Pruning the Blueberries

This weekend I pruned my poor neglected blueberries. Above are a couple of unpruned bushes - they crank out the berries like heroes, but I haven't pruned them in years, so they need a little grooming. This weekend, while adorable hubby worked on the fences to keep Cesar, Prince of Ponies, where we want him to be - for instance: not in the blueberries - I gave the blueberry bushes a little manicure and haircut.

The Ohio extension site has nice suggested before and after pictures, which look a lot like my before and after bushes, but I can't get them loaded up here.

The photos make the after bushes look more thin and scraggley, instead of tidy.  I followed their simple directions. It's hard cutting away anything growing, but I hope to have many more blueberries from my sturdy healthy bushes this year.

Tsunami Art

Here is just one of a striking series of images made in response to the tsunami. A variety of media and styles. Well worth going to the PAGE HERE and looking at the rest of them.

Sundial Birdbath with Dragonflies

So, here is a fun thing! Seems like I have had a hard time getting to my own work in the ceramics studio this semester, but finally, here is a completed piece to show. This is a birdbath with a decorative sundial to put in the garden - not sure it

will really work to tell the time, but I thought the little birdies might like to perch on it.

This birdbath about 13 inches in diameter. I drew the dragonflies in brown engobe, and it is glazed with celadon and tenmoku glazes. It was a drape project demonstration for my beginning ceramics class at the community college, but it turned out so nicely, I think I'll make some more.

This one will just have to sit on a table of some sort.I think I'll put some reinforced holes in the rim of the next one I make, so that it can be hung from a tree limb.

Homemade Vanilla Extract - a True DIY Luxury!

Here's my recipe for homemade vanilla extract. They charge an astounding amount for the nice organic stuff at Whole Foods, or the People's Coop, or anywhere, when you can easily make some that is so much yummier! It's a little bit of an initial investment, but once you have the ingredients, it is very easy to do. In the long run you will be saving money, and this is so much better than anything you can buy.

Here's what you need to make your own vanilla extract:

2 empty 12 oz. Jones Soda bottles, rinsed out with very hot water. (These are just what I had that had caps that make a good seal. Any well washed small bottle with a really tight sealing screw cap will work - the point is to have a good seal, and still be able to open it up regularly.)

4 whole vanilla beans - if you have a choice, pick the ones that smell the best to you. (But, I got mine at the grocery store and they are fine.)

1 bottle cream sherry - the least expensive one that tastes good to you. I have a $5.00 bottle I got at the grocery store, and it is intriguing in the cherry sauce that goes with a nicely roasted duck -another recipe for another time- and improved by close contact with the vanilla beans. (Other people use vodka, bourbon, etc. If sherry doesn't rock your tastebuds, you can use something else. I spent time around Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, which is the heart of the sherry making world, and became fond of cream sherry's sophisticated sweet smoothness.)

Here's what you do:

1. Make sure your bottles hold a good seal, and are very clean and totally dry.

2. Put two vanilla beans into each bottle. You can slice them to let the seeds out if you like, which many recipes suggest, but I just put mine in the bottle whole and the final product is very satisfactory.

3. Fill the bottles up with your cream sherry, or other liquor of choice.

4. Label and date the bottles, and put them in a dark kitchen cabinet. Every day for a week, shake the bottles. If one the bottle caps has a tiny little leak, you will start to notice that it is getting sticky, and you can replace the cap. After a week, you can put your bottles of "vanilla extract to be" in the back of the cabinet, and make a note to shake it once a week. If you forget to shake, no problem, it will still taste just fine after a while.

5. You can smell and taste the vanilla after about two months, and start using one bottle! When you have used up the first bottle, you can fill it back up with more sherry (the vanilla beans will flavor 5 or 6 batches before it starts to fade) and start in on the second bottle, which will be even better since it will have sat with the beans longer than the first bottle.

6. This is great in coffee - 1 tsp. per cup for flavor, not an alcohol buzz! This is also the "secret ingredient" that makes my chocolate chip cookies taste better than anyone else's...and blueberry buckle, and pound cake. And, if you add a little to the egg mix that you dip bread in when making French toast - sooooo good! And of course, you can go get some little 2 or 3 oz. pretty bottles and make nice labels and give this stuff as Christmas gifts to everyone on your list who cooks, or drinks coffee....

Boiling the Sap

This weekend we cooked a lot of maple sap - close to 100 gallons of sap, which will be turned into about two gallons of syrup after I get done processing it. This is a picture of the stove Adorable Hubby welded together, after we both got really tired of working over an open fire. After the syrup season is done, I'll move the little hoop house we have covering the stove over to the south side of the house, and use it to start my garden! But, I can't let myself get distracted by all those lovely seed catalogs - today day I am going to can some syrup! And write lessons for the on-line Art History classes I am teaching. And feed the ponies hay, and the little birdies millet and sunflower seeds, and the bees some strong sugar water. It's good to have lots to do - I would hate to be bored and lazy...

New focus this spring

The last post was a month ago, wherein I mentioned not loving the sinus infection? Well, I didn't love it, but I harbored it for many many days! Ugh. Now, I am finally feeling better, and so I have the impulse to improved my life. Eating better, fixing and finishing projects, doing the most important thing - this is my focus over then next little while.

Recovering

Love is the answer - hard to love my sinus infection tho!

-2 F in the Woods

"Baby, it's cold outside!"

That song was written for today. It's 8 in the morning and it's colder now than when I got up at 5:45! Winter is upon us! I will stop feeling like a slacker for not getting the sugar maples tapped last weekend.

I taught the Ceramics students how to glaze last night. I glazed the two little vases and bowl I made with some of the new glazes in the studio, but I don't like these glazes much - too much bentonite in them - they get all gluey and puddley. I should suspend judgment until I see how they look after firing - they could work beautifully.

We are planning on doing a real pit firing - dig a hole in the ground, start a fire to make a bed of coals, throw on sawdust, put on the pots, metal oxides for color, more sawdust, manure and newspaper for heat, lots more wood, let it burn down, cover it up to let it cool slowly and then retrieve lovely pots from ashes pit firing. This will happen the week after Fourth of July.

But, I need to focus on teaching the other classes I have right now. And go give the thirsty ponies some liquid water - I expect their tank is an icecube.

Snow time like the present...

Well, what a week.

My sweet old horse Candy died of the strange horse digestive problem known as twisted gut. This leaves Cesar an orphan and Sheba, now in charge, is taking care of him but seems anxious and worried. So sad.

Then, the "record breaking winter storm" hit the next night. This storm, here at Maple Knoll, gave us about 8 inches of fairly heavy non-drifting snow and one night where the low was 2 degrees. We've had much worse, although I think further east and south they are still having big problems. Adorable hubby spent most of Wednesday plowing the driveway - the Kubota tractor is one of the best investments we've made since moving here!

Now the sun is shining, and I need to catch up with all the things on my list that I have been distracted from by these unusual events. Catch up on my classes, mainly. Spend more time with my ponies. Get focused on my consulting business - need to start bringing in some more money. Make some pottery and sell it. That's what I really want to do, I suppose.

So, I spent a lot of time yesterday designing the template for a little slab teapot. I will cut the template pieces out of cardboard after I get my classes caught up and make this teapot and some matching cups Saturday morning.

I also designed and drew up a materials list for the chicken coop we are going to build this spring. Although I should be focusing more on more immediate project, maple sugaring time is almost upon us.

Ah, so many things, so little time. More later.

Thoughts on Beauty and Function

Fixing things is something I seem to do a lot. I have this little plan for how to live well:

Maintain a baseline of functional beauty.

Something that is broken is seldom beautiful and never functional, so fix what's broken immediately.

Make routine maintenance efficient and fun!

Real improvements increase beauty (and free time!) by simplifying function.

Chocolate Truffles

Elegant, easy and so yummy! This is a luxurious treat that is delicious far beyond its simple ingredients and preparation.

2/3 cup heavy cream
12 ounces semisweet chocolate, the best you can afford, chopped very small
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or kirsch or Kalua or Grand Marnier or what have you.
1/3 cup cocoa, again the high end stuff will make it taste even better..

Heat the heavy cream just to a boil in a small sauce pan over low heat. Move off heat and add chopped chocolate and flavorings. Stir vigorously until the chocolate is all melted and everything is blended together.

Chill this mixture until it is firm but still workable. Put cocoa powder into a soup bowl. Scoop out a heaping teaspoon of the chilled truffle mix and quickly roll into a ball. Roll the ball in the cocoa powder and set onto waxed paper in the frig to chill.

For variations, you can roll the candy in chopped nuts or coconut or if you are really ambitious, dip them into more melted chocolate....

Ceramics class met for the third time last night

The students worked on coil projects, and a couple of the advanced people did some throwing, and I gave a brief demonstration about how to make slab boxes. The got the take home assignment of designing their Treasure Box, which will be the first major project of the semester. Great group - they work hard and share and are doing a good job of being open to struggling with the process of learning new things. I trimmed up the little vases and bowl I made on Saturday. Hopefully a bisque firing will happen this weekend so that we can do some glazing next week. So much fun - I like this a lot better than teaching psychology classes! Sorta amazing - how much I have moved away from that.

2011 A Brand New Year

This semester I am teaching Ceramics, again, finally, as well as Art History and Developmental Psychology. I feel really really busy!

So long gone, so much has happened...

I see the last post I made has a picture of the tractor we did not buy. LOL. Since then we have bought a tractor, orange, rather than blue, built a bunch of fence, bought another horse, another lovely flaxen maned chestnut Haflinger mare named Candy, who proceeded to produce a baby boy, Ceasar, who is now living up to his name and trying to rule the roost around here. :-). Pictures and more to follow....

New Tractor in the Woods

Today the implement company delivered our new to us 2004 New Holland tractor - we will try it out for a few days and make sure it will do the tasks we need it to do. Darling hubby is so excited, he is going to take tomorrow off so he can get some things done. :-) The old Oliver was just getting too fragile, and whatever is the matter with it now seemed like it was going to require a major overhaul, so we are experimenting with moving the farm into the 21st century.... Having a tractor payment makes it even more important to make the farm self-supporting and sustainable. One possibility is growing more fruit - the blueberries and raspberry crops this year have been great, due to the lack of a hard late frost and all the moisture. The apple trees are doing well too. I've been looking at various schemes for intensive fruit management but if it worked so well, how come more people don't do it?

Wholeness Unfolding in the World

Here's an except from an interview the mystic architect, Christopher Alexander, did with Tricycle Magazine a while ago.... "In the grass there were a very small number of flowers, rather sparse. I think there was one blue flower and a few white flowers, but mainly it was grass. I was lying there looking at this, and the perfection of it gradually began to impress itself on me. There was a faint sense of light in each of the bits of grass. It wasn’t a revelation in any literal sense, and yet as I was looking through these grass stems, myself almost part of the grass, suddenly the thought came to me, So this is what you’re trying to do! What the grass does: it is effortlessly creating a beautiful and complex environment. And it isn’t just capable of it, but it is doing it, everywhere, and every day, and so easily. I was comforted, because the grass found it so easy. So there’s nothing for me to worry about at all. Even if I fail in my lifetime, it is so obvious. Surely people will understand it sooner or later. Alexander's 15 Universal Design Properties 01 Levels of Scale (a range of sizes) 02 Strong Centers 03 Boundaries 04 Alternating Repetition 05 Positive Space (no leftover bits) 06 Good Shape (e.g., well-proportioned fans, circles, squares) 07 Local Symmetries 08 Deep Interlock and Ambiguity 09 Contrast 10 Gradients (gradual changes in size, fine lines) 11 Roughness 12 Echoes 13 The Void 14 Simplicity and Inner Calm 15 Non-Separateness" Great stuff!

August in the Woods...

Wow, I can't believe it is so long since I have been here. The summer has been really busy. We went to Wyoming for 10 days in May. In June I taught some week long art classes to kids, which I hadn't done before, so this required some preparations ahead of time and evaluation afterwards. Then there was an intense summer retreat two weeks ago. Now I feel like I need to get very organized and catch up on all the things there are to do around the place. It is a little overwhelming, actually. On my way back from turning the ponies (who are bored and need to be worked) out this morning I checked the vineyard for grapes.

The previous owner planted a few grapes in a poor location, lower on a little slope, with lots of trees around so the air is pretty still and the vines only get sun for 7 or 8 hours. The vines were overgrown, with lots of oak saplings coming up in the row, and weeds, and part of the supports were broken so the vines hung on the ground. In February, I pruned back the vines unmercifully, and have whacked back the little saplings and weeds a couple times since the growing season started. Now, it looks like my efforts have paid off to some extent. In previous years, the little grapes all got some sort of fungus - they started to form up, and then turned brown and looked like little raisins without ever make grapes. Today I see the vines now have many clusters of nice fat grapes, and many of the clusters show no sign of disease! They are hard and green and the size of small marbles - hopefully they will be able to ripen so we can eat them. I don't know what sort of grapes they are. But it is exciting to see. Now I will do some in house chores - folding laundry, and then go out and weed the garden some. I love summer.

Cherry Blossoms and Sore Throats

I just couldn't make myself go to the Buddhist services yesterday morning, and it is probably just as well, my throat was sore yesterday, and this morning it is very sore and I have nasty laryngitis - I squeak instead of my normal voice. Very odd - I usually pick bugs up from my students, but I didn't notice anyone in class with these symptoms. There were lots of absences but I chalked that up to end of the semester spring fever. Oh, well, it is 63 degrees outside right now, and the cherry trees are blooming, and the peach tree's big pink buds are going to unfurl any second now, and the apple trees have smaller buds just starting...spring is well on it's way. Today, grocery shopping, finish writing the Social Psychology test for tomorrow, paint the beehive parts that need painting, and work on the garden. The vet is coming this afternoon to give the ponies their vaccinations against West Nile and rabies, and then the farrier later to give them a manicure. Then, more work on the garden. Going to plant lots of vegetables and herbs this year. The last two years, my gardening efforts got stalled by too much stuff going on at the end of the semester. This semester, much fewer demands on my time. So, weird that I am sick. Left over conditioning from all those years being a student where the end of each semester had to be a crisis. But, no more.

Bedo's Really Good Granola

I want to put this here so that I can find the recipe next time I want to make it... Bedo's Really Good Granola 4 C. rough cut whole oats 1.5 C. barley flakes 1.5 C. rye flakes .75 C. oat bran .25 C. flax seed 1 C. pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds) .5 C. salted hulled sunflower seeds 1 C. slivered almonds .5 C. butter .5 C. olive oil 1 C. maple syrup 1 tsp. vanilla .5 tsp. almond extract 1 C. dried cherries 1 C. yellow raisins butter or olive oil to grease 2 cookie sheets Grease two large cookie sheets with butter or olive oil. Preheat oven to 275 degrees (electric) or 250 degrees (gas). Combine all grains and seeds in very large bowl and mix well. Combine butter, maple syrup, and flavorings in small pan and heat gently until butter is just melted. Do not boil. Pour liquid over seeds and grains, mix well. Divide evenly between the two cookies sheets. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring mixture and turning pans once or twice to be sure it all gets evenly heated and cooked. After 30 minutes, turn off heat and let sit in cooling oven for 30 more minutes. Remove from oven, allow to cool completely. Mix in dried cherries and raisins, and store in airtight container. Excellent eating out of hand or with milk or yogurt. To make trail mix, add M&Ms or semi-sweet chocolate chips!

Weekend Chores, what fun!

Hubby went off to Tillers International to help with a timber frame barn raising - he wants to learn details of how to put up a timber frame building, and talk to their timber frame architect, since we are going to put up some timber frame buildings here and we want to do it right. This is a great organization! I am staying home to do some of the backlog of chores there are around here, according to this little ditty (sung to your tune of choice): What's the Most Important Thing? There are lots of things to do. So do the most important thing, That would be sustainable, And profitable, And fun, too! Chorus: Finish what you start. Fix what's broken. Make routine chores Efficient and fun! If it's not sustainable, If it's not profitable, If it's not fun - Is it really worth doing? Really! What's the most important thing? Chorus: Finish what you start. Fix what's broken. Make routine chores Efficient and fun! The first most important thing is to get off the internet and do a recycling run to our local recycling center. :-)