards for a more uniform look to finish P's room. We can use new flooring on walls in the bathroom that will be painted.

(My sewing room used to be two rooms with the wood area being the back of a build in storage unit. This was changed before we moved in. I do wish the changes had not been made before we bought the house. We have found many interesting things as we have done our own remodeling.)

Also, please note that my desk is actually CLEAN.

Live Baby Chicks

We got a call from the post office yesterday and hurried into town. We could hear the peeping as soon as we got through the door.

Twenty seven little chicks in a box.They enjoyed a bit of sunshine and fresh air.

Some of them even nibbled some clover flowers.

New chicks are always fun.

End of May Color

We are enjoying some splashes of late May color in the yard. P loves that she can see these pink peonies from the window in her room.

I love these Siberian Iris that were divided from some that belonged to my mother.

I don't remember what these flowers are but the bees really like them.

We also have a variety of other iris blooming now. My neighbor gave me a garbage bag of pretty rusty brown iris last year. We planted them all along the front of the yard by the road. A few are blooming this year but next year should be spectacular.

I am still learning about my new sewing machine. I have a quilt top pinned and ready to go when I feel confident enough with my skills on the new "sewing computer".

I think I'll go ahead with the "random" look for the Spring Butterflies quilt. I will need to lay that out again and then sew it together.

I should have some fun sewing progress to share soon. I don't think you would be very interested in the mending of blue jeans that I did yesterday.

A Great Day for a Fire

Sunday was a great day for our annual field fire.

Each year we burn a portion of our prairie areas. The fire helps to discourage the plants we don't want and encourages the native plants we do want growing there.

I enjoy being outside and watching the flames. If everything goes as planned that is all that we have to do. The fire puts itself out when it gets to the mowed grass that is next to the prairie.

The flares when the fire hits a thick patch of dry grass can be exciting.

It was a great afternoon. The fire behaved just as planned.

I like that the annual fire is something that the whole family enjoys. It is a relaxing work day and we come in smelling of smoke. It has become a spring tradition of sorts. Maybe we have an unusual definition of family fun.

Thoughtful Sunday

"He could tell by the way the animals walked that they were keeping time to some kind of music. Maybe it was the song in their own hearts that they walked to."

Waterless Mountain, Laura Adams Armer, 1931.

Spring Transition

Spring means clothes dried outside on the line,

playing in the dirt,

planting,

and tending the gardens,

and generally spending a lot more time outside.

An early bedtime for small children is not to be seen again until fall.

Gratitude

I am grateful that my daughter wanted to plant picking flowers in the garden. They have lasted a very long time. Their burst of color is very inviting and brings joy every time we go to the garden.  Sometimes we go to the garden just to pick the flowers.

Gratitude

I am grateful that I live in a place that has seasons. I enjoy the differences throughout the year and that each season here moves into the next right on schedule with the equinoxes and solstices.

We celebrated the arrival of fall last night with candles on the dinner table. P has been eagerly awaiting fall so that we can eat by candle light.

Harvest Time

We have been in full swing with our fall harvest lately.  Last weekend we picked some pumpkins and pulled the onions out of the ground.

This weekend we focused on the black beans. First, we pull the bean plants and let them dry in the sun on a tarp. Then, we put a bundle of plants in a smaller tarp and whack them with a stick to pop the beans out of the shell. 

The last step is to separate the small plant bits from the beans. On a slightly windy day we can pour the beans from bucket to bucket and let the wind blow the light dried plant bits or chaff away.

We have also been eating lots of fresh pears from our trees and last night froze several peach pie fillings. Our raspberries will continue bearing fruit until the first hard frost. We pick the berries every other day.

I know we will appreciate our preservation efforts come January. That is what I keep telling myself.

Next on the food preservation plan - grape juice. B says the grapes are ready.

I know I will enjoy my quilt retreat next week!

Late Summer Prairie

Our late summer walks through the prairie are pretty these days.

I like the way there are different things blooming throughout the summer.

Some flowers make big patches of color while others, like this flax, are more subtle.

The big blue stem grows very tall. This grass is over eight feet.

We do feel the coming of fall in the air.

What end of summer things are you enjoying? 

Back to the Fair

We went back to the fair yesterday.

We had to see the animals one more time.

P loved the piglets.

She wanted us to build a fence in the yard and get some baby pigs.

We tried to tell her that they quickly grow up to be big pigs.

I liked the sheep.

This white one played peek a boo with P.

There was a former State Fair Champion sheep shearer doing demonstrations. These sheep were waiting to be sheared.

The rabbits were cute too.

This day old calf was born at the fair.

Happy Bench Monday

We are enjoying a beautiful "summer is almost over" day! 

Happy Bench Monday./ Bench Monday Flickr Pool

Picking Flowers

August always gets to be very busy around here.  Much of our garden bounty is ready to harvest in August. We spend a lot of time picking, preparing, and preserving food.  Sometimes we forget to slow down and enjoy the beauty around us.  I am glad I have P to remind me of that. She picks a little bouquet of flowers EVERY time we go to the garden. Luckily she has a long row of flowers to choose from each time. 

I like growing things such as fruit trees, raspberries, and rhubarb that come back every year. We are getting our first peaches this year from trees that we planted.  

We also get fruit from pear and apple trees that were planted long before we moved here.

This is the time when I start to think about what I want to do differently in the garden next year. What new things do I want to plant? I think about which grew easily and which things are easiest to preserve etc.   First on the garden list for next year - picking flowers.

Weekend Projects

After three weekends away from our gardens I spent a little weekend time catching up. There is a lot of weeding to do but at least parts of the gardens are pretty.

We already have a few pumpkins ready for harvest. As soon as those apples are ripe I'll start making pumpkin muffins again!

A friend and I toured the University of Michigan with the traveling Barbie camper.

See my photos here and more about this fun photo project here.We also worked on the playhouse project. We now have a foundation.  A search in the barn yielded EXACTLY the right number of cinder blocks!

Our weekend was a mixture of work and play. 

What are your weekend projects?