The Cornucopia

There are some good things about fall........I'm sure I can think of a few if you give me a minute!

The best part for me is enjoying the fruits of the harvest - the potato bin filled in the cold room, bags of onions hanging on the wall, jars of preserves, pickles and fruit lining the other wall of the room. The freezer packed with lots of frozen peas, carrots, beans and our own butchered beef. This year however the pickin's are a little slim. The garden did so poorly I only got about a quarter of last years veggies, the strawberries however did well.

I thought ever bearing would be nice to have with strawberries all summer long, but they just don't survive the winters up here. By the time they have recovered from the cold, they didn't produce much fruit. So last year I took them all up and planted the June bearing kind, they produce lots of fruit in late June/early July and are much hardier. Surprisingly enough, after the initial rush they went on to have berries right up until it froze a couple of weeks ago so I was able to pick and eat strawberries all summer.
As well as these jars of fruit I also was able to eat lots, make strawberry cheesecake, and freeze several large tubs without sugar for other baking projects this winter. Today I started canning my tomatoes, sadly there won't be many of those either this year. I managed to get 7 quarts this time and probably have enough ripening to can another 4 or 5 quarts. Last year I had 27 quarts - even though the plants were in the greenhouse, it was just too cold to have any sort of good crop.

The other thing I always can are pears., I did 14 quarts of them 2 weeks ago. They were always one of the favorites Mum did when I was growing up and I still like them, hubby does too which is a plus. Sadly he doesn't like peaches so I quit canning them, it's easier to buy a can now and then if I want some.

I usually make strawberry jam, raspberry jelly, crabapple jelly and my 3 fruit golden jam, but I'm running behind this year. I have a pail of raspberries in the freezer waiting to make jelly, but no crabapples this year because of the weather and no yellow plums for the golden jam either. The strawberry jam......maybe if I feel like it later on - I can always buy strawberries.

It does give me a great feeling of satisfaction to sit down to a meal and know that everything I'm eating including the dessert we grew on our farm.

The last rose of summer

No words needed - this greeted me this morning.

The kitchen saga.....

There comes a time in every woman's life when she just has to toss in the towel and say ........ "Dang it, I have no idea what I'm doing"!!!
My kitchen is coming along, new back splash, new paint, but there is something missing. A theme to tie it all together - something that when the neighbours see it they will say "Wow, what a great idea".
I thought of the little fat Italian Chef, or maybe a wine and grape motif. The old black and white cows, cute piggies, and blue and white geese things have run their course I wasn't interested in them. What I needed was something new, something catchie, something that said "This is Thelma's Kitchen".
That's when it hit me, my love of old things and genealogy what better was to express that than............Outhouses!
When our family moved west what was the first thing they built? A house, a town, a barn? No, they built an outhouse.
I mean; think.....what's the first thing you want once you have completed a days trip? Yup, a nice comfy outhouse.
So, I offer to you my shrine to our forefathers........

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Witner projects

The garden is finished, the flowers are finished and I am bored! So I have started on my winter hobby - wood working.
My friend redid her kitchen recently and was going to toss out all her old kitchen cabinets, I hate to see anything go to waste so I took them. They're are all the top cabinets (the bottom ones were wrecked getting them out), and all different sizes. She had painted the melamine doors royal blue - not my colour, but other than that they were in good shape.
I decided that I needed a new cabinet in my office as the one I have in there is too old, too big and too UGLY!!! I used the 3 cabinets in this picture the one in the middle with the two door on top and the two smaller ones on the right side.
This is my work room in the basement. It's a little on the small side even though we moved a wall last year, but it works for what I do. Hubby likes it, gives him something to give me for Christmas - more power tools!!!

This is what I ended up with. I repainted the doors to match the avacado colour in the office, built a pine frame and counter top and added glass door handles. I want to add two glass shelves in the middle, but will have to get some glass cut next time I'm in town. It is smaller than the old one but still holds nearly all the stuff that was in it and the best thing is I don't walk into the corner of it everytime I come into the office like I did with the old one.

I still have 3 cabinets left over - I will have to think of some other things to do with them.

As Summer Winds Down

It's hot outside today - well, as hot as it get in Alberta at the end of August - must be pushing 90 degrees. We have had very few nice days this summer either it's been cold and dry or extremely hot and dry, it's been hard on the garden and the flowers.
Considering half my garden didn't even come up I am surprised at how well the other half is producing. Last year I got almost 25 bags of frozen peas, this year I'll be lucky to get 8 or 10, the same with the yellow beans. The spinach didn't grow for a long time then it bolted and and turned yellow within a matter of days, so won't have any of that to freeze.
I didn't plant many carrots cause after 10 years of planting, weeding, freezing or canning carrots hubby finally tells me he doesn't like carrots..... WTH!!

The potatoes on the other hand are doing really well. I started digging potatoes yesterday and will probably get about 6 or 7 - 5 gallon pails full for the cold room. That will do the 2 of us till next spring. The onions too are doing well, I will have to dig them up, cure then in the green house and then hang them in sacks in the cold room too.

The rest of the farm work is coming to an end. The hay is cut, raked and baled and most of it is stacked in the bale yard. We still have green feed which is oats cut before they are completely ripe and baled for feed for the cattle. It is cut but needs to dry for a weeks or so before it can be baled - hopefully this weather will stay hot and dry till that is done.
Once the feed it finished and hauled home, we still have fencing to do. We have to build about 3/4 of a mile of 4 wire barbed wire fence across the pasture plus some minor fence building/repairing closer to home. Hubby does most of this type of work, but I sometimes drive the tractor or help pound the staples to keep the wire in place.

I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of the cattle - first one is mama and her baby - she's a sweet little calf. If we keep any heifers (female calves) for replacement cows she will definitely be one.
Hubby running the tractor and baler

Finally some calves out in the pasture. The front two are twins even though they don't look the same or are even the same colour. Sadly when they were about 3 months old their mama died. We have no idea why, just found her dead laying in the bush. She might have eaten some poisonous weed or she might just have had a heart attack - some cows do. But they seem to be doing just fine.

The kitchen continues......

I decided I didn't like the light mint green I had painted the back splash boards or the hallway beside the kitchen, so I redid them. I tore out the pineboard, bought new ones and stained them. - to get this colour I first put on a coat of Danish Walnut and then a coat of Red Mahogany. Hubby says he likes this much better than the light green, good thing cause I'm getting tired of redoing it! I still have to put on a couple of coats of satin varethane so I can wipe it down.

I painted the hallway the same light mint green as the kitchen, that's when I decided I really didn't like that colour at all. I had painted my office an avacado green, so I mixed the last bit of that with the light green and repainted the hallway. It looks much better, it's not as dark as the office but makes the white trim stand out much better. I may repaint the kitchen (just the wall above the cupoboards and around the fridge with the same light avacado, but that will just have to wait a while, my gardening is getting behind.

The Kitchen!

Not being of sound mind or that great a body either, I decided to redo some of my kitchen. I needed a project to keep my mind busy while I tried to quit smoking. Not one of my brightest ideas - yes, the kitchen needed doing, but maybe I should have given a little thought as to how much stress it was going to create in my life! Never the less it is done.

As you can see it was ceramic tile and although they did match the counter top they had never been installed properly and were falling off leaving large ugly spaces.

Around the top was a border of sunflowers - was being the operative word, half of it was gone leaving just the paper backing. The woman we bought the house from said she was in the process of redoing the kitchen, but had sold the house before she could finish. Like so many other things in this home, her projects were very poorly done just quick cover ups to make a sale. She said she had hired a contractor to do the work, turns out it was her uncle who had no prior experience and it shows!

Anyway I ripped off all the tiles, got rid of the border wall paper, washed and scrubbed every inch of the kitchen and installed pine bead boards. That took me 3 days and once that was done, much to hubby's horror I painted it all a light green.

It did clean it up nicely, but hubby was right I should have never painted the back splash. It should have stayed the natural pine and I should have covered it in a couple of coats of varethane so I could wash it easily.

So, as soon as I get the energy I'm going to rip it all out and start again!

The kitchen saga will contine............