The Continuing Stoooooorry…

January 27, 2018January 27, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I finally have more progress on our saga with the movers.

A few days ago, I spent some time talking with a lawyer about our options. One of the things he mentioned was that, usually one would start an insurance claim, then let the insurance companies duke it out. The lawyer can send a letter to the moving company for me about it, if the moving company continues to give me grief about it. How the company responds to that would determine our next move.

Hopefully, we will never have to find out.

Making a claim on my mother’s property insurance was not really preferable. The deductible is a thousand dollars, so if the cost of replacing the pole is close to that, it’s almost not worth it. However, my brother thought to contact our provincial vehicle insurance company, since the damage was done by a vehicle. They said that yes, they do cover that sort of thing, so I called and started a claim. I spent some time talking to someone on the phone, then got an email address to send photos to.

As I prepared to send the email, I got an email from the moving company. This after 10 days of nothing from them at all.

It was pretty short. Basically, they wanted to know if I’d gotten an estimate on how much it would cost; if it was under $1000, they would cut me a check for it. If it was over $1000 (the amount of their deductible), they would give me the information for their insurance company, and I would file a claim there. (I’m paraphrasing a fair bit, since English is clearly not the first language of the person writing to me.)

Which really, the movers should be doing, not me. Except I think I’d rather deal with the insurance company than with the movers.

No word on the money they said they would pay for our damaged goods a while back, which is a separate issue from property damage.

So I included their email with my email to the vehicle insurance company. I was told it could take 2 or 3 days before I got a response, but I got one the next day. Turns out that, because no vehicles registered in this province was involved, it’s out of their jurisdiction. We would have to deal with the driver’s vehicle insurance company. And I have no way of knowing who that is, since in the province we moved from, it’s private insurance companies, not one provincial insurance company.

So after I got that response, I got a phone number of a local electrician. Someone I went to high school with, actually. He’s a year or two younger than me, but we took the same bus to school for many years. He has done work here on the farm for my brother before, and was highly recommended. Since he works in the city, I was given his home phone number, and I left a message for him there. Much to my surprise, not only did I get a call soon after (my timing was good, I guess; he came home from work shortly after my call), but he said he could come over right away!

He spent a fair bit of time checking things out, including making sure there was no damage to the cable itself. I will get an estimate from him emailed to me, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be over $1000, so it looks like I’ll be dealing with the insurance company.

One of the things he mentioned was that he likely wouldn’t be able to install a new pole until spring. The electric company has access to the machinery that can drill into frozen ground, but he doesn’t. It’s unlikely the electric company would be willing to come out for a customer owned pole to begin with – and we’d have to prune those trees for them to get into the yard!

Pruning is something that’s going to have to be a bit of a priority, it looks like! I’d like to get that done while the trees are still dormant, so February would be good. By March, it might be too late. Hard to know. We might have a late spring. Or an early one.

Anyhow, that’s where we are at now. I will wait on the estimate, then go from there – and will ask about the coverage for damage to our goods in the process. I’ll update my lawyer about how things are going, too.

What a long and convoluted process this is!

All because no one bothered to look up.

The Re-Farmer

Quick Sourdough Chocolate Cupcakes

January 27, 2018January 27, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

When we were living in Victoria, BC, and had made our first sourdough starter, this recipe from The Sourdough Cookbook was one of our favorites. Not only was it chocolatey and delicious, it was one of the few things we could bake in our wonky PMQ oven. We couldn’t bake a cake, because it had hot and cold spots so bad, parts of it would be raw and parts overcooked, but we could manage cupcakes and muffins.

We didn’t bake very often at all while living there.

Last night, I gave Sir Sour Alot a new home in one of our giant Tupperware Thatsa Bowls. Since there is so much room in there, I fed it more than usual so that there would be lots left over after my daughters baked bread today. With the larger amount of starter, it will be good to be able to use it for multiple things, all in one day. They made 4 loaves of black olive and cheddar bread today. While the first pair of loaves was baking, I started to pre-measure the ingredients and prepare the pans. That way, when the second pair of loaves came out, I could quickly start mixing the batter while the oven got to temperature (the bread recipe calls for the same temperature, but with glass loaf pans, we reduce by 25F, so it was already pretty close).

Here is the recipe;

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Quick Chocolate Cupcakes
(from The Sourdough Cookbook)
preheat oven to 400F and pre-measure the ingredients.

1/2 cup sourdough starter
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup softened butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup cocoa powder (sifted)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Grease 16 muffin cups, or line with paper liners; set aside. (note: I prepared 18 muffin cups)
Place all ingredients into a large bowl – do not mix until all are combined.
Beat with electric mixer on high speed for 2 minutes.
Fill prepared muffin cups 2/3 – 3/4 full with batter.
Bake in preheated oven for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean.
Remove from muffin cups and cool on rack.

The recipe then says to put frosting on them, but I don’t think we have ever bothered! :-D

When I started mixing these today, the batter was MUCH thicker than I expected. Almost a dough, rather than a batter. I think perhaps the sourdough starter was thicker than when we’d made it before. I ended up adding extra milk to it. It still was really thick, but it turned out wonderfully, anyways.

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The recipe said 14-16 cupcakes, but I filled 18 muffin cups (I had three tins with 6 muffin cups each), so they were a bit on the small side. They turned out very light and airy. So much so, the first one I tried to photograph didn’t work out because, when I started to break it open with my fingers, the inside was so delicate, the slightly crispier outside just crushed it! So I got another one and very carefully used a knife to cut it open. :-D

These have a rich chocolate flavour, but are not too sweet. So you taste chocolate, not sugar.

As for the sourdough, you don’t really get a “sourdough” taste, but there is definitely something there that’s different. It adds a depth and complexity to the flavour that is quite nice, and of course, it adds to that light and fluffy texture.

Very delicious.

And, judging from how many are disappearing with the girls upstairs, they might not last until morning.

Ah, well. I guess I’ll just have to make more… Oh, the tragedy. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Daily Deer

January 26, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I may not have posted deer photos yesterday, but I did get some!

My older daughter also took advantage of our camera set up and got a few nice shots of a blue jay in the trees.

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The two deer that come together came yesterday, and today. Yesterday, the one that looks so hungry all the time did get some of the feed, but she’s so skittish, she ran off quickly, and ever got a chance to come back.

I did manage to get a photo of her in mid chew, though. I love it!

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She looks like she’s making faces at me! :-D

I have noticed that, when they come together, they both go to different food piles and eat together for a while. However, hungry girl gets startled far more easily, and dashes off a few feet. She then hangs around, looking everywhere, before she starts making her way back to the feed. That is when the mean one starts chasing her away. :-(

Today, however, it was a bit different.

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Now that we have a sack of bird seed as well as deer feed, I did things a bit differently, by putting out alternating piles of deer feed and bird seed.

I don’t know if that made the difference, but today, when she got startled off, she actually came back and ate some more, without being chased off.

The other deer started out eating the bird seed. Considering the birds have been eating their feed for all this time, I figure that’s a fair deal. ;-)

The other possibility is that the other deer was just too distracted to chase off the hungry one.

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As the deer were coming over, this one was very leery of the cat at the bottom of one of the spruce trees.

The cats, on the other hand, don’t seem all that disturbed by the deer. :-D

I didn’t take many photos today, because our movements distract her, and I didn’t want her to run off. I hope that, for today, at least, she got a full meal!

The Re-Farmer

Black Olive and Cheddar Sourdough variation

January 26, 2018January 26, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

For the past while, we’ve been using Sir Sour Alot to bake 4 loaves of bread, every other day. Give or take. We’ve been using the Quick and Easy Sourdough Bread recipe each time because… well… it’s quick and easy.

When it came to the final kneading of the dough, before shaping into loaves, that’s when we would get creative and start kneading in other ingredients. Garlic powder, grated dry Parmesan or Asiago cheese, or both together (both from the Bulk Barn), rolled oats, shredded cheddar cheese, etc. Whatever we have in the cupboard that we thought to try.

Yesterday I needed to make a quick run into town, so I was able to pick up a can of sliced black olives. I used half the can, chopping the black olives up finer, and kneaded it in to half the dough, together with about a cup of shredded cheddar. (We kneaded rolled oats into the other half.)

We also used warm potato water, drained from the potatoes I’d made for supper, as the liquid.

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This is what they looked like, by the time the other loaves were done in the oven and I was about to put these in. When kneading the shredded cheddar and olives into the dough, the cheddar basically disintegrates and gets completely worked into the dough. So you can’t really see it, but you sure can taste it!

It took all our will power to finish off the last of the previous baking we did before going into the fresh loaves! Two of which went into the freezer as soon as they were completely cooled.

This morning, we tried the olive and cheddar loaf, toasted.

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It was so incredibly delicious, we’re now thinking of making ONLY olive and cheddar bread from now on!

Since Sir Sour Alot expanded so enthusiastically last night, maybe we’ll do some extra baking tonight. I even picked up more cheese – old, rather than medium, cheddar, for the extra tang.

So, to summarize, to the basic recipe we made the following changes:

substituting potato water for regular water in the recipe.
adding chopped black olives and shredded cheddar cheese (medium) to the dough during the final kneading.

I look forward to when we can start making yogurt cheese again. After draining the liquid off the yogurt to make the cheese, I would use the liquid to bake bread, and it’s even better than potato water.

The Re-Farmer

Our Pot Overfloweth

January 26, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

We need a bigger pot for Sir Sour Alot!

This is what I came out to, this morning.

No, that is not a ladybug on the counter in the bottom right of the photo. It’s an Asian Lady Beetle. And they are EVERYWHERE this year!

Since transforming Sir Sour Alot, we have been using it about every other day, feeding with just flour, water and a bit of sugar, as usual.

Yesterday, I boiled potatoes for supper and kept the water I drained for bread baking. Because using potato water when baking bread is delicious.

Since I had as much potato water as I did, after I poured out enough starter for a doubled recipe of bread, I figured I’d use some of it to feed the starter instead of plain water. I’d measured out 2 cups of starter, which left very little behind, so I added about 2 1/2 cups flour and maybe 2 cups of potato water, with about a tablespoon of sugar, to feed it.

There are pretty standard amounts. I’ve added as much as 3 cups of flour into this container when there was nothing but dregs left after use. I’ve had it over flow only once before, when the container was placed on the stove, where it was warmer.

While we were working on the bread last night, we noticed that Sir Sour Alot had started to overflow. Clearly, it liked the potato water! I stirred it down and figured it had already reached its peak expansion for the night.

Boy was I wrong!

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Not only did it overflow the pot and the bowl under it, it went down the counter, all the way to the floor!

We need a bigger container.

We don’t boil potatoes all that often, but when we do, I plan to treat Sir Sour Alot with some potato water in the future (not to be confused with “rich potato water”, which is potato mashed into the water). It obviously really does well with it!

The Re-Farmer

Our Cat is Broken Again

January 25, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

We have had many cats over the years. At one point, we were an impromptu cat shelter and had a dozen of them at once, but only a couple were ours.

We have never had a cat that liked to do this at all, never mind so frequently. It seems he’s more comfortable upside down than right side up!

The Re-Farmer

Magical

January 25, 2018January 25, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Some days, it’s clear I live in a magical fairyland.

It’s warmed up again, enough for there to be fog last night. Which promptly became frost on anything it touched.

The view of our spruce grove from our driveway gate.

Usually, it goes away rather quickly when the sun comes out, but it’s been overcast and still a bit foggy, so the magical fairyland remains.

So gorgeous.

The Re-Farmer

Busy Out Our Window

January 24, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We got quite a bit of action outside our living room window today!

The beauty of digital photography is that you can take lots of pictures and not worry about running out of film, then go through them later to pick the best ones.

The downside is that you can take lots of pictures, and then have to try and choose the best one! Today, alone, I took about 200 pictures. Oh, how to choose!

Well, here is a sampling.

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The pine grosbeaks were back. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them. I forgot how big they are! Almost as big as the blue jays.

Speaking of which…

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The blue jays are funny to watch. They have a definite preference for certain seeds, and are large enough that they can use their beaks to flick through the seeds, flinging them all over, just to find that special one! They’d eat the others, too, but only after picking out their favorites.

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I got some really good photos of the outside cats that showed up today, like this one of Butterscotch, who is staring at our mama cat in the window.

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Then there was Trüllbus the Crime Eater… also checking out our cats in the window.

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Nasty Crime Boy also made an appearance.

I have a hard time telling Crime Boy and Trüllbus apart when they are not right next to each other. :-D

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Even The Mothman made an appearance today! It’s been at least a week since I’ve seen her. Then I realized all over again, what a big frikkin cat she is!

She spooked the deer, too.

Yes, we got deer as well. Two of them; the nasty one and the one that stays close to him for some reason (see video)

2018-01-24.hungry.deer

I picked this photo, not because it was the best one, but because you could see the difference between the two, a bit. The little one looks thin, and its coat is rougher, compared to the round belly and smooth coat you can see in the other deer in the background. It’s not as clear in this photo, but you can see her hip and shoulder bones sticking out more prominently, too.

They did eat together for a while, then something spooked the little one. She went off to the side for a while, but she she tried to come back, the other one chased her off. She then went into the spruce grove and hung around. At least she has things to nibble on in there, even if it might not be as good as the feed I’m leaving out. Still, the poor thing looks quite hungry. :-(

The Re-Farmer