Our weekend projects

Well... Saturday was windy and still chilly but Mike was able to fix a broken wire on the shifter in our car, so we could get it out of " Park", so, we then decided we'd go to the city to pick up supplies to restock our pantry a bit. We haven't been grocery shopping lately, but rather using what we have on hand. We're trying to get down to one freezer, so we can unplug one and we seriously needed to get some older canned items used up. This cleared out several dozen jars, so we will be making some concord grape jelly from juice we canned two seasons ago.  Anyway going to the city on a Saturday is a BAD idea! To many people, to much traffic and after just a few hours we ALL were ready to head home to the peace and quiet.

Yesterday Mike and Cortney began cutting down the tree in our front yard. It unfortunately was never a very good tree. It had not been trimmed properly when young and had far to many weak crotches and when we received the wet snow in May 2010, it busted up beyond repair. While they worked on that, I put away items purchased in the city, cleaned out the entire refrigerator( scrubbing it down thoroughly) and got some house work caught up. Then it was decided, since it was such a beautiful day that we'd better clean the wood cook stove and chimney. We try to do this two or three times during a burning season, it's better to be safe than sorry and if you've ever experienced a chimney fire you know how scary it is!  So I began the cleaning of the stove, while Mike got the ladder and chimney brushes out and worked on cleaning the cap.  Really it only takes about 25-30 minutes to get the stove and the chimney cleaned and then you know a chimney fire is no worries( for a while anyway*wink*)

After we cleaned up for cleaning the stove, Mike and Cortney went back to work loading the wood in the tractor's bucket and gathering the branches into piles. While they were doing this  I got the BBQ'er started( it's the old fashioned charcoal type) and prepped the T-bone steaks, washed and cut up the potatoes for french fries and got the spinach steaming( frozen from last years garden). We had a light dessert of apple sauce topped with cinnamon, sugar and finely chopped walnuts and dried cranberries.

Then we watched two episodes of " Mash" from our DVD collection and turned in early.
Today is laundry day, Cortney was supposed to work, but Charlie called and he's going to be gone today and will call tonight about setting up another day. I'm making our weekly allotment of bread today and may just make a batch of Cinnamon rolls,( Mike hinted about it this weekend*wink*) We're having pork chops, mac and cheese( homemade) and canned green beans for supper. Not sure of a dessert but gingersnap cookies have been on my mind*wink*

Exciting news, we have gotten two calls about our CSA garden and one lady sounded like she was serious about buying a 1/2 share membership for she and her Dh. I mailed both callers for information, as well as a list of produce we'll be growing, so they can mark those they'd be interested in. This will help us in knowing how many plants to start. I put a deadline of March 15th on our flyer's, so.... praying  we fill all of our openings by then. :o)  Getting set to start our plants this week! I got my starting mix all mixed, all I have to do is was my starter pots and get to planting.
The seeds in the greenhouse are still dormant, due to this cold turn, but today and the rest of the week is supposed to be warmer, so praying it will sprout and grow. I have floating row cover material I can use if it were to get sub zero again.

Lambing will begin soon and Cortney is going to be a very busy young lady. Our meat chicks will arrive end of March and the turkeys are beginning their courtship and mating, so will probably see turkey eggs in a few weeks. The birds are singing, the Robins are back and  there is light at the end of our long wintery tunnel :o)

Blessings for your new week, praying it is filled with good weather and productivity.

Our weekend

Not much to share, Mike and Cortney did clean up in the garden on Saturday, collecting more dried bean pods( a 5 gallon bucket full of one variety and a old milk crate with another), burned the dried bushes from the bush beans, pulled up the cabbage roots. While I worked indoors on cleaning and getting odds and ends chore caught up. In the late afternoon we did clean the stove pipe and stove in preparation for our burning.If your are interested in a tutorial look under woodstove care for pictures.
We did it the old fashioned way but removing a section of pipe and holding a bag over the end of the pipe to collect the soot, if you'll recall our disaster when experimenting on a new way( easier, so so we thought, LOL!) last year.LOL!!!!

I woke up Saturday with a scratchy throat, so immediately took 2000mg Vitamin C, began my day by drinking echinachea / elderberry tea with a liberal amount of raw honey and increased my Vitamin D3 from 3,000mg to 5,000mg. The scratchy throat went away by about midday but I felt it settling into my sinuses. By evening the nose was plugged tight, which I hate not being able to breath through my nose, so fought sleep off and on all night.

Sunday we'd scheduled to butcher turkeys, six total( 5 tom and a hen), would have been 6 toms but one was injured fighting and lost some weight while he was down. We had all but one turkey sold, or so we thought.*sigh*  When I called people on Friday to let them know their birds would be ready for pick up early next week( this week) two people cancelled their orders, sighting $$$ problems and one lady I couldn't get a hold of, but am fairly sure she's just out of town. So this leaves us with two toms and a hen that were not claimed. Our freezer space is limited so we made the decision to butcher only what we actually had sold and one for us; in other words three toms.
Butchering turkeys seems easier to me than butchering chickens, we timed ourselves and it took 12-15 minutes per bird. All three toms( one was butchered when the buyer arrived, because she wanted to help and learn about butchering) dressed out at 20-25lbs and all were plenty fat *wink* We always pay special attention to the organs( heart, liver, lungs) and all three toms organs were very healthy.
Of course since our toms were bronze and they did have some pin feathers there is a little cleanup involved in getting the coloring scrapped from under the skin. Once they'd been thoroughly washed and the final inspection for pin feathers complete, they were bagged( well, the one buyer took her tom home for final cleanup) and are chilling in the refrigerator downstairs. 
Today I'm putting together an ad for a local paper and will advertise the remaining two toms and pray that the other woman who wanted the hen contacts us soon, otherwise we'll butcher the hen for our freezer :o)

I still am congested but feel fine. I was able to clear on side of my nose to breath through last night and after taking hot tea and elderberry tincture before bed, I slept like a log*wink*
Today's "plan"( as Cortney refers to it) is to harvest ripe tomatoes from the greenhouse,wash, cut and add them to the ones already inside waiting to be milled. Cortney most likely will mill them while I'm getting supper started, stew, in the dutch oven. We also have laundry to start, typically it takes us two days due to clothes line constraints, especially now that our day time temperatures are cooler and the clothes take longer to dry.

                          

                                What a blessing!, all the shelves are FULL :o)

                                Herbs collected, dried and now in their storage containers

We'll need to clean up the dunk pan( used for butchering) and the cooling tank buy dumping them out and washing them down to dry in the sunshine. If we have time after this we have two large heads of cabbage still waiting to be shredded and packed into the crock for kraut. The plan is to do a video of the shredding with a slaw cutter, and the steps in packing it into the crocks, then do follow up videos as if ferments. To bad we can't share the smell*wink* For something that smells so bad, when it is finished it sure tastes good, Ummmm. Ummmm. :o)

You never know unless you try, right?

Thought of a different way to do something, to make it an easier chore, only to find out you were WRONG! That happened Tuesday(Mike's day off) when we were preparing to clean our chimney. Mike had an idea, which I agreed seemed good, but were we ever so WRONG!

The idea was to brush the chimney, leaving the single wall portion in place, letting the soot fall into the bottom of the stove and then clean it out from there. Typically we remove the section of single wall pipe and I hold a garbage bag around the pipe and when Mike brushes the soot into the bag. Then Mike brushes and cleans the cap and single wall sections of pipe by hand with a wire brush over the outside garbage can. This of course is a messy job no matter how you look at it, I ALWAYS end up with soot on my face, hands and clothes. *sigh*

So we tried and found out that this new way created an even bigger mess! While Mike was brushing the soot, it was seeping out of the pipe( where the sections came together and at the base of the stove, where the pipe hooks into the stove) a fine black mist of fluffy soot, filled the air. I yelled at Mike but he couldn't hear me, so poor Cortney was running to get whatever towels she could fine to cover the areas leaking soot. By that time it was "To Late"! Cortney looked at me and began laughing so hard she almost fell down, make a picture in your mind of a 44 yr old woman standing on a step ladder holding three towels, COVERED with fine black soot! I mean to tell you I was covered, not only me but the hearth, the stove, the wall behind the stove, the floor around the stove, okay you get the picture! Mike comes in and sees me and asked what happened, he chuckles and begins removing the single wall section of pipe.He then heads out to clean the cap and this pipe, leaving me to clean up myself and as much of the mess as possible, so it didn't get tracked around. I put my shirt, pants, socks and slippers in the washer to soak, then had Mike blow out my hair with his air compressor( just until we were through, then I got a bath). I looked into the back of the stove and Oh my Goodness! It was FULL right up to the edge of where the back of the stove and pipe hook up. It was a fine fluffy black soot, PTL no sticky creosote. Now this all has to be removed through the front clean out port on the stove, scrapping it into our ash bucket. That's fine, but with every scrap into the bucket it filtered up into the air. Mike had Cortney get the vacuum and he held it running just inches above the ash pan, which seemed to help a lot. Now with three loads dumped from the ash bucket, now it was time to clean off the top, and sides of the oven, then again back to scrapping out ash into the ash pan( not nearly as dusty, PTL) All cleaned and everything put back together, I was thinking bath, OH, NO! not yet, now the vacuum is a mess,it's a bagless, the filter was black, the container was black and the screen inside was black! Then we also realized the refrigerator was all black on the front, the floors had a fine dusting of black soot, wall behind the stove was covered. So... after about 2 hours more of Mike and I cleaning and washing the floors, frig and walls I finally got into the tub. Whew! lesson learned that didn't work at all, but you never know unless you try, right, LOL!

Cleaning a wood cookstove 101

Today was the day to clean the wood cook stove pipe and the stove itself.
Many of you may not know that, not only the ashes need to be removed
from the firebox but the ash travels around the oven box, when the
damper is pulled out on the back of the stove. This circulates the heat as
well as the ash and soot around the oven box, before exiting at the
bottom of the oven, into the chimney.


This is the clean out port under the oven. There is a special scraping
tool that clean and pulls the ash and soot out this port. Yes, it is messy
and yes it is dusty, but NEEDs to be done to get the oven to heat
correctly. If to much ash is built up under or on top of the oven, it
causes uneven heating of the oven.

Here you can see the port, under the oven door
This is the view from on top the stove through one of the two

removable lids( this one is directly above the firebox) You can see

The ash buildup on top of the oven box. This ash will be pushed over to

the port clean out door and some will be pulled into the firebox.

This stove was cleaned the end of Dec. 08 and our last fire was in

March 09, the ash/ soot build up is approx. 2" thick.

The top of the oven box all cleaned off
Ash and soot mounded, from being pushed from the top of the oven

box. This is a view from the port below the oven door.

After the ash/ soot is cleaned out.
This is a before of the bottom oven port. The farthest wall back is the

chimney exit for the smoke when the damper is pulled out and oven is

in use. Take note of the soot buildup on the underside of the oven

box.

All cleaned, notice the soot is removed from the underside of the oven

box.

This is the chimney pipe hookup, it's oval, which is a challenge to get a

good fit with the pipe. See the handle to the left, this is the damper,

when pulled out diverts the smoke and heat around the oven box and

out the bottom chimney exit.

All scraped and cleaned out awaiting the stove pipe to fit back into

place and the first fire of the season to be built.

Our temps are supposed to drop into the low 50's F. for daytime highs

evening lows into the low 30's and high 20's F. This storm is due in by

mid-day tomorrow. It was also fore casted that 2-4 inches of snow will

fall on the plains( that's us) 5-8 inches in the foothills and 2-4 ft in the

mountains.

Mike spent the day cutting and hauling home approx. 1-3/4 to 2 cords

of firewood, to be stacked in the wood lean to by my Dad tomorrow

morning before the storm sets in.

Cortney and I got cabbage pulled and in the root cellar, apples

cleaned up off the ground, and our mangle beets( for the cows and

pigs) pulled and in the root cellar. Cortney sorted through the bushel

baskets of tomatoes and came up with enough ripened maters for

yet another batch of sauce or maybe even stewed tomatoes.

We still have a bushel basket of apples to peel, core and slice, then

can as apple pie filling. We also have 5 medium heads of cabbage

to be run across the slaw cutter and made into freezer slaw. It

sounds as if we'll have opportunity to work on these items for the

next week, due to cold fronts moving through. I actually look forward

to the wood cookstove warming the kitchen, a pot of stew

on the back of the stove and baking powder biscuits baking in the

oven, while working on canning maters, apple pie filling and

preparing freezer slaw.

May your Sunday be restful and full of blessings.