Thirteen

Today, my first-born turns thirteen years old.

Those of you who have been reading here for a (very) long time will probably find this as improbable as I do, but I assure you, that tiny Cubby is indeed now a teenager.

Per his request, I no longer post photos of him, but I do have one of the knife he up and made yesterday:

He just . . . woke up and decided to make a knife. So he found a piece of scrap metal, cut it to shape, filed it, punched holes, and there's a blade.

Next he'll fire it in the forge he made with his dad last summer, then carve a walnut handle for it.

Because he can do all of those things. Along with hunting, baking, writing, gardening, training horses, splitting wood . . .

He is incredibly skilled at thirteen years of age. Certainly much more so than either of his parents were at that age. I can't wait to see what else he learns and does as he gets older.

Happiest of birthdays to Cubby, a truly remarkable boy.

Friday Food: Taco Week

Friday 

Short version: Bunless hamburgers, fried potatoes, green salad with vinaigrette

Long version: I had baked extra potatoes with the meatloaf the day before, and those were what I chopped up and fried. I had plenty of fat to fry both those and the hamburgers, because I finally got around to rendering some of the suet we got from the last cow. 

It's actually unusual to get any fat from these range animals, because entirely grass-fed ruminants typically don't really put on a lot of fat. This, however, was an older cow, and as we all know, older females tend to hold onto fat in conditions that would not fatten younger females or males.

I could make a joke at my own expense about that, but I think I'll leave that alone.

Anyway. Here's the rendered suet all cut up and ready to render.

Commence melting.

Saturday

Short version: Daddy's special tacos

Long version: This was the day I went to the very far away basketball game. I left A. and the other three children at home, and for them I made taco meat with beans before I left.

When I got home with Cubby, we found that A. had fried tortillas and made taco shells for the meat. The children approved.

More evidence that Dad is the fun one.

Sunday

Short version: Pizza, frozen green beans

Long version: I made one pizza with bacon, the other just cheese. 

Because I avoid eating too much pizza, I made myself a hamburger with the last of the ground beef in the refrigerator. The boys expressed the opinion that I should just make hamburgers every day, just in case they felt the need for "something extra to munch."

Unlikely that I'm going to start frying auxiliary hamburgers every day, but duly noted.

Monday

Short version: Cafeteria leftovers, carrot sticks

Long version: I brought home a bunch of ground beef tacos from the cafeteria, which the children ate along with the carrot sticks. I was also given quite a few leftover eggs from the hot breakfast at school, which is what I ate along with leftover pureed calabaza.

There was also leftover peach crisp from the cafeteria. Also popular with the children. Yay for the cafeteria food.

Tuesday

Short version: Barbecue meatballs, baked potatoes

Long version: I baked the meatballs and potatoes right before Poppy and I left in the afternoon for Cubby's basketball game. I just left them in a turned-off oven so A. could feed the other two boys in the short time they had before arriving home after the bus run and leaving for judo.

I got home with the other two kids around 5:30 p.m. and fed them the same thing. Very convenient.

Wednesday

Short version: Cafeteria tacos, refried beans, hummus

Long version: The school cook had sent home about two dozen crispy tacos with me. A. heated some of those up for the kids while I was at our very delayed staff Christmas party after school.

We never had the party because we ended school a day early for our Christmas break, due to dangerously cold weather. And this was the first time all the staff managed to be available on the same night.

I brought hummus, carrot sticks, tortilla chips, and some dilly beans. There was a TON of other food, most of which I didn't eat, because I'm not really eating anything fun right now. Oh well. I had fun, even if I didn't eat (or drink) anything fun. And I didn't have to cook, which is always appreciated.

The kids had some of the hummus and chips when I got home with the leftovers.

Thursday

Short version: T-bone steaks, rice with chicken stock, green salad with ranch dressing, baked custard

Long version: I made the rice--in chicken stock with somewhat obscene quantities of butter--and custard for the child who had a sore throat. Again. 

Sigh.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

Growing Food: Constant Vigilance

Now here's a topic guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of anyone trying to grow their own food: wild animals.

If you grow food, some animal is going to want to eat it. And really, who can blame them? You've conveniently consolidated a living salad bar right there! All they have to do is get to it!

And get to it, they will.

In my gardening life, I have lost at least some crops to rabbits, groundhogs, raccoons, gophers, and deer.  

Our neighbor in New York built what amounted to a stockade to encircle her vegetable garden. It was a wood fence eight feet tall. This did keep out the deer, but unless it had buried wire under it, it would not keep out the diggers like groundhogs and rabbits.

Some people sprinkle or spray their plants with hot pepper liquids, in the hopes of making their plants unappealing to furry marauders. I've never tried this.

I prefer to outsource my garden defense. And that means guns, traps, and dogs. Not too pretty sometimes, but effective.

I have never gardened in a place where I didn't have dogs patrolling. They are the most useful deterrent to garden thieves. But for this to work, they have to be out night and day, and they have to have access to the actual garden. This means that sometimes, they will cause their own damage, but it's much less than a rabbit would cause left unchecked.

My furry assassins.

I leave the guns and traps to A. and Cubby. 

A. has successfully trapped both rabbits and gophers, essentially eliminating them as a problem on this property. Although we do have to keep an eye out for new incursions so he can take care of them before they get established.

Cubby likes to set up camp at the next-door abandoned house around sunset with his .410 shotgun and watch for rabbits. They tend to hide over there and make sorties onto our property to eat things at night. So getting them at their point of origin is the best option.

So tell me, my fellow gardeners: How have you managed to deter animals in your garden?

Snapshots: Slightly Delayed

I'm a bit late posting this morning because I spent all afternoon yesterday staring at this:

Into the great wide open, under them skies of blue . . .

I went to Cubby's basketball game, which was at a school 109 miles away. Yes, three digits. And all but the last 18 miles were on roads that looked like that. Except for on the way back, when they just looked black, because it was dark. And there's no dark like middle-of-nowhere-New-Mexico dark. It was quite extraordinary.

I mostly went so Cubby wouldn't have to sit through the varsity games and come back on the bus at 11 p.m. 

Anyway. I drove over 200 miles yesterday and pretty much went right to bed when we got home, so now I will fill you in on the rest of my week in photos.

Let's go!

Poppy made herself a warm bed in front of the woodstove.

In the earlier part of the week, we spent two days in the middle of a frozen cloud that deposited a thick layer of rime on every surface outside.

It was pretty, but kind of miserable to go out in. This is the morning it finally lifted.

It resulted in a few hours without power on Wednesday morning. It went off just as I was getting the kids up for school, but our school has a generator, so we got dressed and started breakfast in the dark. Hooray for propane stoves that can be lit with a match.

And last, our very dark drive last night was actually lit with a full moon in a clear sky, which was still up when I got up this morning.

Sunrise-tinted clouds and a setting bright moon make for a pretty dramatic morning.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Friday Food: It's Egg Season

Friday 

Short version: Fried eggs, leftover mashed potatoes and cheese, cucumbers with vinegar and salt, raw green beans

Long version: None of the children were all that enthused to see eggs for dinner, but, well, we had a lot of eggs thanks to the fact that my friend's chickens are laying more than she can eat. And eggs are fast.

Leftover mashed potatoes re-heated with cheddar cheese are way better than plain mashed potatoes. This was a staple of my diet during my winter pregnancy with Cubby. Very comforting and sustaining.

Saturday

Short version: Beef and bean tacos, carrot sticks

Long version: I did my Church Lady thing for our monthly Saturday Vigil Mass, while A. took the three younger kids to Cubby's basketball game about an hour away. I got home around 5 p.m. They got home about an hour later, of course starving and wanting dinner right away.

Which is why I had already made a skillet of taco meat with ground beef and pinto beans. All I had to do was heat it up in the microwave with corn tortillas and cheese.

Good thing those hungry children have such a clever mom.

Sunday

Short version: Sirloin steaks, chicken-y rice, raw green beans, sauteed green beans and onion, cookies

Long version: One of my children will only eat rice if it's cooked in chicken stock and mixed with a LOT of butter, so this was a good night for him.

I only sauteed the green beans because there was a pan on the stove left from breakfast that still had bacon grease in it. And I only added the onion to the pan because there was half an onion left from making soup in the afternoon--and we always just cook the onion, right? And then the onion, of all things, was what the children ended up fighting over.

You just never know.

In-progress food photo:

Welcome to my cast iron kitchen.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers, soup, rye crisps, cheese

Long version: The children had leftover steak and rice, plus some leftover pizza from the school lunch, and raw green beans.

A. and I had the soup I had made the day before with the leftover taco meat and beans, plus various vegetables. A very good thing I had that soup, as I was feeling the beginnings of a cold and not only did I not want to cook, I wanted to eat something soft and soothing. 

Hooray for serendipitous advance cooking.

Tuesday

Short version: Chili, tortillas and cheese

Long version: This was some well-traveled chili. I had brought it with us to Texas, frozen, kept it in the freezer there, and never used it on the trip. So it came back home with us and went right back into the freezer. It was none the worse for having been across the state line, however. 

And it's a good thing no one in Texas caught me with it, because it had beans in it. SHOCKING.

Wednesday

Short version: Scrambled eggs, bacon, bread and butter, raw green beans

Long version: I had briefly entertained the notion earlier in the day of making spaghetti carbonara with the bacon and eggs, but then I got home from work and all that ambition was definitely gone.

Bacon and fried eggs it is!

Thursday

Short version: Meatloaf, baked potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, raw broccoli, redemption cookies

Long version: The cookie jar was empty for all of two days, and there were children asking somewhat sadly if I might possibly be able to make cookies again on my day off of work.

How quickly they become accustomed to the bottomless cookie jar.

Rapunzel and I rectified that sad situation.

Tiaras make everything taste better.

I was determined to make more-edible oatmeal-raisin cookies to redeem myself after the nasty baking powder cookies. Following the MiL's recommendation, I used the recipe on the Quaker Oats website, with the slight adjustment for high altitude noted, and they were indeed much better. Thanks, MiL.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

Growing Food: Soil

I'm afraid this particular post might not be very helpful for many of you, since all I'm doing with this series is explaining what I do in the hopes that it might work for someone else. This one, however . . . well, you need sheep.

Lemme 'splain.

Soil is obviously a big deal for your plants. It's their home! It's their source of nutrients! It's how they store their water! 

It's also highly, highly variable by location.

I have gardened in only three places: Blackrock, which had pretty heavy clay soil. On the Canadian border, which had surprisingly good, workable soil. And here, which is rocky in a lot of spots, sometimes sandy, but has decent soil otherwise. 

The common denominator for all of my gardens has been sheep-soiled hay.

As long as I have grown a garden, A. has had sheep. At Blackrock, we used the old hay from the barns extensively as a mulch/fertilizer combo. Over time, this somewhat balanced out the heaviness of the clay and made the soil much easier to work and more likely to drain.

We also use old hay extensively as mulch and fertilizer at this house, but here it actually gives more structure to the loose soil we have and makes it better at retaining water. And the actual hay as mulch helps keep soil from drying out via evaporation after we water.

It also provides an exciting opportunity for scratching and pecking if you're a chicken (this is the winter-mulched asparagus).

All this to say that this is the reason I have never tested my soil or added any purchased amendments. We just add large quantities of animal waste and hay to it every year and call it good.

As I mentioned at the start, this is probably not helpful to those of you living a normal, sheep-free lifestyle. But! If you have access to any type of manure/waste hay situation, you should absolutely take advantage of it.

Sorry that was not more widely applicable, but that's the reality of my gardening life.

I don't know what the topic will be next week, but I'm sure I'll come up with something. Until then, let us all huddle close to our woodstoves (or heating vents) and enjoy happy dreams of spring and growing things.

A Nice Surprise

I am not generally a complainer when it comes to companies and purchases. I usually just accept that the whole "being a consumer" thing is unpleasant and occasionally results in a bad outcome. I have been known more than once to just keep purchased clothing to donate rather than going through the hassle of returning it. If I get a bad bag of apples or something, I just give them to the chickens and move on.

A lot of this has to do with our distance from stores and shipping centers, though. So when I got my last Misfits Market order and the grapes that were in it were already partially inedible on delivery*, I was annoyed enough to do something about it.

Grapes are something we can rarely get in good condition, given our place at the very end of the supply chain. When I buy them at local stores, I expect them to be a bit soft and old. But these grapes were not from the end of the supply chain, and I did NOT expect them to be on their way out as soon as I got them. 

So I went to the Misfits Market website and clicked through a couple of screens to register my complaint.

And what do you know? After about thirty seconds of clicking on boxes, I was brought to a window that asked me if I would like my refund as a credit to my account. And there was $4.99 back on my account. 

I was very impressed. 

I don't know if this would be so easy if I wanted to, say, cancel my account and get actual money back, but since this is only the second time there's been an issue with my produce, I'm still planning on using the service and am quite happy with a refund.

So thank you to Misfits Market for not being a jerk about refunds. And if any of you wanted to try getting a box of produce from a non-jerky company, you can use this link to get $10 off (which also gives me $10 in credit, so thanks!).

*  Only inedible for us, however. We actually call nasty grapes "chicken grapes," because they won't turn their beaks up at a brown, wrinkled, and fermenting grape.