Clean Up: old basement progress

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I was able to get a few more hours working on the old basement today.

Honestly, I should probably be using those hours doing housework, but that’s depressing. :-D Cleaning the basement may be really gross at times, but once it’s done, it’ll stay done for a very long time.

It’s a psychological thing. :-D

Today, I finally got to the water damaged shelf.

The containers at the bottom, with odds and ends in them, simply got moved to the other basement, to join the other stuff there we’ll need to sort through and figure out what to do with. That big plant pot will hopefully be big enough to transplant our umbrella tree into. I just have to find a drip tray for it, though the umbrella tree will likely spend the summer outside again, so I’ve got time for that.

Through the shelf, peaking from behind the chimney that used to be hooked up to the old wood burning furnace, is a really big baking pan. Too big to fit in the oven, so I don’t know why it’s here. I later cleaned it up and set it aside. I’ll be using it as a tray for when we start seeds indoors.

Dismantling the shelf was certainly interesting. Just look at the size of those nails! (In case you can’t make them out, they’re about 4 inches long, and those were what held the shelves to the sides.) For part of it, I ended up using a big flat head screwdriver to pry pieces apart. I had thought that some of the boards might be salvageable, but… nope. This will all go to the burn pile.

That shopping cart came in handy. :-D

Yay! It’s done!

That extension cord plugged into the outlet goes up through the floor, and into the master bedroom, along with a TV cable. There’s no longer a TV there, but the extension cord still comes in handy!

When we’re finally able to renovate, this chimney is what I want to have removed and replaced with a dumbwaiter. :-) That will make it so much easier to move things from floor to floor!

With the space opened up, I though I might set up a table here. Some time ago, I’d noticed a sturdy looking wooden table top leaning against the wall just on the other side of the opening to the new part basement. No sign of any legs, though. While I was clearing things in the new basement, I found – along with the hand pump and other things I uncovered – a set of legs that looked like they might belong to this table top.

So I brought them over.

They were, of course, extremely dusty, so I gave all the pieces a good cleaning. This table is clearly home made. I’m thinking it may have been made by my late brother. He did have a wood lathe and could have turned those legs himself.

Unfortunately…

The holes the legs were meant to fit into had crud in them. Only one of them was clear. These two were the worst. I was able to scrape most of the glue and residue out with a utility knife, but that was it for now.

So the legs were definitely made for this table, and the ends would normally have fit into the openings. With all the crud in there, they wouldn’t go all the way in.

I decided to set it up, anyway, in a different area.

I lured my daughter away from some commission work to give me a hand in setting it up on bricks, to protect from any future flooding. (The water on the floor was from the still wet table top and legs.)

I just had to set up my mother’s “thou shalt not steal” sign. Too funny!

Once it was set up, I hammered the table top down, using a piece of scrap wood to protect the surface, to try and get those legs into the openings as much as possible. They barely moved! Which meant that this is a very, very wobbly table.

Just to be on the safe side, because I KNOW I’ll forget and lean on it or something, I made up a warning sign. :-D

After this, I was able to start working on the other side of the basement.

There isn’t a lot that has been added to the space, but it’s big stuff, so it’s filling up fast!

The remains of a wooden chair got pulled apart (the legs were already falling off!) and added to the shopping cart with the rotten shelf pieces. The garden hose we’d used to help clear the access pipe to the septic tank got rolled up into a 5 gallon bucket I’d found, so it’s all nice and neat and tucked away. In one of the pictures, you can see some hoses behind what looks like black pool noodles. Those are old aquarium hoses. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to use them again, since I’ve not been able to find a source to replace a broken hose connector for the filter of our big aquarium. Still, just in case, I cleaned them up, then found another bucket I could roll them up into. I even found a lid to keep the dust off them.

Here is how it looks now. When shifting the broken hot water tank, to move out the box the new one came in, I discovered there was still water in it that had started to drain. So that got moved over the drain trough next to the old hot water tank we replaced shortly after moving here. The next time I work down here, it will be to dismantle at least that one tank, as it’s way too heavy to haul up the stairs as it is. The newer broken tank is pretty light, so it might be easier to take it outside as is. I still want to dismantle it. I would really love to see if I can tell why it broke after only about 2 years.

There is still stuff that needs to be sorted through, but that is for another time. Of course, there are always odd finds. There were so many buckets of various sizes, but only one had a lid on it. Given what I’ve been finding elsewhere, I feared it might have something else for the special disposal pile.

Nope. Just this.

No clue what these are for, but I assume they were cut to size and kept protected in the bucket for a reason, so I’m leaving them until I can ask my brother if he knows what they’re for. There were a few other little things that joined the collection of rotted wood in the shopping cart, and one thing that was definitely a keeper. The temporary grave marker used for my late brother until the memorial stone was installed a year later. It’s just a simple board cut into a cross at the top, with my brother’s name and dates engraved on a little brass plate. It’s got some moisture damage on it, but that’s likely from the year it spent outside than any damage here in the basement. My oldest brother made it, and I definitely don’t want to loose track of it.

I’m rather pleased with the progress made today.

Hhhmmm. I suddenly can’t remember if I turned one of the lights off. One last trip to the basement, and I’m done for the next while! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: both basements, progress and things we find!

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So while my wonderful daughters were making brownies, I headed to the basements to continue with some organizing and cleaning.

In the process, I found some very cool things!

The first thing I found was among a pile of glass jars I sorted through.

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Brownies, with recipe

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Along with the sourdough batter bread my daughters made today, they also made brownies!

I wasn’t there to take pictures as they made it, but here is their recipe.

I didn’t realize until I uploaded the picture that there’s flour covering some of it. That reads “1 1/4” for the white sugar. :-)

For the chocolate chips, this time they used mini Reese’s Pieces.

These are such decadent brownies!

I think I’m going to go have a piece…

The Re-Farmer

Sourdough “Batter” Bread, with recipe

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Today my daughters did the baking, starting with a sourdough “batter” bread.

There’s a reason the word batter is in quotations…

The girls have been finding recipes they like and, after trying them out, adding them to a notebook with any modifications or adjustments they’ve come up with.

Like this…

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Crushed

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I wanted to get some progress in the basements today, but before I continued with cleaning up the old part basement, I wanted to clear things out of the new part basement. I’d been putting garbage bags near the bottom of the stairs, and things were getting pretty cluttered.

It wasn’t just the garbage I’ve been cleaning up from the old basement, though.

Shortly after we moved in, one of the things we’d done was set up wire frame bag holders to hold bags for recycling.

This was back when we still thought recycling was worth doing out here. I’m not so sure anymore.

At the landfill, the only general household recycling they want sorted out is the glass. Everything else is supposed to go into the general bins, which then get shipped to the city for sorting. At first, we would take our paper products to the burn barrel, but with the fire bans in the past two summers, that stopped. Even starting up again in the winter didn’t work out, due to weather. So that all goes to the dump now, instead.

One thing that took some getting used to after the move, is that this province does not have bottle depots. You know all those things you pay an enviro fee on when you buy them at the grocery store? We used to be able to take them in and get that fee back. Here, we just pay the fee and it goes… somewhere.

However, I knew that aluminum could be taken in and sold by weight. It’s one of those things organizations do for charity drives; they collect people’s aluminum, then sell it by weight to raise money. Pop tabs are collected separately, as they are pure aluminum and get a higher price per pound. Pop tab collections are sometimes done to raise money for wheelchairs.

So we’ve been collecting our aluminum for close to 2 1/2 years now.

For a while, we had a wire bag holder for aluminum, another for paper and plastic, and a small bin for glass.

At some point, we needed to make space for company, so it all went into the basement, but never made it back up again.

Since then, we continued to bag the aluminum separately into smaller bags, all of which got tossed into the basement as smaller bags were filled. (Except the tabs from pop cans and food tins. We keep a small jar for those and when it’s full, I run a magnet through them to catch any that aren’t pure aluminum, then transfer them to a 1 gallon jar. We have yet to fill that jar.)

Then we got a can crusher, which allowed us to fit more into the little bags before they got tossed into the basement.

As you can imagine, things were starting to get ridiculous down there.

Today, I fixed that.

Most of this involved combining the contents of little bags into larger ones, but I found 3 recycling bags full of stuff from before getting the can crusher.

I just spent a whole lot of quality time with the crusher.

This is what I got out of the basement.

Six bags of crushed cans. Not everything could be crushed; some of the cans were too big even for our extra tall can crusher, and things like cat food tins don’t get crushed at all. Even taking that into account, each one of those bags is the equivalent of 3 bags of uncrushed cans.

So this is the equivalent of 18 bags of cans, crushed to fit into 6.

I honestly don’t know if this is enough to be worth taking to a scarp yard. They go by the pound, and aluminum is really light.

At least they’re out of the basement.

They are now taking up space in the garage, instead. :-D

I also got out a large bag of regular recycling, plus another 4 garbage bags from the old basement clean up.

Things are looking a whole lot better down there, just by getting this stuff out!

At some point, we will even be able to start using the new part basement as a workshop again!

I’m really looking forward to that. Even if stairs are my nemesis. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Gathering Data: future cheese cave?

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Among the many things we are interested in doing in the future is making cheese.

We already make yogurt cheese (see here and here) whenever we make yogurt, which can be used right away, but we’re interested in making cheeses that need to be aged.

Which requires a place to age them. Like a cheese cave.

Well, we do sort of have a “cave” in the basement. The old root cellar.

In the research I’ve been doing (watch out for a future “Recommended” post for a home cheese making resource!), the aging cheeses need temperatures and humidity to stay within a certain range.

I don’t know that our root cellar has that range. For starters, I think it might actually be too cold, but that can be helped with appropriate insulation. I think our greater challenge will be the humidity.

Since this is not something we’ll be able to do for quite some time, that means we have time to gather data.

Which begins today.

I went to pick up a cheap thermometer at the dollar store and found a hydrometer right next to it, which was great, because I didn’t even think of such a device existing. At least not in household form. These are not mounted just inside the door of the root cellar. This is probably the warmest part of the room, but the best location for hanging them. Ah, well.

As you can see, the temperature gauge had already dropped quite a bit.* The humidity is about the same as it was upstairs, so I don’t know if that was the actual reading, or if it still needed time to adjust for the new location.

There were already huge nails hammered into the floor joists of the entry above (I’m finding nails like this all over the basements, garage, sheds, barn – anywhere there is wood, there are nails hammered in for hanging things), so I used one that was accessible, but still out of the way enough to not bash my head, for the clip board. I printed out some chart sheets to record date, time, temperature and humidity. The plan is to come down here once a week, at different times of the day, and record the gauge readings.

This would be why it’s so cold in here. This vent duct goes directly outside. The only thing at the end is a screen to keep the critters out. While I was down there, I felt an actual wind coming through this duct.

Over the next year, we will get the weekly readings and slowly empty the room out and give it a good cleaning. I figure, in a year we’ll be able to chart the data and use that to determine how much would need to be done to make it functional as a cheese cave, or if we have to go with something else. Like a modified refrigerator.

If the room turns out to not be appropriate as a cheese cave, I already know it works well as a root cellar. :-) So either way, it will be used in the future!

The Re-Farmer

*edit: for some reason, my brain just assumed that, like every other thermometer I’ve seen, the 0C was at the top, so when I looked at it, I saw 2C instead of 12C!! Which is a bit of a relief, because while the temperature did continue to drop, it was not as severe as I originally thought.

Bread Baking Day – all done!

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Sometimes, I think we really need to do bread baking more often.

Then I remember how much clean up is involved. :-D

No matter! We now have two kinds of freshly baked bread done.

Here’s how the seedy bread turned out.

This is how it looked after only 1 hour of rising time. The bowl it’s in is pretty huge – too big to fit in our kitchen sink (which makes washing it a bit of a challenge! :-D ) – with plenty of room for this 4 loaf recipe.

The timing of things works out really well. I use half the dough to make buns first, leaving them to rise while I shape a couple of loaves. Once those are done, I star to preheat the oven. By the time it’s heated up, the buns have risen enough to go straight in. Once they’re out, the loaves have had enough time for their second rising. When those are done, the overnight sourdough loaves are ready to go into the oven. No wasted time in between, making for more efficient use of a hot oven.

They came out quite beautifully, too! Such a tasty bread, with a really nice texture. I love the bit of crunch the seeds add to it.

The second rising for the sourdough loaves was probably about 4 – 4 1/2 hours. The first rising was probably about 11 or 12 hours.

This is how they looked, just before I put them in the oven. They definitely rose more than the first time I tried this recipe, so the modifications made quite a difference, but still not rising as high as variations that use added yeast.

Is it worth it?

I think so.

The actual working time to make this bread is low. It’s mixed at night, then kneaded for 10 minutes the next day. It really doesn’t need a lot of attention.

The loaves came out so smooth and gorgeous. None of the cracking you can get when using an added yeast bread, since there’s no sudden rise in height in the oven.

The bread itself has a slightly thicker, sturdier crust, while the crumb is incredibly soft, tender and fine in texture.

Reducing the amount of sugar was definitely a good move. The sourdough flavour was more dominant this time, whereas the last time I tried this recipe, the sweetness was more dominant. I think adding that little bit of baking soda helped with the rising, too.

I’d still prefer a more “sour” sourdough flavour, but that has more to do with our starter than with the recipe. We’ll be making more of this one, that’s for sure. I think I’m satisfied with it enough that, next time I bake it, I’ll post with the tweaked recipe.

Tomorrow is going to be another baking day, though this time for my daughters. I look forward to seeing what they’re planning to make. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Bread Baking Day

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Yesterday was actually intended to be my bread baking day, but we just didn’t have the energy for it. It was a pretty bad fatigue and pain day for all of us. :-(

I did start a batch of overnight sourdough before bed, though. The last time we tried this recipe, it didn’t really rise at all by morning, so I tweaked the ingredients this time. I reduced the sugar to something adequate to feed the sourdough yeast, and not make the bread itself a sweeter bread. I also added just a touch of baking soda along with the flour. Last time, I left the dough to rise in a bowl on our dining room table, but the house it just too cold, so this time it went into a warm oven with the light left on to keep it warmer throughout the night.

I checked the dough before I headed out to do my rounds, and was quite pleased by what I saw.

It rose quite nicely! I’m very pleased.

After finishing my rounds, I kneaded the dough for 10 minutes, then set it up in loaf pans for a second rising.

With no yeast other than the sourdough in the recipe, it will still take a long time to rise. So I waited an hour before starting some non-sourdough bread.

My favourite additives to my basic bread recipe is thick cut oats, chia seeds, ground flax, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. The sunflower and pumpkin seeds are roasted and salted, and this time I took more time to grind them in a mortar and pestle to break them up. The whole seeds and bigger pieces tend to fall out while the dough it being kneaded. I let it all soften in boiling water first, which makes a much nicer texture in the bread. I doubled the basic 2 loaf recipe again, too.

By the time I got this batch set aside to rise, it was about an hour and a half since setting the sourdough loaves to rise. A quick check showed very little change, so I expect to have the second batch baked before the sourdough is ready to put in the oven! :-D

Oh, and my timer has just gone off. Time to get back to it! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Colder temps and signs of furry visitors

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It was a bit perplexing, looking at the weather forecasts over the past few days. We’d have these lovely temperatures, hovering just a bit below freezing, while the app was saying it was cold.

A few days ago, I could at least blame the wind chill…

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