Pear Juice

A few weeks ago I did a Salem Harvest with pears.  I came home with a lot.  Like I picked a whole large tree by myself and took half.  They took quite a long time to ripen, but we were soon faced with a ton of ripe pears.  They are pretty soft, so I didn't think canning them would be worth the effort.  They do have excellent flavor though, so we decided to juice them.  

I cut them into quarters - we'll do eighths for the next batch to speed up the process.

We put them in the steamer juicer lined with a double layer of extra fine cheese cloth to catch particulates.  Then let them steam.

The first juice to come out was really watery.  This is the first (left) compared to the last (right).  We poured it back in the juicer to mix, then filled the jars again.  This worked well.  I added a teaspoon of lemon juice to each quart for good measure.

This is what the pears cook down too.  Still lots of goodness here.

So we ran it through the food mill to make baby food for Bennet.

The good stuff coming out.

The waste after it's "pooped" out.

Our finished juice.  The color difference is more pronounced here than in real life.  It's delicious!  We got 4 quarts out of one juicer load, which means we should get about 16 quarts.  Not bad for free pears.  We'll have lots of puree for pear leather too!

Long Weekend

What a nice long weekend!  I've been off since Thursday, Aaron had to work early Friday morning, but was off by 2.  We both had today off and got a lot done around here.

Thanksgiving was good, we took a pumpkin and apple pie and this braised cabbage - yum!  

I braved downtown on Friday morning by myself, but honestly didn't see much that I wanted.  I hit up Greenbaum's when they opened to get a random discount, I drew the largest, 25% off.  So I stocked up on solids and this whale flannel I've been eyeing for weeks.

Saturday morning we headed out to Minto Brown to ride our bikes.  Many of the paths were flooded.  We had made it across a few shallow areas when we came to this bridge.  We couldn't tell how deep it was, so Aaron went for it.  As you can see he didn't make too far.  Once he stopped moving it was problematic and let's just say this did not end well for his left foot.

We found ourselves in Independence for one reason or another and had lunch at the Pink House Cafe.  My food was good, but Aaron wasn't too impressed with his.  The service was wonderful and it has great reviews, but I don't know that we were wowed enough to go back.  

Sunday we drove to Corvallis to pick up Aaron's BeerAdvent Calendar.  We picked up some dough balls from American Dream, we do this every time we are in town and make up 8 small pizzas and freeze them.  After that we went to Winco, Home Depot and Market of Choice.  So much easier to run errands there, as everything is so much closer.  On the way home we stopped at our favorite old growth trail for a wonderful hike.

Today we got the automatic chicken door going - ran an extension cord through the garage wall and into the coop for power.  They are enjoying running around here.

All throughout the weekend (and over the last few weeks, and yes, months) we worked on the guest bedroom.  We are finally (almost) done!  With painting at least.  This photo shows the color the best, which is Pittsburgh Paints in "Pistachio" - made up with Sherwin Williams SuperPaint.  Trim is Sherwin Williams "Extra White".  I used their ProClassic interior waterbased acrylic-alkyd, semi gloss and really like the self leveling results.

Aaron cleaned and polished ALL the hardware from all the doors.  What a difference that makes.

This room took me so many hours to paint!  It took about 3.5 hours to paint one coat on all the trim, not even the doors and everything got 4 coats - 1 of primer (Sherwin Williams Adhesion Primer), 3 of the trim paint.  This room has a lot going on, 2 windows, 2 doors and 2 smaller doors.  We cut and painted all the quarter round and got that in tonight, then Aaron caulked everything to finish it off.

It's hard to see, but we really liked this light that came with the house.  Aaron removed the base and painted it to clean it up a bit.

Just a few things left to do here, we need to replace a lot of the electrical, so face plates are needed and the register needs to be painted white.

But overall, I'm checking this room off the list!

P.S. Here are some before pictures.  I really don't have many - total fail on my part!
Here is the room with their things in it.  You can't see the carpet.

Here is the room - I think the only picture I have of the carpet, oops - with carpet and the first god awful color we picked out.  It's Sherwin Williams "Gleeful" at 50%.  We tore out the carpet before we had the floors refinished.

Much better I think!

Mini Pies Ease the Pain

Well we did get our chickens moved over that day.  I still haven't received any "proof" that we are legal, but the officer said we were good to go.  

It took me a while, but I did get that pie filling canned this weekend.  I used my new peeler slicer corer and think it's better than my last one, which I hated.  I didn't do a ton of apples, and I didn't slice them since I wanted them thicker for pie filling.  The peeling is the main issue, and this one did miss some of the peel, but I'll have to process more to get a better idea of how well it works, but it seemed to be okay.  It did get better reviews.

Here is a side by side of the pie filling I made this year with the stuff I made two years ago.  Huge difference and I'm sold on the Clear Jel.  The filling on the right tastes delicious, but it is ugly.

I had a quart and a half of the filling "sauce" left so we decided to make mini pies tonight.  I convinced Aaron to make the crust while I ran to the store for surge protectors and ice cream.  A big storm came through today.

Which flooded our basement.  Not fun.  We aren't sure if we are on a spring or what, but our sump runs every 5 minutes when it's raining.  It was going every minute during the heaviest rain today.  But this was not the issue, the problem was this drain at the bottom of our basement stairs.  We don't know what feeds into this drain, but there was water pouring out of it and into our basement.  Also water coming in along every wall in small amounts.  Luckily we knew this might happen and had everything up off the floor for the most part.  We're feeling like the sellers were dishonest about the severity and frequency of this, but what can you do.
Thank goodness the power didn't go out, as we don't have a battery back up system yet (it'll be here Wednesday).  When we realized the generator that came with the house wasn't powerful enough to run our pump last night, Aaron grabbed my parent's and had it all ready to go.  We knew we'd only have minutes before the basement would flood without power to the sump.

Thankfully these mini pies did help us feel better.

Plans

We finally got the city to set a time to inspect our chicken coop for today, it only took 3 phone calls and Aaron visiting the office twice.  In one day.  Nobody seemed to be able to give us any answers and the person we needed was out of the office and would never call back.  We're kind of wishing we had just gone illegal, but hopefully this will all work out.  I am ready to move them over this evening, hence the large box, but just reread the fine print and the inspections will have to be approved by "the City".  I'm not sure what that means but I'm guessing it's going to be more waiting.  

Meanwhile the girls are holed up in the barn.  I speed over on my lunch break to let them have some fresh air for 45 minutes, then speed back.  I'm ready to have them here.  It's dark before and after work so lunch is the only option.  I'm not willing to let them out over there with no supervision and a raccoon on the loose.  

Hopefully after that I'm making a few quarts of apple pie filling.  I ordered some Clear Jel online, I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Smoky Hot Sauce

We have been working on our hot sauce recipe for three years now, taking good notes along the way.  It started out with a mixture of internet recipes and we have tweaked it each year to suit our (mostly Aaron's) liking.  This was the first year we smoked the peppers, and we have a winner!

This can be done with any mixture of hot peppers.  We did several batches because we had so many peppers.  The first batch was all jalapenos and it's very good with just jalapenos.  One of the batches after we used all sorts of peppers, including a few ghost peppers.  I'm not sure what all the others are, as they were grown by a friend, but the majority were serranos that I grew from seed.

First Aaron smoked them with some onions in a Little Chief smoker that he scored at an estate sale in Hood River for $5.  

The peppers after smoking.

After smoking them, he broiled them on both sides until blackened.  I will warn you that this gives off caustic fumes and is not pleasant to be around.

Aaron then cut off the stems and we ran them through a food mill to remove the seeds and skins.

Then all ingredients were combined in the Cuisinart (I have no picture of this step), then put into glass jars with extra head space and into the freezer.  We made about 3 gallons this year, which is good because with the smokiness, even I am eating it.

Here is the recipe written out.  Be sure to clean out your oven after broiling the peppers - they crack and pop all over.  I thought the fumes while they were roasting was bad, it was nothing compared to the seeds and pepper bits burning when the oven was turned on this morning...

Place peppers and quartered onions in Little Chief with 2 full consecutive trays of alder wood chips.  We let them sit in the smoker for about an hour after the last tray burned out.  Do not pack the smoker too full - the first photo is too full, these peppers didn't get as smoky as the first batch.

Place smoked peppers on cookie sheets and broil on low until skin begins to blacken.  Cut off the stems and put the peppers in a food mill to remove seeds and skins.

Put this in the Cuisinart:
1 cup pepper pulp (1 pound of peppers yields roughly 1 cup)
3/4 of a smoked onion
5 cloves of garlic
2 tsp salt
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup carrot juice
1/8 cup lime juice
1 cup water

Freeze or use within 3 weeks, it actually starts to ferment rather quickly.  This taste doesn't bother me, but Aaron doesn't care for it.

The Coop Has Landed

We have been plotting about how we were going to move the coop the last 20 feet.  I was surprised to come home yesterday and Aaron had already moved it.  By himself.  He felt awful about Olive and took off from work early, bought a big ass chain and wrangled it onto the cement pad.  I didn't even get a picture of the pad to show what a nice job he did.

Here is how we moved it across the yard - the day before the rain came.  We pulled it as far as we could.

Then pushed it, with amazingly little damage to the coop.  I love our farm truck.

This shows how far he moved it - to where the stakes are.  He ended up using a post from the chain link fence for leverage.

There she lies.  We strategically placed the coop behind the garage so it can't be seen from the street, but it can be seen from our dining room table.  Next project is to rearrange the coop so the people door is on the nest box side and the chicken door is where the people door is now, to give them more run space and so I can look out and see if the door is open or closed at night.

Meanwhile I am too afraid to let the hens out without anyone watching them.  So they are on lock down until we can move them here.  I have applied for a license with the city (I don't even want to get into how I feel about having to do this - I'm just playing by the rules).  They said they would get back to me this week, but so far, they have not.  I'm really hoping to not have to keep them in over the weekend.  I'd have moved them over already, but it's a $250 per day fine.

Loss.

My parents have been taking care of my chickens since we moved to Salem.  My mom is just as careful as I am about keeping them safe - locked up at night, checking on them several times a day.

Well this week they were out of town and I messed up.  They have an automatic door and I set it to close 15 minutes earlier due to shorter days.  Normally when they are in my backyard (or when my mom is home) they are checked on to make sure everyone is in. 

Tonight I went over just after dark, because of daylight saving and when I opened the back door I could hear Buffy.  That's not good I thought, that means they are locked out.  I went to the barn, saw Buffy and Camilla outside (my favorites, yes, I have favorites).  Inside I saw Bert and Mabel.  I didn't think too much of it, quickly opened the door for them - they came running in.  But Olive didn't come.  I shined the light out into the run and saw her in a heap.  

Shit.

I went outside and found her disemboweled.  Most certainly a raccoon.  I think she got locked out the night before and was killed, because she was fine yesterday afternoon.  

I feel guilty.  I am happy that Camilla and Buffy are okay, but I'm so anxious to get them moved out of there before it can come back.

Aaron was super nice and came over to take care of her body for me.  

Ugh.  I've seriously been so careful the last three years.  

Rest in peace Olive.  I'm sorry I let this happen :(

Chicken Coop

It was time to tackle this awful green room this weekend.  Really the pictures don't do it justice.  It was radioactive green.

I primed the walls and I think we have decided on a color...test patches are up.  If they are good in they daylight, we'll get the walls done tomorrow.  Then we can paint all the trim and move back into this room and out of my sewing room.

But our big project this weekend was to get a concrete pad poured for the chicken coop.  Our new concrete mixer and bags of concrete ready to go:

The chicken coop spent 6 months in my parent's driveway while we were busy buying a house.  We moved the coop to the south end of our yard, then used the pickup to pull/push it to the north end closer to where it will stay.
We staked out an area the size of the coop, then dug it out and added gravel.

While Aaron finished putting the mixer together and building the forms, I raked up the leaves from the two big maples in our yard.

He tamped down the gravel.

Then it was go time.

Aaron would pour in the 80 pound bags of concrete while I added the water.  Then he would rake and smooth as we went.  He worked concrete construction to put himself through college, so he had lots of experience with this.

I, on the other hand, had no concrete experience.  It is messy business.  Sometimes the concrete would fly out of the mixer, at one point into both of my eyes.  I had to go inside to dig the rocks out of my eyes.  Safety glasses all the way after that.

22 bags, 1,760 pounds of concrete later we had a 5 x 8 pad.

Aaron leveled, smoothed and brushed it to make it look nice.  

We're hoping the rain holds off so it can cure tonight.  The next challenge will be getting the coop onto it without destroying the edges.  Getting closer to having my girls here!