It's been a busy summer.  I've spent most weekends and vacations working on various projects.  This weekend I took a break from that and have been mostly lazy and done nothing.  Probably not a good idea since we are heading into winter and there will be plenty of time doing nothing and we will dream about getting back to work and seeing progress on our numerous, ongoing projects, but having said that it was still nice to catch up on news and play around a little with my new linux system.  I do have a few things to post that may be of interest.

As I mentioned above I have converted my main home system to linux, ubuntu distro.  I have played with linux for many years and have installed it hundreds of times on my boxes all with varying degrees of success.  After a particularly persistent virus attack on my windows system a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to repartition my hard drive so I made accommodations for a linux partition.  After getting XP back on I found an ubuntu disk and installed it.  It was positively the best install I have ever done, almost everything worked from the installation.  I am now dual booting into either linux, which I am using everyday, and XP which I will only use when I want to play a windows based game.  Everything was configured easily, the only thing not working is my scanner and there doesn't seem to be a linux driver for it so I will have to boot into XP if I want to use it.  There are enough linux apps to cover most every basic XP based program that I should not pine for the XP system, although some of the apps will take a little learning.  The fun part is the highly customizable desktop.  See picture below.


Chicken house/barn:
I haven't done any more work on the chicken house since my last post on it but it is more complete than the picture below.  I post this picture to offer a different view and to bring attention to the roof which extends over the outside chicken run.


Some might wonder why I would go to the expense of creating a covered outdoor run for them, it certainly wasn't necessary but it will provide some outdoor access during the winter when there would be heavy snow cover.  The primary reason though was because our future plans are to make it part of a larger structure, the barn.  Our idea was to provide for access to the total building (chicken house and barn) under one roof to minimize the amount of snow removal.  See the image below for a conceptual drawing of this future building.

November 1, 2009

November marks the start of winter for us.  It is really the first days that snow could fall and remain for the duration until spring.  Today, however, was very nice, mostly sunny and comfortable.  A good day to burn a brush pile.  It was almost too wet, some of it will not burn but spring projects will see it grow again for another try.

Apple Cider Day

What a beautiful day to press apple cider.  It poured rain for half the night but when we awoke this morning the sky was clear blue.
It was about 10:30 before we actually got started on the pressing.

Here's our setup:
The two tubs in front are for washing and rinsing the apples.


The grinder and press:


The ground apple mash.  I am not sure that this ginder reduced the apples to a fine enough pulp or not.  We tried to run it through again but that did not make it any finer and it didn't feed well.  Grinding was the hardest part of the whole process.  I don't know if other grinders are better or worse than this one but I think an electric motor on it would make things a lot easier.


The mash in the press:


Juice coming from the press:


Juice has been put in containers and is ready to go in the freezer.  We got about 17 gallons today, we still have 4 more large boxes of apples to press.


It was a lot of work and there were 6 of us washing, rinsing, quartering and removing bad spots, grinding, pressing and filling jugs.  It certainly isn't the easiest way to make cider but it was a lot of fun.

Hot Bread

Hot buttered bread.  There's an old wives tale that says it isn't good for you to eat hot bread, I disagree.

The Wood Pile

It has taken most of the week and a lot of hard work but the logs have finally been turned into wood.  The woodshed is full and there are a couple of nice ricks sitting outside.
I figure this is close to 5 cords.
That is Cali next to the wood pile.

Homemade Whole Wheat Bread

Having a special diet can sometimes (most times) be a pain, but having to come up with my own bread recipe was a definite benefit.  I make this in a bread machine, sorry but I'm not going to make bread twice a week by hand.  I would rate a bread machine right up there with a washing machine and definitely higher than a dishwasher for must have appliances.
The recipe, added in order given:

• 1 1/2 cups tepid water
• 1/4 cup half & half cream/milk
• 3 3/4+ cups of whole wheat flour (almost 4 cups)
  
• 1/3 cup oatmeal flour (this adds a nice texture to the bread.)
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
  
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 heaping tablespoons coconut oil (non-hydrogenated)
• 2 teaspoons yeast

You can reduce or eliminate the oatmeal flour if you want but you will need to add a corresponding amount whole wheat flour so that the total flour equals 4 1/4 cups. 
We are not currently grinding our own wheat flour because we have a full bin of purchased flour but as soon as that is gone we will be buying wheat and grinding it ourselves.  It takes a lot of work and energy to grind even small amounts by hand.  Our grinder is made so that it will accept a motor and we may in the future set it up with one.
Use the whole wheat baking setting on your bread machine, if you have more than 1 setting you might choose the longer one.  It takes almost 4 hours for ours to complete the process.

Grinding oatmeal into flour.


It takes a lot of grinding to get the flour shown below. Thanks Tessie.


Adding the honey



Ready to put in the bread machine.


The finished loaf of bread.

Woodshed

Here’s a picture of the woodshed/storage shed/shop/office.  It’s hard to imagine that little building performing so many different functions. 

The firewood is stored in the lean-to on the right side.  I also keep the garbage cans there (brown cardboard barrels in the foreground).  The sticks stored in the rafters over the wood are for my future walking stick projects I am planning for some winter work once the shop is completed.  The wood pile is growing, another load went in today.  All total the shed will hold about 4 or 5 cords, which will meet most of our heating needs.

The lean-to on the left side of the picture is the storage shed.  The low ceiling is a real head clunker.  I wish I had built the whole thing 2 feet taller but when we built it we used what we had on hand and what we could afford. 

The center section, with the window and doorway with no door yet is to be the shop.   It isn’t anywhere near useable yet, too many other projects taking precedent.  It used to be where we stored the wood when originally built but has been (or soon will be) promoted.  Currently the shop has boxes of apples stored on one side and the other side are the dog beds.  The dogs don’t know it yet but they are moving out before long.  I will build them a dog house in the front section of the woodshed just opposite the garbage cans.  I think it will be a lot warmer and cozier than where they are now.

My office is in the center section, back half.  It is not very big but easy to keep warm and just right for me.  I will not show any pictures of it because I am not a very good housekeeper.

It may be hard to tell from the pictures but the whole building is in the process of being painted.  There is not much left to do but the cold weather has put a stop to it.  One or two more days of warmer weather will see it done, if it doesn’t rain.

The hot tub felt wonderful last night.  The sky was clear and the milky way put on a brilliant display.  We saw 4 or 5 falling stars and multiple satellites passing over.  Half a dozen deer grazed in the field below the house although they were hard to see in the dark but we could hear them moving about.