A View from Sierra County

Sustainable Sunday: Photo Essay Edition

Hey!  It's Sunday, and here I am!  I hadn't forgotten about all of you last week, but you see, there was this wee fire in our community that really got me pretty discombobulated.  I first noticed the smoke just down canyon from me (Camptonville is on a ridge above Oregon Creek on the east and Bullards Bar, formerly the free-lowing North Yuba, on the west) about an hour into the fire at 5:30 on Friday, August 27th... a huge plume being fanned by the wind, it grew extremely fast into about 500 acres by dark.  We were very lucky that the wind was at the front of some unseasonably cool weather, dropping down into the 50s and the fire was contained by early in the week.  DH has been working steadily on the crew, this time in supply, but was able to get back to his regular High Country Ranger duties for most of the holiday weekend.  I do promise there will be a Sustainable Sunday: Living in Fire Country post soon, and have also promised Ruinwin a short tutorial on making herbal preparations, since she lives on the opposite side of the country and couldn't drop everything and fly in for my class two weeks ago.  The preparations we made as a group are almost ready, and some of my pupils will be meeting with me later in the week to strain, decant and otherwise finish up our project.

This week's post is a photo tour of late summer here in my region.  I strained a muscle in my upper back this week, probably from over-use through knitting and the phone apps, and can't sit at the computer too long at once right now.  I do feel lucky to live in an area that is wealthy in agricultural bounty this time of year, even with many people struggling for jobs.  Unemployment in my county and the two on either side is amongst the highest in California, which still beats out most of the rest of the US.  Sad.  Hoping for brighter days, but grateful to be able to eat such good food and put some of it up for the winter.

First, the beautiful... because my gardening philosophy is that whatever you plant, make it beautiful!  The garden occupies one of the most prominent places in my summer lifestyle each year, so by considering its appearance as well as its productivity, I am doubling the yield!  Permaculture in action, LOL.

Last year I planted morning glories along one side of one of my biggest raised beds, and allowed them to grow up an old iron bedstead. They reseeded (thank you!) and this year, some climbed up into one of the three sunflowers at the back of that bed.

 

What a glorious sight this has been as I gaze out the window from my kitchen table over breakfast!

The sunflowers were leftovers that Paul offered up at a Sierra Permaculture Guild meeting back in May, and I have never had much success in my climate starting them outdoors from seed, so jumped at the chance.  All three took off and have been a joy to me as well as a lure to the birds, keeping them from tearing up the leaves of other plants.  One lunch this week, I spent the entire time watching birds light, check to see if the seeds were ready yet, and then peck away at the sunflower leaves... wonder if they taste enough like the seeds to be a treat to the birds?

 

Something for now.... and for later.  Tomatoes were slow to ripen throughout the foothills this summer, partly because of cool spells in late spring.

They are coming on strong now, though, and it is time to think of many, many ways to use them.  Ketchup-making will be one way that we preserve some for later.

Also for later... Royal Acorn squash. I don't usually plant a summer squash these days, since so many friends will gratefully give me all the zuccini and crookneck I might need, or I can pick them up for cheap at one of the farmers' markets. I use the space for winter squash, which we cure and keep and eat throughout the next six months. This year, we are trying a new variety, because late frosts killed ours and these plants were available at Rebel Ridge Organics, where Jessi had them protected in her large greenhouse.  I took the photo last weekend, and am happy to report that by yesterday, several were starting to turn the darker green that indicates approaching ripeness!  They need to be properly cured to keep well; we usually set them on cardboard boxes on the porch, up on shelves or chairs where there is good air circulation, and let the outer skins dry out before storing them.

The next picture is a rather messy raised bed, full of the mixture of items I like to see in one place... tomatoes, Thai basil, nasturtiums, sunflowers and morning glories, all sharing space and producing abundance.  In another bed, I have an extra tomato plant vying for attention with one lemon cucumber plant that has been giving me multiple cukes each day...

It has been fun to watch what does well and then go to our town's Saturday Gardeners' Market and compare notes.

I haven't found much to buy, simply because we are all growing similar items.  I did get some eggplants each of the past two weekends, which have joined tomatoes and squashes in my favorite summer dish, Ratatouille.

Neighbors gather to discuss their gardens and buy the extra that one has but another didn't plant, etc.

We are fortunate that this year, the Pelton Wheel Cafe has allowed the market to meet in their back lot, and people have been able to relax on their patio, either breakfasting on cafe foods or purchasing a crepe at the historical society's booth.

A few people bring along instruments and serenade us with live music.  Life is so easy in summer!

This last photo is of my delicious and mostly-local supper the other night... homegrown tomatoes (the yellows are from my neighbor and the reds from me) accompanied by California mozzarella and Sierra d' Oro blueberry balsamic vinegar (from a small, local olive oil farm, though they imported it from Modena, Italy) drizzled over the top. Truckee sourdough bread paired with California Olive Ranch fresh, green oil for dipping (they are only 40 miles from me and are "America's largest grower and processor of olive oil"!), and a Napa Valley red wine.

Eating Sustainably

Welcome to the first (real) Sustainable Sunday post, and Happy Easter and spring!  What better time to begin a blog journey together with me as I fill you in on how we are trying to become more sustainable here at Slate Range Camp.  Thanks to so many of you that committed to support me in getting my Permaculture Design Certification, this should be the first of many posts to come.  Let me know what you want me to discuss, and I will do my best to accommodate.

Where to start… where to start?  Sustainable living is such a big, huge subject and so few of us are really able to even begin doing it.  If you disagree, go take a quick look at the labels on the food in your cupboard and then come back…. If you had taken that step a few hundred years ago, you probably would have found some containers in your pantry, but most would be hand-labeled and, unless you were wealthy, most of the food would have been grown within a few dozen miles of where you lived, even if you were a ‘townie’.  There would be far less variety.  You might not ever eat an avocado, or an orange in your lifetime, and if you lived inland, you might have never tasted fresh crab.  These are tastes I love, and I am very lucky to have been born in California, but thanks to overfishing, fresh crab now comes from other countries, rather than the San Francisco Bay (oh, and the ones in the Bay are now considered too toxic from mercury washed down into the Sacramento River Delta from the gold-mining era!).

Now, food is routinely shipped around the globe!  What would it take to get back to a localized diet?  Those who follow the Eat Local Challenge blog, or have participated in such challenges over the past few years already are groaning, because no matter who you are, it would likely mean giving up something you really, really love… like chocolate, or coffee, or seafood if you live in the Midwest, avocados if you live anywhere north of Los Angeles or Phoenix.  You get my drift.  We have become so accustomed to eating whatever we like, whenever we want it, that it takes a lot of thinking and planning to even begin to get your head around making a change to food without a lot of food miles on it.

What do I mean by ‘food miles’?  The real cost of something has to include all the methods used to grow it, package it, ship it, and market it, and then you can add on what it took to get it home to your pantry or refrigerator.  Most of the foods we commonly find in the grocery store travel between 1,500 and 2,000 miles to get to us.

I did some research for you, trying to find a calculator online where you could plug in a food and your zip and get a calculation for how many food miles it had traveled before you started eating it.  Kind of like a calorie counter, right?  Well, I wasn’t particularly successful, but I did find that some of the most promising research on this topic is being done by the Leopold Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, at Iowa State University.  There’s a lot to wade through on their site, if you are interested, and I am sure glad they are doing all that work for us.

 

Now, for what you can do yourself.  Start slowly.  Or dive right in, depending on how you approach things!  Either way, start by looking at every food label, and paying attention to what is grown and produced in your region.  Are there orchards?  Farmer’s markets?  FFA auctions? CSAs? (community-supported agriculture, though I bet you knew that one already!)  Where else can you link up with your food?   Think of this as getting back to your hunter-gatherer roots, and start switching out things.  Maybe you will find that you need to take cooking lessons…. Another new adventure!  

In the photo at left, a little friend is sampling local blueberries, grown on Heaven and Earth Farm about 10 miles from my home.  Take special note of her home-made, recycled berry-picking container... now that is the kind of resourcefulness I'm talking about!

What if you don’t like cooking?  Here in my region, there’s a community-supported kitchen where you can buy locally grown and made food, as well as our local food co-op, where foods are labeled as local, including a wide array of deli choices.  This movement has really been catching on across the country since I first started writing about it back in 2006, and I am looking forward to hearing your stories about how you are connecting more with local food.  

Here’s a list of good resources:

Eat Local Challenge

One Hundred Mile Diet

Here's a tool to help you map out what exactly 100 miles means from your home, and a link to the group that really got me started.  

After I read about the Locavores, I bought Jessica Prentice’s book, Full Moon Feast, which discussed what was in season throughout the wheel of the year.  I greatly enjoyed reading it, and it really set me in motion changing how we eat.   

Starting in 2006, we have grown and put up more food each season... we had given that up several years ago, when our children left home, thinking we didn't need to store as much food.  Now, it's nice to be 'stocked up' and also helps us make sure we are eating food that didn't travel very far.  I will be filling you in on food preservation throughout the summer.

Of course one of the most wonderful books to read, for support, thinking, laughing and the recipes, is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver and her family.

 And, another really cool tool to help you start thinking about eating seasonally:  the local foods wheel. Unfortunately, they are only available for the San Francisco Bay area and the New York City area.  However, just reading through the list about when all these foods we take for granted come into season can be very eye-opening and will make you appreciate very bite far more.  While you are reading down the list, think too about how much healthier we would be if we made a point to eat a wider variety of foods each week; that’s really the topic for another post, but since my purpose is to get you both thinking and doing, I thought I would throw it in the mix.

I think that's probably more than enough for today, and look forward to seeing you next Sunday!

Happy Easter

Thanks, everyone! I didn't have computer access yesterday afternoon and had to come to work this morning and log in to discover that you all put me over the top on my goal!! As the ticker shows, I have enough to pay to attend the training.... whoo, hoo!! You will also notice that the "Donate" button has been removed as promised.  I will be donating the amount I have raised over the course fees to the instructors to help anyone else with a shortfall (*added after checking with PayPal - "and the PayPal fees"... I hadn't realized...).

I will be pre-writing my Sustainable Sunday posts, especially since our current home-computer-crash (repair-son addressing this weekend) brought home home fragile technology can still be, so you can expect the first one on Sunday, addressing eating locally! DH and I have spent some time getting ready for a family gathering that will need to be shifted to an outdoor room rather than our usual 'grove'... some will recall photos of BBQs in the grove of four towering cedars that we have on one corner of our property, and where we have developed an outdoor kitchen and firepit. However, the weather has turned from spring back into winter this week so look for pictures of our 'outdoor room', with canvas walls, next week. We also did our food shopping yesterday afternoon, during a break between storms. I come from a Portuguese Catholic upbringing, and therefore share this recipe with you... there's still time to make it before Easter:

Portuguese Easter Bread

 5 pounds flour

 1-1 ½ cubes butter

2 ½ cups scalded milk

 3 cups sugar

 8 eggs

 2 tsp. salt

 3 packages baking yeast

 3 tsp. vanilla

 1 potato

 Preboil one small potato. Scald the milk, but remember to let milk cool down to room temperature- important! When cooled to just warm, add the yeast and a small amount of flour and stir in pan. Let set until it rises (will look all bubbly). Mix in all the other ingredients and knead dough well. Punch down and let rise again. Shape into a very large round loaf. Make four indentations and place an UNCOOKED egg (in the shell) in each. Place on a cookie sheet and let rise for another hour or more. The dough will rise around the eggs in their shells and hold them in place. Bake at 375 degrees. This loaf will take anywhere from one hour to one and half hours to bake. Use a cake tester to check for doneness… will be moist but only a few crumbs should stick to your tester when done. Allow to cool before slicing.

Thanks to my Great-Grandmother and a long-time-ago fellow Portuguese descendant, Frank Tash.

Circle Vest on the Home Stretch!

I have been MIA as a blogger, since I needed to get the latest update for my photo program in order to share some exciting news... the Circle Vest is off the needles, half the ends are woven in, and the stitches for armhole ribbing #1 were picked out of their waste yarn this afternoon...

it's a little hard to tell from the photo, but I ended the outer circle with my turmeric-dyed handspun, with a thin row of some lovely rose quartz merino top... that one ounce of spinning, and Navajo plying at a heavy worsted weight, only left a small bit after completing one of the outer rows!

There is enough of the green left to do the final bits for both armholes, and all the final bits need to get woven in, as well as washed and fluffed and dried, so that I can drop this piece off at the fairgrounds Thursday morning... luckily, hot weather is predicted to continue all week.  Otherwise, something this thick might still be damp at the check-in, and that really would be embarassing!

I won't be able to try this on until the armholes are finished, but overall, I am pretty pleased with myself to have completed a garment all from my own handspun yarns!  I am not so sure I would have picked all of these colors out while on a free shopping spree at a yarn shop, but then that has been part of the learning process as well... a bump of fluffy fiber may spin up to look considerably different as a yarn.  There is a lot more control in spinning first, then dyeing the yarn using one of Sara's color formulas, but the spinning is more pleasurable (at least sometimes) when working with colorful, hand-painted rovings.  Speaking of Sara, did you know she has a book coming out this fall?  Yes, I saw the write-up in the Interweave Press catalog that arrived at the shop last week!  It is titled Woven Treasures, and looks really elegant, at least from the glimpses I can get so far...

In other news, Allison arrived safely in Portland, with her car "stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey", as she put it, and ready for Sock Summit.  We are all excited to see how the items we have been collectively working on will be received there; I think people are especially going to love the dye kits, which some of our loyal customers helped to assemble Thursday evening.  Each kit will contain either a skein of sock yarn or a sock blank and enough dye in small bottles for you to create up to five skeins, as well as the other supplies and instructions needed to get you dyeing your own yarn.  Although I am sad to miss out on the chance to meet up with dear friends from around the country, if you are going please do go by the Fibers booth and say hello, and also look for another friend, KnitWit Momma's fabulous stitch markers (at the Mama Llama booth), as well as JessaLu's bags, and Lisa Souza and her hand-dyed creations (she's another NorCal grrl, so I have to slip in a plug for her).... what a crazy time you will all be having!

I decided about a month ago that rather than mope around about not being able to get away for a week or more in order to go to Sock Summit, I would host a gathering of my favorite Knit Night grrls up at my high country cabin... we could simply make our own knitting, spinning, eating and drinking fun in one of the prettiest spots on the planet (at least from my worldview).  I have spent a handful of days off cleaning the place and making it mountain-sparkley, and will be thinking about food this week.

Thinking of food leads to showing you the other grand accomplishment for today... yup, fresh strawberries from the farmer's market yesterday, turned into strawberry jam this morning!

My local cooperative is sponsoring an Eat Local Challenge through the month of August, and one big part of my own personal challenge will be to turn summer's abundance into stored foods that will further our eating locally throughout the year.  A few of the jars are already spoken for; DD claimed one after reading what I was up to on FB, and youngest son and pregnant sweetie dropped by for a visit this afternoon, leaving with a jar and a bag of garden produce.  There might be a recession on, keeping me from some goals, but I have an abundance of lemon cucumbers, blackberries, tomatoes, apples and pears, and even got three eggs today, meaning one of the young pullets is starting to lay, as there have only been two producers prior to this.  Whoo, hoo!!

Come back for an update on the Fiesta Friendship shawl later this week; it has continued to grow but taking a photo will also mean annotating and acknowledging the donors of those diamonds produced since my last update and I am sure you've had enough of me by now... so let's hear about you!

Muddling Through May

I almost typed "March" and if I hadn't been so busy lately planting my food garden, I would honestly think I was still back in March.  Putting a major grant proposal together is one of the big time-gobblers this month.  I submitted it last week and have to wait until the end of next to see if I was successful.  Since our program budget hinges on getting the funding, I wouldn't mind if y'all thought really good thoughts for me and the 123 Grow program.  Then, I got a bit wrapped up in creating a Facebook presence for our non-profit; you can view it through this link if you are a Facebook member, and become one of our fans. If you haven't bought into FB, that's ok too --- the other person of our two-member committee to create this web presence lovingly calls it "Facecrack" for the addicting, time-sucking qualities.

Then, as I intimated, gardening has really risen to the top of the priority list this month, including helping the parents in my program as we contributed a big presence at last weekend's community plant sale, where the temps got really close to 100!  We made $275 in sales, and the temps are back to normal for this time of year in the Sierras, so life is very, very good!  I have soybeans, bush beans, snow peas, eggplant, five kinds of heirloom tomatoes, yacon, strawberries, dill, bronze fennel (for dyeing wool), calendula (also for dyeing), two kinds of basil (the Opal variety may end up in the dyepot as well), red peppers, lemon cucumber, Jerusalem artichokes, mixed greens, rhubarb chard, sorrel, and corn all in the ground, along with several flowering plants, including a bush lupine about to burst into bloom.  This year's spring weather has blest me with the prettiest blooming of roses in ten years, and my raspberries are flowering as well.  There are blueberries, cherries, pears, and apples all setting fruit, but it all adds up to a lot of time outside instead of in front of the computer.  I know... excuses, excuses.

It is the height of spring where I live, and I promise to take lots of photos over the weekend.  We have the old Slate Range Camp in sparkling shape for the annual family reunion we will be hosting.

I have been knitting and crocheting, though all of my projects seem to have made slow progress through this month.  It looks like a handful will reach completion in rapid succession, with my five potholders for the Potholder Swap arriving at the finish line first.  They are pentagonal, a variation of the Granny Square stitch, and double thickness, using basic washcloth cotton.  I will be sending them off in the mail tomorrow, but am basking in the sense of accomplishment.  Crocheting is much harder on my hands than knitting, I had to make ten to get five, and they won't lay flat, but I do know from past experience that they will wear well and do a great job for their intended purpose -curving around the handle of a hot pot and protecting your hands.  I suspect that the baby blankie will be the next FO.  Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

A Farm Store Spin-In

I mentioned on Friday that my fiber guild was sending a delegation to the outpost known as the Oregon House Farm Store, and wanted to share photos of the fun we had with you.  Turns out it was probably the biggest day at the farm store this season!

This is the former barn that houses the farm store, and inside you would find local foods and crafts, produce in season, the best butter crafted only a quarter mile away, and a freezer full of High Sierra Beef.  Jenny had to make a trip to the other freezer, up at her house, to replenish her offerings, as customers from the surrounding region and spinners alike put in their requests for roasts and summer sausage.  Turns out a few of my fellow guild members are closet summer sausage lovers, though I'm not telling which ones... here's a view of part of our fashionably attired crew.  From left to right are Sara, dressed in double layers of colorful knits from her own handspun and handdyed yarns (showoff!), BJ, wearing a handwoven top, Sue F., with her prize-winning shawl, spun from her own sheepie, draped over her shoulders, Stephanie, wearing a triangle loom shawl she wove last year, and Sue V.

The day started out overcast, after a rainy Saturday and night, and we all came prepared in our wooliest attire.  However, by late morning it was warmer outside than in, and we mostly migrated out to spin in the lovely autumn afternoon sun.  Soon, we will be forced inside for months, so Jenny's pastures rang with the sounds of our laughter and the honking of migratory Canada geese, joining her own herd of honkers briefly.  Her farm also features guinea hens, chickens, rabbits, two pigs, and probably other livestock we weren't aware of....

A closer-up view of Sue F.'s shawl... and her spinning.  Mitts were in order early in the day.

Sue V. had just finished this colorful version of the Leaf Lace shawl.... unblocked but still fabulous.

Allison brought along the knitter's loom, and people loved trying out weaving, watching us spin, and tasting the lovely wines from  Ramey Schulten Winery.

There were two extra tables of fibery goodness.... this one features Stephanie's hand-dyed rovings (which can be purchased through her blog), and handknit baby items made from her handspuns, with natural-colored rovings from Sue F.'s sheep.

The other display featured BJ's products, including weaving and lavender.... I bought a cute little handwoven tool pouch to hang from my wheel.  BJ also brought a rigid heddle loom and will be teaching a class soon at another LYS locally.

I left two cabled hats I knit last week behind on consignment with Jenny, but expect that the downward spiraling economy is responsible for the sluggish sales in non-food items.  I am not trying to knit a lot to sell this year as a result, but am sending a few items along with Stephanie to an artisan fair she will be attending the first Saturday in December.  I finished another hat last night, and spun up more yarn, so a WIP Wednesday post is in order this week, even if it doesn't appear until Thursday!  I was surprised to realize that I am only a few weeks away from my four-year blogiversary... I am still here and better start thinking of a way to celebrate!

New Beginnings

I am starting with a disclaimer... my new beginnings are nothing as big as Norma's... just little stuff around here.  We spent Monday finishing up the planting to feed the old Camp, particularly making sure all the raised beds had something in them.   Having filled them all, I also threw a bunch of zinnias and pansies into this rusted-out wheelbarrow, now gracing a corner of the inner yard.
The beas, peas and tomatoes had already been planted, but got a good feeding and tomato cages in place.  Their bed has nasturtiums that have come back from last year and alyssums, which I plant in hopes of deterring aphids; both add color and a feeling of fun.

I planted parsnip seeds, basil plants beside already-planted out cucumber and eggplant, and whispered words of encouragement to the bed containing winter squash and edamame (green soybeans, non-GMO, thank you!).  Also thriving well are beet seedlings, rhubarb chard and sorrel.  This year's novelty awards go to seedings of edible chrysanthemum and beetberry, both of which will keep the parsnips company while growing and add color and new tastes to our salads over the summer.  I am also hoping they will fulfill the promise on their respective seed packets of reseeding themselves, saving us the work next season.

The fish pond got fresh attention as well, with plants fed, mulched and watered... currently a lovely columbine that didn't photograph well in the slanting light of late afternoon is blooming.

Then, we pulled out our lovely new rocking lawn chairs and admired the view as the sun went down...

The newest beginning on the knitting horizon arrived by mail on Wednesday... the latest kit in Anne's Wooly Wonka Lace Club.  This offering is just over 600 yards of a hand-painted silk laceweight in the Supernova colorway (a bit more like fireworks just overhead on the 4th to my way of thinking), paired with a glorious Orenburg-style scarf pattern from Susan Lawrence, called "Heat Wave".  Neither colorway or pattern is yet available, but soon I am sure.

As soon as the computer cuts me loose from its punishingly long uploads of photos for the blog post, I will begin winding this lovely silk so that I can start my next lace project.... couldn't be happier!

Have a wonderful early summer weekend, dear ones... next weekend I get to be in Estes Park, where I hope to renew the acquaintance of blogbuddies and meet some I haven't yet in person.

Where Have You Been?

I heard this question over the weekend from a handful of caring friends, and I haven't posted in a long stretch (at least by my usual standards), but I am fine.  Very busy, but happy.... my back is healing up and last week gave me far less trouble.  I start a few weeks of physical therapy tomorrow, and spent time last week getting caught up on tasks I couldn't complete while laid up.  Preschool started on the other side of our building, and even though our infant-toddler Headstart program is year-round, it added to our load, with extra energy and visitors abounding.  I now have a Sunday-Monday weekend, but took Saturday off from the LYS in order to attend a once-a-year event with DH and his fraternal 'brothers' of ECV... we had a great Officers' Dinner with friends out of doors in a lovely Downieville yard Friday evening, then I attended a fun ladies' tea on Saturday morning.

The ladies gather at Donna's house and have a fantastic brunch and visit while the guys are busy doing 'guy secret stuff' and I have gotten to know several fine people over the years.

This year, we had our dear friend Wit and his new sweetheart Nancy staying with us over the weekend, so I was her tour guide to Downieville for the day... we had a fun time, shopped 'til we dropped, and ate lunch in cool comfort at The Grubstake... the temps have been hovering in the mid-90s here and being outside just isn't as much fun when you are sweltering.

Nancy and Wit pose in our kitchen... we have known Wit for close to 15 years, and were happy to see him in love and thriving.  Wit is a beekeeper and also goes throughout the San Francisco Bay area extracting wild bee hives that have settled in peoples' walls, sheds, etc.  He will be one of my primary sources of information for the posts that I am researching on bees, beekeeping, and Colony Collapse Disorder.  These posts will accompany the progress reports on my Bee Fields shawl, which I plan to knit as a prayer for the health of bees in the face of a changing environment..... our food supply depends heavily upon creatures we either ignore or take for granted, so I hope to be able to enlighten my readers about the truly amazing work they do and the plight they are facing at this moment in time.

I have postponed starting until I can get truly finished with about three other WIPs.... most of those participating in the KAL will be done before I even get started, it appears.

Yesterday, I got together with much of our immediate family for a birthday luncheon to celebrate Nikki's 24th birthday today.... we had a fun time dining on Mexican food followed up by Coldstone ice cream.

I didn't take many pictures, but in this one, DS Jesse is entertaining Mason (DD's boyfriend's three year old son) by arm wrestling while we wait for lunch to arrive.  He also drew several entertaining pictures for him, and had 'marker races' with each of them using a different color and drawing as fast as they could, then trying to figure out which color had covered the largest area... I love to see how creative and compassionate my (adult) children grew up to be... they are my best FOs!

I have spent much of today working on the abundance our garden has given us.  The tomatoes are cooking up into a sauce out n the solar oven, while the chard was blanched and frozen for enchiladas later in the year...

We have been picking peaches all week, trying to get them off the tree before they fall off and go to waste... we have eaten peach smoothies for breakfast, peaches and cottage cheese for lunch and peaches and ice cream for an evening snack, and most will go in the freezer to become jam or cobbler when it is cool enough to cook!  That is some of my fresh peppermint in the background, as well as a honey bear from Wit.

There has even been some knitting happening around here....

Here's a before photo as these clogs are having their day in the washing machine as I compose this post between stops and starts... they have agitated somewhere around an hour total so far.  I can't count the frequent turning off, fishing out of suds, checking against my garden clogs, then getting to the stage of shrunkenness to be able to press out some of the water and try them on as part of the felting time, but it is much longer than the time it has taken for any of the bags I have made to date.  I just hope they will fit!

Diamond Square has been my carry-along project, and has grown steadily... I now have the two diamonds that form the V-neck in front done and am working on the same stage on the backside... this is
a fun knit and I am really loving the colors... if I didn't have so many projects waiting in line, I would probably want to start another Just One More Row pattern as soon as I finished the top; it is easy to remember the routine while making each diamond, yet exciting to anticipate each next step in the construction process... I have tried to weave in my ends as I go, but will probably be complaining about that step when I am done with the knitting, however there is NO sewing (sweet!)

As you can see, there has been quite a bit going on to keep me away from the computer!  However, I have been working on another post (trying to find some before and after pictures has kept me from completion) that will appear later this week, and DH and I are taking a mini-vacation Wednesday and Thursday, so I will have nice mountain photos for you by the end of the week.  It's not that I don't love all of you... really!  I am so grateful that so many people even cared enough to write and ask "Are you all right? Where have you been?"  What a charmed life I have.

Cookie Extravaganza ...

or, Why I Didn't Get My Christmas Cards Done Yet.

I don't go to such lengths every year, but I have always loved holiday baking.  This is something that was passed on to me by my father, who used to take the two weeks of school holiday off from work every year, to be the Poppa In Charge while Mom kept working.  We baked.  We cleaned.  We helped him get ready to host my Mother's annual Christmas Dinner for the extended family.

One of the things that Dad made on his own, without our help, was a persimmon fruitcake, baked in October and soaked in rum for two months.  I never really understood why people DIDN'T like fruitcake until I left home... obviously, they had never eaten my dad's.  He taught me all I knew about cooking before I left home, and really, it was mainly how to bake!  We made breads as gifts, cookies to wolf down, and other goodies for the holiday meal.  I have continued my own version of this tradition, in greater and lesser amounts, over the years.  The year that DD was an infant, I was not working as Christmas approached and had little money for gifts.  DD watched on in her infant seat as I made about a dozen pies; most of those on my gift list got a pie that year... persimmon pie for my Dad, pecan for my SIL, chocolate cream for lil' brother, pumpkin for my family, etc.

This year, I asked DD a few weeks ago if she wanted to come over and share a day-long baking extravaganza.  She suggested that we make gingerbread people and invite our little friend who lives up the road and is almost four to join us.  Everything was arranged during the week, and she arrived after a hectic day at the toy store where she is working, at the same time that a farmer from our community was delivering 15 pounds of persimmons for us.

We made the first batch of persimmon cookies last night, studded with chopped walnuts, rolled oats, and dried cranberries, and at least we were eating "healthy" cookies...

It was downhill from there... we also made a batch of fudge last night and hid it in the fridge to harden.

This morning, my first task was making the gingerbread batter and letting it chill for a few hours before trying to roll it out.

Nikki is rolling balls of dough for Raspberry Fudge Thumbprint Cookies.. not so healthy, except that we used raspberry preserves that were "fruit only", then ate a bunch!  These are the greatest.

We also made Peanut Butter Kisses... another family favorite, but put a few organic dark chocolate morsels in the middle of each one instead of unwrapping all of those Hersey Kisses.

Youngest Son decided to come up and join us, do his laundry and get in on the goods.  He has always had an artistic bent, and painted these snowpeople, plus a tree and a cat extrapolated from the wreath cookiecutter.

DD made an equally stunning plate of decorated cookies and was disappointed when the head on her gingergirl started coming loose.

Our little grrlfriend had a great time too, playing with our toys between bouts of cutting out shapes, stirring and mixing, sprinkling colored sugar (and licking it off her fingers), and plucking mini M&Ms into her mouth as often as putting them on cookies to take home to big brother.

This much fun in my own kitchen is worth all the mess... I felt truly blest today, and really couldn't ask for more from life.  It didn't hurt any that the sun was shining, and we were able to fit in a photo shoot for my gift to MIL and my aubergine Bejeweled (which will appear later this week).  I hope your holiday preparations were as much fun!