Hot Time Tonight

Ok, so not so hot tonight, but it sure was a few nights ago.  The Cayuse Mountain outside our front door was on fire.

The fire started several miles away and at first I was only concerned for our friends and neighbors in the area.  Sustained 20 mph winds and gusts over 60 mph sent the fire racing straight for us. 

While we not terribly concerned that our house would burn down, as we have built with wildfires in mind.  However, we have only one road out of our valley and if the fire reached that road it would be dificult to get our animals out of danger.

It was extremely distracting and difficult to work with that fire dancing ever closer to us.

We caught a break as the winds let up and the fire fighters were able to extinguish all but a few hot spots high up at the top of the mountain.  The lower fire edge was stopped about two miles from our farm.  The last report I heard cited the fire at 75% contained with fire and mop up crews still working.

My boys loved watching the helicopters dumping water and the airplanes dive bombing the flames with red fire retardant.  It was quite a show and at night we can still see the flames that those hard working fire fighters are battling.

In some areas there is a dry season or a rainy season - here in the Okanogan we also have a fire season.  We rely on and deeply appreciate the fire fighters that put themselves on the line year after year for our community.

THANK YOU!!!

Tents and mushrooms popping up

Some of our solstice guest have arrived and the tents are scattered across the lawn like the mushrooms that grow wild there.  I figured everyone would want to find a private little space for themselves, but instead they are huddled together like frightened sheep.  To be honest our graded lawn is one of the few flat spots on our property and maybe this rather than lack of the desire for privacy drove everyone together.

You say wait, go back to the mushrooms…. are they edible?  The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms calls them “choice”.  What we have growing wild and volunteer is a Meadow Mushroom, Agarics campestris.  I was a bit hesitant as I haven’t the mushroom hunting experience that my husband has, but after confirming that they are not the white amanita I am happy to consume as many as decide to grow for us.  I admit after our happy discovery we have been faithful to leave a few to repopulate and we throw our grey water over the areas that tend to be most prolific.  This is our third year harvesting the tasty mushrooms and they are more plentiful now than when we first discovered them growing outside our front door.  Morels, Shaggy Manes and many others grow quite willingly for us to harvest.

As always consult a field guide and always be absolutely sure before you eat any wild foods.

Summer Solstice

Summer is coming and we are going to greet it properly.  We have invited our friends and family to come out to the ranch.  We have over 20 acres of forests so there will be no lack of camp spots. 

Of course lamb is on the menu and anything else the garden has to offer.  We had a lovely fresh lettuce salad for dinner last night, but it is still a bit early for a large harvest.

The weather looks like it will be cooperative for us and so the sun will be the guest of honor.  We would love to hear how you ring in the summer.  Hope you have a great solstice weekend.

Bar-b-que Bread

Several people who are aware of our lifestyle have asked me how I cook.  I’m sure they are imagining a quaint wood burning oven and stove like one would find at an antique store.  I have nothing so fancy nor expensive.  What we use for the majority of our cooking is a regular back yard bar-b-que grill.  Ours happens to be a Kenmore propane grill with side burner and rotisserie attachment.  In the winter months I take advantage of my wood stove and cook a fair amount on that.  So that means….  yes, I do most of my cooking outside.

To bake more touchy foods or ones that require long bake times I set 2 fire bricks on their sides on top of the iron griddle and lay a cookie sheet over the top like a bridge on which I set the bake pans (for things that are cooked on cookie sheets already- like biscuits, I don’t use 2 cookie sheets.  I simply lay the prepared cookie sheet over the firebricks).  This creates a large air space under the baking pan that gets very hot without applying direct heat.

Ok, so that must mean we grill everything right?  Wrong.  We have made everything from your basic bar-b-que fare to birthday cakes and chocolate chip cookies.  We have a heavy iron griddle that we lay over the grill to help dispense heat and use as, well as a griddle.  For foods that need to be baked from below such as lasagna and other deep dish foods, I simply set the bake pan on the griddle and set the bar-b-que on low heat.

When I bake fruit breads or cakes that are best when moist I will either add a can of water set directly on the grill for water vapor, or I will make a tin foil case to keep the moisture in.

Today, I finally braved uncharted territory.  I baked some yeast breads.  I wasn’t sure I would be able to maintain the temperatures that are required.  I have been contemplating building an adobe wood fire oven so that I could once again bake my own bread.  I figured that before I went through all that work I would see if I could pull it off with the grill.  I used a basic white bread recipe - I didn’t want to go through a lot of effort if it was going to be a flop.

See my results for yourself.  The family dove right in and devoured the first batch of rolls.  I really liked the texture, but I’m not fond of the taste.  I’ll try a better recipe next time.  

My husband has been after me to make my home-made apple pie for him.  I have been putting him off as I would hate to go through all that work and have it be a burned or half done.  I had planned to spend a day at a girl friends house having a pie cooking day.  Maybe I’ll just go ahead and give it a try.  I’ll let you all know how it turns out.

 

Is it a good washboard?

I recently had a conversation with my husband regarding the quality of our new washboard.  My husband is of the mind that our washboard isn’t a good one and I agree - the legs are much too short.  As a little girl I am sure I didn’t imagine a day when I would become a connoisseur of hand laundry tools.  The rising gas prices have made the 40 mile trip to the laundromat too expensive.  (I did say that I live in the boonies.)

I took advantage of the break in our recent rainy weather to get some laundry done.  It is during such back breaking labor that I think about my grand parents.  What must my grandma think.  On one hand she might admire my spunk, on the other she might recall all her efforts to better her family so we wouldn’t have to work so hard.

After only two loads the muscles in my back are near exhaustion and they twitch with fatigue.  What power houses of strength and endurance those women of our past must have been!!!

A new Ford

As fuel costs rise, so does the cost of everything else.  The price of propane and hay are two farm necessities that are really going to hit us hard.

We cook and refrigerate our food with propane.  It would be nice to one day generate all of our own energy for our needs from either solar or wind.  Some day….        In the mean time all we can do is upgrade our systems and buy what we can.

Our primitive lifestyle has provided fodder for plenty of jokes from our friends and family.  One joke is becoming a real possibility.  Yes, we are considering driving a horse and wagon to town.  We don’t currently own a horse, every animal on our farm must serve a purpose.  At this point a horse is a luxury - someday though we might get one and name it Ford.

vacation?

Do farmers take a vacation?  Not often!  We recently planned a family vacation to Hawaii only the family couldn’t go.  Someone had to stay behind and mind the animals.  So my husband elected to remain at the farm while the boys and I spent 8 days in Maui.  Granted my husband spent a lot of time on the islands and he has a lot of other places he would rather go.  To be left behind though!  Ouch!

Joe had all these big plans of all the projects he was going to complete with us out of his hair.  I don’t think he even washed dishes while we were gone.  What can I say about that- I was in Maui.  I do appreciate the break and I had a spectacular time. 

So when my hard working husband chooses to spend hours working on his motorcycle rather than mending fences and he and the boys ride up and down the hill on their off-road skateboards and scooters I just smile and pray they don’t break their necks.

Is rustic dirty?

I read a blog recently where someone was traveling about.  I assume to broaden their mind.  One ‘experience’ was to visit a farm.  After an over romanticized beginning the ‘charm’ quickly wore off.  Their summation was that “rustic = dirty”.

As one who lives rustic rather than experiences rustic.  I say, “Get a mop!”.  I lived in an unfinished one room cottage with a preschooler and a small baby.  We didn’t (and still don’t) have running water.  When we moved in the floors were still unfinished.  Have you ever tried to clean sub-flooring?  Regardless, I managed to keep my house and children clean.  You are only as dirty as you let yourself get.

Sure bathing and washing dishes is a challenge, but after four years I’m quite used to it.  In fact, I become acutely aware of the immense waste of water as I watch other people wash their dishes or fill their bath tub with as much water as we use in two weeks.  OK - that doesn’t include washing clothes.  I go to the laundromat for that.

We aren’t totally backwards, we do have a sink and a grey water system in our house.  The loft that we built for our eldest son is temporarily housing a fifty gallon water barrel that is plumbed to an on-demand pump which feeds to the sink faucet.  So we have 50 gallons of room temperature water in the house and easy to use.  We fill that barrel from a truck tank with a sump pump every few weeks.  When ever we haul in the water we also get enough to fill the stock tank for the animals as well.

One might say that this sounds like a complicated and laborious system, but it is far better than the system we used to have and we are always building and making improvements.  One day we might actually have light switches too.

Skateboarding Farmer

My husband isn’t what one would call a stereotypical farmer.  In fact he despises any stereotype so much, he goes out of his way to not fit in.  Repeat any of the popular buzz words to him and you can see his spine visibly stiffen….  them’s fight’n words.

He really hates it when I talk about him so I’ll just paint the picture and you can see for yourself.

We have a large hill behind our cottage, in fact most of our land is quite slanted.  Everyday we let our sheep out of their sleeping paddock to graze freely on our land.  The first thing they do is head straight up hill.  They love to graze at the top.  Someday our paddock system will be complete and we will initiate a rotational grazing system.  However, for the moment they basically have free range.

One of the evening chores is to trudge up the hill and fetch the flock home.  This is not one of my favorite tasks.  We always feed the sheep their treats from a red bucket our eldest son won at a rodeo for roping.  When the sheep see that bucket they come running.  So imagine if you will trying to run down hill for a quarter of a mile over rough terrain with a whole flock of sheep barrelling down on you and that red bucket.  It’s enough to get the heart pumping and the boys yelling ‘Run, mom!  Run!’

So, my hero husband has often relieved me of that odious duty.  “Your duty?!?” you ask.  Yes, I’m the designated stay at home farmer and my husband currently works ‘off farm’.  In fact, my husband was so eager about taking over the job hat naturally my suspicions were aroused.  So I watched as he cheerily grabbed a beer and his off road skateboard and headed up the hill.  Before long, my husband came skating down with the flock not far behind. 

I wonder how many farmers work their land on a skateboard.

carbon stomp

With all the talk about carbon foot print and green living, everyone seems to be so absorbed with living PC that the purpose is forgotten.  I know people who buy everything local and organic that they can.  I didn’t realize that so many things are available in ‘organic’.  These same people live such  consumer lifestyles that their great grandchildren will have to live in Quonset huts to make up for their carbon stomp.  The thing is…. we get all hung up on counting our carbon and how do we truly do that.  Yes, I have seen the calculators and such, but life is such a web and the connections so infinite that it is truly difficult to project one persons effect on this world.  As my husband likes to say, if you want to leave a low carbon footprint, then be homeless.

I am reminded of a news article that my husband and I discussed.  It was about a woman who was commenting on the large number of bird her backyard bird feeder was attracting.  She was concerned about the impact on the environment and native bird populations that so many birds in one place might cause.  She knew enough about birds to realize that migratory birds were choosing not to migrate away from the abundance of year round food.  While she struggled with this dilemma and what she was going to do, as she put it, nature stepped in and tipped the scales.  She noticed that a larger than normal number of birds of prey were hanging around and feeding on all the smaller birds her feeder had attracted.  Presto- the circle is closed, she feeds the song birds and the large birds feed on the them.  She was congratulating herself on seeing the perfection and correcting nature of well - nature.  What infuriated my husband so much was her failure to see that now the problem has only been transferred to the birds of prey.  What will be the impact of a larger more readily sustained population of hawks?  Why could she not see that the circle was bigger than just the two birds?

It doesn’t matter if we try to individually reduce our carbon foot print.  They are only marks on the beach that the tide of humanity will wash away.  We have to come up with solutions that will last beyond a single lifetime.

I don’t go on this way to justify a wasteful and indulgent lifestyle, but rather to point out that the circle is so vastly infinite and our pitiful attempts at modeling are woefully unable to state the true case.  So what am I doing about it…….  well, I’m trying to lower my carbon foot print.  But I hardly consider that earth shaking.  One thing though, we are trying to set up a green business model.  And if we are a sucess, maybe it will be emulated and improved on.  Maybe the simple life we live and our frugal habits will pass down to our boys.  Maybe one of them will shake the world.