WINDFALL

Hello dear friends!  Can you believe we are already one week into August?  Hope this week has been a cooler one for you.  We finally are having some nice temperatures.  If you close your eyes and face north, you can almost imagine it is autumn.

CANNING

This time of year is a busy one at Sweet Briar Cottage.  This week I canned 13 pints of beans, 20 quarter-pints of jalapenos,  7 half-pints of maple-vanilla-peach jam and 8 quarts of peaches.

There's nothing like jars of peaches in the pantry to say "home".  By the way, I saw a jar of  Amish canned peaches in the store the other day - $6!  I'd have to be pretty desperate for a jar of peaches  to pay that price!  Altogether, my peaches cost about $1.50 a quart, and they are all-organic and  non-gmo.  That's why it's good to learn to can.

We also started a crock of sauerkraut.  The directions for making it are here.  We didn't grow our own cabbage because we can buy a ten pound head for $1.40 at a local vegetable stand.  Two heads are all the cabbage we need and it costs about the same as a packet of seeds.  Takes up less space in the garden also.  Which reminds me, someone asked why I don't raise chickens.  Our village  has an ordinance against it, but it just isn't cost effective for us.  By the time you buy the feed and house a small flock, and they don't lay too much during our harsh winters, those eggs are getting expensive.  It helps that I can buy free-range  ones just outside of the village limits for $2 a dozen.  We use less than a dozen a month.  You always have to weigh the benefits when being thrifty. Of course, chickens do give the place atmosphere, so if they ever change the ordinance, neighbor Tom has offered to split the costs with us.

GARDENING

In the garden, we are harvesting our first tomatoes!   If you have ever tasted an heirloom variety picked fresh from the garden, still warm from the sun, you will understand why the tomato is a fruit and not a vegetable.  So wonderful!   So sweet! Every year I fret over them.  Will they ripen before the first frost?   This has been such a strange year; we are already digging potatoes, but the corn is still puny and I'm not sure  the pumpkins will ripen this year before a heavy frost.  I don't ever remember things growing so tall, either.  The hollyhocks have to be at least ten feet tall, and the sunflowers too.  The lilies come up to my shoulders and we have to beat back the black-eyed Susans.  On the other hand the corn is floundering and the Concord grapes are just hard little green pebbles.  Gardening!   It's always feast or famine, that's why it's so important to preserve what you can; you never know when you'll get more!

SAVING SEEDS

 We save most of the seeds from our garden, as many are rare heirloom varieties.  It helps keep the costs of gardening down.  This week we are collecting the seeds from our tomatoes.  Each year we select the earliest, most perfect, sweetest,  meatiest ones; traits we are trying to breed into them   The textbook way to save tomato seeds is to cut open the tomato, scoop out the seeds, place in a jar of water, stirring a couple times a day, let the pulp ferment at room temperature for a couple day, the seeds drop to the bottom, pour off the pulp, repeat this procedure until the seeds are clean, spread the seeds on a paper towel to dry.  However, I've found it is easier to put the seeds in a fine mesh sieve and wash the pulp off under running cold water, then just plop the seeds onto a porcelain plate to dry, scrape them off the plate when they are dry and store.



Our dear friend, Mary, gave us a bunch of ferns from her garden.

Which we planted on the north side of our shed.  An instant garden!   Georgie likes to pretend he is an ancient canine, living in the wild among them.

Silly dog!  But I do understand, every time I can, sew or light an oil lamp; I feel an ancient pull connecting me to my ancestors.  It gives me peace.  One of the best things you can do for your soul, is to turn off all the technology and reconnect to the earth and the natural rhythms of life.  There's scientific proof that WiFi and electrical lines interfere with a good nights sleep and others that having your bare feet touch the bare earth is beneficial to your health.  Who knows?  Maybe we all need to return to our primeval  roots.

"Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still they say. Watch and listen.  You are the result of the love of thousands."
~ Linda Hogan, Native American Writer~

HOUSEKEEPING

One old-fashioned thing we are doing this week, is cleaning  all our room-sized rugs.  Just like the old washerwomen  of days past, we fill tubs (modern-day storage bins work also) with soapy water, throw in the rugs and stomp on them with our feet, like we are making wine.  In another tub, we rinse them.  Then we lay them over clothes lines, bushes and this make-do (two sawhorses and the garden table) for our very heavy braided wool rug.

A few days in the hot sun, and they are dry.  You'd burn out the motor of your washing machine with these old rugs , they are so heavy, and for what it costs to dry clean them, you might as well throw them out and begin anew.  Make sure you use cold water so the dyes do not bleed.  You have to make hay while the sun shines!  So much to do in summer.

RECIPE FROM THE GARDEN

One thing we don't do during the summer, is to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.  One of our favorite summertime meals is  Panzanella,  or Italian tomato and bread salad.  Most of the ingredients can be found right in the garden, so it's thrifty too.  And it's vegan!


Panzanella

1/2 C. olive oil
two cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. ground red pepper
1 loaf of a hard crusty bread (like French) cut into cubes
5 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp. black pepper
4 lbs. ripe tomatoes, cut into 1" cubes
2 C. chopped bell peppers
1 small red onion
1 C. basil leaves, torn into pieces

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Whisk together 3 tbsp. olive oil, 1 clove garlic, salt, paprika, and red pepper.  Toss bread cubes in mixture.
Spread cubes evenly on a cookie sheet. Bake 20-25 minutes, stirring halfway through, or until cubes are crisp.  Let cool.
In a large bowl, whisk together vinegar, remaining 5 tbsp. olive oil, remaining clove of garlic and black pepper.
Add remaining ingredients.  Add bread cubes.  Toss to coat. Serve immediately.

BTW, check the reduced-for quick-sale  shelf of your grocer's bakery for good, cheap bread for this salad.  Since you are toasting it, it doesn't need to be fresh.

Pure bliss!

Most of our meals this week have consisted of freshly dug potatoes, (either roasted or boiled and served with fresh dill and a dab of butter) just picked tomatoes, green beans from the garden and some berries for dessert.  Life is good!

WINDFALL

The recent storm has gifted us with some treasures.  There were lots of branches to be gathered for firewood and smaller ones that I am collecting for a Colonial-style stick fence for our garden,  If a person put some effort into it, I'm sure they could gather enough wood to see them through several weeks of heating the house by woodstove.

Another windfall were these plums.

A branch must have broken off the neighbor's tree during the storm and they didn't bother to pick the fruit off the branch before hauling it to the street.  All in all, there were about three pounds of fruit, free for the picking.  Not a blemish on them!  Should make several jars of plum butter. 


CRAFTING

 

I've been seeing a lot of these knitted ruched scarves on Pinterest lately (don't you just love Pinterest?) and I wanted to knit one up.  I found the pattern  in this knitting book  on loan from the library. I used an inexpensive Lion Brand wool in mustard and the pattern really knitted up quickly.  Hint:  I really dislike casting on large amount of stitches (this pattern was over 300) I count and recount but the numbers always come out different each time.  I found that if I place a marker every 50 stitches, it is easier to count the cast-ons. 
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"To me a lady is not frilly, flouncy, flippant, frivolous, or fluff-brained, but she is gentle, she is gracious, she is godly, and she is giving.  You and I have the gift of femininity ....the more womanly we are, the more manly men will be and the more God is glorified.  Be women, be only women, be real women in obedience to God."
~Elisabeth Elliot~

GO OUTSIDE

My son and daughter-in-law brought the grandbabies for a visit.  That's a picture of son Erik and grandson Felix above, eating ice cream at our favorite parlor, a Victorian general store.  We also spent some time at the beach.  A fun activity for grandparents to play with the grandchildren is buried treasure.  Bring a couple handfuls of change  along.  Encourage the grandkids to look for buried treasure by digging in the sand.  Every once in a while, distract them from the digging and throw some of the change in the hole.  The little ones get quite a kick out of it.  We used to do this with granddaughter Tatianna, but now she is too big to fall for the trick.  Only works for the little ones.  Enjoy them while you can, they grow up so quickly!


THRIFTY THINGS WE DID THIS WEEK

Canned peaches, jam, jalapenos and beans.

Saved tomato, hollyhock, spinach, dill and mustard green seeds.

Collected windfall branches and plums.

Harvested tomatoes, summer squash, peppers, beans and herbs from the garden.

Washed our area rugs rather than dry-cleaning them.

Knitted a scarf from a free pattern.

Got more free compost from the village.