Meat and Apples with Apple pie topped with apple sauce

A few weeks ago I began to harvest apples from our apple trees.  The first day I picked a dozen apples.  A few days later we decided to begin harvesting the apples before they spoiled or were all eaten by wildlife.  One and a half trees later we picked 10 dozen apples.  Overflowing in apples I decided to make apple sauce. 4 batches of apple sauce later with 7 dozen apples remaining I made apple pies.  4 apple pies later with 3 dozen apples remaining I made meat with apples.  Today, there are 2 dozen apples remaining and I do not want to eat another apple... Even the deer did not want all of the apples from the tree.

 

Guest House

I would like to present our new guest house.  This long weekend we tested out the camper.  We took the long drive through the bush to the back field of our property.  There we set up the trailer; that is after 3 hours in the pouring rain we were finally able to make it level. 
Prior to moving the trailer our neighbor was very concerned this would scare some of the wildlife away.  I am not sure how many animals we had before but we definitely heard coyotes and something that was breathing loudly that was either a deer or the concerned neighbor.   We are pretty sure it was a deer...  I am sure it is safe for house guests.
At the very least unwanted house guests. 
 

Human vs. Animals Part II

There have been two more battles won with the wild.  Well sort of.  This evening while I was eating the corn on the cob I got from a neighboring farm I decided to put some salt on it.  Just like every other time I use salt I shook the shaker over my food when none other then an earwig came out.  Obviously, I screamed and when I told my husband what happened his response was "It must be a Jewish earwig because that was kosher salt".   I guess living in the country has made us somewhat complacent to the presents of other animals...

The other battle I have been having is with the crows.  We have been fighting over apples.  Specifically, the apples on my front yard apple tree.  I needed to take action because neither the dog nor I could stand by the tree all day scaring them away.  My first idea was to build a scarecrow but then I read that you could put up foil and old pie plates to scare them away.  It has something to do with the bright reflection with the sun.  I found one pie plate, one 6 muffin sheet and some fishing line.  And Voila my tree looks like a poor mans christmas tree but I can safely say that for the last week no crows have eaten an apple. 

How the basement renovations started...

We had the first big rain in two months.  This was great for my grass that has started to turn a little yellow.  It was not a great way to find out that the drains in the basement are connected to the outside drains that collect rain water. 
Yesterday during the storm the dog got very scared by the lightning and ran to hide somewhere downstairs.  In the past she has hid and then gotten stuck somewhere strange so we went downstairs to find her.  That is when we saw water coming up out of the drains and half our basement in an inch of water.  Apparently the drain plugged somewhere outside so instead of draining out the water drained back into our basement. We spent all evening moving things out of the water, ripping up carpet and pulling of damaged wall paneling.   The good news is our basement is very ugly and I had planned to renovate it eventually anyways.  The bad news is we have to do it now instead of next year when I had planned to do it. 
   

I really don't hate animals but...

Today I started by checking on the hickory tree that I have been waiting for the nuts to fall off of so that I could plant it in a few spots around the property.  When I got there the nuts were all gone.  I search through the bushes looking for any left on the ground but to my disappointment, even though my research says the bitternut hickory is even a last resort for squirrels, the squirrels or chipmunks did get desperate enough.  Next year I will come by earlier for the nuts. 
Then I went to check on my tomatoes...they were fine yesterday almost ripe in fact.  Today the only ripe tomatoes were eaten.  Next year I invest in some heavy duty chicken wire and begin the fight against nature. 
The only good news is so far most of the apples have remained and I managed to find an untouched blackberry bush. 

 

Apple cider wishes and porcupine dreams

Today a professional forester came to our house to perform a woodlot assessment.  While I did not think our property had any valuable trees one always secretly wishes.  The final assessment was that we were not sitting on a gold mine but an animal kingdom in a swamp that does not grow valuable hardwood trees well. 

We did found more woodpecker nests then I have ever seen in my life and good apple trees for me...and the deer too. There are also a number of trees that he told us to take down so we will not be lacking firewood. 

We also found out we have a lot of porcupines and they are eating the tree bark. Now we are going to have to go hunting for porcupine shelters and destroy them. Pulling quills out of the dog is the last thing I would like to do in the evening.  I have caught her chasing after porcupines in the past so I know we would be in trouble. 

As long as the porcupines stay out of the house I think we will make it through the fall...
  

Poison what?

Even though our property is a lot larger then our old  0.2 acre town lot we for some reason have not yet invested in a riding lawn mower.  This means that my husband spent the summer getting his exercise cutting the grass with a push mower.   It would not have been entirely horrible except that in the beginning we were still new to the lands and were not very good at distinguishing plants and trees.  Let me tell you it is not always a good idea to learn by trial and error or should I say poison or not poison.  About a month ago Max decided to cut through a bunch of "shrubs" to make a clearing to throw brush from the trees we had been trimming along the roadway.  A few days later the rashes started to appear.   That is when we started to learn about poison ivy.  Before this all I knew was the expression "leaves of three leave it be" but a lot of plants have three leaves.  So we called in the expert: my mother-in-law.  After she fell of her bike about 15-20 years ago into a patch of poison ivy she learned the hard way to recognize poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac and poison anything really.  She walked down the property with us and found the culprits.   
Once we found the large patch of poisonous plants along the road we began the annihilation.

Here are some tips:

Poison Ivy

1. Wear Rubber boots and a pair of gloves. The poisonous oil (urushiol) apparently stays on your clothes so that you can keep spreading the rash back to yourself or others. 
2. Wash your dog.  Who would have thought the oils would stick to her to little paws and then spread the rashes to weird places when she rolled the oils around on our bed?  She is getting used to being hosed down and she smells so nice after being washed with a little bit of baby shampoo.
3. Don't cut, burn, rub, poke or eat poisonous plants.  Bad all bad.  Cutting the plant spreads the oils into the area and on the lawn mower...very bad.  We never burned the plants but were warned over and over again that inhaling the smoke will kill you, extremely bad.
4. If you do touch the plant. Go inside and wash yourself and wash all of your clothes with a lot of soap.  This is why rubber boots are so good, they wash well.
5. Round-up is your friend.  We spent hours spraying plants with round up.  They will after a few years of spraying completely kill the plant and in the short term remove the threat of rashes.

Poison Ivy a few weeks after being sprayed

Tractor: the lazy mans shovel and wheelbarrow

I have been getting lots of questions about what we are going to do with a tractor.  Our property is about a 1 kilometer in length with a very curvy road running all the way to the back of the property. The road is apparently constructed on top of a natural ridge the locals call a hog's back which is why it is not a straight road.  The drive way to the house is man made though and it is curvy I believe either because they wanted an excuse to buy a tractor to blow the snow of the driveway or maybe because it provides privacy. 

Today we spent some time with tractor filling in some of the pot holes on the roadway.  Right in the middle of the property is a gravel pit that we used as fill. 

Here is what I learned:
1) There is a little stick that pokes out of a hole on the front loader to tell you when it is level.  Who would have guessed?  I thought it meant I was getting too excited moving the loader up and down.
2) Don't try picking up dirt on a high gear.  It will work just not well...
3) Dogs don't like to be picked up with a tractor.  They will shake a lot even being near the outside of a loud diesel tractor.
4) Pick out the big rocks. They are not good for the tractor
5) Know if you are going forward or backwards.

From 90210 to Tractor 1.0

I apologize for not posting for the last few weeks.  I have just returned from Niagara Falls and it was wonderful and like always a bit of an adventure.  It started out brushing elbows with a celebrity in Toronto where I stood in line behind Tori Spelling from 90210. Then, we spent one night at a hotel that overlooked the falls and the last few nights camping in a trailer at Niagara-on-the-Lake. The trailer was interesting...it was not what I would call clean there was a very strange little dirt piles in the corner of the bathroom. When we checked in the lady took us through the trailer and told us to clean it up but to leave it as we found it so the dirt piles remain for those of you who would like to see it.  We did come home many bottles of wine richer and numerous new muscles sorer after spending the last day biking from winery to winery.

Today we returned to the country and the two cowgirls in training, the dog and I, tried out the new tractor. So far all we have done is drive backwards and forwards on the lot.  I even managed to find an outfit to match. 

Maybe tomorrow I will pick up some rocks with the front end loader. 

 

50 acres with very little berries

 I just spent the last two hours walking through the forest picking berries.  I have plenty of blackberry and raspberry bushes but 12 bug bites and two hours later I have learned that I see a lot of wildlife for a reason.  I managed to find 10 ripe berries in the 50 bushes I searched.  I also have checked the wild grape vines and they too have been eaten.  Next year I will have to invest in some netting maybe or some fences.  I would show you a photo of my ten berries but it was such a pitiful number and I have already eaten half of them.

The good news is that I found what looks like a butternut tree or some type of walnut tree.  That will be my next foraging attempt.  Lets hope the squirrels don't get to it before I do.  The book I am reading says they ripen at the end of August to the beginning of September.  Seeing as I will be traveling for the next few weeks that will probably be next post.

How the wall came down and the bat got out

Today we received the last bit of paperwork from our real estate agent saying our other house is officially sold.  Now that we will soon be single home owners with single home monthly bills I can finally start planning renovations in our current house. 
My first project in the house will be the kitchen.
Actually, I sort of already started the project. 
About two weeks ago we started to smell something around the entrance beside the fridge.  I took out the vacuum, some cleaners and started cleaning but the smell did not go away. 
This made me a little bit frustrated. I found a hammer and began to take of the baseboards.  That is when I saw mouse poop and a little tiny hole where the mouse must have crawled in from.  No big deal a little cleaning and vacuuming no more smell.  Or so I thought.  The next day the smell got worse.  I thought maybe I missed something.  When I started vacuuming the vacuum started to suck out something large which I thought was insulation so I shut off the vacuum.  That is when I found the head of the first mouse corpse.
I went to the tool box and found a drywall knife.  I cut a hole in the small hole in the drywall.  Then the real smell came.  After doing some research I realized I found a mouse nest filled with dead mice.  I could not clean it very well so my hole then grew double in size.  I still could not clean everything so the hole doubled again.  After removing most of the lower half of the wall I was finally able to remove the nest.  I spent hour trying to clean the wood boards using bleach, baking soda, murphy's oil and ammonia.  So, the wall started to come down. 

Having part of a wall removed was final until 4 am this past Friday Max shakes me awake to ask me if heard something.  He turns on the light and my first thought is a burglar but then a something flies above my head.  A bat.  We get up grab a flashlight and a sheet.  I was always told you are supposed to drop a sheet on it and then carry it outside to set it free.  We finally spot it at the end of the hall near where the wall used to be.  I run around to close the other doors while Max tries to find the bat.  He can't find the bat.  It could only have gone into two places the laundry room or into the hole where the wall was that connects to the attic. It dawns on me...the bat came in through the attic.  So naturally it must have flown back into the attic.  Max boards up the hole and we go back to bed. 
The next evening is a little warm so I decide to open up the windows.  I am in the laundry room opening the window when obviously I find the bat.  The bat is sleeping between the window panes.  I remove the screen and search for sheets and old yogurt containers to try to trap it with.  After an hour of us trying to trap it, the bat flies out of the window all by itself. 

Hopefully the rest of the kitchen renovations go a little bit smoother. 

Basket Weaving 101

Now that we have this 50 acre bush lot we decided to purchase some books on using and working with the land.  In one of these books it discussed the many uses of cattails. We have at least 1 acre full of cattails so I thought this would be an easy place to start.  One suggestion was to collect the pollen from yellow cattails (not the normal brown cattails) and this pollen can be used with flour for baking.  After cutting down a cattail and spending an hour attempting to gather pollen I decided that maybe I should start smaller.   That is when I set my aim on basket weaving. I thought "nobody fails at basket weaving".

Off I went.  I cut a few cattails down and started my very first basket.  I could not remember if I was supposed to start making the side of the basket or the bottom first.  I started the side first which as I learned was my second mistake.  When my basket was finished I realized that I had no way to connect the first and last side together...thus starting from the bottom is important. 

After inspecting my basket today I found the spaces between my weaves were bigger and that it no longer sat up straight. That is when I realized my first mistake; I used green cattails.  Apparently, you are supposed to use dry cattails that you then resoak prior to weaving.  The reason the drying is so important is because cattails shrink to one quarter of their original size. 

I give myself a C- for effort. Maybe my next post will show a proper basket. 

How Max and I became hicks...

What started out as purchasing a property in the country has now in retrospect turned into a gradual process of us becoming, well...hicks.  I did not see it at first but everyday it becomes even clearer.
Yesterday was hot, very hot, after being outside for a few hours decided to go to Walmart and purchase a kiddy pool.  It turns out $50 dollars will buy you a decent sized pool.  We brought the pool home and decided the best place to set it up was on the concrete pads on the driveway because it seemed level enough.  Well it was sort of level.  Who knew it would make such a difference?  After filling the pool with water it became apparent that it does make a difference but since we drained the cistern trying to fill it and because we are not sure how much water there actually is in the well it will just have to do.  
After a day with the crooked pool it appeared to be holding its own. 

Phase 2: the lawn chairs.
Today in the absence of something to float on in the pool I decided lawn chairs would be the best way.   After spending an hour in my lawn chair in the pool on my driveway the truth hit me...I am a hick.