I love how he’s got his face smooshed into his own leg.
And no, he’s not as soft and fluffy as he looks. He’s even softer and fluffier!
I was also finally able to get to the mail today and found a gift from a dear friend.
She sent me yeast!
The top packets are from the one time I was able to find some locally. I’m not a fan of the quick rise instant yeast. It may be more convenient, since it doesn’t need proofing and can be added in with the flour, but I’m a bit more old fashioned about that. Traditional, you might even say. Teehee. I made a funny. Well… I made myself laugh, at least. I’m a goof. I know it. :-D
My dear friend actually found some traditional active dry yeast. These have the larger granules and require proofing. I can’t even really say exactly what I’m seeing or tasting different about using this yeast, compared to the instant yeast. It’s a combination of feeling slightly different while working the dough, a difference in how it rises, and subtle differences in taste and texture in the end result. I just like it better.
One of these days, I want to try the even older style wet yeast. No hurry on that. From what I’ve seen, they come in bricks the size of a pound of butter. I’d have to be planning on a whole lot of baking, to use it up quickly, before I even consider picking any up.
So now we have a bit of a buffer in case, for some reason, we can’t use our sourdough.
M, you are such a sweetheart! I miss you dearly. <3
Welcome to my “Recommended” series of posts. These will be weekly – for now – posts about resources I have found over the past while that I found so excellent, I want to share them with you, my dear readers. 🙂 Whether or not I continue to post these, and how often they are posted, will depend on feedback. Please feel free to comment below, and if you have a favorite resource of your own, do share, and I will review them for possible future posts.
I hope you find these recommendations as useful and enjoyable as I have!
This week’s recommendation is a US based permaculture vlog by Justin Rhodes and family.
Now, I grew up here on the farm, in conditions I affectionately refer to as “two sticks ahead of the stone ages”. We were subsistence farmers. We grew enough to feed ourselves and our animals, we sold beef cows at auction once a year for money, and if things got tight, my parents got odd jobs to pay the bills. We had chickens and cows for as long as I can remember, plus we, at various times, had sheep (I think my parents got rid of them before I was born), horses (they came with the farm; my dad upgraded to tractors, and the horses were eventually sold) pigs, geese, turkeys, bantam chickens, and probably other critters I don’t remember. We also had a huge garden where we grew and preserved most of our food, we butchered our own meat and, of course, we had our own eggs.
So basically, I grew up in the “back to the land” environment so many say we should all be going back to. There are many positive things to say about this life, but I find that most of the people who say such things have no clue just how difficult it is, and unreliable it can be.
Then there are people who are doing it for real, and they have no illusions about such a life. They’re also making it work in creative ways.
These days, they don’t call is subsistence farming anymore, but “homesteading.” As far as I can tell, it’s the same thing, really. There are some significant differences in some things, though, and this is one of the resources I’m learning a lot from.
I stumbled onto Justin Rhodes videos through something called a “chickshaw.” It was a variation on a concept I’d never heard of before.
The chicken tractor.
Our chicken coop was an old log cabin that was previously used as a summer kitchen. The idea of having a chicken coop you could move was quite novel to me. Why would anyone even want to?
Well, it turns out there are all sorts of advantages to moving them around! Not just with chickens, but pigs, too.
Man, that would have saved us SO much work, when I was growing up on the farm!
After watching some of his videos, I now really want chickens again. Our soil could really, really use them.
There are a lot of permaculture resources out there, but I find I really enjoy this one. Part of what I like about it is that a lot of what’s covered is that, while the channel has been going since 2012 (the earliest videos start in 2015), it’s still very much a learning experience for the entire family. He talks about their failures as well as their successes, and they don’t shy away from some of the harsh realities of raising animals for food. He really gets into the hows and whys of the things they do, and his enthusiasm is contagious. They also share their knowledge, and while some is available to members only, they also have things like a free course at their Abundant Permaculture website.
There is a LOT available on their channel, on a variety of topics.
There are quite a lot of well organized playlists to follow as well.
I think that, even for those who aren’t planning to do any homesteading, it would still be useful for those interested in maybe growing more of their own food, or having a few backyard chickens. If you are thinking of homesteading some day, I definitely recommend checking this resource out.
On top of all this, now that so many people are affected by the Wuhan virus lock downs, there has been a sudden increase in people wanting to know how to grow their own food. Fast. That call is being answered, as new videos are coming out to directly address how people who may never had had gardens before can find ways to grow food for themselves and their family quickly.
First, you may have noticed a change in the menu at the top. I now have a separate tab for sourdough. If you’re looking for information on making a sourdough starter, or trying some of the recipes we’ve been using, that’s where you’ll find quick links to all the relevant posts.
There’s a reason I’ve done this. :-D
We have long been the sort of family to keep a pantry stocked of basics and do a lot of “from scratch” cooking. Part of it was because that’s what we wanted to do, but there was many a time when finances left us with little choice.
Since we’ve been living on my husband’s long term disability income, which comes in once a month, we’ve also been in the practice of stocking up once a month, long before we found ourselves living out in the boonies.
Which means that many of the things people are being called to do, with the Wuhan virus lockdowns, are things we were already doing. Now, however, there are more people doing it, which means we’re suddenly having a harder time finding things that have never been an issue before.
Like yeast.
Now, to be honest, I did have troubles finding the type of yeast I wanted. It was far easier to find super quick acting or bread machine yeast, than the slower acting yeasts I preferred. But that’s just me being picky. :-D Right now, there just isn’t any type of yeast to be found, even as supplies of flour and sugar have been restocked in many places; at least in the cities.
I have given up Facebook for Lent, which is probably an extra blessing this year, as I’m missing out on all the social media crazy that I’m sure is going around right now. I still use their messenger, as I can use it on my phone without logging into Facebook, so I sometimes get people sending me information that way, but beyond that, I’m pretty much out of the social media loop.
With so many people suddenly stuck at home and having to learn how to cook and bake, plenty have turned to social media to discuss and share. Since I’ve mentioned to a few friends and family members about my inability to find yeast, I had someone message me with something they found.
It was instructions on how to “make your own yeast.”
Now, right off the bat, I knew things were off. That’s not how yeast works. You don’t “make” yeast. Yeast is a living thing, and wild yeast floats in the air around us all the time. Now, it could have meant instructions on how to make something like commercial yeast, but that’s not what was in the photo.
What it really was, was instructions on how to make a sourdough starter.
Which was great. As a recipe, it could have made a very nice sourdough.
The reason I say “could” instead of “would” is because how it turns out depends on the wild yeast that finds a home in the mixture and starts colonizing it. It’s entirely possible for a nasty strain to take hold, and instead of getting a nice, bubbly mixture that smells wonderful, you get something that’s black or red or otherwise nasty, and it needs to be thrown out. That’s why even some sourdough starter recipes include adding a bit of commercial yeast. This is to ensure that a strain of yeast that is known to be safe is established.
There are lots of reasons people so readily adopted commercial yeast.
Even if it was colonized by a lovely strain of yeast, sourdough starter is not something you can substitute 2:1 with commercial yeast. It doesn’t work that way. Starter is a living thing that needs to be tended and fed and stored properly if it’s not going to be used very often. It also behaves differently than commercial yeast, typically taking much longer to rise (unless your recipe calls for something like baking soda which triggers a chemical reaction… do feel free to visit the sourdough tab to learn more). That slow rise is one of the attractions of sourdough baking, as it allows all sorts of lovely flavours to develop.
Oh, and the Pinterest worthy photo of a mason jar full to the top with lovely, bubbly sourdough starter?
Don’t do it. It may not be as aesthetically pleasing, but this is what it should look like.
A starter needs lots of room to bubble and expand. Put it in a little mason jar, and you’re going to have a mess to clean up before long! Also, if you’re going to be doing any serious level of baking with sourdough, you’re going to need more than a tiny jar will give you. We keep ours in a giant plastic bowl (no metal!). Some of our recipes call for 4 cups of starter, so we keep a fairly large amount of starter bubbling away.
Having yeast is really handy. That’s why, even though we have a sourdough starter we’ve managed to keep alive for a year and a half now, I still like to have commercial yeast.
I recently spoke to my mother about not being able to find yeast. She told me how, in her younger years, no one used yeast. She’s shared memories of her childhood before, so I already knew that part. When bread baking, her mother would set aside a piece of the dough for the next baking day. I knew that part, too, as it was a common technique at the time, and my dad has also shared memories of his family doing the same. Her mother would bury the set aside piece of dough into the flour.
Wait… I didn’t know that part!
In fact, this was a method I’d never heard of before. My grandmother would bury the piece of dough in the flour. A dry crust would form on the outside, and it would need to be soaked before it could be used in the next batch of bread.
I think I might have to try that!
So what’s my point about all this?
Well, for those who are new to baking and wondering what to do about not having commercial yeast, you’ll be fine. You can make a sourdough starter. Just know that this is something that takes time to get established. Or you can make flatbread, with no leavening at all. There are options. The trick will be to sift through the misinformation that’s out there. It’s not as hard as some make it out to be, but it’s not as “easy” as others make it out to be, either.
I supposed it comes down to, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t!
This morning, I had the boys keeping me company as I did my rounds.
They do love that post! :-D It’s one of their favorite things to climb and scratch when they follow me.
Later, I hear meowing from another direction and eventually spotted Butterscotch making her way through the trees.
With some difficulty.
She is still pregnant.
Poor thing! When I came to pick her up, she would not let me near her. I wanted to carry her over the deep snow, but I think she doesn’t want to be picked up right now.
I don’t know how much time we’ve got to clear out the basement. I don’t know about the girls, but I’m hurting quite a bit today and will probably not be able to get to it again. At least nothing too physical. I suppose I could take a break for our 32nd anniversary. ;-)
Not a complete break, though. I whipped up a couple of mats that we will use to create cozy nests that I hope Butterscotch and Beep Beep will be content with to have their babies on.
They already pass the Susan test. Susan, of the still nekkid shaved belly. I can’t believe how long it’s taking for her fur to grow back after getting spayed!
In other areas, we got some good news. Not long ago, a nurse at the long term care facility my almost 100 yr old aunt is in tested positive for the Wuhan virus. The nurse went into isolation, as did 9 residents that had already been displaying signs of respiratory illness. This, in itself, is not unusual for the facility, but they took precautions and tested them, just in case.
Well, today it was announced that the nurse’s test was a false positive. There is no Wuhan virus in the facility at all. With this news, I believe our area is back to zero cases.
After I got the news, I phoned my mom to let her know. She had already heard the news on the radio, so that was good. As we got to chatting, I mentioned the work we’ve been doing in the basement, and that I’d taken 11 batteries to the barn. She flipped out a bit, thinking I was planning to throw them away. I told her no, I was planning to take them to a scrap yard, to sell them by weight. I think she still thought I was talking about the dump and went on about there being people who would buy them. Eventually, she told me that she used to phone someone who would come to the farm and buy old batteries from her. Which is good to know, but it does make me wonder just how many of these there would have been if she hadn’t done that! I don’t think she realizes, however, that if I take them to a scrap yard myself, I’ll get a better price. I also had a hard time explaining to her that I couldn’t get rid of the batteries now, anyhow, because of the lockdown. Just as she expected to be able to go to a restaurant for lunch after her doctor’s appointment, she seemed to think I’d be able to get a scrap dealer to come over and buy old batteries off of me. I’m a bit surprised by that, considering her own building is, literally, locked down and all regular social events are cancelled, and she can’t even go to church. For me, it’s easier to forget, since we are already pretty isolated and not much has changed at home.
Speaking of which, time to pain killer up and get back at it!
Normally, Sunday is our day of rest. No unnecessary work is done.
Unfortunately, cleaning the basement has crossed over into the “necessary work” category. Part of the challenge is finding a time to do it when the girls and I are all physically up to it. We need to get it safe enough to use as a cat maternity ward, and we may already be too late for Butterscotch. I haven’t seen her all day today.
We got a huge amount of progress done, and there is still much to do. We’re not even doing much sorting. Though there were some things that very obviously needed to go straight to the junk pile, most went to be stored in the barn. Including…
… lots of motors. In the photo is 5 of the 6 small motors we cleared out. There are more, larger motors that still need to be moved. I will be trying to keep them all together in the barn. I have no idea what their state or status is, but my brother might now.
Of course, we also found all sorts of interesting things. Including this blast from the past for me!
Yeah. That’s a “throwing star”. One of my boyfriends in high school made it for me in shop class. It used to be nice and shiny, and boy could that thing sink keep into a wooden door!
We also found a panel of chain mail. I don’t know if it’s a front or back panel, but it was clearly meant for a very small person. I have no idea who in my family would have gotten themselves some chain mail!
Manual hair clippers! This was a cool and unexpected find! They were well protected in their box, thankfully. The massive towing chain and hook it’s leaning on is another unexpected find. :-D
A light bulb for a type of light I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere, yet.
(Thanks, 53Old, for your comments about this. This is a Made in Canada, 3AU6 vacuum pentode tube, most likely from one of the many TVs we acquired when my parents bought some property many years ago. There was an old shed that had at least a dozen old TVs in there, some of which had their solid wood cabinets converted into shelves we are using now.)
We also found some stuff I was really excited about. They are going to be quite useful!
A couple of modern planers, and a clamp. A bit of clean up, and I hope to get good use out of these.
I was more excited to find this.
A small vice with a table clamp. We have a larger vice in the shed we keep our lawn mowers in that I’ve already found useful, but it’s the type that gets affixed permanently to a surface. I was already thinking of seeing if I could find a smaller one with a clamp at one of the local hardware stores, and now I don’t have to!
We found lots of other things, too, that I didn’t get pictures of.
Here is how the basement looked, after we hauled some stuff out and called it a day.
All the rubber boots still in the shelves will need to be thrown out. They’re so old, they’re brittle.
Hmmm… Three table legs got taken to the barn. I wonder if that round table top is the table they belonged to?
At one point, the floor in the foreground was full of stuff that got hauled out. The shopping cart is full of old wood, picture frames and frame glass that needs to be removed with care. The cardboard box partially visible on the bottom right has broken glass in it.
The sheet of pink rigid insulation was brought down for something you’ll see in another photo. Some of this stuff will stay, while others will be hauled to the barn. The broom is leaning in my mother’s old sewing machine. That’s a keeper, for sure!
Quite a lot got cleaned out of the “bar”. Still lots more to get rid of. It’s still cleaner than it has been, in decades! We’ll need to get into it with a vacuum cleaner and crevice tool, to get rid of the very old mouse droppings and bits of broken glass.
There are still a few bottles to move out, but most of them have already been set aside into the old basement.
Eventually, we will go through these. The ones we want to keep, including for future bottle bricks, will be thoroughly cleaned. Unfortunately, a few of the old wine bottles we dug up still have liquid in them. *shudder* The rest will go to the landfill for recycling. There are a few bottles we found that might actually be collector items, too.
The rigid insulation is now covering an opening (formerly a window, I think) into the old basement. The main focus for here was to 1) make sure that opening stays covered and 2) there is no gap any future exploring kittens can fall into in the back.
The bottom cupboards of this shelf has lots of old paint cans in it. From the smell when I looked inside, there is at least one that is leaking.
The shelf itself is in pretty terrible shape, and I’d love to replace it some day.
Some day.
The other old shelf is in slightly better shape. At some point, I want to set up that drill press in an easily accessible location, and test it out.
Hopefully, we didn’t overdo it today, and will be able to continue tomorrow. Once we have it safe, and access to the old basement is blocked to cats, we’ll be able to set up a cozy area for kitties. I’m just hoping that, if Butterscotch has already had a litter, we can find them and bring them inside. It’s way too early for kittens, and their chances of survival are not that good right now. :-(
Lots of work to do before we get to that point, though!
My daughter spotted a surprise in our largest aloe vera, Sarlac 2.
It’s starting to send up a flower spike!
This aloe traveled with us during the move. Before the move, we were able to sell quite a few things, including several of Sarlac 1’s transplanted babies. We had intended to bring the Sarlac along with us, but realized it was simply too big to fit in our van, even without all the other stuff we had to jam into there. So when someone came to buy this plant, I asked if they’d be willing to upgrade to the mama plant and we’d keep this one.
Not only did they agree to take the mother aloe, they ended up buying almost all the remaining potted aloes as well!
So that saved us a whole lot of space.
The Sarlac was a massive, toothy aloe we’d had for quite a few years, but it wasn’t until we moved to a larger townhouse in the co-op that it apparently got the amount of sun it was longing for. Shortly after, it threw out a flower spike with three buds on it – then a second spike, soon after! I’d never seen an aloe bloom before. Unfortunately, the spikes tipped the balance of the aloe – literally. The pot fell under the weight. Everything survived just fine, including the pot, but we transplanted to a pot with straight sides, instead of the more decorative pot with a narrower base.
Our umbrella tree is in that pot right now, and this experience is why I’m really wanting to find a larger, straight sided pot for it.
The girls and I will be re-arranging the living room over the next week. My husband has moved his computer set up into his bedroom, closer to his hospital bed, so now there’s this strange empty space. As we move things around, we’ll hopefully find a better arrangement for the plants in the process, including a better spot for the mini-greenhouse until it can go outside.
I did end up stopping at the post office today, where I could also pick up some more deer feed (the post office is in an old style general store, so it’s got a little bit of all kinds of things!) and found my back ordered birdhouse gourd seeds in the mail box. We will be starting these indoors, too. I was more than ready to start the cucamelon and fennel, but even if we were to transplant earlier than the last frost date, it would still be way too early to start them indoors. They can be started closer to the middle of the month, then the rest of the things we want to start indoors, like these gourds, can be started about a week later.
It’s nice to think about budding things when there’s still snow on the ground!
The snow was gone in a lot of places before the storm hit a couple of days ago. I could even see green grass through last year’s thatch. So it was no surprise that we’ve seen virtually no deer. Even in the trail cam facing where they cross the road to our place went from streams of dozens of deer to … nothing. In just a couple of days.
With snow falling pretty much continually for the past two days, all the yards and gardens were covered with a pristine white blanket.
Yesterday evening, we saw three skittish deer making their way to the feeding station. They didn’t really get much to eat, as something spooked them and they ran off. They were the first deer to visit us since before the snow fell.
This is what I found this morning.
Tracks, everywhere!
The area around the feeding station was torn up as they dug through the snow to get at the seeds below (which a couple of cats took advantage of. :-D ). From the heavy trails through the garden and trees on the west side, more came and went from that direction than from along the spruce grove to the east. The east yard was full of tracks as they headed towards the barn as well. Tracks went through the spruce grove as well, and my rounds had be going past where a couple of them jumped the south fence to cross the driveway to the old hay yard.
It should be interesting when I check the trail cam files. That will wait until I come back from town after dropping my daughter off at work.
For now, I have to grab a shovel and clear the plow ridge. The snow was soft enough, we didn’t bother clearing the driveway, but the wall of snow at the road is something else entirely!
So… I did a bit of shoveling when I headed out to do my rounds this morning.
There is no drifting in front of the house, so the depth of snow you’re seeing is what fell. I figure it’s about 6-7 inches. There is still a light snowfall as I write this. We’ve got winds from the north, but nothing like we had overnight.
Between the snow and the stay-at-home conditions right now, I thought I’d share this questionnaire I found. It’s being passed from blog to blog, so I don’t know who to credit for it, but I thought it might be fun. Feel free to leave your own answers in the comments. :-)
Are you staying home from work/school?
Home is my “work”, so… no? Yes? My husband is on disability, so no change for him. One daughter works at a pharmacy, and while her hours may have been cut, she is an essential worker and still has her job. My other daughter has an internet based business. So really, not much change for any of us.
If you’re staying home, who is with you?
My husband and my daughters.
Who would be your ideal quarantine mate?
My husband and my daughters.
Are you a homebody?
YES!!!
An event you were looking forward to that got canceled?
None. We don’t really do stuff like that. Everything is either too far away or too expensive. Or both. The one thing we’d planned that got cancelled at the last minute was a dinner with my brother and his wife. I was really looking forward to that.
What movies have you watched recently?
Hmm. I don’t usually watch movies. I think the last one I watched was Paprika.
What shows are you watching?
Mostly YouTube channels I’ve been discovering. Also stuff on Tubi. It’s free and while some things have commercials, they are short and quiet. I discovered the series, The Edwardian Farm and The Victorian Farm, and now I’m hooked on Peter, Ruth and Alex.
What music are you listening to?
I don’t actually listen to music much anymore. If I’m working in the basement or outside, and not making too much noise in the process, I’ll get a playlist going. I have very eclectic interests. My daughters have found some very interesting artists they’ve introduced me to, as well. My playlist includes Tom Waits, Cosmo Sheldrake, The HU, Tengarr Cavalry, Sam Lee, Wardruna, Twenty One Pilots, Mumford and Sons, Sivu, Eliza Rickman, Garmarna, Unwed Mothers, and songs from the movies Dhoom I, II and III, among many others.
Excuse me while I get some music going while I answer the rest of this! :-D
What are you reading?
If the questions means reading of books, sadly, I don’t read anywhere near as much as I used to. Too many distractions, and my eyes aren’t what they used to be. I’ve been working my way through the Bible again, through a ‘chronological Bible in a year’ daily devotional. Most of the reading I do are articles I find while doing research and blogs I follow.
What are you doing for self-care?
Hhhmm… That’s not something I really think about. It’s just sort of woven into my days. Things like, letting go of situations that are not in my control. Not taking on too many things at once. Doing crochet and other crafts. Learning how to do new things. Researching stuff that interest me. It’s something I had to put a priority on, many years ago. One of the things I discovered about myself is that I have to write. There was a time when circumstances prevented me from sitting down and writing at all, never mind on a regular basis. The girls would have both been under 10 yrs old at the time, I think. After about a year, I found myself in a pretty bad place, stress-wise. It was really awful. Setting aside time to write regularly made a HUGE difference. So I guess my biggest “self-care” activity right now is writing in this blog!
So how about you? How has the Wuhan virus affected you and your household? How are you holding out?
The Re-Farmer 