There be Cows Here!

June 11, 2018June 11, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

We had a nice rain today and, when it was down to a drizzle, the girls decided this was a good, safe time to get the fire pit going and burn down the pile of wood we had in it.

Then we had a cook out. Because, why not?

While we were out, I could hear the sounds of cows mooing. Not unusual, except that the sounds were much closer.

Like, really close.

This is taken from the gate beside the fire bit.

My mom rents most of the land out to someone, including the other quarter section. He’s had his cows grazing there for a while, and now they are here.

While we had the fire going, even though it was still kind of raining, I couldn’t help but work on the area near the fire pit, cleaning up the area next to the log cabin that’s got a collapsed roof. There were a lot of dead branches to clean up, plus saplings to trim away, etc. More stuff for the fire pit! :-)

The roof of the cabin is decidedly interesting.

That is a lot of nails.

This would be the remains of one of the trusses.

This board would have had shingles nailed to it. They were all wooden shingles, most of which seem to be gone, now, leaving their nails behind. !!

We also had a squirrel go onto the roof, where it seemed to find something to eat among the pieces of fallen roof!

My head just clears that truss piece, as I walked back and forth under it, making my daughters very nervous! :-D

As I was cleaning up along here, grabbing dead branches and dragging them out, the toe of my shoe caught on something under the decaying leaves along the wall, and I almost tripped. Going back to pick up what I got caught on, I found it was a piece of board.

With nails in it.

Pointing down, thankfully.

I pulled more boards up out of the decayed leaves, also with nails in them, until the girls insisted I stop working in there.

Cleaning up under there is going to have to be a very careful job!

After we had our cook out, I stayed outside to burn more of the wood pile. While there, I started to hear strange metal noises coming from the barn.

I knew exactly what it was.

I got my younger daughter to tend the fire for me, while I went to check on the cows.

Who, for some reason, decided they needed to graze around this collapsed shed, with all the sheets of metal lying about. They were walking over the metal, and that’s the sound I was hearing.

They didn’t like me coming over and were already moving away when I took this picture.

The wire in the foreground is an electrified gate. There are two of them the renter puts up before he brings the cows over, so they don’t go into the house area; this one by the barn, and another closer to where the cows were in top photo.

With the electrified wire there, I went through the barn to get to where the cows where.

I moved things around as best I could but I’d really rather fence this area off until we can get this stuff hauled away and cleaned up. There’s little I can do about it. Some of the metal bits and pieces could not be picked up and moved, so I used sheets of tin to cover them as much as I could, then adding whatever I could on top, to prevent the wind from blowing them away.

On the far side, I stepped on something that felt like a potential problem. It turned out to be part of fence wire that was likely rolled up and left there. Except it was there for so long, it was now covered in ground and I could not pull it up. It was completely hidden in the grass, and a definite risk to hooves! So I covered it with sheets of metal, then dragged a metal headboard out of the pile (I have no clue why anything like that would be there!) and tossed that on top, both to weight it down, and to make it more visible.

I really look forward to when we can start getting rid of piles like this. It might be a few years before we get to the stuff on this side of the fence, though.

The Re-Farmer

Ready to Go, and a nice surprise

June 10, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Today, my older daughter and I confirmed that the mower would fit in the back of our van, took out the seats, emptied it of my crates of supplies (we kept the emergency kit and cooler of van water, though), and loaded it up.

I won’t be taking it to the shop until they open on Tuesday. I had thought of dropping it off tomorrow, but my brother tells me they don’t have a secure drop off point.

Which means the mower, with an almost full tank of gas, will be in the van for two nights and a day, in the heat we are having again.

I made sure to open the windows a fair bit. Plus, we still haven’t replaced the handle on the garage door (I finally got some replacement cable for it), so it’s wide open. No chance of accumulated fumes.

Earlier in the day, I went into town with my younger daughter so she could drop off some resumes, and we could pick up a few things at the grocery store. There’s a hardware store next to it, so I popped over for a bit. Turns out they don’t have fan rakes, but they did have metal roasting sticks. So I picked up a few for our next cook out. :-)

My mom called while we were out, so I called her back as soon as we got home. She was wondering how we were doing in this heat (we were hovering around 30C today), and telling us that if we open the basement doors, we would get cool air. I remember doing that, when I was growing up here. It works very well. Unfortunately, we can’t do that until we’ve cleaned up the basements. The old part basement is pretty good, but the new part basement is filled with all sorts of breakable things (years of accumulated jars and booze bottles, spare florescent light tubes, etc.), and way too many hidey holes that the cats would get into.

While we were talking, I told her about the different areas I’ve been working on. I found out that she did, indeed, deliberately plant those little spruce trees at the fence line. Why there, I ask her. Where else? she answers. :-D So I bring up that, when the trees are full grown, they will destroy the fence. Oh, by the time they’re that big, she says, it won’t matter. I think she was implying the fence would be old, or would be replaced before then? I’m not sure. I told her I will be transplanting them, once I find a good place of them. Much to my surprise, she just said not to worry about them for now. Considering that, earlier in the conversation, when I told her I cleaned up around her white lilacs, she thought that meant I had cut them down, this is a good thing. :-D

Then I mentioned wanting to clean up the bushes growing around the other house.

In the past, these false spirea had covered the old stairs on both sides, as the wood rotted away. I remember this because, when we made a road trip to visit family after getting our first van, I had tried to go to the door and a step gave out under me! Now there are nice strong steps, and I want to keep them well maintained.

Which means cutting back the spirea. Plus, I’ll be thinning away the dead branches, etc.

As I tell my mother this, she asks me how her vines are doing.

Vines?

All I could think of were the vines I’ve been finding all over the place, choking out trees and bushes.

No. Vines. She had planted them by the steps. How are they doing?

Well, I did notice what appeared to be dead vines in the spirea, which I thought were the same vines I’ve been getting rid of all over. That was not what she was talking about.

Then she mentioned she’d actually picked from them.

Picked what? Berries? I had no idea what she was talking about. The only vines I’ve seen don’t have berries.

Finally, she remembered the English word for them; grapes.

We have grapes?!?

That’s on my list of food plants, too, but at the bottom of the list, since they need a lot more tending than most plants.

I told her I didn’t remember seeing any, and perhaps the spirea had choked them out? I told her I would check.

Which I did.

Lo and behold, there are, indeed, vines growing that aren’t the ones we’ve been fighting for the past while.

Not only that…

… there are even little baby grapes started!

I will have to ask my mom if she remembers what kind they are, so I can look up how to properly care for them. There are not a lot of varieties of grapes that are hardy enough for our growing zone, so even if she doesn’t, I should be able to figure it out.

I do know that they shouldn’t be the way they are now! If possible, I would want to transplant them to the fence, which can be used as a trellis, and they will have full sun. With judicious care, we should be able to get good harvests of grapes from them.

Oh, I am suddenly quite excited! I had no idea my mother had ever planted grapes! She’d simply never mentioned them before.

I filled in my mother about all sorts of things, from what the electric company told me about clearing the trees, and my wanting to get a quote for the job, so we know what to budget for, to progress on the flower gardens. She had a hard time understanding some of what I was telling her, sometimes. She has what she’s always done so firm in her mind, it’s hard for her to picture something different, just from a description. But it was a good conversation, overall, even if she doesn’t seem quite sure about what I am doing. When it gets to a certain point, though, she starts talking about how this is all men’s work, so she will talk to my older brother about it, so he can take care of it. We got to that point in the conversation, but I didn’t mind too much at all, since she started talking about how good my dad was about taking care of things, and how he understood electricity and plumbing and so on. Then she started talking about how women’s work was housekeeping and so on, and I just kept saying, no. Nope. No. Until she started to say, well, that’s how she and my dad did things, and that worked for them, but others might do it differently.

Yay, Mom! That right there was a HUGE step for her, and I am so proud of her. :-)

It was a good conversation.

Later on, while talking to my older brother, he told me he’d just talked to our mom as well. At one point during their conversation, he told me that my mom expressed her satisfaction with how we are taking care of the place.

She would never tell me that to my face, of course, but I don’t expect her to. For her to say it to my brother, however, is another HUGE step, and I am so proud of her. :-)

I am happy that we are able to take care of this place for her. It takes a big burden off of her shoulders, and it’s been pretty good for us, too (as much as possible, under the circumstances! :-D ). She was having a hard time with letting go, which is understandable. If she is reaching the point where she is able to start trusting that we know what we’re doing, even if it’s different than how she did things, that will also reduce stress for her.

Win, win! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Little Critter Friends

June 9, 2018June 9, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I thought I got some pictures of how the area near the firepit looks, after my daughters raked, but apparently, I didn’t.

So, instead, I stole a couple of pictures my older daughter took. :-D

While they were raking, they got visited by two wood frogs. This one, and one that jumped right into a downspout. I neglected to steal her pictures of a blurry frog butt in a tunnel. ;-)

She also managed to get a good picture of one of these guys…

They have a distinctively shrimp-like body, and are really big! They are also hard to get pictures of, they move so much. They just LOVE this lilac bush by the house. They are Snowberry Clearwing Moths, also called hummingbird moths. They do sound like hummingbirds, and are almost as big as the one variety of hummingbirds we have in our area.

Meanwhile, I added the bird seed I found to the feeder and stand we’ve put near the living room window. The birds are just starting to discover it, and I hope to get photos, soon. I also saw a deer last night, just quickly passing through our yard. All I managed was one blurry photo before it ran off. Good to know they are still willing to come by, even with all the yard activity these days. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Sun Room Clean Up – East side

June 8, 2018June 8, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Today, while the girls finished raking up behind the other house and adding to the flower garden, I finally got started on the sun room.

This addition to the house was the brainchild of my late brother, to create a space that my parents could sit and enjoy “outside” without being exposed to the elements. My late father used to love sitting there. It was also easier for him to get outside with his walker, as there are no steps to clamber up and down, like at the main door.

We’ve been using the room to store bags of feed for the outside cats, deer and birds, and now we’re using it to store the yard work tools we’ve been using. However, we’ve basically only been able to use one side of the room.

Here are a couple of before pictures.

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My dad’s walker is still there, and still used by my mother, so she doesn’t have to struggle with bringing her own walker over here.

Behind it is what appears to be an antique prayer kneeler.

I’m keeping that, and hope to be able to refinish/preserve it.

That plastic church on the shelf across the window is something I thought was one of those Christmas village things. It wasn’t until I started packing it that I realized it’s a hanging bird feeder!

It is now hanging off the stand in front of the living room window, waiting to have some bird seed added to it.

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We’ve been using my dad’s old seat to hold the feed bags (just cat food, right now). It’s one of those glider rocker type seats.

The crutches in the background, leaning against the shelf on the right? Those were there so long, the padding of the handle leading on the shelf was actually stuck to the wood!

Of course, cleaning this all up was… interesting.

I started at the window, taking things outside and getting it cleared enough that I could move the seat outside.

When I moved the green garbage can, I figured I’d better check to make sure there wasn’t any actual garbage in it.

I found a plant pot.

Full of gloves.

Then I spotted a… wire whisk?

Ugh.

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I don’t want to know what’s on that.

It got thrown out.

Yes, I was wearing gloves for all this!

When I finally could move the seat, I found this, under it.

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The cat poop, I was expecting. During the winter, we sometimes found one of the outside cats had snuck into the sun room while we were putting food out, and at least twice, we discovered a cat in the room the next morning. There is no way a cat could be in there that long, without making a mess. Unfortunately, we had no way to even look for it, never mind clean it up, until now.

I also found the world’s cheapest, dullest knife.

Once I could access the shelves, I finally could start packing up the books, magazines and old Polish newspapers, as well as the various odds and sots around.

Speaking of odds and sots…

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There were tucked away behind the kneeler. Mouse and rat traps.

Very gross traps.

The got garbaged.

The scrap carpet got added to the haul-away pile, outside the yard.

Here are the after pictures.

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The far wall is one of the log walls of the original part of the house. Behind the bookshelf that was there, I found a pile of dead Asian Lady Beetles, that had made themselves some sort of a nest to hibernate in, partly under the paneling.

I really hope I swept them all out, but probably not. We’d have to remove the paneling.

I’ve left the shelf across the window to finish clearing later.

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What a huge difference!

Once this side was clear, I had the space to start moving things around to work on the other side.

Which will be in my next post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Lilacs and Lenses

June 8, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

A bit of an experiment for the day.

Most of the photos I take are done with my phone’s camera; for the most part, I leave the DSLR on the tripod at the living room window, with our 70-300mm lens on it, to take pictures of the deer and birds. Things are quiet out there this time of year, so it’s been sitting idle.

This morning, I decided to grab it and get some flower photos. I put on an 18-55mm lens, then took a few more shots with the 70-300mm lens back on.

Much to my surprise, there is quite a noticeable difference in the pictures, with the big lens looking much better. Part of the surprise is that, with the big lens, I had to step quite far back from the subject, just for the camera to be able to focus (another time, I’ll break out the macro lens). My hands tend to shake, which can really affect photos taken with a bigger lens. So I fully expected the photos with the smaller lens to be clearer.

Here is a comparison. Aside from resizing the photos and adding the text and frame, they are untouched. No post processing.

This one was taken with the 18-55mm lens.

It’s certainly a pretty photo (that lilac tree is just a mass of flowers right now!). I would have preferred crisper focus; that softness was not deliberate, but the result of my hand shake. Still, the softness is nice, too.

Here is the one taken with the 70-300mm lens.

The focal points are much sharper. Even though I had to stand further back and zoom in more to get photos, it was unaffected by my hand shake. The 70-300mm is a newer, faster, lens than the 18-55mm that we have.

I’m happy with both, but it was interesting to see the differences.

The Re-Farmer

Oh, the things we find!

June 7, 2018June 7, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today ended up being one of those days where nothing really happened as I intended.

First off, I decided we needed to take a day off yard work. As much as I love it, I knew I was pushing myself harder than I should. I need to remind myself that I am still broken, even if I happen to be feeling great on any particular day. If I overdo it, I’ll wipe myself out for days, and I don’t want to do that!

So I was going to finally start packing up the sun room of my parents’ things, starting after I went into town to pick up some prescription refills. My younger daughter came along, to drop off resumes and play Pokemon Go. :-D We were just getting ready to head home when I get a text from my older brother; he was just passing through the town our mom lives in, and on his way to do some work on the barn, in preparation of the electricity to be hooked up again.

He got there before we did. :-D

So I ended up hanging out with him and helping as much as I could. Being the sort he is, once he finished on the barn, he decided to patch the roof of the shed near it. That turned out to be a huge job, and that was just to patch one of the holes. Also near the barn is a collapsed building and sheets of metal roofing material that he had to scavenge to get the job done.

Part way though, I had to leave to do a dump run. The summer hours for Thursdays is now a lot later than it was during the winter. When we’d got back from town, the girls and I loaded the back of the van with our garbage, so it was sitting there in the heat. Definitely a good thing I didn’t decide to wait until Saturday!

After patching the roof, we came in to have the supper my daughters prepared, and then it was back out to fix one more thing before he headed home. He wanted to replace a melted, broken plug in the pump shack, so that we could have power in the storage shed we’re putting all of my parents’ stuff in.

While we were there, I couldn’t help but look around at all the stuff in there, that’s been sitting for years.

Which is when I noticed this bottle, way up near the rafters.

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I tried to get a picture of the label, and enhanced it as well as I know how to do.

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It’s still hard to read, but I can make out most of it.

I had to laugh when I got to the end. For horses, cattle, hogs and sheep, too! That’s some all purpose stuff, right there! :-D

Oh, and while we were there, I asked about the old wood cook stove that was in the pump shack. It turned out it’s at my brother’s place. It seems someone spilled battery acid on it, so he took it before it got damaged even worse! I was very happy to hear it was with him.

The electric pole did not get delivered today, so we will be expecting it tomorrow. Now that my brother is finished with what he needed to do at the barn, everything is ready.

It will be so good to have that over and done with!

The Re-Farmer

Yard in Bloom

June 6, 2018June 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

With all the yard work we’ve been doing over the past while, I’ve been really appreciating all the blooms.

The ornamental apple trees and plums are long since finished blooming, but now we have all sorts of flowers, scenting the air!

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Right by the sun room door is this white rose. There are others in the flower garden, but they are not as prolific as this one is!

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After clearing away the vines that had climbed up the lilacs by the people gate, I could finally see that they were blooming! I’m sure my mother told me, at some point, that these were white lilacs. Not that I can remember one way or the other! So it was a nice surprise. :-)

20180606.flowers.tiny.lilac

This is the huge lilac bush with teeny, tiny leaves and flowers, that I’d cleared a maple tree out of, earlier. I’ll need to go back to this garden and finish cleaning and clearing it. It, too, is inundated with vines! There are regular lilac bushes at the other end of this flower garden.

This is also technically the “front yard”, and the door in the middle of this side of the house is the front door. Which isn’t used. In fact, I still haven’t been able to open the screen door; it’s still stuck at the base, and I don’t want to force it and break something.

If all goes as planned, though, that is the door the ramp we hope to have added will be installed at. Depending on the dimensions, it may be necessary to remove this garden.

The post in the foreground had a bird feeder on it. I took it off after I turned away from pruning a branch and smacked right into it with my glasses, knocking them askew.

Thankfully, the base was designed to lift right off. It needs to be cleaned up and repaired, anyhow. :-)

20180606.flowers.honeysuckle.bush

In the big flower garden, off the old kitchen, is this honeysuckle bush, in full bloom! When talking to my mother about clearing this garden, one of the things she requested as to save this bush. It was being choked out by the invasive undergrowth!

20180606.flowers.honeysuckle.flower

I can see why she wants to keep it! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Front Yard Clean Up – by the gate

June 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Today was another awesome day of clean up in the yard. It is looking so great!

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I so missed this kind of work! I love it so much. There’s the feeling of accomplishment, and at the end of the day, when the body is sore and achy, and I’m tired – it’s a good tired. You know what I mean?

Oh, and I also got some great news today. I got an email from the electrician. The new pole to replace the one the movers broke will be delivered in the next couple of days. Whoot!

Meanwhile…

While the girls started on the HUGE job of raking between the trees I cleared out yesterday, and adding them to the flower garden, I started working on the south yard. I figure, it’s about time I did some work on the parts of the yard people see when they come to our place, rather than the parts hidden away behind houses. ;-)

The first section I worked on was West of the people gate. This is where there was a mass of dead plants that turned out to have a wire fence in it – and a bottomless glass bowl. :-D

Here is what it looked like, before.

Tree tire is tired and broken.

This is how it looks now!

20180606.front.yard1

Cutting away those vines – both the old, dead ones, and the new ones that had started to grow – was a huge job, all on its own. The mass was so thick, it was hard to find what I needed to cut with the pruning shears (those anvil shears (affiliate link) are amazing!).

Then, after getting the big stuff off, I had to go back and find more vine roots and clip them. They spread through their roots, so there was a lot of pulling up.

I like vines. I really do. But my goodness, they are invasive!!

That done, I moved on to the lilacs section.

20180606.front.yard2

This is how it looked after I first started working on it. There was a lot of clipping and pulling out of vines, cutting away dead and dying branches, and figuring out what lilac stems were keepers, and what had to go.

Lilacs also spread through their roots, and can become invasive, if they’re not kept in check. Except when they’re being choked out by vines. :-/

As I worked my way to the far end, I found…

20180606.front.yard3

… Seriously?

The biggest lilac bush at the end of the row was growing straight out of a pile of horse droppings.

I’m getting really tired of finding horse droppings all over the place.

Here are the after photos!

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This is from the West end of the lilac row, after trimming and raking.

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And here’s how it now looks from the East end.

With all the vines I pulled out of there, I think I just extended the life of these lilacs by quite a few years! Well. As long as we keep on top of cutting back the vines as they try and grow back, that is.

I’m pretty sure my mother had flowers planted in here, too, but they don’t seem to have survived the vines. I don’t have any plans to plant anything here this year, but we’ll see what we decide to do with the area next year.

Next post; cleaning up my mother’s… shrine?

The Re-Farmer

Fire Pit Area Cleanup; between buildings

June 5, 2018January 14, 2019 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I went back to cleaning up the West yard, by the fire pit area, today, focusing on the area between the other house and the log cabin that’s slowly disintegrating.

Photo heavy post ahead! :-D

The girls finished clearing away the last wood pile from when I cleaned up in the East end of the maple grove. Before they went into the house, we got rid of the old freezer that has been sitting along the side of the other house, for many years.

It was a beast of a freezer, but it is now finally out of the yard, and in the pile of stuff that will be hauled away in the fall.

The baskets and foam were inside the freezer. The chair and the plastic thing on it were dug out from between some maple trees.

It took two of us pushing, one pulling and steering, to drag that old freezer out!

Modern freezers are much lighter. :-D

When I started cleaning up the remains to haul away, I found even more Styrofoam, buried under the leaves.

Time to start working on the rows of trees directly behind the other house.

This involved cutting away dead branches, suckers and picking up fallen branches, just to GET to the stuff I needed to clear away.

The rain barrel that was there appears to not have any cracks or holes in it, so I just set it aside for now.

The roll of wire fencing was almost completely buried in leaves and dead branches.

That plastic bin on top? It was upside down on the ground. After lifting it up, I found…

… old cat litter.

As I was clearing away an area at the base of a maple tree, I found more cat litter, under the leaves and branches.

It appears that, when my dad had a cat, this was where the old litter was dumped. I think that plastic bin is what was used as a litter box and, when the cat died, it just got dumped into the trees and left there.

That cat died many years ago.

I was also finding lots of horse droppings. I’m told my younger brother had let his horses into the yard. Considering how many piles of their droppings I’m finding all over the place, this was either done often, or for a very long time.

I’m not impressed.

More stuff to add to the haul-away pile. Some stove pipe, a roll of cable, aluminum sheets and… I don’t know what that plastic thing is, but it made moving the stove pipe out much easier. ;-D

While clearing dead branches away near the building, I found all sorts of things buried in the leaves. I’ve just leaned them here, for now, for clearing out later.

More was added, before I was done for the day!

In the foreground is an area I’d gone into with the weed trimmer recently. I had to stop, because I was finding so many dead branches, so I started a pile at this end that I cleaned up today. In the background, you can see where I hadn’t used the weed trimmer yet.

There was a LOT of dead branches in here.

I also cleared dead branches from the trees themselves, as well as pruning back live branches and seedlings.

This is another section I’d used the weed trimmer on previously. For now, I’m ignoring the dead branches and trees on the other side of the fence.

That tree in the foreground?

Completely dead. I thought there was one branch that still had green leaves on it, but that branch is from the tree on the other side of the fence.

So this is going to have to come down at some point.

While clearing away the dead branches, I found more metal, buried under the leaves.

There was some cable leaning against the building that I thought was rolled up, like some I’d already cleared away elsewhere. It turned out to be only partially rolled up. Most of it was stretched almost the length of the building, all buried under the leaves.

When my daughter came out to let me know supper was almost ready, she helped me take down this dead branch from one of the group of three maples near the fire pit. I started cutting it with the pruning saw while she used a rake to reach the other end and applied gentle downward pressure to make it easier for me to saw. Then when it started breaking under its own weight, I just stepped back and let her pull it down.

I feel so much better, now that it’s down. There is another huge dead branch just above it, but it will have to wait for another day.

Here are the rows of “living fence” my mother planted. There is a third row closer to the log cabin. I did more clean up and weed trimming after this picture was taken. We will have to go back and work our way towards the log cabin. That area is filled with dead branches, so I can’t even go in with the weed trimmer, yet. There’s quite a bit of oak in there. I’m hoping my mother will let me get rid of some of these, and encourage the oak, instead. They are planted way too close together to be able to grow well.

Here is the area that had the old toilet, rain barrel, and other debris in it. It will still need more clean up before it’s finished, but it looks SO much better now!

The rest of the rows of trees. There is one willow in there, and the rest are maple and elm. There are still dead branches on them, but they are too high to be able to clear.

I noticed, as I was clearing up against the house, that the willow has a huge root, running right under the building. I guess it’s a good thing it’s just siting on blocks, or it would be causing all sorts of damage to a basement or foundation.

Let’s see if I can find some before pictures to include…

What a difference a few hours of work makes!

The Re-Farmer

Flame Roasted Potatoes

June 5, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I roasted potatoes in yesterday’s cookout, and I thought I’d share. :-D

To make these, you will need;

Large potatoes (1 per person)
Butter and seasonings
heavy duty aluminum foil, pieces sized to wrap each potato in a double layer
fire

Start by thoroughly scrubbing the unpeeled potatoes, then stabbing them all over with a fork.

For the butter and seasoning, you can use plain butter, then add coarse salt (how we usually do it), or you can make a flavored butter using whatever seasonings you like. This time, I added paprika, fresh ground pink Himalayan salt and fresh ground pepper, dill and garlic powder.

Generously cover the potatoes with the butter and seasonings. Tightly wrap each potato in a double thickness of heavy duty aluminum foil.

Don’t skimp on the foil. ;-)

Time to go outside!

Prep a small fire and let it burn down. When you have a layer of coals, place the foil wrapped potatoes directly on top of the hot coals.

Build the fire up again on top of the potatoes.

Enjoy your fire for about an hour, letting it burn down to coals. Gently move the foil wrapped potatoes out of the coals and remove to a container that can handle high temperatures.

The time is completely a judgement call. A lot depends on the size of the potatoes and how hot the fire gets. You might want to try for 45 minutes the first time you do it, and adjust for the next cookout.

Because there will be another cookout! :-D

Carefully unwrap the foil (I used two forks) and cut a potato in half.

As you can see, this potato was VERY well done! Which I’m okay with, as the skin serves as a bowl.

While the potato is cooling, roast some wieners over the fire.

Add flavorings to taste. I had some of the flavored butter used on the outside of the potatoes left, so I put some of that on one half, and sour cream on the other. Then I used a fork to mix in the flavorings, in the skin “bowl”.

I think, the next time we do this, I’ll roast 2 potatoes per person instead of one! It was SO good!

These can also be left to cool and eaten later. Just unwrap and reheat in the microwave, or chop into cubes to use to make hash browns, or to make a potato salad.

Enjoy! And please remember to exercise fire safety precautions, at all times.

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

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