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.