Onion Braids, and Shameful Things

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I took my camera along on our Monday excursions, but didn't take any pictures.

Michael and I learned to braid onions in the morning. I don't know if you can look at them and say, "Wow! Look at those braided onions!" But we did braid them, so that's what they are, by dingo!.





We took a very long piece of twine, folded it in half, and tied a loop in the end.





The first onion was placed on the twine, making three strands to braid; two that were twine and one that consisted of onion top.





Begin braiding...





Add another...





Get tired of how slow it takes and add several at a time. They are small anyhow.





Tie it off and trim. The loop at the top is how you hang it.





After doing some work in the garden and kitchen on Labor Day we took off for parts known.

A stop by the home improvement store to pick up lumber and paint samples for a little girl named Maddie. Maddie is a sweetheart. She's got a wonderful new family with a brand new baby brother. But she's been going through a lot. Her wonderful new daddy is battling cancer. Doctors say he is likely not going to survive this.

So with all that going on, plus having a newborn in the family, it's kind of nice to give Maddie a little extra attention. She's got a doll that does not have a bed. Michael and I are going to build one for her, and we hope it makes her smile. Her favorite color is pink.





If you remember to pray for this family. Todd truly means a whole lot to all of us. We selfishly desire to keep him here, with us.

It was a gorgeous, mostly cloudy day, as we headed to the blueberry farm for one more go at filling our freezer and jars.

The leaves were just beginning to turn color in some places. Not as red as these in this photo.





The bushes were mostly stripped bare. It was the last day he was going to be open. It was a little sad, feeling the season coming to a close, seeing the bare branches, feeling the change in the air, the leaves the soil, even the birds sing differently as the years progresses. The incessant joyful twittering of spring has long since faced into simple occasional calls to one another across tress.

It was only Michael and I then, so we didn't have a lot of constant chatter. Filling the buckets was taking a long time. We'd just decided to reduce our goal of 4 gallons down to 2 gallons, when we hear voices across the empty fields, calling our names.

It was our dear friends, coming to help.





They knew we were going picking today, and we were late meeting them and couldn't reach my cell phone which had been left in the minivan, so they piled into the car and drove to help us finish. Needless to say, the gloominess I was feeling quickly vanished and all was well with the world, once again.

The rest of the day was just hanging out with them. We played the clicker game, so everyone could get an idea of what clicker training is like to not only teach with, but what it is like to learn with.





Then we went down and worked with the horses a few times, had dinner, and watched "The Shaggy Dog".

Aaaaaaaaaand on the way back home, late, tired, needing to visit the powder room.....

Michael and I are chatting, wishing we were already home and sleeping, when he tells me he feels nervous. I look over at him, concerned, and ask why. He says, because there is a police car with flashing lights right behind us...





...I got my first ticket in nearly 20 years. AGH!

Common criminal, signing off,

~Faith

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If you lay down, you may never get up again.

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So had become a rueful joke amongst those of us who share my own particular lifestyle.

We are TIRED!

But you know, it's a GREAT tired. By Friday night, we were fairly wiped out and, while sitting on the couch at a get together with friends, it was hard to not want to run screaming for the shores of Tahiti.

We took a Saturday Shabbat rest. Now, Shabbat is all about setting aside your worries, your tasks, the things that encumber you and remembering that the most important things are your relationship with God, and the joy and fun in the simple things of family and friends; resting in God, and remembering that He takes care of us.

But, as I often do, what began as something fun, my photography, turned into work (coming up with an order) about 3 hours into it. I asked for God's leading in it, in prayer, and suddenly the whole truth occurred to me. Whereupon I laid it down, and we spent the rest of the day playing games, reading, watching a movie, taking a nap.

Have you been able to yet open your windows? I can't wait, every winter and summer, to get to the milder weather that allows me to keep the windows open as much as possible.





I LOVE FRESH AIR!!!





I am excited about getting another scoby. I have not had one in a while. I had ordered one with a woman, and we were to go in halves, but I never heard from her again. The last few days, however, I've been chatting about it with a friend on a forum and she may be able to send me one sometime soon. You want one of these, don't you. Admit it.





Weird news of the week: My husband, who is thousands of dollars in arrears for support, and in defiance of a court order, left me a message on the machine. He'd accidentally deposited more in my account than he meant to. Please send him a check or wire him the money. He needs it.

Upon conferring with my attorney, I am keeping it and applying it to the money he owes. However, I fully expect retribution, so the money will be saved for those future weeks of punitive vengefulness. I'm so grateful I have a church family who steps in and cares for us when we need help. They have done so much for us.

The pears!





Here they are. Well, these and more that are already in the kitchen by the time time photo was taken.





They are now under newspaper in boxes, awaiting the magical time of ripening. And I am awaiting the magical time of stubbing my toe in the darkness when I forget they are there.





We are finding a few things here and there in the fusarium-decimated garden. No, not the bananas.





We are finding far more rotted produce than anything though. The melons on the counter were picked from dead plants. We have opened two of them and found they were still unripe. I suspect the rest are the same. But it's worth a shot.

A precious hubbard squash. I'm so happy!





Must get busy on those chores today! Next item, learn how to braid onions.

~Faith

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Fencing, Electrical Repair, and Pears

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For those who were wondering. The pain I was feeling in my face and head, turned out to be a TMJ problem. I'm on Ibuprofen therapy, basically all day and night, not chewing yummy good things like gum and jerky (which I haven't had in ages anyway - sigh) and going to be fitted with a guard at night. Joy.

Thank you for all your well wishes on that. It does my heart good. Maybe it will do my TMJ good as well!

We've been struggling with our electric fencing for a month now. We replaced the car battery, thinking it was bad. But found that, though it may have been contributing, it was not the problem.

I don't think our fence charger unit is working. Michael has been trying everything for days now.





There was a new break in the wire as well. Funny how so many things go wrong all at once, you know?





So here is a mini tutorial on how to repair a broken wire.

First you need to trim the insulation off of the wire ends. If you have gauged insulation cutters, great. If not, you can carefully use scissors. If you take off anymore than one of the little interior wires, you should re-cut the end and try again.





I use to work in a factory when I was a teenager, building wire harnesses and pc boards for fancy and expensive medical equipment, so I picked up a few skills there. With these old trimmers, I usually carefully cut, not quite into the wire, and pull the insulation off, so I am sure that I don't take any wires off with it.

The larger the number, the smaller the wire. That's because it is counting how many wires will fit into the space - or at least that's how I can remember it. So 5 gauge wire is thicker wire because only 5 of them will fit. 22 gauge wire is thinner because 22 of them will fit. Make sense?

Now they are stripped and ready.





When you splice them together, don't just hook them like you'd hook two fingers together. If you do that, you have only one point of contact between the two wires, and a great chance of not getting the electricity to flow through. Instead, wind one repeatedly around the other, starting half way down, the take the top of the straight wire and wind it repeatedly around the other wire.

Of course, in the sample, I did not wind it as much as I could/should have. There is plenty more wire than could have been used to contact the opposite, but I left it straight.





You can buy handy little covers to slip onto splices and shrink down, or pinch down to squeeze it tight. But I just used the girl-who-did-not-want-to-dig-in-the-tool-shed method. Electric tape.





Aaaaaaaaand, we've got one more problem. Rusty clamps to sand off, so they make good contact.





However, still no worky. I may take a shot at seeing if someone at Radio Shack might pity me enough to take the time and see if there is a fried part on the board, because we can see no damage in there at all. If that does not do the trick - it's another 100 dollars to get that fence going again.

We went and picked pears from a beautiful farm yesterday afternoon. My friend's mother has this unidentified pear tree which is suffering broken branches from the weight of the fruit.





It was very tall, and on a good slope, so a ladder was not doable. It was also covered in poison ivy around the trunk, so Michael's desire to climb it was nixed.









We were only able to glean as far as we could reach from the ground. We now have many boxes of unripe pears in our minivan. I'm not sure they will ripeen before they rot. They were really not ready to be picked, despite the fact that they were dropping like crazy.

So while Michael mows the place, I've got to clean up this very well-used household area. We've been working at night on some photography for sale, and the house has suffered for it. I need to then figure out how to set those pears up for ripening. Have to leave early to office clean again.

I really want a vacation. Who's got an island rental for me?

~Faith

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Apples, Apples and Ginseng!

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With all the extra goings on, it's taken me a little while to get through the second batch of 3 gunny sacks of apples, but they are now cleared from my kitchen floor!

Leah came by and helped for the day. She is always such a sweet addition to our lives.

She and Michael found a semi-comfortable place to anchor the Apple gadget to and proceeded to knock off about 1/2 of our latest bounty.









With a fan to blow away the flies they got pretty quick at it.

And I ended up inside mostly prepping all the canning stuff. These went mostly to apples in light syrup...





And apple pie filling.





I wish I could say we got it all done, but it actually took us several days to complete the project. Michael went after them with the juicer





These all went toward applesauce. We are currently up to 34 quarts of it. Later on, I'll take some of that and cook it down into apple butter and can that.





I had a problem with my first batch of applesauce yesterday. All the jars overflowed and I had to reprocess them. But the rest went fine.

Michael and I got a special treat yesterday. We went for a visit with some friends of ours who are buyers and sellers of ginseng. We got to participate in seeing what they do, even being able to take part in the sorting.

I've got to tell you, that's a LOT of ginseng, and I can't imagine even being able to find and harvest all that these people do. It was about a refrigerator full, and that's how much they get every single day.





Michael took these with his little camera. They sure came out yellow. That's not the actual color of the room.





Ginseng is closely regulated by the government concerning harvest. The earliest you can harvest a root is if the plant has reached three years of age. This can be told by the rings on the neck of the root. They are VERY slow growing. Some of these roots are barely an inch long.

Their main market is China. So many Chinese buyers come here to inspect and purchase what has been collected. Interesting stories.





Being a fan of classic automobiles, I was not hurting to be working next to this beautiful car.





If you don't want to see a yucky picture, stop reading now!

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FINALLY got this guy! He's been evading traps for weeks!
You'll never guess what Michael did with him, when I said to take care of it.

He let him go in the woods next to the house...

Well, well, well! Our replacement rooster chick seems to have finally developed his crow this morning!

Tomatoes today. Pears tonight.

~Faith

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Michael's Adventure

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Here are some pics of Sunday's cruisin' in the Deuce! Thanks, Kasie, for sharing the pics!














Yippee!





Good friends ~~ ( A few mixed in from the game.)









































And Spiderwoman, you know there is no escape for you next time! You will succumb to the Goof Gang.

Be one with usssss.......

~Faith

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