Country Entertainments

 Hello dear friends!  Hope today finds you all hail and hearty!  Well, spring is here, albeit, Michigan spring is very finicky.  One day it can be in the mid-50s and the next day we have snow.  I can't wait until we have true warmer weather because sitting around all winter is making me fluffy. Ha! I really need to be able to get out and work in the garden and firm up my muscles.  Doesn't help that I spent the last month just lying about trying not to hurt.  But as neighbor Connie says, "It is what it is.".

The first weekend of March was maple syrup weekend and we enjoyed visiting the local maple sugaring shack.

The steam from the boiling sap was heavenly.  We had a nice conversation with the people that owned it. And we bought a pint of syrup from them, also.  It's important to us to support local businesses.  Our maple syruping is coming along splendidly.  The irratic temperatures have been a real boon for collecting sap. Here's the first of our syrup all canned and ready for the shelves:

We have more coming!  It's a long way from meeting all of our sugar needs, but every bit counts! What a pleasure it is to forage for food.  Why, it's almost like manna from heaven!

The second weekend of March we went to an estate sale in a nearby village we had never explored before.  Most of their items were what I call rusty greasy junk, but they had some beautiful pieces of Victorian furniture in excellent condition for very good prices, some pretty wicker porch furniture and an intriguing Victorian bronze mantle clock with the most extraordinary mermaids on the sides. None of which I bought.  But I did buy a Wedgewood teapot with eight matching teacups and saucers for the grand sum of $20!  Not that I needed it. As you can see Ihave plenty of china:

The teapot I bought is the white one on the far right corner. By the way, I took all my china down and gave it a good wash the other day.  The first job in Spring cleaning.  Oh my!  The cobwebs in this house! Anyways, the teapot isn't really my style, I prefer things a lot older, but it was such a good buy, I'll use it for a season or two, then donate the set to a local thrift store that employs disabled people.  They have a little "antique" shop area in their store.

Since the Mennonite store was near the estate sale, we stopped by and bought ourselves a coffee.  They brew the best coffee and it's only a dollar with free refills.  And we bought a large head of cabbage for ninety-nine cents, which we used to make this inexpensive meal to offset my "antique" expenditure:

Cabbage Frittata 

This is our take on a Korean street sandwich.  We make ours into a frittata since Ran can't eat bread.

Finely diced cabbage

Shredded carrots

Finely diced onions (or anything in the onion family)

a teaspoon of sugar (the street vendors use a lot more but a teaspoon is enough)

half a dozen eggs

 a tablespoon of mayo and a tablespoon of ketchup combined

and of course, a wee bit of fat or oil, whatever is your preference to fry it in

The proportions of vegetables is whatever you like, enough to fit in (heaping)  the frying pan you are using.

Heat the oil/fat until hot and saute the vegetables until the are translucent and starting too crisp.  Stir in the beaten eggs and continue to stir until the eggs are cooked through.  We like to finish it off by putting the frying pan into a hot oven.  Take from the heat and sprinkle with sugar. Serve with the ketchup/mayo sauce.  Of course you can cut into squares and serve between two pieces of toast if you desire. BTW, our independently-owned grocery store sells eggs for $2.99 a dozen, making them affordable again.  Bless free enterprise!  A local egg farmer undercut  the prices of the large commercial ones.  I suspect  there's a bit of price-gouging in the high costs of eggs these days.   There's enough cabbage left over to make a nice bowl of coleslaw for the guys (I can't eat raw cabbage because of my thyroid) so we'll have another cheap-to-us meal of walleye and coleslaw.

This coming weekend we will attend a benefit for our Amish neighbors. They are having a luncheon, auction, and bake sale to raise money for their school.  And just down the road the Mennonite store is holding their customer appreciation day (free coffee and donuts) and some very good prices  on meat and butter.  So we will stock up.  So that is how we country bumpkins keep ourselves entertained.  Exciting isn't it? Ha!

Soon we won't have any need for outside entertainments, as gardening season will be upon us.  Ran started some of our seeds; tomatoes, peppers, onions, and herbs, this week.  And there's spring cleaning.  In between times, I fill what minutes I can snatch with knitting, sewing and cross stitching.  I'm making progress on that sampler now that I don't have to make a color change every two stitches.  I'm also making a Holly Hobbie inspired charm quilt (small) for the back of the loveseat.  The top came together quickly, but the quilting (ugh!) is really gobbling up my free time. I'm also knitting a pair of socks in a pretty (for me) colourway called Dried Herbs.  I love earthy colors and there's certainly nothing earthier than dried herbs. The socks could knit up pretty quickly if I just dedicated my time to them, but I've spread myself pretty thinly with these projects.  Next month I'll choose quick-to-finish projects.  And please remind me NO MORE QULTS!

So you see, life here at Sweet briar cottage is pretty sweet, figuratively and literally.  I found this quote the other day and it pretty much sums up our philosophy on life:

To live content with small means ~ to seek elegance  rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich~ to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart ~ to bear all cheerfully ~do all bravely, await occassions ~ never hurry: in a word, to let the spiritual,  unbidden  and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.

~William Ellery Channing~

Well, That's it for this week.  Please drop me a comment and tell me what you are doing for entertainment this month.  Or just to  say "hello!". I hope this week will be a lovely and joyful one for you all!

Hugs

Jane

Living Below Our Means

 Hello dear friends!  Firstly, I want to thank all of you that sent me get-well wishes.  I am getting better, but it is going a lot slower than I had hoped.  I am one of those sorts of people that thinks I can by  force of will to get better.  Nope. Ha! BTW, I went to the emergency room with an extreme pain in my side and thought perhaps it was my gallbladder or appendix.  I was concerned because my son had appendicitis and   his pain wasn't in the usual place. By the time the doctors figured it out, it started to turn to gangrene. So I thought I should get it checked out.  So off to the hospital I went.  After blood tests and a CT scan, they couldn't find anything wrong with me, and since they didn't have any diagnosis, they couldn't give me anything for the pain.  So I came home and while I was getting undressed I noticed a rash. Yep, shingles!  My mother told me I never had the chickenpox so I thought I was immune to them and came as quite a surprise.  The pain I was experiencing was nerve pain. If they only would have given me a physical exam they might have discovered it, but modern medicine is quick to use all their diagnostics instead of doing good old-fashioned doctoring.  A month later I'm still suffering from nerve pain, but it is lessening and I have my good days and my bad days.  I don't intend on letting the pain stop me from getting what I need and want to get done. Just have to work through it.   Anyhow....

Still, I managed to get some things done.  I managed to meet my goal of finishing the bottom half of a Beidermeier-style sampler I'm stitching.

The top should go much more quickly than the bottom half and I hope to finish it by the beginning of summer.  Just in time to hunt down a frame for it at a garage sale.  What sort of frame do you think would look good with it?

I also finished knitting this fischu.  

BTW, that is not a cobweb on the bottom left-hand corner, it's just some strands of my hair when I bent over to take the picture.  Some people are so critical!  My hair gets into everything and I'm sure I have knitted quite a few strands into my work over the years.    

Late Winter Jobs

February is a big month for canning here.  Foods that are root cellared must be canned before they spoil, so we canned potatoes and winter squashes.  We grew a lot of potatoes this past year.  I also canned all the organic grass-fed beef that I wrote about in an earlier post.  And we canned some dried beans.  Annieh asked if I would explain how to can, but really there isn't more than I can add to what is already written in a good canning book, such as Ball's Blue book, and by studying the manual that comes with your pressure canner.  For canning beans, I can them exactly (except I can mine at 10 pounds of pressure) as this lady does on YouTube.  She is very knowledgeable about canning and I would recommend her channel to anyone that wants to learn how to can. Always check the information you are given on any blog or channel with the Blue Book or a canning book written by an extension office.  There's a lot of very bad advice out there.  Unfortunately, a lot of people are attracted to slick looking blogs and channels, rather than those that are written by actual knowledgeable  and experienced people.  BTW, Ran and Jamie were a major help to me in canning.  They really could have done it themselves, but lack the confidence, I guess.  Ran even made up a batch of cranberry catsup (recipe in the Ball Blue Book) and all I needed to do was to fill the jars.   More things cleaned out of my freezer!  We are getting ready for the fishing season.

The snow is melting quickly and we have begun maple sugaring.  I wrote about how we do small-scale processing here.

Since I didn't feel much like leaving home this past month and the weather wasn't cooperating anyhow, Jamie spent his down-time organizing and inventorying our pantry.  Such a big job!  I can truly say that we are well-stocked.  Taking inventory is a major aid in keeping a budget.  Ran is one for always wanting to buy more, but when he saw our stock list, he was finally convinced we didn't need to buy any more.  We really only need to spend a few dollars a month on groceries.  We prefer to eat our own fruits and vegetables that we either root cellar, freeze, dehydrate or can, rather than eat fresh fruits and vegetables from the stores during the winter.  We keep a jar of seeds sprouting during the winter to get our green leafies, as well as our frozen spinach, broccoli and nettles. We start lettuce in cold frames and we collect dandelion greens and nettles as soon as they show up on the lawn.  Lettuce, kale and spinach can grow late into the fall, so really there's only a few months when we don't have "fresh" fruits and vegetables.  My ancestors have lived like this for centuries and they were a long-lived bunch, most living into their late 80s and 90s and quite a few  centenarians.  So I guess it works for us.  

Ran has also started our onion seeds and sweet potato slips.  It is too early to start any other seeds, as our last frost date is in late May. 

Live Well Below Your Means

Ran and I sat down and made a bare bones budget.  We really don't enjoy spending money just for the fun of it.  It is just the way we are.  Some people might look askance at some of the things we do, such as we only have the minimal Medicare (no cost to us that you are required to take when you turn 65) that only covers hospitalization and hospice.  We simply do not believe in running to the doctor for every little thing.  Last month I made a trip to the emergency room (why does every emergency happen on the weekend?) Anyway, I had a CT scan and blood work.  The bill ended up being less than a few months of the "extra" supplements.  We have a fund for those sorts of things.  And the hospital and labs always give us a discount because we pay promptly and they don't have to file all the paperwork.  If we don't use the funds, which we rarely do, the money is put into savings.  When the doctor told us we needed to start coming in twice a year, because of our age, we told him no.  Ditto for the dentist.  When I see the sackful of medications the average oldster is using, I really question modern medicine.  A long time ago, the doctor said my cholesterol was getting up into the danger zone and suggested I might need medication.  I went home and started exercising more and eating more vegan meals.  Never had a problem with cholesterol since. Good food from the good earth grown by ourselves benefits our bodies, much more than anything the doctor has ever prescribed.  Our philosophy is to eat what the Good Lord has provided for us.  

We don't spend money on trips, dining out, or expensive hobbies  I am content to sew, knit  and embroider from supplies I find at thrift stores and not to be boastful, I think I make as nice of things as people that spend hundreds of dollars on their hobbies.  As a matter of fact, I find it a fun challenge to use "found" supplies rather than go out and buy precisely what the project calls for.  We are content to travel only within our county and the surrounding ones.  Our entertainment is going to church rummage and bake sales and an occasional church supper.  In the summer we like to stop at garage sales on our monthly trip to do our grocery shopping.  If an estate sale is nearby, we like to go just to poke about, but we do not feel the need to buy anything. We are content to garden and sit outside and listen to the birds.  We buy DVDs from the thrift store and have our favorite series that we watch sometimes for entertainment. There are some interesting channels on YouTube also.  No need for cable TV. 

We save on heating by using our wood stove.  We do have a natural gas fired boiler for our hot water and it supplements our wood heat also.  The highest bill we have ever had is $75, but in the warmer months it usually runs us $25.  Every three years we buy a truckload of wood which runs around $1000.  Our electric bill averages about $65 a month.  We do not have a lot of electronics.  We don't keep our house lit up like a Christmas tree at night.  

Our water bill is $100 a month, but includes sewer and trash pick-up. Our property taxes are low because our home is small and not grand.  It's about $1200 a year, but we just got a tax assessment and it is going up 20% this year.  And then there's house insurance and car insurance (Michigan has the highest car insurance rates in the country) and license plates and all those other little taxes that they tax us to death for, (sigh), no one is ever truly free are they?  Groceries and medical funds, etc. Anyway this is a long-winded way of saying that we figured that our bare-bones budget adds up to $950 a month that we could live on.  And that is what we intend to live on this year.  We intend to live well, well beneath our means.  If all this seems like misery to you, I can assure you that we are truly content We live such a blessed life!

11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;12 That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.

1Thessalonians 4: 11-12

I'm sharing this with you to be an encouragement.  Don't let others tell you how to run your life.  If you like spending money and can afford it, do it.  If you enjoy extreme thriftiness ( someone once commented that they thought that term was an insult) enjoy it.  Why do people feel the need to follow the crowd?  Wouldn't it be a boring world if everyone thought the same?  BTW, sorry about the font!  Professional blogger, I am not.  If these sorts of things bother you, please feel free to go elsewhere.  Well, I hope this long post makes up for my absences in February.   So as we bid adieu  to winter and March toward spring, I hope your days are pleasant and filled with contentment and joy.  It really was a beautiful winter.

Hope to see you soon!

Hugs

Jane

I Love Winter Most of All

 Hello dear friends!  Hope you all are staying warm and safe.  Today the sun came out!  Hurrah!  We are having snow squalls with it, but that is winter.  

This is the break wall.  Only one lone ice fisherman is brave enough to face the wind these days.

He must really love to fish!  It's warming up today and the thermometer has even registered in the teens (Fahrenheit)! The lowest we've had so far has been around -5F with wind chills in the -20s, but that is winter.  Winter is supposed to be cold.  I feel like I'm alone in my opinion, but I love winter. It's my favorite season. I even think the cold is healthy for you.  Have you ever noticed how healthy the Scandinavian people are? Although I have no medical proof of it, I believe that breathing in all the cold crisp air is healthy for the lungs.  Growing up I had asthma quite severely, but I was still allowed to play outside in the winter (I grew up much farther north than where I live now) and it seemed the more I played in the cold the stronger my lungs became.  Anyway, I love winter and even was bemoaning the fact that it is flying by so quickly.

Winter is my season of "slow living".  I guess slow living has become quite a trendy thing these days.  Or was trendy, I should say, I just read something the other day that it is going out of style.  How can someone's lifestyle go out of style?  Am I supposed to change and start fretting about things and begin going places just to keep up with the trends?  This entire idea about "aesthetics " is just so ridiculous.  I've been living the cottage-style, slow living lifestyle for fifty years and I'm not about to change just because it becomes unfashionable.  To me slow living means being a homebody.  I like to make my home comfortable for my family and take time to really enjoy being with them.  I do not believe in being busy for busyness' sake. Our home still gets cleaned and business taken care of, I just don't think I need to fill every waking moment with doing "something".

Of course, that's easy for me to say, as I really don't need to go out unless I want to, I'm content just to do a little cleaning, do a little baking and sit by the fireside and do a little dreaming. 

I was thinking about the Bible story of Mary and Martha the other day.  I never really could understand it.  I always looked at it from the perspective that Mary was shirking her duties and poor Martha was left holding the bag.  But then I realized that Mary was just living "in-the-moment" as the expression goes these days.  Just being still and listening to her Savior.  Martha was so busy trying to earn favor by her deeds and keeping busy that she missed the entire point.  That is what winter is to me, my time to be still and hear my Savior's voice.  In spring there's planting to keep me busy and summer is filled with harvesting and preserving.  Winter is my time to "Be still and know that I am God" Psalm 46:10.

Not that I just sit like a bump on the log all day long!  I still get plenty done.  I finished this huge woolen quilt this month:

I've made a few of these woolen patchwork quilts, but this is the largest one and hopefully the last one.  It was so large that we had to remove all the furniture from the dining room to lay out the backing and batting and to tie it.  I think it is queen size, so I guess that illustrates how small our home is. Ha! Plenty of my old woolen skirts and blazers went into it.  As I get older I can't tolerate wool as well as I did when younger.  But I hated to just get rid of them, so this was a good project to use them up.  I used the last of my down blankets for batting and a flannel sheet from the thrift store for the backing so the total cost was about one dollar.  And it keeps us very warm.  I call it Holly Hobbie meets Ralph Lauren  style as many of the skirts were RL brand.  

Since we had all the furniture from the dining room removed, I took the opportunity to do a bit of rearranging and brought the chimney cupboard into the back wood stove room.  We've been working to make this room a more cozy spot since we winter there.  It is sort of a catchall room of cast-offs.  I also found this cute little lamp at the thrift store for the backroom.

Isn't it cute?  Only four dollars! I had the vintage lampshade that fit it perfectly.I wish they'd start making cute lampshades like that again. BTW, the calendar behind it was free from my Amish store.  It gives me old-timey general store vibes.

Oh!  And speaking of thrift stores, I went looking for a New English translation Bible (sometimes I just want to read the Bible in plain English), which I found, and I also found this lovely book:

The New Kitchen Garden by Anna Pavord.  It's one of those beautifully styled books that they published in the 1990s.  The made the loveliest books then. Anyway, it is a wonderful book and some wonderful layouts for gardens, particularly a layout for a patio style garden for those of you that only have a terrace or patio to garden on.  It sort of reminds me of John Seymour's Self-Sufficient Gardener, which is my favorite gardening book.  

And speaking of gardening my Select Seeds catalog arrived today.  Do you  get this catalog?  Oh my!  The absolutely most beautiful varieties of flowers!  I always make a list of about a gazillion flowers I want to grow.  Who could resist?  If only I didn't have to grow food, my entire backyard would be beautiful heirloom flowers. Oh well! If wishes were horses all men would ride!

Good Intentions

Well we all know which road those are paved upon!  I had every bit of a good intention to list all my menus to show you how thriftily we are grocery-wise, but you know what? This month we haven't been thrifty at all.  We've been trying to get our pantries and freezers eaten down, so we have probably eaten more meat than ever. Usually our winter meals consist of making a big batch of soup and eating that for a few days then a batch of something like a pot of rice with beans and vegetables, and some kind of sauce served on a tortilla with cheese.  This week it was rice with white beans, carrots (it's always carrots), broccoli and leeks with chermoula sauce and some mystery  leftover cheese.  Tasted just like lamb without the price of lamb.

Baking

I bought dates before Christmas but didn't get around to  using them, so no time like the present!  Been experimenting with wheat-less baking and I made these bars with one of those wheat substitute flours, but here is the recipe as it is written in the old receipts book.

Date Squares

Crumb layer:

1 1/4 C. flour

1 1/2 C. oats

1 C. brown sugar, packed

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 C. butter

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl.  Cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly.  Press 2/3 rds of mixture into a 9 X 9 inch greased pan

Filling:

1/2 lb. dates, pitted and cut up

1/2 C. sugar

2/3 C. water

Combine in a saucepan.  Bring to a boil and then simmer until mixture becomes mushy.

Pt all of the date mixture over the bottom layer of crumbs.  Crumble the remaining crumbs over top. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes until golden brown.

I like to make a glaze of powdered sugar and orange juice and pour over the warm bars.  Allow to cool completely before cutting into squares.

Well. other than that, I've been canning potatoes this week.  Potatoes are a chore.  I tried a new canning recipe to make herbed potatoes.  You use chicken broth instead of water and add your favorite herbs to the jars.  I used rosemary, parsley a bit of thyme and a bit of savory. And salt.  Can't tell you how they taste but they look good

Well, I rambled on here long enough.  Been looking at all the analyticals and it is hard to tell what you all want me to write about.  One post that is viewed a lot might be one that is strictly about thriftiness, then another that is really about nothing is just as popular. So just let me know what you'd like to see on this blog and I'll try to accommodate you.

Hugs

Jane