Moolie - Happy Thanksgiving :)

[moolie]

Been busy and realized I haven't updated my journal for a while.

My daughters carried banners in last Friday's Calgary Stampede Parade (Pathfinder Girl Guides take on this role every year--for more info on Girl Guides see my post #70 above) and received free tickets to the Stampede so we went Tuesday evening. The Stampede is billed as the "Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth" and is a cross between a huge rodeo, "state-fair" style fair with midway rides and games, live music performances (some free, some big names so you need tickets), and agricultural exhibition.

We saw the Super Dogs which is a fun free show, ate some wonderful beef on a bun from one of the food carts, wandered the cattle and horse barns, checked out the military display (tanks, personnel carriers, a helicopter, a fighter jet trainer cockpit, various other displays), watched the extreme midway rides (we're not real thrill seekers but they are fun to watch!), looked at displays of award and scholarship winning High School art with western themes, checked out the 4-H barn, spent some time in a small "petting farm" tent (photos below) and generally had a nice family evening out.

As we headed back to our car we stopped at the top of the hill to take a few photos of the Stampede Grounds and also got a peek at the evening Chuckwagon races:

Been busy in the garden keeping everything tidy and planting succession lettuce, radishes, carrots etc.

Butter lettuce, Romaine, carrots, radishes, beets, cukes

Tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, onions

Apple tree doing well

One of the tomato plants on the deck

Canned up some more strawberry rhubarb jam (5 half-pints) to finish off our rhubarb (may still get a few more stalks yet) and blackberry/raspberry jam (7 half-pints) and also canned up 7 pints of farmer's market Roma tomatoes because I'm all out of canned tomatoes from last year. Pressure-canned up a bunch more ground bison because it's just so darn easy to make quick dinners with! Plan to can up some chicken chunks and stew beef when I put in a couple of freezer orders next month.

Scored another great deal on canning jars, again via Kijiji (like Craigslist but more popular here in western Canada):

I have 5 dozen gem jars (quart size). Also have the snap lids new in the boxes.
4.00/dz for the jars and 1.50/box for the lids.

She actually only charged me for 4 dozen jars since there were only 10 in the final dozen (I protested, but not too much) so I spent a grand total of $25 for 58 jars and 6 dozen lids.

jars fresh and clean from the dishwasher!


With all the talk of home-made ice cream, my girls and I decided to break out the ice cream maker this morning and we made up a batch of Vanilla ice cream

 

[justusnak]

Great pics!! Sounds like you all had a wonderful time at the Stampede. Looks like lots of fun! Great score on the canning jars. I was looking at a few the other day, but realized, I probably have 800+ jars already. That ice cream looks YUMMY!!!!!! Now I am wanting Ice Cream. dang! LOL The garden looks great too! I wish ours would take off...crazy weather!!

 

[moolie]

Thanks! We did have fun

And the garden has just finally taken off in the past couple of weeks. I know my tomatoes are behind schedule (planted the seeds indoors about 2 weeks later than I should have) and all the cool weather and rain we had in June really stalled things for a while. But the radishes are almost ready, planted the second crop 2 weeks ago, and we may be looking at baby carrots in a couple of weeks. The lettuce is the happiest and we've been enjoying it on sandwiches and in salads.

 

[TanksHill]

hey there. Just stopping in to say hello. The garden looks great.

Did you by chance get the envelope I mailed with your hat and scarf? I mailed it slow boat to China, or Canada in theis case.

I hope it makes it ok.

g

 

[moolie]

The toque and scarf came today!

They are beautiful, thank you so much!

(And you really didn't need to send money for postage, but thank you all the same for that as well. )

 

[TanksHill]

"toque" I'm sorry but I admit I had to google it. Not a word I am familiar with. I didn't know I was so talented as to make a woman's Toque.



Glad you like it.

g

 

[moolie]

LOL! Bit of Canadiana there for ya!

Haven't updated the journal for a while because I was out of town for a big jamboree-style international Girl Guide camp out in BC. I went as one of two Guiders with a Patrol of 8 Pathfinder Guides (see my post #70 for more about GGC).

2000 teenage girls living in a tent city on an agricultural fairground property on the edge of a small Fraser Valley town with no showers and enjoying every minute of their 10 days together. We hauled water each day from huge potable water tanks set up on the site, had no bathrooms other than porta-potties, and cooked all our meals on a propane campstove. The girls had different activities each half-day, including geo-caching, mountain biking, scuba diving lessons, sea kayaking, rock climbing, archery, rappelling... as well as arts & crafts, science experiments, nature and ecological adventures and each girl also took part in a half-day community service project.

The girls in my unit had all made lots of traders (I think Girl Scouts call them SWAPS) and we also brought lots of city pins and Girl Guide District patches to trade--they each have lots of new patches to sew on their camp blankets and lots of pins added around the brims of their camp hats. Girls from all across Canada attended, although the BC contingent was the largest, and we also had girls join us on this camp from Idaho, Mexico, Ireland, the UK, the Philippines, and New Zealand.

It was a hoot, but I was glad to come home again to have a shower and sleep in my own bed when it was done.

Hubs held down the fort while I was away and the garden went jungle on me! The radishes were done a couple of weeks ago, the beets are in as of today and I just need to blanch/peel them tomorrow and get them into the freezer, we thinned the baby carrots out this afternoon to go with dinner (although we all ate several as we picked!) so the rest can grow big and strong, and I've got green tomatoes on a few plants that just need to ripen to juicy redness.

We left a few Romaine lettuces in the garden to head up a bit more but pulled the last of the butter lettuce and a Romaine head to make a salad along with a few of the beet greens for dinner. The cukes are coming along slowly, only a few bean plants made it through for whatever reason but they are flowering, and the peas are also in flower--these last two seem a bit behind to me, but I did plant everything later than usual so that may just be it. The herbs smell wonderful and we had some fresh basil with our pasta (along with the salad and baby carrots) for dinner this evening.

 

[moolie]

A few quick cell phone photos:

The 3 garden boxes today

Tomatoes and herbs on the deck (there are 3 more round planters on the other side of the deck)

Beets washed and ready for blanching and freezing (there are more, this is the first few that came out of the sinkful)

Apple trees coming along

 

[moolie]

We were out to visit my folks in BC last week and Hubs, Mom and I (Dad gave us moral support and hung out with the kids) canned up 35 quarts of peaches while we were there as they live in orchard country:

Canned up 11 quarts of dill pickles yesterday, the house still smells a little pickled at the moment! One batch has dill heads, the other has dill seed and some stem bits as I didn't have enough dill for all the jars. Hubs also added cauliflower to the second batch as he really likes the odd bit when we have pickles.

Can't wait to try them but know I need to let them sit for at least a month (although two or three is even better and they should be awesome by Christmas!)

The garden is a jungle of yummyness and we feel like we are living off the land at the moment with all the fresh stuff we have with each meal. Tomatoes are starting to ripen, we're down to 3 heads of Romaine that need to get pulled soon before they bolt (this Valmaine variety was everything it promised in terms of heat tolerance though so I can't complain!) but we've still got lots of carrots and onions and potatoes to harvest when the time comes (although we've snuck a few baby carrots and a few onions here and there!). The few beans that made it through the cold wet spring are just about ready and the peas that I planted late look like they are going to be ok after all. Disappointment on the zuke scene, no idea where those were planted as I can't find the markers and there aren't any squashy plants where I thought I had planted them--wondering if I ever got them in? Didn't plant corn or big squash this year but will add another raised bed next year.

Hubs has borrowed a "how to build a greenhouse" book from the library a few weeks back in order to come up with a plan and get a frame up before the frosts come so we can keep the tomatoes outside longer this year. We've done the hoop thing in the past to get a couple more weeks in the ground before picking and bringing in to ripen, but he wants to ramp it up this year. He plans to build a wooden frame and cover it with construction vapour-barrier plastic for this year, then perhaps modify it in the future with glass or fiberglass/acrylic panels as time goes on. We live in a neighborhood where people are often swapping out old wooden windows for new vinyl ones so I've already scored some curbside piles of old windows over the past year that I've got stored in the garage so we just need to keep our eyes out until we have enough. A couple of the windows I have are the textured bathroom window type glass, but I figure I can place those strategically where a bit of light loss won't affect the plants.

Can't believe summer is coming to an end, especially after a sunny hot 30C day like we had today, but the nights are cooling down so I know fall is coming. At our old house we had an Ash tree that pretty much turned completely yellow round about the 1st of September every year, and the odd poplar here and there in the neighborhood already has a branch or two of yellow leaves on it.

 

[moolie]

I usually try to keep my journal to sufficiency topics (so that I can keep track of my efforts as much as for anyone else reading along), but I just got a call from my Dad that my Oma (my Mom's Mom) passed away quietly this morning. She was 96. She had been going down hill over the past 6 months and had spent the last week mostly sleeping and had stopped eating and drinking over the weekend.

She lived in a care home near Vancouver BC, so we'll have to travel for the funeral (after having been out to BC twice already this summer), so if you are so inclined please pray for everyone's safety on the roads, for my Mom and her two sisters in their time of loss, and for Oma's brothers and sisters who are all quite elderly. Oma was the eldest girl of 8 surviving children, the eldest child (her older brother) passed away a couple of years ago at the same age Oma is now. The rest of her siblings range in age from 94 to 81.

I have so many fond memories of times spent with my Oma, she is one of my main inspirations in living more self-sufficiently, and she was also my prayer warrior and a quiet inspiration in how she lived out her strong faith in her every moment. I will miss her so much.