Bless your hearts!

Bless ya'll's hearts!  So many of you wrote sweet messages to me after reading my blog post from last week, the one where I poured my heart out about my grief after getting rid of the goats.  It helped to know that so many of you cried with me.  The hole in my heart hasn't gotten any smaller since last week.  In fact, every time I walk by the goat barn, it tears open a little bit more.  
But I won't talk about this right now, no, I won't.  
Instead, I will tell you what happened immediately after getting rid of my goats.  I knew that I couldn't deal with going back home to an empty, quiet, sad homestead, so after unloading the goats from the minivan and shaking out the tarp that had been pooped and peed on, I met up with the rest of my family and some dear friends, and we headed into the mountains for a backpacking adventure at Chain Lakes.
Balm for the soul, I tell you.  What with majestic Mount Baker and Shuksan looming so large... it puts all your problems into perspective.  And the huckleberries!  The huckleberries!  Our tongues and lips looked vampire-like after hiking up these alpine meadows dotted with blue berries.
The kids had a blast.  The boys got to hike with their best buddy, and Eva got to hike with one of her good friends.  Later, after setting up camp by one of the lakes, the kids fished their hearts out.  They actually caught fish in the morning and cooked them up as rain pelted down on them.  Yes, the weather turned on us.

Kai caught a fish!

You can't really tell in this picture, but it was raining hard.

The second day, we hiked out in dense fog, which was a little bit of a bummer because we couldn't see the apparently stunning view.  On the other hand, it was also incredibly mystical and magical, so it all worked out.
That night, we stayed at a campground in Glacier, made memorable by the giant marshmallows the kids got to consume after dinner.  What a brilliant move that was, sugaring them up just before bed time!

Returning home to our homestead was hard for me, because I knew there would be no goats to greet me.
So I threw myself into putting the garden to bed and harvesting a bunch of food.
Of course, there was lots and lots of garlic that needed to be cleaned up and brought into the house after being cured in the wood shed.

Then there were six full boxes of apples that Steve and the boys picked from only one of our trees.  I think there might be apple sauce in our future.

And, of course, fall and winter squash go hand-in-hand, so I borrowed my unpaid workers children for labor.  I thought they would grumble and protest, but they enthusiastically harvested squash and turned it into a race.  Go figure.  

The kiwis went bonkers this year.  Maybe it's because our mason bees live at the kiwi trellis, and they did a fabulous job pollinating.  I love these kiwis!  You pop them in your mouth, skin and all, and get an incredible boost of sweetness and vitamins.  It also makes your mouth kind of pucker after eating lots of them.

I yanked out a bunch of leftover broccoli and cauliflower that had seen better days.  I also took down the bean trellis, which still sported enough beans for a big meal of buttered green beans, with bacon, hopefully.  These beans were hiding high enough on the bean poles, so that the darned deer couldn't reach them.  Here is a box of stuff I salvaged, kind of accidentally.

Since I'm trying to be not all about work, but also play, we spent a lot of hours this week with a new hobby (for the boys, that is): Fishing.  Salmon are making their way upriver, and my kids are very motivated and show an amazing amount of patience dangling their fishing poles into various rivers.  I bring my knitting.  Eva brings her princess dresses.  You HAVE to look glamorous when fishing, you know.

What are you doing these last glorious fall days?

Too good to be true

Glorious fall is here. We are bustling around like bears getting ready for hibernation, or squirrels frantically stashing away food for winter. We are harvesting, putting food by, canning like mad. There is the beautiful garlic and onion harvest to be cured. The Sauerkraut is done fermenting and has to be put in jars. Plums and apples need to be picked from the trees. Grapes and kiwis are ripening. Winter squashes are almost ready. The kids stroll in the garden to investigate what food can be snacked on. And I'm making Steve's favorite: Caraway Gouda.  (By the way, I have two more spots left in my Gouda cheese making class this Saturday, Sept 20.)

And then, as every fall, there is the dreaded chicken slaughtering.  I say dreaded because it's not fun.  It's gnarly and sad and messy.  But the reward for eating our own chickens that we raised ourselves are immense.  (I wrote about it here and here.)  This year we set a record in terms of time and efficiency: It took us only three and a half hours to process 45 chickens from start to finish.  The team: Steve, neighbor Rich, friend Greg, our sons Kai and Luke, and me.  Go team!  We rent equipment (a chicken plucker and cooling tank) six months ahead of time, so the day is set in stone.  It's a miracle that every single year at chicken slaughter time, the weather is gorgeous.  

I took lots of great pictures, but they are tiny bit gory and bloody and stuff, so I'll spare you the sight.  Here's one of neighbor Rich refreshing Kai's memory on how to cut open a chicken and deal with the guts.  And below is Rich's dog, who is very excited to help when slaughter time comes around.  Don't worry, she doesn't kill the chickens, but she does like lapping up any blood that happens to drip.

When everything is over, I grab the chicken livers and make liver pate.  It is marvelous, and I am heartbroken that I am the only member of my family to adore it.  How could you not like something that involves sauteed onions, garlic, a whole stick of butter, thyme from the garden, a splash of Brandy, and chicken livers soaked in milk?

Talking of food: our family has gotten obsessed with juicing.  With all that wonderful produce in the garden, what else is there to do?  After milking the goats in the morning, I wander into the garden to pick beets, carrots, kale, swiss chard and collards.  Then I come back inside and juice the heck out of everything.  It makes the most colorfulful, nutritious juice you can imagine.  The kids love to help with juicing and drinking it!

Even with all this activity going on, Steve and I managed to get a way for a day long bike ride this week.  We rode over 30 miles along the Skagit and Sauk rivers, blissing out on each other's company, the sunshine, and the gorgeous views of Mount Baker.  Our friend, who took care of the kids, welcomed us back with home made pizza.  Sometimes I think our lives are too good to be true.

I will leave you with images of two of our kids.  Luke on his way to his first solo-overnight camp out in the woods (which will be a separate blog entry one of these days), and Eva playing with flowers in the vegetable garden.  Have a wonderful week!

Harvesting and putting food by

Eva helped me make pesto with all the basil in our garden. Notice I didn't write, 'Eva “helped” me make pesto”. She HELPED me! In fact, if it wasn't for her, there wouldn't be many bags of freshly frozen pesto in the freezer right now. It's quite the undertaking, this pesto making business. I don't know how people made due with mortar and pestle before Cuisinarts existed... Even mechanized, it's a lot of work. First, there is the harvesting and snipping of fragrant basil stems. Then, you have to pick the leaves off the stems in order to wash them (just in case the dog peed on them, hypothetically speaking). Then the leaves have to be spun in the salad spinner to dry. Afterwards, they get dunked in olive oil in the Cuisinart and then blended into puree. You can't believe how much volume the basil looses once it gets smushed. You keep repeating these steps until you have enough paste to put into a quart freezer bag, which then gets flattened and put in the freezer.

I really, really love the smell of basil. But after two hours of standing in the kitchen and plucking, washing and pureeing basil leaves, it gets old. Eva was my cheerleader, demanding over and over again that we do more. She rather liked picking off leaves and spinning them in the salad spinner. I am so glad for her help and the female bonding that ensued over the kitchen sink. We now have many nights worth of dinner in the freezer, thanks to this little girl. When I'm ready to make a frozen green patty into a meal, I will take it out of the freezer, put it into a pan of hot water (still in the bag til it's soft enough), then put it into the Cuisinart with fresh garlic, more olive oil, and a handful of walnuts (I am too cheap to spring for pine nuts). Voila! Heaven!

I love fall and harvest time. All the work of planting seeds, fussing over seedlings in the greenhouse, transplanting them in the garden, and watering and weeding them for months finally pays off. The garden cranks out a lot of food. I made my famous bread and butter pickles, after the boys harvested cucumbers. While they were out there, I made them help with garden clean up, weeding, cover cropping and all that. They didn't complain too much, and I was glad for the help.

There is also (surprise, surprise) lots of zucchini to be had, which I make into zucchini bread and stir frys. Kai and Eva helped me harvest a couple, and I thought the apple tree looked so inviting, I promptly took their picture under it.

Fall also brings Humpies. I wrote about them in last week's blog entry. They are such fascinating, magical creatures, these salmon. By the time they reach our creek, they are beaten up, eager to spawn, and ready to die soon after. We are careful not to disturb the ancient rituals of these fish, but the kids love to watch them, and sometimes they try to touch them. I make sure the kids don't get overly zealous, but every now and then, I let them try to catch one with their bare hands. They have never succeeded, since the salmon are too fast and skiddish, but just the other day, Lukas grabbed one for a split second, and I even got it on camera!

The above is a salmon egg that one of the kids picked up, and I immediately had them put it back in the water where they found it.  Pretty, though, ey?

I leave you with an image of the sky last week.  We've lived through some intense thunderstorms lately, one of which fried our phones.  

May you feel as abundant as we are right now.