winter CSA

I completely forgot to post about our first Winter CSA pickup! We bought a full share from Buckwheat Blossom Farm in Wiscasset. It is what I expected a CSA to be when we got our summer CSA. You go to the farm, there are tables set up, and each table has veg on it with the amount you are supposed to take for either a full or partial share. The pick-up time was between 3:30 and 6:30pm and boy am I glad I got there at 3:45! The place was packed, and I wanted to be able to pick the best of each (all of it looked amazing though). They also had a little outside store which sold breads (I picked up a roasted garlic focaccia), soap, milk, eggs, cookies. All kinds of good stuff. We pick up every other week through March. So without further ado, here is our first week's share:

2 bunches of carrots
10 red onions
5 heads of garlic
6 delicata squash
1 lb of kale (red and green)
2 leeks

Overall I was very impressed, and am very excited that I will have fresh produce all winter. On top of the winter CSA, I just found out recently that my town is continuing their farmers' market through the winter. Eating local is really going to be easy this winter. Plus, today, all of our pork is supposed to be dropped off (minus the smoked stuff which we will get in a few weeks). Exciting times!

Christmas

Now, I know that everyone is freaking out that the stores already have Christmas decorations out, Christmas music is already playing on the radio, and Christmas commercials are already playing on TV when Thanksgiving is still 2 weeks away. However, I am not one of these people. I am so happy that the Christmas season has come early. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. The food, decorations, music and visiting with all my family, and my extended family of friends. I love it! But, this year I think I am even more excited than normal. I think the main reason is because of Emma of course.

I am so happy to start new traditions with my baby girl! I know she won't remember a bit of this Christmas, but I hope that we can take enough pictures and video to show her when she is older. I am also very excited about making presents this year. Christmas has never been about what I receive for Christmas. For me, it is always what I can give to someone else, as well as what types of food we have and being together with my family. That is the most important part. This year I have made a majority of the presents that we are giving away, and I am really happy about it. Being able to create something, to me, seems like a perfect way to show your love to someone. I wish that I could put up pictures and tell everyone what I have made, but, I don't want to give anything away.

So, because I have been making my presents, instead of buying them this year, I had to start thinking about what I would do quite a few months ago. But, now that it is colder outside, and we are burning the fall candles, I am ready to bust out into the Christmas season. I guess I can wait 2 more weeks until we put up the tree and decorations, and Matt allows me to put on the Christmas music, but in the meantime, I will continue my present making, and sneak some listens to Christmas music on the computer while Matt is at work :-)

And for all of you people who don't want to think about Christmas yet, just remember what Christmas actually stands for, Christ being born to save this world. Remember the togetherness of family, and the food and the traditions, and don't think about the commercial side at all. Just enjoy.

new direction

Well, I can finally say it, Matt has gotten a new job. We were told that his job was 95% safe at his current company, but that 5% is still a big if. When the company told everyone that they had to make cutbacks, of course he dusted off the resume and sent it out to as many places as he could find. Luckily, he was able to find a job close to where his current job is, so that we don't have to try and sell the house and move. It was an option though. Everything was an option at that point. But, here we are, starting on a new direction, and hopefully it is a good one. Not that you should jump ship just because your company is going through difficult times, but the new company seems to be a better fit for him, plus it is a management job, and that is always a big plus in my book :-)

Another new direction we are heading in, is trying to combine the upstairs living space with the downstairs living space. See, our house is a duplex, with the first floor being one part, and the 2nd floor the other part. However, we have decided to make the upstairs living room/kitchen/bathroom/entryway into a studio, and then close off that part from the other 2 bedrooms upstairs. Eventually one room will be for Matt and I, and the other for Emma, but we are starting out by just getting one bedroom done.

Matt is in the process of getting the closet built, funny that older houses don't have closets...and when they do, they can't even fit a hanger in them...hmmm. We bought some "no VOC" paint at Lowes last weekend, and will be painting this weekend, and hopefully next week I will be able to get everything settled. I'm very excited though. I think it will be great to have a dedicated bedroom, with a door on it. Our current bedroom doesn't have a door and is downstairs. Plus, our house is completely full of "stuff."

I have been having such a conflict with myself about all the stuff that we have. I keep going through everything and getting rid of tons and tons of it, but it hasn't really made a dent, and now with the addition of Emma, well, it seems like it's that much worse. Not that she has a TON of stuff, but she does have a high chair (currently sitting in the middle of our kitchen because there is no wall space to put it against), she has an exersaucer (also in the kitchen, but it goes between the kitchen and the living room depending on what I am doing), then there is the pack and play (which she doesn't actually use at this point in time unless I put her in there to nap - not often, but she will use I'm sure once she can sit up) and that is in our current dining room/office and takes up most of the floor space. I really don't like clutter and neither does Matt, but since we have zero closets in the downstairs part of the house, clutter is inevitable, even with less stuff around. I think that getting the bedroom upstairs will help a lot. Then I can use the current dining room as an actual office, and we can have a nice big dining room and I will have plenty of room to have my craft stuff in there. And since Matt is building a closet in the upstairs bedroom, we can use our two wardrobes as closets downstairs, yay! I'm very excited about all of this, if you can't tell :-)

I recently read a post on Simplicity Soup that talked about "moving in" to her house, where she has lived for a few years. I could definitely relate to that, because I feel like I haven't really been settled since Matt and I got married. First we were living at my Grandmother's, then at my mom's, now in this house, which has been in a constant construction mode since we bought it 2 years ago. And now I am trying to actually get things settled. I want to have pictures on the walls, have my kitchen be "just so", be able to have people over without feeling like they are looking at how this doorway doesn't have trim yet, and that doorway still needs to be painted. So, hopefully, this move upstairs, and Matt's new job will help me to feel a little more settled.

What happened to October?

Wow, I haven't been here in a while. It has been a crazy 7 weeks. Let's see. After my freaking out post we found out that Matt's work would be having cutbacks, and so I really started freaking out about whether or not Matt would be laid off. Thankfully he still has his job as of right now, and hopefully that will continue to be the case. Two people have already been laid off. It may not sound like lot, but considering there are/were only 13 people in his office...it's a lot. We have been lucky enough to visit my brother and sister-in-law for a weekend, and also Matt's brother and sister-in-law. And then most of the other time has been putting up food for the winter. Well, I guess I haven't put up that much food...in fact...I have a feeling the food I have put up will be gone by the end of the year.

I now know that the salsa I canned is really yummy, and I should have made gallons of it instead of the 6 pints that I came up with. Note to self, at least can in quart jars next year instead of pint jars. We use one pint for one meal pretty much. I also canned 7 pints of apple jelly, which will go with the 5 pints of strawberry jam I have in the freezer. I at least know I have enough jam and jelly to last us until next year, yay! What else? 6 quarts of applesauce (Emma will be starting solids soon), 4 pints of apple butter, and 3 pints of pumpkin butter. OK, so it really doesn't seem like much at all when I write it down :-) But, it all sealed, and as this was my first foray into canning, I am extremely happy.

We make muffins pretty much every weekend, usually with some kind of fruit in it, either frozen blueberries or cut up apple or whatever. But, now that we have the apple butter, I can make plain muffins and just put the apple butter on them. It is definitely yummy. I used about half a pint of pumpkin butter in a batch of muffins a couple weeks ago, and it made the most delicious pumpkin muffins I have ever had. So, yay for me! It also helps me realize what I will need to do for next year. I think that we will need to get at least a couple bushels of apples if I am going to continue to can the applesauce. I used about half a bushel for the applesauce, and then a quarter of the apples for the apple jelly. I also had about 7 cups of apple juice left over which we drank pretty quickly. I was thinking I would make more jelly, but we didn't need it after I took inventory of what we had for strawberry jam.

So now it is November, all of our plants are dead now, and we are getting ready for winter. We had bought the wood stove and were ready to start on the chimney, but when Matt found out about possibly losing his job, we decided to hold off on the chimney in case we needed the cash to live off of. Instead we bought an edenpure electric heater. So far it has worked really well. We have only had it a few weeks, and it does look like our electric bill is going to double, but that is still a lot less than what we would pay for oil. Last year we were buying only 100 gallons a month and keeping the heat on 55, and we bundled up nice and tight, but the house was frigid. It was fine for us, we just spent a lot of time under the covers reading etc. But, now that Emma is here, it just isn't an option. We don't have the heat on at night still, and it seems to be fine because she is in bed with us and stays pretty toasty, but during the day, we need some heat. The fact that our electric is only going up by like $60, is amazing though. We'll see what it is like in January and February when it is below zero.

I have also been doing a lot of sewing recently. Getting Christmas presents made. I'm really happy about what I have done so far, and hope to continue to make presents in the future. Finding the time to complete the projects is the main challenge. Currently I have my sewing machine downstairs on the kitchen table which is good, considering I spend most of the day in the kitchen. I do have a dedicated craft room, but, it is in the other part of the house, and I have come to the conclusion that until the two parts of the house are connected indoors, there is no way I will be using the craft room (except on the weekends when Matt is home and can help watch Emma). So now my kitchen is doubling as a craft room, luckily we have a big kitchen...and that we don't mind eating on the floor :-) I have also made Emma's Christmas stocking. My mom made both my brother's and mine and so I felt that I should make Emma's as well. I was very proud of myself, I didn't even have a pattern :-) OK, so most of the stuff I have sewed hasn't had a pattern...and it has been coming out ok. I just need some better tools for sewing, like a cutting board. Unfortunately, very expensive, so I am working with what I have.

Next week we start our winter CSA. I am definitely looking forward to that. I also think that we are getting our pig next week, or at least the portion not smoked. And I found out that my town is going to continue their farmers' market through the winter at an area church. That is very exciting. Not that I will need much, but being able to go will be nice, in case I do need to pick up something. I guess the first day was yesterday, but I missed it. I will have to try and go next week.

So that is what has been going on in my world. Oh, and of course playing with Emma all the time is a big part of why I haven't posted much :-) She is a character. I shall leave you with her smiling face today :-) This is from a few weeks ago.

freaking out

I guess I am always freaking out though, so maybe this isn't news to anyone else! I am seriously disturbed about the sudden amount of gov't bailouts for financial institutions...seriously disturbed. I think the last thing we need is to bail out all these banks. It is just putting off the inevitable in my opinion. The business cycle is cyclical *ahem*. So why not let it work?! You can't always be going up! There will be a point when the market will correct itself. Yes, there are many things that can be done to push it off into the future...but is that a good idea? Not in my opinion. In fact, I think it is probably the worst possible idea ever. Instead of letting the market correct itself, we push it off into the future, which means eventually when the market does correct itself it will be that much worse.

I know that I am always talking about getting goats, being self sufficient and having my entire family live together, but it seems to me that maybe I am not as far off as I thought I was. Of course the blogs I read are all blogs that people are preparing for the "collapse," so maybe I am only seeing what I choose to see. But, I think that where we are as a country right now, the state of our economy, well, we need to really prepare and be ready for what comes next.

I have been trying to prepare for the past year and a half now, but I am no where near as ready as I should be, or even need to be for that matter. But, we are getting there. We have our woodstove and a huge pile of wood in our yard (which I am concerned about people stealing, of course). I am preserving food, we have the pig coming in November, our summer CSA has another month to go, and then our winter CSA starts up.

There are major concerns. What happens if Matt loses his job? What if my mom can't work? My brother and his wife? It's a constant concern of mine. I know, worrying is a sin, and it's the sin that I have the hardest time not doing. Maybe I am not worrying as much as I think, maybe I actually am trying to prepare and be responsible just in case something happens. Or maybe I am making excuses for worrying :-)

I don't know what the future holds, no one does, but I just hope that I can prepare enough so that my family is safe and secure. That is the only thing that matters, that my family is safe.

PS I'm not always this much of a downer :-)

salsa

I have successfully canned salsa! I am so excited right now I can't even explain it. I have never canned a single thing in my life. I am all about the freezer baby. But, last Christmas, my brother and sister-in-law bought me a bunch of canning supplies (which I have wanted to try out so badly), so here I am canning my first batch of salsa. OK, so it is a little watery at the bottom, but that's because I didn't drain the tomatoes. I figured why bother, it will make more salsa, and I don't mind if it is a little watery. All I have to do is shake it up before I use it, or stirring might be a little safer :-) I canned 6 pints, which is probably not enough to get me through football season, but we will savor it. Unfortunately, I didn't get nearly as many tomatoes as I did last year. We still have some, but I plan to use those to make sauce over the next couple of weeks, and of course to put in our salads (is anyone else getting as much lettuce in their CSA's this year? or gardens???).




Matt and I took Emma apple picking this past weekend. It was great. We picked a bushel of apples in about 30 minutes, and all in one row. I think Emma really enjoyed it. She really loves being outside. We forgot the camera though, so we are planning on going back to stage some photos ;-) And maybe pick some more apples...who knows. I plan to make applesauce and apple jelly out of the apples. I'm very excited about this whole canning experience...although...it did take me just about the entire day to do those 6 pints of salsa. Between a teething baby who hates to have a wet diaper (the downside to cloth diapers) and trying to make sure I get everything perfectly measured (I have read some horror stories about bad canning), I think I did pretty well :-)

winter eating

I am excited to say that we have put a deposit on half a pig for the fall. And we have also paid for a winter CSA which will allow us to continue our local eating through the winter into the spring. Very exciting stuff. I think that half a pig will end up being around 75-90 lbs. That seems like quite a bit of pork, but over a year I think it will be just enough. I'm also thinking of buying some chickens from Snafu, where I normally get my meat. It is a lot of money up front, but it works out to way less than when I am buying the food at the grocery store each week. We have narrowed down our shopping to just needing to buy dairy at the grocery store, and occasionally eggs when we can't get them from the farm. I'm happy with that :-)

The pig is coming from Thirty Acre Farm in Whitefield. They are certified organic and just let the pigs run around in the woods looking for grubs. There are a ton of pictures on their website and the pigs look happy, so that makes me happy.

Our winter CSA is coming from Buckwheat Blossom Farm. And the brochure says "November through March, come to the farm twice a month to pick-up a variety of root storage crops, greens, leeks, onions, garlic, winter squash, potatoes, and frozen veggies such as corn, peppers, green beans, and broccoli." Sounds good to me! That leaves 2 months where we wouldn't be getting food from the farm. And hopefully we will have stored enough to not really worry too much about it...although I'm not sure that is a reality. This farm also sells meat, you can buy half a cow, or pigs, or turkeys, chicken, and lamb. It's amazing to me what is around here. I never realized it until I found the local harvest website, and started doing the One Local Summer last year. I can't really think about going back to the way things used to be...

This weekend we are going to go apple picking which I am very excited about. I see lots of applesauce and apple jelly in my future :-)