Pics of around our place

Smokey doesn't look happy

Three little cuties

Thor and Ceili asleep

Princess in Waiting, age 7, took this pi  of the parlor fire.  It turned out pretty neat!

Princess In Waiting with Thor

Loki doing his gazing into the fire routine

The Cherpumpple Cake

We spent a wonderful day at my sisters house for Thanksgiving this year.  Everyone brought a different dish and the turkey was delicious.  But my sister forbade any of us from bringing a dessert.  She had a surprise.  After everyone had eaten their fill of the thanksgiving feast she unveiled her piece de resistance! 

A Cherpumpple Cake

What is this massive thing you might ask.  Well the cher stands for a cherry pie baked in a chocolate cake, the pum stands for a pumpkin pie baked in a yellow cake, and the pple stands for an apple pie baked in a white cake.  Then you layer these one on top of the other with homemade cream cheese frosting and you have the Cherpumpple!  It weighed over 20 lbs and was really good.  The frosting was addictive, and I'm not a frosting fan.  Way to go sis!

Saving Rabbit Babies.... Again!

At two days old, see the size difference

It seems like every time our rabbits have a litter they pick the coldest day possible and I end up having to do some quick baby bunny saving.  The bunnies were so cold and still they almost seemed dead, so I rushed them inside and quickly put them on a hot water bottle covered by a washcloth.  Then I took each one and put it in a bowl of warm water holding its little head above the water.  Soon all 7 babies were moving and squeaking.  For some reason we had two huge ones and a bunch of little ones.  It's so cold that I have to keep them inside in a pop box until they fur out.  We bring the momma in twice a day to feed them and give her oats.  So far she (first time mom) is doing fine with this arrangement and I've only lost one that was the smallest and the one I thought was really dead at first.  I think it just was too cold for too long to make it. 

The rest of them look like little water balloons now with tummies full.  They are already getting a thin layer of fuzz and I cant wait to get them out of the house and into the constant care of mom.  With four children, 6 baby bunnies, three kittens, one long haired cat, and a golden retriever in the house the furball and dirty floor problem is reaching critical mass.  I pretty much vacuum and sweep every day because if not I can actually see the piles of fur in corners!  Ugh!  Not to mention the constant ash and firewood debris from using our wood stove everyday.

Oh well

Those Who Left Too Soon

In rememberance of my two babies gone to heaven.  My sorrow is now turned to joy in the knowledge that someday we will meet.

Our small town is a pioneer town.  It was founded barley 100 years ago by farmers looking for cheap land to make a living on.  These brave people left many humble monuments for those of us living now.  One of the most poignant is our local cemetery. 

One day I  decided to find the graves of the family that owned our home and lay some flowers in remembrance.   I had recently been researching the  lives of those who owned our old Victorian and used many old obituaries to get more information.  As a result I found out that the mother and father were buried in our cemetery. After I had completed my quest I continued to look at the other tombstones as some of them were incredibly lovely and told bittersweet stories on the inscriptions.  The loveliest were the white marble markers that were scattered with startling frequency in the graveyard.  Probably 1 out of 5 of the graves were topped with these beautiful markers.  Each one  had either a hand carved lamb or fallen dove on the top.  As I read inscription after inscription I came to realize that every marker was for a child or infant.  This absolutely broke my mothers heart.  Many of the inscriptions had a wrenching  poem and a few words of loss for a child taken too soon.

Some stones were topped with 2, 3, and even 4 lambs or doves signifying the loss of multiple children.  I of course knew that death rates for children used to be incredibly high, and I thanked God many times for allowing me to be born at a time when the loss of children was not a normal occurrence.  But to see those stones that still echoed the pain of mourning parents brought the reality home.  I looked at my four precious children and felt that loss in my soul as well.  For these parents death was not something that occurred in the sterile and impersonal environment of a hospital or emergency room.  They held their child in aching arms as it took it's last breath.  They desperately watched as a adored baby struggled to breath.  Brothers and sisters witnessed the loss of much loved playmates.

I have often heard the popular view stated that people had 10 or 12 children because they wanted more hands to enslave on the family farm.  What a incredibly narrow and uneducated view this is.  One only has to read the journals and diaries of men and women of yesteryear to know that children were not just viewed as workhorses but were beloved, cherished, and adored perhaps more than we do today. 

After a diphtheria outbreak:

Eight of the nine children of a local family died in ten days in our town.  There remained only a baby of nine months.  The mother took to carrying this child constantly even while she did the farm housework.  Clutched to her mother's breast, this child seemed inordinately wide-eyed as though affected by the silent grief which surrounded her.

The horse and Buggy Doctor - Aruther Hertzler, M.D.

Of a lost son:

Do you remember, I wrote you of a little baby boy dying?  That was my own little Jamie, our first little son.  For a long time my heart was crushed.  He was such a sweet, beautiful boy.  I wanted him so much.  He died of erysipelas.  I held him in my arms till the last agony was over.  Then I dressed the beautiful little body for the grave.  Clyde is a carpenter: so I wanted him to make the little coffin.  He did it every bit, and I lined and padded it, trimmed and covered it.  As there had been no physician to help, so there was no minister to comfort, and I could not bear to let our baby leave the world without leaving any message to a community that sadly needed it. His little message to us had been love, so I selected a chapter from John and we had a funeral service.  So you see, our union is sealed by love and welded by a great sorrow.

Letters of a Woman Homesteader - Elinore Stewart

Of a lost Daughter:

Prayer for a very new Angel

God, God, be lenient her first night there.
The crib she slept in was so near my bed:
Her blue and white wool blanket was so soft,
her pillow hollowed so to fit her head.

Teach me that she'll not want small rooms or me
When she has you and heaven's  immensity!

I always left a light out in the hall,
I hoped to make her fearless in the dark;
And yet, she was so small - one little light,

No, no, she seldom cried! God, not too far
For her to see, this first night, light a star

And in the morning, when she first woke up,
I always kissed her on her left cheek where
The dimple was. And oh, I wet the brush,
It makes it easier to brush her hair.

Just, just tomorrow morning, God, I pray,
When she wakes up, do things for her my way!

Violet Storey

  The ultimate testimony is perhaps the grave markers themselves.  At the time cash was something you had very little of.  Most farmers had an account at the local dry goods store and paid the account at harvest.  So the money it took to put up an expensive marble headstone with had carved doves or lambs would have been prohibitively expensive.  In fact many of the adult markers of the parents  were simple or nonexistent.   yet they sacrificed so much to place a stone over a child that was only with them a few years, months, or in many cases a just a few days.  These children signified no monetary benefit as they could not yet contribute to farm work. Yet the expense and work of a years farming was sacrificed so that they would not be forgotten.  The loss of a child was no less shattering as it is now.

Other little angels before the heavenly throne

Inscription reads: Our baby boy

A fairer bud of promise never bloomed

Aged 18 Days

Inscription: Angels whisper that our darling lives in lands of love so fair

that his little feet are waiting close by the golden stair

Autumn is Ending

Fallen leaves
Come flying from elsewhere
Autumn is ending.

 

~Matsuo Basho

Beautiful Autumn & Vivaldi

I'm a classical music fan and love this particular song.

Pics around our place

Warm and comfy on a cold morning

Naptime at our house.  Viking Boy with his "baby" Thor

Thor our narcoleptic kitty.  He will literally fall asleep anywhere!

Smokey has finally gotten over his snit and likes to groom the kittens

Loki gazing into the fire.  He does this regularly

Smokey and Loki - BFF'S

Autumn Meditation to the Music of Bach

Autumn is my favorite season for many reasons. The heat of summer is finally over, harvest is almost done with lots of yummy foods being put up for winter. The holidays are on there way and woodfires are back in fashion.

Autumn Leaves - Harp Guitar something soothing on a rainy fall Saturday

To all our Troops and Veterans- Thank you we owe you so much!

A tribute to our veterans and troops! Thank You!

Those Voices Dont Speak For the Rest of Us.

Truer words have never been spoken. If you look at the protests in Europe, and the protests that I was told would never happen here in America, you will see that they are protesting not for more freedom, but for more government. For free housing, free medical, free food, guaranteed jobs.

There is a trade off for all this "free" stuff. And that is you give up your right to choose where to live, what you can eat, what medical care you can have, and what job you will do. Is it worth it? Is a little supposed security worth becoming a slave to the state. The new peasants in a new feudalistic future. Most of the people down at these protests are nothing more than useful idiots. On their knee's begging for a system that ends up doing nothing more thank making them servants to the state.

The Potato Harvest Is Finally In

Yesterday I decided to make a push to finally dig up all the potatoes (by hand) and get them into storage.  The weather has been extremely cold for this time of year and I didn't want to chance them freezing.  I  was fairly hard work as the potatoes were deep and we have heavy clay soil. By the end I was tired out and ready to sit by the fire and warm up.

A pretty good haul (at least 75 pounds) considering that we didn't fertilize them at all and I don't think our soil is especially good there. Also it was just two short rows of  free potatoes gone to sprout that we got from the local hudderite  community last winter.   I'm starting amending the soil right now so that next year our garden will do better.

Getting up our apple supply for winter

Every fall I buy about 175 lbs of apples to get us through the winter for fresh eating, apple pies (I personally don't like apple pie but make it for Husband because he loves them) , fried apples, and applesauce.  I buy directly from the growers and this year found a great deal on Brayburns and Fuji's at 30 cents a pound.  Way cheaper than the dollar or more I'm paying at the store.  Both the apple varieties I chose are excellent keepers so as long as I keep them cool they should last well into next spring.

As to why I do it?  First is because we love apples and my five apple trees haven't started bearing yet. And well hey after all I live in Washington state right?  The apple state. Buying in bulk is cheaper than at the store, might as well take advantage of it.  There are in fact many orchards here in Washington of different fruits, so in season you can find fabulous deals on cherries, peaches, plums, and apricots as well as apples.  It is still however cheaper to grow your own which is why I currently have my five apple trees, two peach trees and a passel of assorted berry's growing.  My goal has always been to grow all my own fruit and veggies, but it is a goal that takes time.

The place I store them is in the unheated back enclosed porch which keeps them extremely cold without freezing them.  This worked out well last year even when temperatures dipped down below zero.

Having a cold room is definitely helpful when it comes to storing produce from the garden that requires cold and slightly humid conditions to keep.  People mostly would use a root cellar or unheated basement.  I have the basement but it stays just a little to warm and way to dry to properly store apples.  It is much more suited to storing onions.  Someday I'm going to build nice looking wooden boxes for storing my apples, carrots, and other root crops in the back porch.  For now though they are simply stored in cardboard boxes with a layer of newspaper on top to keep off dust and keep them a little more humid.  Worked fine last year.

The logistics of keeping warm at night in a wood heated house

Every year we go through the ritual of preparing for winter.  Since we live in a 110 year old house that still has the original windows and doors this process includes lots of sealing out drafts.  To further complicate matters we try to heat our home only with wood heat.  We have a lovely wood stove and small fireplace to accomplish this but it is far from perfect.  However it is allot cheaper than using our furnace in the winter.  Allot cheaper!

So every year we either order wood/get it free by watching craigslist or some combination of the two.  This year it was a combination of getting free maple wood and buying well seasoned apple wood.  Two of the best burners in our opinion.  We don't bother with going up to the mountains to cut for  the very practical reason that is is more expensive when you look at the gas to and from.  We always manage to find deals that are cheaper and the wood is already cut up and ready to burn.

Then comes cleaning the chimneys.  I bought a chimney cleaning kit at a yard sale for five bucks so there is a messy few hours of cleaning to do.

Next on our to do list is caulking windows, sealing drafty doors, and putting up storm windows.

Last but far from least is the annual changing of the bedding from cool cotton sheets and light blankets to thick soft flannels and heavy comforters. This is almost a ritual for me now.  It signals a big change in lifestyle and habits.  Mornings are spent restarting the fire and getting hot coffee, evening comes early and we gather in front of the fire to read or play games. For those in our family who like even more warmth I have been collecting down comforters and feather beds wherever I can find them.  I have four now and when you snuggle in flannel sheets with a down comforter thrown over your guaranteed a warm nights sleep.

I also snatch up all the 100% cotton flannel nightgowns and pajamas at thrift stores I can find.  They are much warmer than standard pajamas, breath naturally and wick away sweat so that your more comfortable.  And then I get out the rice bags.  These are bags of cotton filled with rice that you can heat up in the a microwave or warm oven.  They are like a hot water bottle and are great for heating up cold beds or putting on sore muscles or upset tummies.  These are lifesavers when it gets truly frigid outside.  The kids love them and beg for them at night.

This is very important because all the bedrooms are upstairs far away from the wood heat.  The upstairs stays cool to downright chilly no matter how warm the downstairs is, but as we've all grown used to it we aren't bothered.

The thing about wood heat is that the further from the stove you get the colder it is.  Having a two story house helps a bit because heat goes up.  And having fans helps too.  But still your going to have a big lifestyle change if you go from central heating and air to wood stove heat in the winter.

The Comfort of a Hearthfire

For as long as I can remember the hearth fire has been the ultimate in comfort and relaxation.  As a child I begged my parents to light our fireplace.  As I got older I took over the responsibility of splitting wood and lighting the fire after school every day. 

In  summer's hectic days I long for cold weather so that I can sit next to a blazing hearth and listen to the crack and hiss of the fire and watch the soothing colors and shadows shift on the walls.  It's my favorite place for reading, sewing, or just relaxing.

 

Our little Hearth Fire

We are already burning every day and in the mornings I even light the parlor fireplace to take the chill out of the air until the wood stove really starts pumping out the heat.

As the children file down in a groggy daze they plump down next to it and slowly wake up.  Husband and I sit next to it in wing chairs sipping hot coffee and talking before we have to get breakfasts and get him off to work. 

 

  It's no coincidence that the hearth was considered the heart of a home. It's more than a source of heat.  It's a gathering place and a symbol of comfort and relaxation.  A place where memories are made and lovelight shines.

Pics of around our place

Viking Boy all tuckered out

Princess in Waiting (red fairy), Captain Submarine (Bumblebee), and Viking Boy (Moooky Ghost)

Eldest Daughter playing her French Horn

Eldest daughter (in light dress) and best friend dressed up to go to the Victorian Ball

Best Buddies

Chillin after a hard day of play and work

Eldest Daughters Harvest Party costume

Drying Laundry in Winter Without Electricity

Yesterday our dryer suddenly stopped drying.  For those of us who like to prep this may be an interesting dry run on what life without electricity would be like until we can get it fixed.  In the summer this would present much less of a problem because I have my nice laundry line I use anyways.

But in winter you usually cant hang clothes outside to dry because they either just freeze or don't dry.

So I practiced hanging the wet clothes on all available surfaces in front of the wood stove.  It takes roughly half a day this way to dry all the way for jeans.  Plus I have to watch the clothes carefully to make sure nothing hanging over starts a fire.

Obviously I need to rig up some type of drying racks for when the electricity goes out.  Those on the east coast are experiencing what this must be like right now.  I'm so thankful we have a nice big wood stove!

Harvesting potatoes.... and antique bottles?

I had harvested some of our great potatoes that I planted this spring yesterday and the kids begged if they could continue digging for "treasures".  I said fine since I had other chores to do and nothing keeps kids busy than digging in the dirt.  Soon they had a sizable pit in the garden and started coming across pieces of broken china and old mason jar pieces.  We live in a house that is about 110 years old so this most likely came from quite awhile ago.  Well Husband got interested and started digging too and pulled up a fully intact ink well and and interesting medicine bottle.  Both very old looking.

They cleaned up amazing and shiny and now we all like to dig a little deeper in the garden than necessary!