Guess What Terry Did?

Ally is getting older and slower and is heading into retirement, the easy life, sleeping in the house on her fluffy bed....so meet her replacement!

 Lupin!

 

Fall Wildlife

Well, with the fall weather, and the cooler temperatures, the wildlife makes it's way through the yard eating the last of the garden and flowers..  BTW the dog is in the house laying next to the fireplace enjoying her retirement!!

Halloween Treats

I just made some cake balls for Halloween Treats. Very easy to do and quite pretty. Watch out Kids, you are getting these for Halloween, see ya on Monday.....

Cider Time!!

Just a reminder: More pictures are on this entry, just click on the date tag to open the entry completely.

Although this year was not a bumper year for apples, we did round up about 120lbs worth to try out the press. Thanks cousin Dean for the press. This press was in the barn back in Iowa at Cousin Deans place. When we went back to Georgia last November we stopped by and picked it up. Terry re-furbished it, fixed up some of the old wood pieces that were broken and spruced it up....so we are pressing the first apples through it!
The bottle of Brandy is ready for the first juices to fill the cup!!



Rush is in charge of the pressing part.

Mom, Jeanne and I (Damon did a turn as well) cut apples and did a bit of quality control.


The boys were in charge of the actually pressing. Damon fed the apples in, Terry pushed them into the hopper, Seth turned the chopper and Rush pressed. Quite a functional operation. We went through the apples in no time flat. We got about 3 gallons of juice total. We were all happy....a beautiful day....fresh cider....and chicken noodle soup and toasted sandwiches. It was a great day.

Plum Harvest

We have the BEST plum tree, it is a Satsuma, and this year it out did itself with big beautiful plums.



This is a picture of the plum cut open and one plum filled Emily's hand.

Emily picket out some of the biggest most beautiful for a close up.


As you can see, we picked three big boxes of these beauties!!

New blog features

As you can see the site looks a bit different. In order to fully see the postings each time you must click on the Date icon, it opens the page more completely so that you can view all the pictures.

Tahoe in the Fall

The Sugar Pine cones are ready. As you can kind of see they are covered with sticky sap, they sparkle in the sunshine.



We hiked to the top of the hill (something that is done each time we visit Thelma and Bobs) it is great exercise cause it is uphill and at 7017 feet above sea level so you really get a cardio workout!!


Surprised with a kiss for the pic.


The sun on the lake is fantastic. The shade from the trees makes for a beautiful silhouette shot.

Bear Sighting

As we were heading out of the Canyon on the way to Tahoe, we had noticed ALOT of bear "sign" in the road.....so we were kind of looking around just in case....and we came around a corner and a big black bear sow crossed the road right in front of us. She didn't immediately go into the bushes but stopped at the side of the road and looked as if she was going to climb a tree...looking up into the tree and then looking back at us. We couldn't get stopped in time so we went on around the corner turned around and came back....and she was still by the base of the tree and this is why....




We stopped and took a few photos but didn't want to disturb them, Mom bear stayed in the bushes below the tree watching us intently...

UMMMMM Cheese!

So my first attempt at making mozzarella cheese, and it turned out not too shabby. Actually it was really quite easy and tons of fun. I made two batches in the same day. The low fat version is more firm and rubbery while the full fat version is soft and creamy, would be great for pizza!!

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Tomato Time

I just picked 20 lbs of tomatoes (and a couple of green peppers and yellow peppers) from my garden. We had planted no less than 4 varieties from the very large to the grape tomatoes which we planted by the back steps so we can grab a handful each time we walk by!!
Who has ever planted a garden and harvested the fruit without giving glory to God?! His creation is AWESOME and AMAZING.

Camping on the Imnaha

Terry and I were fortunate to be able to take a couple 4 days and go camping with friends on the Imnaha. We swam in the river, picked huckleberries and went 4-wheeling. 4-wheeling is not an off road experience like you may envision, but is actually a "travel the less traveled" dirt roads that lace the mountains in this area of the country. You can get to some very beautiful vistas via 4 wheeler.



We stopped by Lick Creek and Diane found this HUGE mushroom growing out of the cut bank of the creek. Anyone want to venture a guess at what kind it is???


It had a fleshy cap so maybe it was edible???? We didn't pick it cause it was so cool and so big.

Blackberries are on!

The kids came home for the weekend and we got the boat out, the fishing poles loaded the worms gathered and the berry buckets on board....We caught some fish, swam some and picked blackberries by the bucketful!! yum yum, the taste of summer

Other solar oven designs we saw

This design uses a reflective shield, an turkey roasting size oven bag, a rack and a dark aluminum pan.



This is a hard metal reflective shield with a pyrex bowl with lid.


This is made by a non profit organization and can be use in summer or winter with different orientations for season.



This on is a windshield reflector an oven rack, a bucket and a stump. She baked a pan of brownies with this one!!

Time to Bake Bread

I had also gone to a work shop on how to bake with sourdough (unleavened bread). The presenter for this work shop is the wife of the cob oven workshop, and they bake bread in their cob oven all the time. So when they were in John Day about 10 years ago they built a cob oven at a local area home and some of us were invited up to see how the bread baking happens in the cob ovens.

This pic is the door of the cob oven and a loaf of fresh baked whole wheat sourdough bread.


I am using the peel to get the loaves out of the oven.



See how big the inside of this oven is.....wow, we had 5 loaves of bread and a pan of roasted garlic in there all at the same time.


So dinner consisted of fresh from the oven bread, garlic dip and homemade mozzarella cheese, some red wine and beer if you preferred.


This is Hannah the maker of the bread as she slices the still warm loaves. YUMMMMMMY!!!

What I did this weekend

We don't get alot of weekends off (which means to go away to a different location) but this last weekend we packed the camping stuff and headed to John Day, Oregon to the SOLWest fair. I was very interested in learning how to build a cob oven, and Terry was interested in how to update out solar hot water heater.....Here are some of the pic from the fun weekend.

DAY ONE
We started by making a matrix of clay soils and sand....always mixing with our feet. Until it was like pie dough.


In order to mix it thoroughly we used the tarps to turn it over.

Terry had the camera at another workshop so some of the steps are not going to be in picture here.

This is John and I getting cardboard and newspapers wetted to make a layer on top of our oven to provide a "void" for insulation and inhibit heat transfer.

I am not taking a break and reading the local paper, I am separating sheets to get wet before being applied to the oven.


This is Sue, Lew, John (the other John) and I placing the paper layer on the oven.


This is John (no hat) and Kiko (with hat, also the presenter and expert!!), after the first stage of the cob oven is constructed. We had applied the clay/sand matrix over the sand/rock "void" for the inside of the oven and have applied a layer of newspaper and cardboard. We are discussing what happens next


More mix is required....this time the clay/sand is mixed with wood shavings. This produces an insulation layer to inhibit heat transfer out of the oven so all the heat is kept in the clay "battery" for baking.


This was the most fun of the mixes....it felt really great on the feet. My pedicure didn't hold up well but I did get the exfoliation treatment from the mix!!


Here we are applying the mix we just "stirred up" onto the oven.



This is what the oven looked like after day one. The door is constructed, the void is still full of sand and the cob mix on the outside looks like mud with shredded coconut in it (the wood chips)



Patricia and Sue are enjoying the shade and a break to discuss the artistic touches the oven will have. Patricia is a local artist that had painted many of the murals you will see in and around the John Day area.


DAY TWO

More mixing....now our matrix is clay/sand and straw. This pic shows Terry, Sue and I dancing on the straw trying to incorporate the slurry of clay and sand. This was the hardest mix to do.
Sue is showing you her "cob sandals"!!! Boy did we meet some fun people during this fun weekend.

John, and I along with more eager hands placing the straw cob mix on the oven. This is the final structural component to the oven.



It looked like a beaver dam, or a giant kiwi fruit when we got the straw mix on.




DAY THREE

Time to add the final layer on the oven. This matrix is clay/sand and manure!! Yes, it did smell a little but it wasn't terrible. Your hands smelled a little like a feed lot after you were done, but it washed off. This is Sue applying to the top and Sarah applying to the front. Sarah is the spear-head of this project. She is a community member who has volunteered her time, energy and lots of space in her garage to buckets of mud and clay for this community project.




We are just about covered.



Ta-da, now just awaiting the artist!!!


Patricia arrived and began drawing on designs for us to follow as we "colored" them in with a colored plaster mix (clay/sand/manure).



This is Patricia beginning the coloring process.





And this is a pic of me with the final project completed. Awesome huh!!