I had to go pick the van up. With our family shrinking, and the monthly trips to Calgary no longer happening, my desire for a more winter-worthy minivan is no longer a pressing need. We decided to put some work
Back-a-century weekend
One hundred and fourteen years, to be exact. A homeschoolers field trip to the historically recreated Fort Steele was perfectly timed. Less than two weeks after Erin’s exciting departure to Montreal, and four days after Noah and Sophie headed out
The Cheese Stands Alone
Our cheese is now a month old. It has been coated in fetching red cheese wax and has been sitting in a dark cool crawl space adjacent to our basement foundation for a month now. Probably it should be somewhere
Outdoor shower
Look what we have! I LOVE outdoor showers. There’s something about short bursts of warm water to lather or rinse in, accompanied by warm summer breezes, that leaves me ten times more refreshed than a shower in some sort of
Huaraches
Here’s another chapter in my minimalist footwear adventure story. I made these sandals in the traditional huarache style out of a bit of 4mm rubber outsole material purchased from a cobbler in the area. I traced my feet, cut the
Earth oven
I spent some time this weekend learning how to build an earth oven. When we wrecked our old deck and built a new one in a slightly different orientation, we ended up with a vacant sunny spot 4 metres from
Building a gaming machine
Noah has always been the heaviest computer user amongst or kids. He’s a self-made geek who has become a whiz at tinkering with software. Recently he’s been straying into the realm of hardware, trouble-shooting connections and adding secondary drives. But
Carding jag
Thanks to a borrowed drum carder, this phase is going reasonably efficiently. But it still takes ages. We’ve spent hours at it over the past couple of days.
Hanging over our heads
The first colour, the first twenty per cent of our washed and carded fleece, hanging to dry above our heads at the apex of the living room ceiling. This is about 250 gm or half a pound. We have a
Granola
About 16 years ago I was busy at home when I got a surprise visit from an old medical school friend. She just dropped in and we had a brief though lovely visit. It was one of those moments, though,
Pantry joy
This is what keeps me going through two hundred pounds of pears, recurrent apple-picking sessions, the grinding of spelt and wheat, the hours of collating, sorting and hauling around bulk orders of nuts and grains. The pleasure of a pantry
Pears done!
We finished with the last of the pears today. We spent the afternoon picking an awful lot of tart apples. Then we combined them in a 3:1 ratio with the pears. We filled the cider press five times just today,
Pear production
We’re into day three of pear processing here. All six trays of the dehydrator have been loaded up yet again. We pulled out our copy of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen” by Harold McGee
Ap-pearant bounty
Today we cleaned a pear tree for a seasonal resident. It took four of us an hour and a half to pick about 200 pounds of pears. For the homeowners we’re providing a service — ridding their tree of fruit
Whoot! Wheat!
I thought I had missed out. I had tried to buy a share in the Kootenay Grain CSA but hadn’t heard back from them last spring. But today at the Garlic Festival I found out they still have a few