ARGH$$&#^#!@&^@!%@*R#*#^^

I hate my washing machine.

It has a setting for "handwash." I thought I could set it and it would fill with water and STOP so I could handwash a sweater I just finished. I just finished after months of working on it, after having to do the first sleeve two times because it didn't turn out right...

but no. The washer kept going and I sat here at my desk completely oblivious to the fact that the sweater was getting STRETCHED OUT terribly.

I jumped up thinking OH SHIT THE WASHER IS WASHING and by the time I got it stopped, the fucking sweater was huge. So I threw it in some hot water and then in the dryer for a little bit. Okay so far. A few more minutes and it's fucked. It's totally too small now and it's for someone who is over 6 feet tall. It's already a very late birthday present and I feel like a GIANT FUCKING FAILURE.

It was SO pretty. It was the first thing I ever made for my second kid - son number 1. He was 9 when I started knitting and he was growing so much that I wasn't prepared mentally to make him something he wouldn't wear for as long as it took me to make it.

Then I found this pattern and thought "WOW! That would look so good on Kid2." And I found the perfect yarn in a really dark green and thought "WOW that would look so good on Kid2."

and it's ruined.

Podcast

I keep forgetting to put that on this blog. We're doing a pod cast now. It's 40 Acres and a Fool - mostly my husband. He started it, thought I'd like to show up once in a while, and now it's a gig.

We talk about current events, farm stuff, critters, gardening, cooking, politics, history, whatever pops into our heads mostly.

40 Acres and a Fool

My Scar

I don't think I've shared this before. 

That's the scar from the tumor surgery; it's about six inches long. The two smaller scars below and right are from the two drains that were left in for about four days after the surgery. 

Not easy to tell there was a problem, right? Until, that is, all my hair fell out. 

Election Day!

Worst election choices ever. Hillary Clinton (D) vs Donald Trump (R ). 

Crook vs Crazy

Surgery Consultation

Met with the surgeon on Tuesday and I'm less freaked out now. One should never look up medical issues on the internet; way too much information.

I asked Dr. S. on a scale of 1 to 10, how difficult is this surgery for you? He smiled at me. He said he took someone's heart out the day before and put it back together. My operation is fairly simple. He then went on to explain where the incision will be, the process for getting into the chest cavity. I'm happy they don't have to break any ribs! And I've already decided that I'm going to get a shark tooth tattoo that looks like it's breaking the skin at the scar. Long story short, while at the beach one summer, the kids were being assholes to one another, and my husband gave them a talk about being siblings and being on the same team and we were Team Shark Tooth and we needed to all have one another's backs. Then he bought them all a shark tooth necklace. So this is my Team Shark Tooth tribute.

Anyway, surgery is on the 16th of September. Pre-operational testing is on the 15th. The hospital has an inn for patients and their families so I have a room already reserved for the 15th. Husband will drop me off in the morning for the testing and come back in the evening, take me out to dinner, and then we'll stay at the inn. He'll accompany me to the hospital for surgery the next morning, and when I'm out and everything is good, he'll head home to let the kids know I'm okay. Then they can come visit over the weekend.

My oldest daughter is coming from Tulsa to help with the house, kids, and critters and that is a big relief. 

Health Issues

I had to have a PET scan today, so I had to take out all my earrings. All five pair :)

I feel so naked!

The steroids didn't have any affect on the dense mass in my lower left lung. The doctors are perplexed. So the next course of action was a PET scan. It's nuclear medicine. The technician sticks an IV in and injects some radioactive material. Wait one hour while it makes its way around the system. 

Then the PET scan itself. Very uneventful. I lay as still as a dead person. Well, at least one who can breathe. That took about 30 minutes. I almost fell asleep; I caught myself and stopped a sleep jerk. You know that feeling when you're not quite asleep and a body part decides to to a *spaz* movement. Glad I caught it; I'm sure we'd have to start the test again. It wasn't claustrophobic because you don't stay in the "tunnel" thing; however, it could be problematic for some people in that they wrap your arms at your sides like a mini burrito. Better than having to extend my arms over my head for 30 minutes. 

The theory is that the mass should be the only thing the reacts to the nuclear medicine: the only glowing area. If that's the case, surgery to remove it. If, however, there are multiple glowing bits, then treat for cancer. 

I hope this yields something! I already have an appointment with a thoracic surgeon at the end of the month. 

And I should hear something about the PET scan next week. 

Fingers crossed. 

Summer of 2016 Sucked

May rained the entire month and was cold and miserable. We kept trying to find the right time for us and the garden and it never worked out well. Then on May 27th, I thought I was having a heart attack in the middle of the day.

I called my doctor and they said get to the emergency room. So I drove myself 26 miles or so to get there. Got hooked up to an EKG and no heart issues. One chest xray and on CT scan later, and they found a large dense mass in my lower left lung. So home I went with the diagnosis of pneumonia and a prescription for antibiotics.

One week later, and I still feel out of breath and exhausted. Went to the family doctor and he gave me what I thought was a decongestant but it was a cough suppresent. With that at least I could get some sleep so I wasn't so exhausted anymore but still didn't feel right. Had a follow -up appointment  with a pulmonologist on July 19 and he didn't like the sound of my lungs, so I had to go back to the hospital for another CT scan.

The mass was unchanged. Still large. Not larger. Not smaller, It didn't look like cancer and frankly the doctor was puzzled. So after that? bronchoscopy. The doctor takes a small tube, shoves it up your nose, and down into your lungs. I was promised that I would be "heavily sedated" but I was aware and awake the whole damn time. So much for that.

Go back in a week to find out the results of the biopsy only to be told they only know what it's not. It's not an infection. It's no fungal. They are pretty sure it's not cancer and they really have no idea. What now then?

Prednisone for two weeks and then another chest xray. They are treating with prednisone because they think it's Bronchiolitis obliterans organizing pneumonia (BOOP), also known as cryptogenic organizing pneumonia, is a form of non-infectious pneumonia; more specifically, BOOP is an inflammation of the bronchioles (bronchiolitis) and surrounding tissue in the lungs.

My garden is a shambles. It's been so muggy and humid this summer that staying outside for longer than 15 minutes has me wheezing and struggling to breath. 

No tomatoes for sauce or canning. No peppers for making into hot sauce. This year has been a failure. The goats stopped producing enough milk to bother to milk them anymore because of the heat. My rooster got snatched by something over the weekend and he was my  last original chicken. And my hens seem to be on strike and we haven't gotten an egg in about a week.

Fuck my farm this year.

Cydik - a photo tutorial

It takes 14 eggs and one quart of whole milk to make one cydik.

Start by cracking the eggs open and the pierce each egg yolk once. 

Add the eggs to the milk and start to heat the mixture, all while slowly stirring. 

Keep stirring. 

Just keep stirring. 

It will start to curdle and look like curds and whey. The milk will be very watery.

Set up a station to squeeze the "curds." I use two half sheet cookie trays, some thin plastic cutting sheets, and a big iron pot (for a weight). 

Pour the curds into a colander lined with either two layers of cheesecloth or one layer of butter muslin (as shown). 

Set the wrapped curds between two plastic cutting boards and under a big cast iron Dutch oven for the weight and press overnight. Refrigerate and serve cold, sliced thin. Great with keilbasa and horseradish. 

Finished product (just remembered to get a photo right before it was all gone). 

Truth?

I don't really like nor enjoy Christmas. I do all the stuff I'm supposed to do, but it's a ridiculous waste of money and emotion. The children's expectations are somewhat unrealistic sometimes even when they know the budget. They end up getting whatever they want most of the time so getting present ideas out of them is annoying. I get random shit ideas that end up forgotten or trashed. 

I just read through the Xmas_list.xml file where I keep an itemized list of the gifts I get everyone for Christmas. Accompanying that list is a corresponding pivot table so I can see how much I've spent per kid. I was looking at presents I've gotten for them since 2005 when I started this spreadsheet. Most of what I got for people in 2013 is a vague memory. Last years? Same. 

I need to do better. 

I only buy presents for my children. If I see something I know someone might like, I'll get it but for the most part, Christmas for me is just about my kids. I only track that spending. 

That being said, I've spent, according to the spreadsheet, a little too much for the youngest. I bought a digital microscope for the youngest boy, however it's really a homeschool supply.  And a ninetendo 3DS for his twin (girl) so she'll quit stealing his.

Grey Storm Clouds

I have one over my head right now. At this moment, that little evil puff ball is making me feel like shit. 

I'm really fucking sick of crutches. I have a very old house. The floors change from room to room. The door thresholds are big enough, but to get to my room, I have to hop over a threshold,  go up almost 6 inches from the foyer to the family room. Down into the back hall over another high threshold, and over one more threshold into my room. Most places aren't wide enough so there's a lot of sideways sidling. 

I'm tired all the time. 

My ankle still hurts to touch and when I accidentally put weight on it, it's painful. The other night I got my feet tangled in the blankets and woke up yelping because of the pain. 

The husband was gone all last week. He'll be gone three days this week and three days next week. I'm sick of eating easy-to-prepare, frozen, and instant food. There are no places that deliver and none of my friends live nearby so asking someone to make a food run isn't really an option. 

I'm getting depressed. Can't walk. Can't do chores. Can't stand up very long. Can't take a bath because I have a clawfoot tub and I can't get in and out of it so it's been "whore's bath" at the sink.

I'm really sick of this. 

Broken Ankle

My husband and I took a walk on our property through the woods. We went up and down hills, over rocks and fallen trees, and over a creek. We found eight different types of mushrooms and walked back to drop them off at the house before proceeding down to the creek to forage for persimmons. I walked towards the picnic table to put down the mushrooms and stepped directly in a hole. I fell over completely loosing all the mushrooms I was carrying in both hands. My husband behind me saw the whole thing and told me I almost hit my head on the picnic table. When I finally could sit up, I was in so much pain. I couldn't put any weight on it. I asked my husband to get me ibuprofen and we headed straight to the emergency room.  Broken fibula. 

Update: although the ER attending thought it was broken, it was not. I was up and walking around within 3 weeks. Still swollen in the area, but I don't even have much of a limp now. Thanksgiving and the day before led to some pain given I'd been on my feet 

Lessons Learned

First one was I am way too busy with a full-time job and homeschooling one of my kids to try and also participate in a farmer's market. I had high hopes of getting in a market with some various cherry, grape, and saladette tomatoes, but nature and every thing else got in the way.


All of the tomato plants got blight this year. They did keep producing tomatoes, and there are still a bunch coming in now, but because of the blight over such a large area of the garden, I have to not use that garden next  year. That's fine. The raised beds were a great idea in theory, but maintaining them is hard. If it was one flat surface, weeding would be easier.


Next year, that entire area is going to get rototilled and I'm just planting some rows of corn. Maybe try the three sisters thing with corn, beans, and squash. We're going to set  up an area near the orchard (front of the house) to use as the garden. Less tomatoes, more food we actually eat. I did great with the beets and carrots, onions and potatoes, but next year I need to plant beans and peas and stuff for salads.


Meat production is going great! We had two (of the seven) hogs processed this year and ended up with 330 pounds of mixed cuts for the freezer. I made over 50 pounds of various sausages - Italian, bratwurst, kielbasa, and breakfast. I've started one ham (I want it for my birthday party at the end of this month), and brined 18 slabs of belly for bacon. I smoked 8 of those last week to take up to my family this past Saturday. Cooked some bacon for breakfast at dad's and it was really tasty. I hope they all like it. If not, more for me in the long run.


I have over 15 quarts of hot and sweet (mostly hot) peppers fermenting in the kitchen. Going to turn that into fermented pepper sauce. I had good luck last year making some. I'm following the same method so I have high hopes for this batch. I'll need to get one of my husband's friends to be my official taste tester; he loved last year's!


Traded my rooster Bob, the Buff Orpington, for four Barred Rock hens. They had too many hens, and I had three roosters and five hens so it worked out great. He was with me from the beginning; I had him since he was a 3-day old chick but he wasn't appreciated here because he was the beta rooster. Chip is still around; he's the alpha and he's happier now that he's the only male. The one chick who managed to not get eaten turned out to be another rooster (Half Amerucuana and half Buff Orpington). I gave him to my friend who also needed a rooster - especially after watching and waiting for this one chicken who she thought was a male to step up and start acting roosterfish. Turns out, he's a she; she laid an egg instead of starting to crow. In her defense, she thought with the big comb and wattle that it was male. It's really hard to tell them apart until they start sprouting spurs, crowing, or laying an egg. I thought my rooster was a hen; I could have sworn the saddle feathers had rounded tips not points (another way to tell). But I was wrong.


The weather has been beautiful this week. We had a period at the beginning of the month where we had nothing but rain and clouds. Was not a happy camper. Doing much better now. Hate how sometimes my moods are affected by the weather.


The trip north was fun. It was great seeing my sister and her four children. Met the newest member of the family, my first great niece. They were celebrating her 1st birthday. I wasn't planning on going because my husband was supposed to be out of town but it was postponed. Last minute road trip! My children all behaved. The drive (five hours) wasn't too bad on the way north, but NoVA traffic on I-495 sucks. Just all the time. Every day. 365/24/7. It's just a fact.

Zakooskas!

I'm planning my 50th birthday party. I've always wanted to do a vodka and caviar party for the big 5-0, but am going even better with a Russian-themed cocktail party. 

My dad's dad (paternal grandfather) was actually Ukranian, but I'll be substituting some of the Russian items with foods I grew up with; for example, I think that my great-aunt Pearl's cydik, which I usually only make for Easter, would be a really tasty base for caviar and go well with vodka. She married my paternal grandfather's younger brother. She lived with my grandfather's parents after she married my uncle and learned how to cook Ukrainian food. She taught me how to make Ukrainian cydik and paska, and Polish pierogies. 

Here's the menu:

Here's the cookbook that inspired my party food. 

Pork-a-palooza!

We had Hambone and Spotted Dick aka Dickie butchered two weeks ago about. Ended up with 330 total pounds of various pork products: bellies, jowls, ribs, chops, tenderloins, Boston butts, picnic shoulders, and hams.

So far, I've started one belly in brine for bacon along with the jowl. Made fresh Italian sausage, bratwurst, and breakfast sausage. Made smoked kielbasa this past weekend. 

Pork: it's what's for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner at our place.

Smoking

Today I'll be smoking bacon and ham. These are from the hogs I helped to butcher at the workshop last month. These have been in either dry rub brine (bacon) or liquid brine (hams). At the moment, they are all laid out on the counter on cooling racks drying under a fan. 

I'll be using a combination of pecan, hickory, and cherry woods to smoke today. First time using this combination but it sounds great as far as qualities of the smoke. 

Also today, I'm making sweet pickle relish, bread and butter pickles, and canning carrots. 

Wednesday's Garden Update

Pulled the rest of the onions out (all the red and the remainder of the white) and set them on shelves in the greenhouse to dry. The yellow ones were brought up to the house last night, dusted free of dirt, stems removed. Now I have to have a marathon chopping/dicing session. Plan is to cut up recipe-sized portions and freeze them in vacuum seal bags. I'm also going to make some onion soup and either freeze it or can it. I'll have to see if I can can it. That would be ideal.

Completely cleaned out the weeds in that bed since I was out there.

Got three more huge albino beets and that bed is just about finished; I think there's maybe five more so I'll give them some time to get a little larger.

Going to start some fall crops in those spots - for me, it's late lettuce, spinach, bok choy, and some other Asian salad green called Salt Wort that's supposed to be like sea weed. I love seaweed salad!

I need to clear out the area where the pigs were; mow and then rototill it this weekend so I can plant pumpkins and turnips there (to use for hog feed). It'll be nice rich soil too. My current garden was home to hogs first. I don't add anything but compost to the tops of the beds each season, give it a good mix up, and plant. I've had the soil tested by the local agriculture extension office and we don't need to add anything. We're getting good results by giving beds a rest and rotating crops.

Seeing a LOT of baby tomatoes and hot peppers. Very exciting! I'm already harvesting some Bloody Butcher tomatoes. These are from plants we picked up at the Scottsville Farmer's Market. We lost a few when we transplanted. I suck at the whole conditioning thing. I'll be better next year with the greenhouse to use. Others are tiny and green, but you can tell all the different shapes already: small grape, long pear, tiny cherry!

The zinnias I started in peat pots need to be transplanted; they are about to bloom! OOPS! I also have to put the nasturtiums out in the garden too. The idea of peppery edible flowers sounds interesting. I love fresh salads composed of all kinds of lettuces, so I thought the edible flowers would be a fun thing to try this year. Both the zinneas and the nasturtium are edible.

Beets!

I have three four foot by eight foot raised beds full of beets. I'll be harvesting more this weekend, but today I'm trying out a new recipe for quick-pickled beets from Alton Brown. 

Have some red, white, and gold beets just roasted and peeled. 

Three quarts!

Patriotic and Funky!

I decided to add a streak of blue to my otherwise very red hair. I have a naturally occurring grey patch there so it worked out well.

First tomatoes!

Fresh goat's milk mozzarella, basil, tomatoes, black pepper, kosher salt, and a little olive oil made for a really good lunch. 

Unfortunately, the remaining tomatoes are still very green.

Patriotic brain fart

I read a news story online reporting about a baseball game. The fans were told that due to time constraints, they were going to skip doing the national anthem. 

This was the third game that day; I get it. 

The fans took it upon themselves and sang it anyway. 

Which led to my brain fart. Did I know the words? I can't remember the last time I went anywhere where this was sung. 

I don't do sports. 

Anyway, I didn't realize the original song was so long! The games would be well into the second inning had the long version been used. 

In 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the poem,Defense of Fort McHenry. The poem was later put to the tune of (John Stafford Smith's song)The Anacreontic Song, modified somewhat, and retitled The Star Spangled Banner. Congress proclaimed The Star Spangled Banner the U.S. National Anthem in 1931.

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their lov'd homes and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!