Let the Games Begin!

I stopped by our gardening store today on the way home from the gym and was delighted to find bins and bins of half off seeds from last year! Today I am going to go through all my seeds and see if I still "need" anything else. Not being limited by space, I'm a little concerned I'll get in over my head, but in a good way right? I'm toying with the idea of having a farm stand outside our house to sell fruits, veggies, eggs and flowers. I've never felt like I had enough room to spare for flowers, but this year the sky is the limit.

Christmas Catch Up

Mabel is laying regularly now, which means two eggs on most days! I think Bert is next, her comb is getting bigger and she was extra talkative today. Mabel's first egg is on the right, I love its little speckles.


The chickens have been getting Nancy's yogurt to build their good bacteria back up after the worming.


We had such a nice Christmas, lots of time with family, and lots of thoughtful gifts I wasn't expecting. My parents gave us a food dehydrator that my dad built in the 70's when my aunt and uncle lived on a prune orchard. When we dried Italian plums from a neighbor's house two summers ago, the smell was so nostalgic. My parents would dry boxes and boxes of the prunes and we would have them in our freezer all year long.


It runs on light bulbs and a fan system


I think it's funny that they describe it as "Portable", it's pretty massive.


With a fresh coat of paint, it is going to look great and work much better than our small, weak dehydrator.
I made at least 6 batches of cookies, I'm all cookied out.


I took some pictures of our wonderful Christmas dinner, but left my camera at my parent's house.
We went skiing last night and will probably go again tonight, I am picking it up quickly. I have only been a handful of times and never with any regularity, so I never really got past "plowing". Last night I was flying down the bunny hill making quick turns and feeling very comfortable. The season pass is nice because we can stop when we get tired without feeling like we didn't get our money's worth, hopefully that will stave off injury!
We are planning a fun date day on New Year's, stay tuned for that...

Today's the Day!

Snowy Days

Look what came in the mail! The owner of the hatchery is having some sort of family emergency, and I haven't actually paid for my order yet which makes me a little nervous. Hopefully they call me back today and assure me all is well with my order, because we are "nesting" over here. Ha ha ha.

We have over 10 inches of snow right now from a big storm a few days ago. Not growing up in a snowy place, I didn't realize the hazards of falling snow from the roofs as the snow melts. It slinks down in these big heavy sheets.

This time there are also ice daggers along the edges. You definitely do not want to be standing under these at the wrong time. The whole house shakes when they come down.

I hope these guys are okay, no way to tell really until we get a warm enough day to do a quick check. There is still activity in both hives, but the bees on the right took a hard hit after the move. There were hundreds and hundreds of dead bees.

After a snow storm I go out and shovel a path for the chickens.

They seem to appreciate it. I'm sure they get bored hanging out in the coop all day, and I feel like they sit around eating wood shavings the whole time. It turns out chickens are not always the brightest creatures.

The snow is definitely a welcome change from the rain, especially the nice dry powder. I skied around the yard a few times yesterday and I think I will again today, instant access is pretty nice!

From Our Kitchen

There has been lots of time spent in the kitchen over the last week. We made this roasted red pepper pine nut sauce, it was good, but we both thought it needed something. I think fresh basil would have done the trick. It also would have been better if we had roasted our own red peppers, but at $2 a piece, that wasn't happening. Not to mention, it's not red pepper season in this part of the world.


We've been playing more of this than I would like to admit. We are not TV watchers or video game players. We waste our time by internetting. This old Nintendo is fun though, lots of Dr. Mario!


I was gone for the week, but Aaron kept busy. He made roasted red pepper hummus from scratch.


I found some hot sauce pictures on my camera...he took very good notes, I'll share the recipes this week. Cookies, muffins, pizzas and Chex mix were also made this week, but no pictures. I have been on a Chex mix, cookie diet. Uck. A big salad tonight hit the spot.


Today was chicken worming day. I realized I should be prophylactically worming my girls. I haven't seen any worms, but Buffy has been thin for a long time and I know she eats well. So I decided it would be a good thing to do. The eggs have to be tossed for about a month, so I also wanted to do this before anyone else started laying. The first round of worming happened today, it is a liquid so I measured out each dose onto some bread pieces. Camilla got a half dose because she is so small. Everyone took their medicine well (and no one else's, that was a concern) except Camilla. I had to try 3 different foods before I got her to eat her's.


Some exciting news - Mabel has begun "squatting" when I go near. That means she will start laying soon. Hopefully we won't have to throw any of her eggs out, how horrible to waste the first eggs! I also got everyone dusted for mites and lice last week with Aaron's help. Everyone looked pretty good except Camilla, her skin was red and inflamed. I have a feeling they gained hold when she had her surgery and wasn't feeling well. We are well on our way to a parasite free zone over here.

This Week...

We ate these (not ours) (not all of them)


Decorated our tree


Canned apple pie filling




Shared a 2009 Abyss


Starting saving seeds for spring


Made these with local, organic beef given to us by a friend (YUM).


Went skiing at Meadows twice. 12 inches of fresh powder today!


Next up: make more hot sauce, dust the chickens for mites (not looking forward to this), work on some small sewing projects.

Ski Event

We stopped downtown today to watch this event. Some of the streets in Hood River are really steep, they filled this one with snow and added some rails and the local (and I think some non-local) kids competed on both skis and snowboards.


This kid was my favorite, he was probably 7 and really good. He won his heat. We had to leave early to meet the firewood guy, who never actually showed. No call, no answering his phone, nothing after talking to him for the last 10 days to arrange a time. Very weird, I don't know what that was about.


Here's a view from the bottom.


We kept busy in the kitchen during the time we would have been unloading wood. I baked bread! I don't know if it was beginner's luck or if I have a knack, but it turned out wonderful, even though I tweaked the recipe. I know that baking is a whole new ball game from cooking, but I did grow up making bread so I think a lot of that was ingrained and filed away. (The Kitchen Aid helped too)



We are in the process of a lot of life overhauls - mainly driven by money, but also by trying to live the lives we want to live. We are trying to cut food costs, food is super expensive here. The kind of prices we are used to paying for organic, local for regular food. The highest priced organic milk we've seen was $13 for a gallon, who can afford that?? We haven't priced it out yet, but we want to start making our own bread. If nothing else it tastes better, less plastic is used and we know exactly what went into it - including our own honey. We are also buying in bulk and freezing, preparing dried beans instead of canned, that kind of thing. We are still working through those apples, 2 more batches of applesauce - it is the best applesauce I've ever had, and SO easy. Fill the crock pot with apples, our's is a 3.5 quart. It will fit 10-12 large apples. We have been using granny smiths, I think that is the secret. Add half a cup of sugar, sprinkle liberally with cinnamon, and add 1/4-1/2 cup of water. Low for 8-10 hours, high for 3-4. Using an apple peeler/corer is key, super fast and easy.
We will be making hot sauce again soon with the rest of our peppers and I'll post the recipes then. The first ones need to be adjusted.

Keeping Warm

We kept warm tonight by staying close to the kitchen. We're waiting on a firewood delivery from a rather strange craisglist connection. It's taking longer than I had wanted, but it was too good of a deal to pass up.
Here's Aaron helping at my parent's house on Thanksgiving. Those are little red hens on his apron for those with sharp eyes.


My mom sent us with some bones and dark meat so that we could make soup.




Perfect winter food.
I made a batch of applesauce for the crock pot. I've never made it that way - so simple! Aaron is excited to put it fresh on his oatmeal in the morning.


I also made up a bunch for drying. We still have two boxes or so of apples to get through. Tomorrow I think I'll make up some pie filling and freeze it. I made this last week while we had a friend staying...delicious! I'll probably go more traditional (and lean) tomorrow.


I hope you are all are keeping warm, that cold snap last week came early!