Taking Trees Down for More Solar Power

With the open winter so far, John is taking down some tall white (cat) spruce in the swale that cast a shadow (note shadow) on the solar panels when the sun is low. Our neighbor can use the wood with his portable saw mill. The brush will get piled and burned later on. The ashes will go into the compost and onto the plants. That's the plan....

Halloween Snow

Ready for winter....

The root cellar is cooling down ever so slowly as the weather has not turned particularly cold. Only two frosts so far. This year's cellar has more experimental products than ever! Canning is a challenge, no wonder I prefer dehydrating things or pickling. The tubs contain locally grown organic beets and carrots, and my two celeriacs. My new's years resolution for 2012 is to eat everything in here by June first when the temperature goes back to 50. We shall see.

Grand Kids

grampy john and the girls

liddy and grampa

ellie and liddy

ceb and the girls

Oh So Red, High Bush Cranberries

Brilliant color

Cleaning and Sorting

Along the field

Very easy to pick

Sauce and Syrup

When we first looked at this property, the high bush cranberries were flourishing. Several years later, we found the viburnum leaf beetle, the larvae and adults of which may completely defoliate the plant, and can kill it. The eveidence of the beetles persisted until THIS YEAR. The berries are everywhere along the hedgerows, boundary fence lines, and driveway. The harvest is easy. Making the syrup is easiest... boil in water for 10 min, crush and strain, reduce with sweetener of choice to syrup, add some pectin to thicken a bid. Voila. Vitamin C for the winter, plus the extra benefits for women is proven.

from wikipedia:  Viburnum trilobum (American Cranberrybush Viburnum, American Cranberrybush, Kalyna or Highbush or High Bush Cranberry) is a species of Viburnum native to northern North America, from Newfoundland west to British Columbia, south to Washington state and east to northern Virginia, with an isolated population in New Mexico.Although often called "Highbush Cranberry", it is not a cranberry. The name comes from the red fruits which look superficially like cranberries, and have a similar flavor and ripen at the same time of year. The fruits, sour and rich in vitamin C, can be eaten raw or cooked into a sauce to serve with meat or game.^[2]

The Colors of Harvest

Here comes the Sun

This little collection of pictures shows the what the sun is doing for us these days. It is cooking our compost, growing the plants in the greenhouse, and saving CO2. Now we are going around and checking to see how we can conserve more energy, turning off  the computers from 7 pm to 7 am, for example, turning off things that don't need to run, etc. This is a miracle for us, a dream that came true. The monitoring system is in a small room in the barn where we can connect a laptop and download the energy data to a laptop and take a look at what is going on. BTW, the hurricane only came up with 3.5 in of rain and a 35 mph gust. We are far above flowing rivers or brooks so we did not see the damage they have south of here. One bridge in our town is majorly damaged, a detour to live with for months. We were so lucky.

John's Birthday - Update

The solar project is coming along nicely today. The wood oven is being lighted today to prepare for canning, baking, drying veggies,and sterilizing jars. The greenhouse veggies are starting to turn the right colors and we have found  a good number of berries around the edge of the field that we can cook with the abundant apples for jellies and syrups. Tonight we will treat ourselves to a dinner at   Claire's   in Hardwick, where they serve what we like to eat, but cook it better...! Unfortunately, John got stuck with a tractor repair today, but that will not keep us from having a great day.

Baking In a Wood Fired Oven Class at King Arthur, Norwich, VT

Ciril Hitz led a class in Cooking in a Cooling Wood Fired Oven on Aug 5-6 at King Arthur Baking Education Center. From bagels, to pizza, to cinnamon  rolls, Linzer tart, granola and rustic tarts, we worked with 12 other people to master the art of cooking in a cooling oven. Most of the products we don't normally eat, so have given away most of it. We hope to find a class on baking artisanal whole grain breads someday, more to our liking. However, never having taken a class together like this, we came away thinking that it was fun and necessary if we are going to cook the foods we like. We recommend the classes at KA to everyone.

The Solar Power Project Begins

As we watch the wind towers go up on the mountains in our view, we are starting our own alternative energy project for the summer. Materials were delivered that will be installed in mid August. We expect to be using solar power in Sept.  This is Forest Palombo of Hyde Park, VT helping John off-load the materials. He is the son of Dave Palombo, the owner of the company, Indepent Power, (see truck). BTW, nothing was broken.

Baking Day

 

 When the oven is hot, ya gotta bake! Whereas the June weather is taking a vacation and we have rain, rain, rain..... we fired up the oven and over two days have baked up a number of things. We are working hard to become proficient with this, but there are so many unknowns. What a different experience in life from traditional  baking where everything is more controlled and exact, more or less. Timing is a big, big factor with the temperature of the cooling over descending at some unknown pace. Pizzas are best in a very hot oven, we made each in about 4 minutes. Later we baked a corn bread (a bit too much), a fruit crisp that is definitely very crisp, and the Lasagna which came out really well. So baking day is official: when the weather is crumby and we need to stock up on meals.

First baking... pizza and bread

 The first baking was a bit slow. The fire was not hot enough, but in time the pizza came out to be quite edible. The bread cooked in just under 20 min, to an internal temp of 190. However, (long story) the dough was not the greatest. So there is room for much improvement. We enjoyed the pizza and will try the bread for breakfast. It's a start and with luck and patience, we will figure this out. One thing for sure, this way does not heat up the kitchen!

Memorial Day Planting At Last

Chile Peppers and Tomatoes

 

Tomatoes/Sweet Peppers

Cold Frame/Plant nursery

Memorial Day has always been the benchmark for planting the garden. In the northeast kingdom, zone 3, that can be iffy. I took a chance this year. The plants were ready to go in, the irrigation system was connected (see black tubes going to each tub) and the weather finally warmed up nicely. The containers were mixed up with soil amendments and then planted. This summer the theme is Chile Peppers, growing and preserving.  They were slow to sprout and grow in the house, but they took nicely to the warm greenhouse today. They should be happy in such a hot place for the summer.

Decorating the Wood-Fired Oven

At the end of the day, May 19, 2011, the front of the oven looked like this. To see what took place all day long to get to this stage, click on the link to the slide show:  Oven Decoration Day  The electric heater inside is drying and curing the mortar. John and I had a ball doing this together, using things we had collected up in the Canadian Maritimes years ago. Red beach sand from the coast of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, scallop shells from Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, various other shells from various other beaches, cookie cutters, hand made clay marbles from a confiscated collection in the attic of our former house in Gill, Mass, and mirrors from window mobiles bought in Johnson, Vermont.  There are still other things that must be done before we can start building little fires to break it in. The oven will be insulated with vermiculite and the chimney has to be installed. Another month maybe before we are ready to bake.

Building the Wood-Fired Oven

 

The mason, Bill Roddy, took a few days off after working on the oven 6 days a week. He has completed the oven and we will attempt to dry it, set the concrete etc. over a long and rainy weekend. We put an electric heater inside to help the process. The next step will be to start the first stucco layer. Kyla, my craft buddy from town, has agreed to come and help me apply the shells and other things to the second coat of stucco. 

Here is the link to the slide show of the building of the oven. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nekcarolyn/sets/72157626594681775/show/

The Oven Begins....

Today the masons arrived. We are waiting for the materials to be delivered and measuring, measuring, and remeasuring. And so the wood-fired oven project begins. There will be slide show when it is done, rather than daily postings, oh no no no.Much too busy keeping up for that. Stay tuned, a couple of weeks tops.

A Natural Ritual

 Every spring, during late April early May, we have tried to witness the annual migration of the Steel Head Trout up the Willoughby River in Orleans. Brownington where we live, is next to Orleans and the Willoughby comes barreling through Brownington before it hits this gorge on its way north to Lake Memphremagog. After the water goes under the bridge, it opens up and generally there will be dozens of fisherman there, hoping to snag one of the big beauties. The steel head is really a rainbow trout and in some of the pictures you get a faint rosy glow on the side. Click on the link to see a slideshow of the run. We have dreamed of getting these pictures for almost ten years. Thanks to a tip-off from a neighbor yesterday, we saw this wonderful ritual passage where the river runs north.



Steel Head Run up the Willoughby River, Orleans, VT May 2,2010

Turkeys are annoying

Through the dirty basement window I saw a face that I  am glad did not become our country's symbol, the wild turkey. It gobbled, danced and pecked at the window's reflection of itself. Quite funny to watch and hear. They have stayed out front during the completion of our sugaring  this spring. We bottled about 8.5 gallons of amber colored syrup. A good year for us. The turkeys better head out soon before the season opens up!!

Turkeys Display

As we wrap up the sugaring season, other activities are taking shape. Two tom turkeys displayed to 4 hens this morning while we ate our breakfast.  Rains washed most of the snow away and left lots of mud and torrents of runoff water in the field. Finishing Batch 7 on the stove today, we are getting back to normal. It looks like the temps are too warm for the run, but we still have enough left in the barrels, tanks and buckets to get another boil on wed. Then it's done for the year. Maybe 8-9 gallons.....

Very Good News About Maple Syrup

Batch 4 in the picture is still looking med light. We don't really grade it because we don't sell it, so we don't really care. We are boiling today in the sunshine and warm temperatures. What is even greater about maple syrup than we had known, is that it has been labeled "health food" . Yes it's actually good for you! Follow this link to find out what the latest research is saying. Health benefits of Maple Syrup. 20 maple syrup compounds have been discovered last year in preliminary research which can play a key role in human health. These compounds possess antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, which have been shown to fight cancer, diabetes and bacterial illnesses. I GUESS WE WILL KEEP BOILING....!

Birthday Batch

This is batch 3, which happens to be on my birthday, so I will call it the Birthday Batch. The sugar content is still high, down from 3.2 to 2.9 on the hydrometer. It is getting somewhat darker but still on the light side. I like the real dark stuff, personally. John is out in the shack today while I remain tethered to the floor and bed with my backache (muscle spasm). Bummer. And to top it off, the winds have picked up to around 20 mph and it is about to rain, no snow, no rain, or both. However, yesterday was a great run and we stored 74 gallons of sap which has to be boiled. He's got books to read and the fire to stoke. We chat over the 2 way radios quite often. I am getting some reading done and other internet searching. I will hobble over and give him a break for lunch and a nap. We should finish around 3-4 pm. Hopefully this next batch will be the same or greater. When the blog  background changes from snow to flowers, you will know that our snow is gone!

Sap Slowing Down

Cold temps have come again leaving the buckets very slowing filling. We get to take a break from our work.