Thanks to my wonderful daughter taking over for me, yesterday, we had a couple of fresh loaves of bread to try this morning.
I’d started by having the dough baby soak overnight, then added flour to make a sponge. After several hours, this is what the sponge looked like.
My daughter set aside half of this, then used the remaining sponge to make our basic bread. Instead of using loaf pans, she made two big, flat loaves on a baking tray. Here is what I used for breakfast, this morning! :-)
The bread had a very mild sourdough flavour. For all the months the dough baby sat in the flour, it did not get any stronger in flavour. It was mild enough that I could put them with slices of brie under the broiler, and the flavour of the bread did not overpower the flavour of the cheese. The bread had a very nice texture to it, too.
As for the sponge that had been set aside; my daughter had used the flour from the dough baby’s canister in the bread, but there was still some left. I kneaded some into the sponge to make a stiffer dough, then refilled the canister half way with fresh flour, added the bough baby, then topped it with more flour. The canister is semi-transparent, so when I checked on it an hour or so later, I could see the dough baby had risen enough to work its way through the flour, so I gave the canister enough of a shake to cover it up again. With our temperatures slowly cooling (though I saw a 30C day in the forecast!!), we’ll be using this more often, which should further develop the flavour.
As someone who has never managed to keep a sourdough going for more than a couple of years, I really appreciate how low maintenance the old dough method is. If we can’t going to bake as often, it’ll just stay in its flour bed and dry up. It doesn’t need to be constantly used, fed, stirred, or kept warm. I think this will work out really well for us!
Well, this is one way to tell the temperature are getting chilly at night.
And that I need to change the batteries in the newer trail cam.
Until the camera warms up enough, it starts recording things in pink!
Also, during night shots, the infrared flash stops working and the files have a red law battery warning across the bottom. I’ve taken down the white string lights that had been along the top barbed wire on the fence, as they were getting pretty damaged and burnt out. There is now a solar powered string of lights long enough to reach from the gate to the corner fence post. When the infrared flash doesn’t turn on, they are quite nice and bright! :-)
I’ll have to head back out later with some fresh batteries. :-)
This was waiting for me, when I came into the sun room to start my morning rounds.
They know which door the food comes from! :-D
There are nine kittens and four adults in this photo, plus two more kittens at the food tray under the shrine. I can see five grey striped tabbies. So we have Bradicous, Chadicous, Tadicous and Sadicous… plus the spare! :-D The girls will have to come up with another -icous. :-D
There are quite a few more of the purple beans buried underneath. They have been, hands down, the most prolific bean producers, and if the weather keeps up the way it has been, we will be picking beans for at least another week or two! Even the yellow beans are putting out a second crop. With the drought conditions, none of the bean plants are as large and bushy as they should be, with the green and yellow beans particularly stunted, even as they continue to produce. With the green beans, that resulted in my finding bean pods that were almost as long as the plants were tall!
I had to get a bigger container to collect tomatoes with, instead of the red Solo cups we’ve been using until now. The vines are dying back, yet they still have so many ripening tomatoes!
Earlier today, I made a quick trip to the post office, before I gathered our morning harvest. The general store it is in always closes at noon on Wednesdays, so I had to do it early, but not too early; I knew the postmaster would need at least an hour from opening, to sort through the morning mail. We had some packages to pick up, but one of my daughters also had a package that was supposed to be delivered by courier, directly to our address, as it was from a place that does not deliver to box numbers.
Which has always been a problem, since our physical address doesn’t come up in searches. Like pretty much all of the roads around here, our road has two names; one is a numerical designation (part of the provincial system), and the other is our family name (a municipal thing). Many of the local roads are named after local families. It was only recently that I discovered that the road past our place has no name on the maps at all! Not even the road number. Which certainly explained why delivery companies had such a problem finding us!
My daughter was keeping an eye on the tracking number, however, and got a notification that her package was delivered to our door at about quarter to one. Of course, there was no such delivery, since the gate is locked. I could see nothing on the live feed of the security cameras, but my daughter went to see if it might have been left at the gate. Sure enough, I watched her on the camera as she got to the gate and picked up a white package. Which was on the gravel of the driveway, which also looks pretty white on the camera! No wonder I couldn’t see it!
I’m impressed that they found us, but it reminded me of something I wanted to try. Using the maps app on my phone, I found our road and took a closer look. It turned out that there is a 4 mile stretch of our road that is not labeled at all, however to the south of us, the road ends at another road, then restarts a short distance away. From where it restarts and continues south, it is labeled with the same numerical designation as the signs we have on our stop sign.
The four mile section that had no label is the only section that has our family name assigned to it. The offset part of the road with the numerical label probably has another family’s name assigned to it.
The app now has a function that allows the map to be edited. When I used that and started to select sections of the road, it simply said “unknown road”. I was able to select all 4 miles that had no label on it, then put in the name. It gave the option to add more information, so I added that it was also known by the numerical designation. I then sent the edit to Google Maps. I’ve already got a confirmation email saying “Thank you for your contribution. Your suggestion is being reviewed. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. We’ll let you know once the changes are published.”
Hopefully, that means or road will finally have a name attached to it on Google Maps, and people will be able to find us more easily! Plus, with the name rather than the number on the map, it will also match what is on not only my driver’s license, but on the licenses of several of my neighbours, too!
Speaking of which, I am hoping to get a chance to visit the one that sells pork products at the farmer’s market today. With our province’s latest draconian restrictions, organic humans are no longer allowed in “non-essential” places, even though such mandates are expressly forbidden in our laws, at both the federal and provincial levels. Vendors at markets aren’t required to be GMO though; just the customers. So I will just have to skip the market, and go right to the source! :-D
I’m quite okay with that. They are a homesteading family that are a few years ahead of where we want to be, as far as self-sufficiency goes, and I would love to see how they’ve been doing things! I may have grown up here on the farm, two sticks ahead of the stone ages, but I am more than happy to learn new, better and more efficient ways to go things! Especially since we’re only about one stick ahead of the stones ages now. ;-)
Gosh, it feels like such a long day today. It always does when we do our city shopping!
I am so glad we only do this once or twice a month!
But first… Kitties!
I just have to share some adorable photos with you. :-) <3
I got my morning Ginger cuddles!
He does not want me to pet him. If I try, he violently kicks my hand away with his back legs, rolls half onto his back and sticks the back of his head onto my hand for ear skritches. Not from above his head, but from below! Of course, once the skritches starts, a back leg starts to kick uncontrollably. :-D
Gosh, he’s adorable.
Before my daughter and I headed out to the city, I of course had to check the basement.
That is SUCH an improvement! By the time I checked it again after we got back from the city, this side was mostly dry. I think, by tomorrow, I’ll be able to move the blower fan to face the other side of the basement, as it had flooded enough to reach the other side of the furnaces. A couple more days, and we should be able to start the final clean up.
I even remembered to pick up more heavier duty latex gloves for the job, as the pair I was using while working on the drain pipe sprang leaks! :-D
Of the four places we typically try to hit during our monthly city shop, my younger daughter and I managed three. :-D Our first stop was at Canadian Tire, were we picked up more wood pellets. We still have some unopened bags to use as litter, but now that I’ve found how well they work to amend the soil in our garden beds, I have no problem stocking up even more! While there, we also found a heavy duty, high traffic, scrubbable paint for the inside of the outhouse. My older daughter was thinking a pale robin’s egg blue, but once we started looking at the colour samples, there were not a lot of options, so my younger daughter chose a light mint. Not a colour I would have chosen, but they have better taste than I do, so I trust them. ;-) As long as it’s a like colour and not white, I don’t really care all that much. :-D So now we just need to get all those tacks out of the walls, give it one last cleaning to get rid of any new dust or spider webs, and then we can paint! At some point, we’ll pick up more exterior paint to do the outside, but that can wait until next spring, really. Getting the roof fixed is more of a priority when it comes to the outside.
After Canadian Tire, we went to the international grocery store for those little things we can’t find at Costco, with Costco being our final stop. We didn’t get everything in the quantities we will need for our goal of stocking up extra for the winter, in case the weather has us stuck at home for a couple of months, again. Partly because, even using a flat cart, it would be just too much. The largest and heaviest items being the bags of dry cat food. Even so, it’s been a long time since we packed the van this full!
One thing we didn’t get a lot of was meat. Partly because we still had some in the freezer, but partly because we are planning on getting a quarter beef from the local supplier we found. They are taking orders now, then start butchering in November, and the meat will be ready in December. They are charging $6 per pound this year, and a quarter beef averages about 150-200 pounds in finished weight. So, at most, we can expect to be paying $1200. That’s the equivalent of our entire grocery budget, including cat supplies, toiletries, household cleaners and the like, for the entire month! Which means we have to make sure to set some of our grocery budget aside, along with the unallocated funds in our budget. Most of the unallocated funds for this month just went to pay for the plumber, though. We’ll have to juggle the budget a bit, so we can still set aside for the beef, while also not touching our contingency fund that is slated for something else.
After we got home and everything got put away, it was time for supper, and then I headed outside to water the garden beds. We hit 25C/77F today. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, and things have been pretty dry for the past little while. We still have the soaker hose set up under the squash trellis, and the sprinkler hose set up with the summer squash, so we got those going first. While I was at it, I topped up the empty kibble trays outside.
We may have got all of the outside cats when I did!
I counted 11 kittens in total, including Nosencrantz and Toesencrantz in their usual private dining area under the shrine. Nutmeg, Rosencrantz and Ghost Baby joined them, too! I also saw Potato Beetle, Rolando Moon and Butterscotch at the kibble house. They were all moving around so much that, if the 12th kitten was there, too, I could easily have missed it. Especially since they sometimes hide under the cat house.
There are nine kittens and three adults visible in the above photo. What a crowd! Lately, I’ve been seeing more and more of the kittens outside the sunroom door, waiting for me to come out with the kibble, and fewer of them run away completely when I come outside. Some of them are almost underfoot when I put the food out, even though they back right off if it seems like I’m about to stop near them. They are such an adorable bunch. I just love those stripes on the ‘icouses!
When I came back out later to switch the hose from the soaker hose to the sprinkler hose, I was very entertained by the sight of a Rolando Moon roast! She loves to climb right into the old roaster (which became a kibble tray after one of the handles broke off). I missed getting a photo of her looking all trussed up, before she gave me her famous death glare. :-D
Later on, I even saw Junk Pile cat! She has been coming out to eat after all the other cats and kittens are gone.
I’m just looking at the long range forecast right now, and it’s looking like we are going to have some absolutely glorious weather, well into October! That should go a long way to giving us a chance to get some outside projects worked on, and for our garden to continue producing. While watering today, I was noticing quite a lot of pea pods developing, and yes, I have even found some mature enough to taste! Just a couple of pods so far, but my goodness, fresh peas are the best! One of the sweet corn blocks is even looking like it might have cobs worth harvesting soon, too! I honestly thought that one was a lost cause, too. We shall see! Meanwhile, tomorrow I will be picking tomatoes, and probably more beans, too.
It’s past midnight as I write this, and it has suddenly become a rather unpleasant night!
I was returning from the bathroom when, while walking past the old basement door, I heard a splashing sound I should not have been hearing, so I went down to take a look.
The septic backed up again.
The pipe with the P trap was full to the top, and water backed up into the laundry sink to the point of overflowing. Thankfully, we don’t really use this basement much, because the water has spread pretty far. Thankfully, whatever caused it to back up happened relatively recently; the last major use of water was a load of laundry, and greywater seems to be most of what I was looking at down there.
I’ve already arranged for the septic guy to come over tomorrow morning. Getting that done was actually in the budget for next month, which means we would have had it done at the next of next week, when my husband’s disability payment came in on Thursday.
Once the tank is empty, I can see what I can do about unclogging the pipes. I am guessing it is the same sort of thing that happened last time. If that turns out to not be it, we’ll have to call in a plumber.
*sigh*
The last time this happened, we were able to set up a honey pot in the bathroom until we could use the toilet again. We don’t have it anymore; I took it over to my mother’s when we found out she was having mobility issues getting to the bathroom at night. We did, however, get the outhouse cleaned up, and made the entry safe to use. So we do have an alternative.
There’s a bit of a new issue, though.
Once we determined that we would have to use the outhouse, I grabbed the flashlight, some cleaning supplies and toilet paper to set it up. It’s been a while since I’ve gone in there, so I wanted to sanitize the seating area. When I opened the toilet lid to clean it, however, things looked… different. When I was cleaning it out before, I made a point of checking underneath, and saw the contents were composted and level from being flooded out by melting snow over the years. It needed to be emptied, but not in any urgent way.
It’s now full.
Of gravel.
After shining the flashlight around, I was able to spot a small hole.
It looks like a groundhog made a den entry leading under the floor boards, filling much of the space under the seat with gravel.
*sigh*
So that’s going to have to be all dug out. It can be accessed from the back of the outhouse, but not very easily.
*sigh*
It’s been a while since we’ve seen the groundhogs; I’ve seen one, once, a couple of weeks ago or so, and that’s it. They no longer visit the bird seed, and we no longer see them around the yard. It seems early, but they seem to have gone into hibernation already.
I suppose it’s good to find this out now, and not in the middle of winter or something.
I am not looking forward to having to clean up the mess in the basement.
Whenever I head out to feed the yard cats these days, I do a head count! :-D
There are “only” eight kittens in the photo, with Nosencrantz and Toesencrantz eating at the kibble tray under the shrine. I was happy to see Nutmeg still around. He’s the one Rolando Moon is hissing at. :-D There are four adult cats in the above photo, including Butterscotch running by, just visible in the gap between kibble house and cat house. I even saw Ghost Baby this morning! That made five adult cats I saw this morning, though I think I saw Rosencrantz later on.
I do wonder what has happened with Junk Pile Cat.. Her babies are all hanging around the yard, but I haven’t seen mama in quite a while. Which is unusual with the female cats. Particularly while their kittens are still around.
Last night turned out to be a very calm evening, so my younger daughter and I got the fire pit going and were finally able to clean up and burn the remains of the diseased crab apple tree we’d recently cut down. Nutmeg joined us and stayed the entire time, getting in the way while we were cutting the branches smaller, and even going right on top of them as I was setting them up the fire pit. Once the fire was going, I spent much of the evening trapped in a camp chair with Nutmeg in my arms, cuddling for all he was worth, and even going for a nap!
I was telling my daughter how unusual I found this, considering he barely let me pet him before he disappeared for the summer, and that Ginger was the one that was more friendly. It turns out that, for her, it was the other way around! Nutmeg would let her pick him up and carry her around, while Ginger was the one who was more skittish. Funny how they can behave so differently with other people. I’m rather glad Nutmeg is now okay with me giving him cuddles. :-)
This is an “almost” first for me. I’ve made a few little videos now and then, with minimal editing, to post here on the blog. Years ago, I used to make videos on DVDs of photos for my parents, set to music and with chapters, etc. Since we were so far away, I thought it would be a fun way to share lots of photos of their grandchildren with them in a way that would be easier for their declining mobility. When I found out they never watched any of them (and in cleaning out their possessions in the house, I never found them), I stopped.
Yesterday, instead of making another long, photo heavy post, I would try doing a narrated, fall garden tour video. I have very little equipment; I recorded the audio using a headset with a microphone, and the video software I used is the same old one I used back when I was making DVDs for my parents! It took a long time to make, and a long time to upload. Thankfully, we didn’t loose our internet in the process. :-D Anyhow, in the wee hours of the morning, I finally got it done!
It is WAY longer than I would have normally done a video. Usually, I try to stay under 5 minutes, but this ended up being just over 47 minutes. I did try to explain some of the how’s and why’s of things, and I hope I did all right with that.
So please feel free to grab a cuppa, settle in, give it a watch, and please leave some feedback. I’d like to know how you liked it, if you found it informative and useful in any way, and if you would like to see more (I would NOT be making such long videos on a regular basis, but I might make some little 5 minute ones). I’d love to hear your questions, suggestions and anything else you’d like to share.
Look who was willing to come an eat, while I was still close by!
Little Toesencrantz normally won’t come to the food until I’ve moved away. Nosencrantz was letting me pet her and was purring, so that might be helping.
This evening, my daughter was thrilled to let me know that when the topped up the kibble trays, Nosencrantz was willing to be picked up and held for several minutes!!! So awesome!
On a another note, I am working on something different that I hope to post tonight, though more likely tomorrow, and it’s taking quite a bit of time, hence the lack of posting today. I’m hoping to get feedback on what you all think, when it’s up, to know if it’s worth doing again! :-)
