How can I be behind already?

I function best with lists, but have fallen away from that habit recently. In 2012, I determined (OK, resolved) to improve my productivity. The first step was to find the list organizer I purchased several years ago. (Does anyone else love office supplies?)

So I crossed one thing off Sunday's list and one thing off Monday's list. I'm working now on Sunday's list (invitations to a baby shower), with Monday's list (paperwork) panting for attention and Tuesday's list (errands) growling in the background. Is this how it is suppose to work?

New Year, New Granddaughter, New Home

Do you think I can write more than 7 posts in 2012? That was the number I wrote in 2011. It's not for a shortage of topics, thoughts, adventures, joys and heartbreak. 2011 was full of them. It's that I tend to post on Facebook instead of my blog.

I don't know what 2012 will bring, but I do know two things are pending: a new granddaughter and a new home. Pretty big news, eh? And rather bloggable too.

Madelyn Mae
Madelyn Mae is due to come into the world mid-February, but she is pushing things a bit. Her mom is on bedrest, trying to eke out three more weeks. Madelyn has a two-year old sister. Sister is not too happy with Mom on bedrest, so I can't imagine how she will react to the intrusion of an infant who can't even play with her yet.

The Highlands
In 1995, we bought several acres of farm land on a high bank of the river in DeKalb County and dubbed it The Highlands. Then two months later, we adopted the twins and decided to stay put. Over the years, we built a barn and planted thousands of trees on the land. Last fall, we decided to build a house and move there. We are now deciding how to site house, outbuildings, drives, gardens, orchard, septic and well. We are on round three of a house design and the land has been surveyed and platted.

So with these events, and whatever else 2012 sends out way, perhaps you will see me here more often.

Aliens Attack Earth Girl's Home

Several alien invaders have insidiously established strongholds around our home, but Steve and I have been attacking them on several fronts. Here's a report from the fighting front.

Bush Honeysuckle
Twenty years ago when I noticed how much the birds like the red berries on the pretty bush by the bridge, I should have been suspicious. Now we are surrounded by bushes, blocking our view of the woods. This spring we launched a full scale attack. While there have been skirmishes elsewhere, the main battles have been along the stream bed and the meadow edges.

Autumn Olive
Oh, your heavenly scent seduced me into leaving just one or two bushes. Then you show your true colors. If you cut the thorny bush down, it sends out suckers. Off with its head with a few drops of pure glyphosate on its neck. It likes to hang out with the honeysuckle, but our brush pile is now about 20 feet tall as we attack both invasive shrubs.

Multiflora Roses
Sure, you call yourself a rose, but I call you dead. Once upon a time, I had a pretty native pink rose growing here; what did you do with her?

Garlic Mustard
Just search my blog with this term to find out how long I've been battling this alien. Every time I think I have won, I find you hiding among the canes of the multiflora roses, or under a large mayapple. And you are mutating into ever shorter plants all the better to hide from me. But I have trained my eyes to find you, even to the point of missing the morels.

Potential Threats
I won't even mention the English ivy that is trying to creep into the woods, or the ajuga romping along the stream edge, or the dandelions, or the red osier or poison ivy. And how did lily of the valley get in the woods?

Please send care packages!

A day at The Highlands

After church, breakfast and grading homework, we headed out to the tree farm for some cross-country skiing. We call it The Highlands because of the 70 foot bluff overlooking the river and the fact that my husband's ancestors came from Scotland.























We discovered the neighbors from the Art Farm (two artists are rehabbing an old Amish farm across the road, starting with purple paint) had laid ski tracks around our land and through the neighbor's woods. A fine powder of snow filled the tracks for perfect skiing. The weather seemed balmy (24 degrees) and the sun was shining, but the wind was blowing hard. After some skiing, we built a little fire in a sheltered spot and warmed up Cuban black bean soup for lunch.























We hit the trails again and then switched to boots to prune some of the trees. Note the small hardwoods behind Steve. We are pruning so all the hardwoods have one dominant straight leader. This is called financial pruning (best timber price when mature) rather than aesthetic pruning, although I let one oak in an open spot continue growing with spreading branches. Maybe someone will put a swing there someday.

Do it sooner, rather than later

I painted my dining room today and it reminded me to make changes sooner, rather than later. A good reminder for the new year.

I have disliked the color in the dining room since I painted it, about ten years ago. Here's a picture from a baby shower that shows the dining room. The french doors are open in the picture, but there's a good shot of one wall. The paint has a pinkish cast and it washed out the beauty of the woodwork.

Here's what it look like tonight, almost finished. The color is not true; it's darker and not olive. The tape is still on, I have some trim to finish on the built-in sassafras china cabinet that my husband made for me, and I need to iron the freshly washed valance to hang over the doors. Oh, and clean up my paint mess, too.



















So on the theme of changes, perhaps I shall work on getting the plank floors I want. It may be a while since my husband wants to put radiant heating under the floors and build the planks himself, probably from trees harvested from our tree farm. Oh, well, I'm pleased with the new paint for now.

So how were your holidays, Earth Girl?

Christmas Tree
The moon was full and the night was cold. Our impossible mission was to find a tree that would fit in the house. In 1995, we planted 25 Scotch pines on our tree farm to provide us with Christmas trees, but they have grown like Topsy, not pruned into the ideal conical Christmas tree shape. After wandering up and down Christmas tree row (watch out for the briars!), the beam of our flashlight at last lighted a passable specimen, a 30 foot specimen. We cut it off midway and brought it home. We cut it off again. And again. The tip of the tree that made it into the stand in our house was a poor reflection of the nicely shaped tree we saw in the moonlight. Lights and ornaments and huge sprays of red berries disguised a lot of imperfections.

Baking
Kolachi, date balls, key lime cookies, homemade caramels, lemon coconut squares, cut-out sugar cookies, cranberry bread, crispy cookie coffeecakes, lemon balm pound cake. No wonder my pants are snug this morning.

Making Gifts
I am not a crafty person (in all senses of that phrase). But I decided to make a scrapbook for my mother-in-law chronicling her birthday party and their fall hayride. This took me hours, but I improved as I completed page-after-page. She loved it, especially the pictures at the sand pit, the hayride destination, because she could not ride in the wagon and missed that fun.

I have been working on compiling Mom's recipes into a cookbook as a gift to my family for over three years now. Family pictures and stories are interspersed throughout the cookbook. It's at the place where I need a killer design for the cover and a really good editor. When I look at it, I love it and I hate it. I think that is about normal for such a project. My niece Jennifer agreed to edit it, so perhaps this gift will be ready to print soon.

Ice and Snow and Rain
A few years ago, REMC buried the lines in our heavily wooded neighborhood because we often lost power. When the bad ice storm hit, we had power. We lent our two kerosene heaters to friends without power. Then on Sunday as temperatures hit subzero, we lost power. Steve started the generator and we plugged in a small electric heater. As he went to retrieve one of our kerosene heaters, Ricky and I played word games by candlelight. (Steve didn't understand why we didn't plug a lamp into the generator, but candlelight was much more dramatic.) When he got home, we gathered up an elderly neighbor and her dog and brought them to our house. Her plan was to crawl into bed and heap on the quilts. As soon as we settled in, power was restored. I am so blessed to have a competent prepared husband.

I'm 19
If I hear this one more time from one son, I'm going to scream! OK, so I did respond several days ago with "So, I'm 59." He thinks our rules, especially curfew, no longer apply to him. This "letting go", a euphemism for ripping apart the family structure, is not easy on either the parents or the sons. I just can't wait for him to be fully emancipated and our relationships restored. If you think I'm being overly dramatic, you have not experienced this stage. As parents, we have worked hard toward the goal of independence for him, but he is so immersed in it that he can't see that we are all working to the same ends. The biggest sticking point is "If you live in our house, you obey our rules."

Wild Pectin

My "go-to" cookbook for years has been The Joy of Cooking, because it includes so much background information. For example, the intro to jellies includes information about pectin. By using natural pectin, instead of commercial pectin such as Sure-Gel, jellies require about half the sugar resulting in an intense fruit flavor.

But the seven bags of Concord grapes on my counter are not high in pectin. The Joy gave several options for natural pectin for grape jelly: use under-ripe fruit, use wild grapes, add an apple. So here are the steps for making low-sugar grape jelly without commercial pectic:

1. Take a ride on the river.
Make a date with your husband to go to the St. Joseph River in the Western Lake Erie watershed. Nose the riverboat into shore and cut off (prune?) the vines until you have a large pile on the floor of the boat. Remove the clusters. Step on numerous tiny grapes (they are smaller than blueberries), staining the floor with unique patterns of reddish purple. Watch the moon rise as you head back to the landing. Some sweet smooching is required at this point.

2. Ignore all warnings posted on the blog of an Internet friend.
Google "wild grape jelly" and find this post by Kylee, which includes the money quote:

The first thing I had to do was take all those tiny grapes off their stems. This job reminded me of shelling peas. It takes forever and a day of cleaning those before you get enough to feed two people one time.

3. Spend five hours de-stemming the grapes.
Yes, it takes a long time. Kylee is right. To break the monotony of this chore, make two batches of Concord jelly using some under-ripe fruit and half an apple to 8 cups of grapes. Making jelly with natural pectin requires a candy thermometer to know when the syrup reaches the sheet stage. If you are easily entertained, as I am, use the spoon method to test the jelly as well as the thermometer. Instead of the one or two minutes required with commercial pectic, this approach takes about 30 minutes of cooking.

4. Accept five bags of peaches and pears from brother.
At this point, you may be getting slightly insane, so when your brother calls and offers you peaches and pears from his orchard, resist the offer. Remember you still have four bags of grapes left on your counter. I didn't resist. My son drove over and collected the fruit so it could sit on my table. I ran out of counter room.

5. Cook, drain and strain the fruit.
The proportion of seeds to juice for wild grapes is about 10 times more than for Concord grapes. Empty the cooked wild grapes into a fine mesh strainer, listening for the clunk of seeds instead of the usual plop. For clear jelly, strain for 15 hours. Skip the straining if you are getting impatient or if you must use every last edible bit of these grapes.

6. Add sugar to grape juice and boil until it gels.
Add the sugar gradually, tasting the syrup until it is the right combination of sweet and tart. The wild grapes will gel in about ten minutes.

7. Seal in small jars.
It is important to use the smallest jars possible. This is precious stuff. Don't calculate the cost of each jar based on your consulting rate. You may weep.

8. Let your son lick the pan.
And smile knowingly when he raves about the taste.

If you don't like to sand, don't build a canoe

Steve laid fiberglass cloth on the outside of the canoe and then covered it with three layers of epoxy. He sanded the final layer in preparation for a varnish finish. Since these pictures were taken, he has turned the canoe over, knocked out the forms, sanded the hull, and laid fiberglass and two coats of epoxy on the inside. Today he selected some cherry for the thwarts and seats. He will put in the seat after he uses the canoe to make sure the seat is in the right spot for him.

Harvest Season

Why wait until fall? Let's celebrate the harvest season now. Locally grown produce is highlighted in the following account of my harvest to date.

Already harvested
I can't keep up with the green beans. I am filling the freezer with parboiled tender beans but I had a lot of big tough beans. Yesterday I decided to make soup stock with the beans. I added the squash clubs, tomatoes and cabbage given to me by my father-in-law, some aging celery and carrots from the fridge, an onion, and garlic. Steve suggested I throw in some beef so in went two neck bones from the beef we purchased last winter. I ended up having to use two large soup pots. I cooked it down overnight and this morning removed the solids and am now boiling down the stock to freeze for soup base next winter.

Last week, my son, his girlfriend and I picked 15 pounds of blueberries. I flash froze them and now they are in the freezer waiting for me to make blueberry pancakes, blueberry cobbler and add to my breakfast yogurt.

My father-in-law gave me 6 green peppers from his garden. We don't eat a lot of green peppers, except as flavoring. So these have been chopped, flash frozen and put in little baggies for future use.

My squash and zucchini plants didn't make it. They just withered away. But don't fear, I have a bounty of zucchini from family and friends. They are piled up in the fridge and I suppose I will make zucchini bread, which my husband likes so much.

Going back to the spring crops, I have enough chopped rhubarb frozen for two pies and several bags of spinach.

Soon to be harvested
Early this spring, there was a garden blogger challenge to plant something new in our vegetable gardens. I didn't respond, but it did give me the courage to plant five 12-foot rows of sweet corn. The silks are turning brown and soon I will be awash in fresh corn.

For some reason, I planted 12 Roma tomato plants. Oh, I remember, I was going to make sauce. Other green tomatoes waiting to be harvested in include pink brandywine, volunteer cherry tomatoes and a heirloom green striped tomato. The last tomato was from seeds I saved last year, another first for this new vegetable gardener.

I have 6 cucumber vines and have harvested four cukes already. When these start coming on fast, I want to make bread-and-butter pickles again. My family loved them last year.

I'm hoping the red peppers mature with the Roma tomatoes so I can add them to the sauce.

I have six red potato plants in tubs. I'm adding soil and waiting for new potatoes. Aren't they suppose to ripen with green beans so I can make my mother's German potato salad?

The blackberries are starting to ripen and within the week I should either freeze them or make jam. I'm also checking on the grapes. There are large clumps but still a solid shade of green. I planted red raspberries this spring and one is forming berries. I suspect all that I will harvest will be eaten as they are picked.

I think that is it. I should be busy this next month or so, but will enjoy the fruits (literally) of my labor all winter long.

Canoe in progress

I'm not documenting this canoe building very well, but here are the pictures after all the strips were laid and the staples removed. Since these pictures, Steve did a lot of detailed work on the stems and laid the outer stems. I think sanding, sanding and more sanding is next. He will be doing most of that by hand.

This shows the "swoop" of the stern. The bow is more pronounced.



















The "football keel" has been integrated.



















Here he is sanding the end of the strips level with the inner stem. End grain is tough and no one will ever see it, but it has to be perfectly aligned so the outer stem will fit flush.

Graduation Time

Ricky is graduating this summer. He was three credits short, but wanted so bad to graduate with his class and HAVE A PARTY. So he took three classes this summer, because we refused to have a graduation party without, you know, him actually graduating. He finished his English class a few weeks ago and finished his health class tonight. That just leaves Economics, which should be done tomorrow night.




















The party is August 2 and he just asked me, "Mom, you'll make me a scrapbook, right?" Yikes! I've tried scrapping and even attended a scrapbook night at church once. Five hours later, the other women had completed numerous pages and I completed just one. I dinked around with the design and then had to write a narrative, while they just slapped the pictures on the page with one or two words. To complicate matters, I've printed very few pictures the last two years. I think I'll put the recent pictures into a digital frame and then make posters of the major events and perhaps make a few scrapbook pages. Probably in desperation I will just throw the rest of the pictures in an album.














His cousin, who graduated in the same class, took these pictures of Ricky for me.

Projects

Since I created a new tag called Projects for the bridge and canoe projects, I had to share some of my projects. No, not the apron. It's still uncut, but not forgotten. My great niece has an apron in a similar style which I plan to use to resize the Grandma's pattern.

One project was arranging the planting of over 100 trees at The Third Place this spring. It was an intergenerational event. They posted pictures on the church website and I especially like the one of the girls right in the hole they dug. These same girls, not 30 minutes earlier, said they didn't want to get dirty. We've had lots of rain this summer, which is a good thing since there is no way we can water the trees on the far end of 30 acres.

With Steve teaching and not "studenting," we've added another dimension to our wardrobe, necessitating giving up part of our bedroom for a larger closet. Steve's portion of this project is almost complete and now I need to start painting. We are painting the bedroom four different colors. I hope it works. I have also been hunting for new curtains, without any luck.

Of course, there are always numerous garden projects in various stages. Ron dug out some overgrown shrubs by the back deck and now I need to decide what to plant there. I've planted an even bigger veggie garden and this is the first year I've grown corn. I created a new bed in my front yard and planted it. But these are all normal garden activities for me. My project involves my growing interest in native plants.

We have always let our pond edges grow naturally, resulting in volunteers of cattails, sedges, Queen Anne's Lace, milkweed, black-eyed susans, and even Joe Pye Weed. We did plant blue flags many years ago and they have claimed a large portion of the north end of the pond. Last year I planted three starts of yellow flags. However, the shallow end of the pond is sawgrass and cattails. It is also the first thing you see after crossing the stone bridge. Last fall I collected seeds from swamp hibiscus, pink turtlehead and cardinal flowers, all plants that love their feed wet. At the encouragement of Kylee, I winter sowed the seeds and they grew! So I've been hacking away at the growth to plant them on the shallow end of the pond. Let me tell you, removing turf and amending clay soil is easy compared to sinking in muck and getting scratched by the grasses to battle swamp weeds. In addition to the plants I started from seed, I planted Queen of the Prairie. If this works out, it will be breathtakingly beautiful.

A sassafras strip canoe

My brother is not the only craftsman at work around my home. My husband has started his second strip canoe. I gave him the plans and forms for a Voyager canoe for Christmas. He decided to make his own strips from sassafras, a traditional wood for canoes. He started by cutting the planks into strips, planing and sanding them and then he put beads and coves on every strip.

The next step was to set up the forms on the strongback and then mold the inner and outer stems.














Here he is applying the first strip to the form. He staples the strips to the form and glues between the strips.
















After laying about four strips on each side, he laid the "football" on the keel. This makes the keel stronger; otherwise, he would have numerous strips ending at the keel line due to the shape of the canoe.




















The next strips on the side will have a walnut inlay and he cut the design into the next three strips.















Then comes a tricky part. He had to add tapered strips to each end. You can see one of the tapers in this photo, the second strip down. I think of these as reverse darts. He's out in the shop now laying on more strips and more tapers.

Building Bridges

The third tier of rocks have been lain. This is the north wall of the bridge.















And this is the south wall. My brother John is wrestling a large rock in place. He placed flat rocks at each end of the arched walls for seats and this seat will have a backrest.















That boy sure is strong, always was. I can't believe the way he lifts and places those large stones. Before I took this picture, I asked him if I could help and he just gave me a look. John is two years younger than me and the oldest of my three younger brothers. I remember walking to the house from the school bus and turning around to punch him as hard as I could in the belly when we were both in middle school. He just looked at me (probably the same look as he gave me today) as I rubbed my hurt hand. I clearly remember thinking, "Time to change strategies, Martha."

Bridge over Usually Not Creek

Day One
It was time to do something about the bridge over Usually Not Creek. The sides were eroding and gravel was washing out in the center of the bridge. We asked my brother John to fix the washout between the two culverts and to build wing walls to prevent the erosion along the side. John used a pick and shovel to dig out the center of the driveway and found a gaping cavern created by a large cottonwood root. The picture shows the gap between the culverts and eroded concrete from the root.






























Day Two - Digging the footers and starting the forms
John and I both came up with the idea of an arched fieldstone bridge. My husband was thinking of a simple wooden structure.


































Day Three - Finishing the forms and finding stones
Steve shrugged and let the sibs take the bridge where we wanted. The boys and I gathered all the fieldstone we had (shown below) which will only do the first row of one side of the bridge. A volunteer at work told me about several large piles of stones in her woods which I could have. Perfect! We will probably have enough to finish the bridge.




















Day Four - Pouring concrete and setting the first row
I love looking at this hint of what is to come and searching through the stone for the best specimens. We still have several truckloads of stone to pick-up. I'm using the term "we" rather loosely in this narrative.

















































































Day Five - Removing forms and filling in around the retaining walls
John is taking the next two weeks to help move his daughter and family to Colorado where her husband is doing his fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery. I'm sorry they will be so far away. John's granddaughters are both three, Sophia is three years and Victoria three months. They will likely not remember their GREAT aunt.

During the next two weeks, I will be poring over stones deciding which ones I want on top. I'm toying with the idea of embedding some other things to make this uniquely ours. My husband already has several fossils selected.

Godly Living, Green Living

Starting this Wednesday and continuing for 11 weeks, I will be co-teaching this class at my church during its Prime Time Wednesday community classes. The class starts at 6:30 and ends at 7:30 and all are welcome to a join us for a meal from 5 to 6:15. This week we will be introducing the series and asking you what you want to learn.

I'm having fun researching this topic, learning what I'm doing right and what else I could be doing. I think my theme will be "Take small steps and don't feel guilty because you aren't doing it all." For example, if you are driving a car that gets good mileage, shouldn't you be driving a hybrid car? If you are driving a hybrid car, why aren't you riding a bicycle or walking? Another theme is "What did Grandma do?" except she probably heated with coal or wood, which is something that you shouldn't emulate.

Food and Fabric

Food and fabric sums up this week's trip to Shipshewanna with my mother-in-law. She's still doing good but tired quickly. This may be our last trip together.

Our first stop was E & S Foods. It's fun to try new things, but I don't recommend honey coated flax corn chips. There was no mistake with their cheeses and flours. I'm ready to bake some unusual breads now.

The second stop was Yoder's for fabric, which was my reason for the trip. I asked for retro apron fabrics and they had such a fun selection it was difficult to choose. But I fell in love with this fabric. These colors aren't true; the middle picture is the closest.


Then I tried dozens of contrasting material. The smaller designs that coordinated with the main fabric were too busy and the larger designs that worked well with the print weren't the right color. So I selected a plain color and then some polka dots for trim. My intent was to trim in rick-rack, but that didn't work without a secondary color to pick up.


So the plan is to use my grandmother's handmade pattern and make a reversible apron with a plain green pocket on the print side and a print pocket on the green side and use the polka-dots to trim the pockets and perhaps the yoke. Or maybe I'll make a polka dot pocket on the plan side.

I haven't sewn for almost 40 years and there are few instructions with Grandmom Diehl's pattern--just the word "apron" on the large piece and "Set in shoulder seam" on one end of the small piece shown below. I decided to mock up the apron using an old sheet before I cut into my fabric. No way could I figure it out. So yesterday I bought an apron pattern (and sewing shears and pins and thread. Also some fleece and a pattern to make a hat for my mother-in-law as chemo claims her hair.) This morning I looked at the handmade pattern and finally figured it out. The small piece is cut on the fold where it protrudes. The long end is set into the shoulder and the short end is attached to the apron body as it wraps around the waist into the back. The problem is that it didn't wrap around to the back of me. So now I have to decide whether to modify the pattern or use the pattern I bought. Stay tuned as I continue to get in touch with my latent sewing skills.