Tag Archive | personal: homesteading

Blog Post: Apples and Dog-cations

Oct10

It’s October!

It’s October and there was a stranger picking apples from our tree this week.

I mean, not exactly strangers.  The lady – Barb – comes by every year.  She comes by about a month early every year and we tell her our apples will be ready in October, so she came by Friday with a grandson and picked a couple bushels I think.

(Every time I say bushel, I hear my grandmother singing “I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck…”)

(Turns out it’s from Guys and Dolls!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfnwhlywWjA )

Then today, Ezra, who lives a block away, stopped in – he left a message a month ago and turns out, no big surprise, that he works at the same university that I do.  He makes cider!  And he offered us some sweet cider in return. Continue reading →

Sleddddddd (a blog post)

Jan3

Hello all!  It’s wintertime!

And I have a SLED!

Have I mentioned this sled before?

I mean, it’s nothing exciting; it’s a plastic molded sled of the sort you buy your kid so they can go down the hill, or at least it’s really similar to the one I had to go sledding downhill at the nearby park (Rochester is on the plain that used to be in Lake Ontario, so the option is the park with a hill (which may have been manufactured, I never asked) or… well, that’s about it.  In Ithaca, I could sled half my commute, if I was feeling daring.)

What it is, for me, is just about the size of the totes we use to haul firewood.  Continue reading →

I Found Another unposted Blog Post!

Dec12

this one written October 21!

 

So, the first year we were in our house, someone came onto the property and just started picking apples.  Claimed they knocked, but T. was in the garage and they didn’t, say, leave a note or anything, they just started picking.

T. told them to Get Off My Property and, as far as we know, they’ve never come back.

I giggle about this sometimes.

Couple years ago, this guy who looked like a hipster except with a thick Eastern European accent stopped by and wanted to photograph our tree.  I told him only if he took some apples. 😉  He took like three reusable-shopping-bags worth and came back later for more.

Last year, a nice guy brought us a gallon of cider BEFORE he started picking apples, and brought us some maple syrup too, and then more cider.  Took a lot of apples – we did not have any shortage, let me tell you.

Just got a note from him the other day and, in addition, there’s a nice older lady who stopped by with her grandkids to pick some apples.  Hooray!  I am super thrilled by people who come to me to get apples.  (Especially when they leave cider behind).

But only if they ask first.

Or, you know, happen to bike by while we’re picking apples.

Or come with a good recipe for something we haven’t done with apples yet.

(And we still have more than enough for ourselves, let me tell you, even without breaking into the weird apple trees in the hedge row).

Also, tonight for dinner: Kale Apple Soup.

Apple-Picking

Oct21

So, the first year we were in our house, someone came onto the property and just started picking apples.  Claimed they knocked, but T. was in the garage and they didn’t, say, leave a note or anything, they just started picking.

T. told them to Get Off My Property and, as far as we know, they’ve never come back.

I giggle about this sometimes.

Couple years ago, this guy who looked like a hipster except with a thick Eastern European accent stopped by and wanted to photograph our tree.  I told him only if he took some apples. 😉  He took like three reusable-shopping-bags worth and came back later for more.

Last year, a nice guy brought us a gallon of cider BEFORE he started picking apples, and brought us some maple syrup too, and then more cider.  Took a lot of apples – we did not have any shortage, let me tell you.

Just got a note from him the other day and, in addition, there’s a nice older lady who stopped by with her grandkids to pick some apples.  Hooray!  I am super thrilled by people who come to me to get apples.  (Especially when they leave cider behind).

But only if they ask first.

Or, you know, happen to bike by while we’re picking apples.

Or come with a good recipe for something we haven’t done with apples yet.

(And we still have more than enough for ourselves, let me tell you, even without breaking into the weird apple trees in the hedge row).

Also, tonight for dinner: Kale Apple Soup.

Homeownership: The Plumbing Volume

Feb7

Things I have learned that you never say, because you are simply tempting fate, Volume LIII:

Oh, I’m not worried about our pipes.  The one pipe in our house that COULD freeze was replaced when it froze years ago.

Saturday morning we woke up to a glubbing sound.

Glub-glub is not a sound you want to hear in your house, I assure you.  Continue reading →

Autumn is Here, and a weekend of weekend-ness

Sep26

Autumn is here, in fact as well as in name.

I can tell not only because my apples are coming ripe and the grapes in my hedgerow are sweet and full, not only because every store is selling pumpkins and my dash is full of Hallowe’en, but because between Thursday and Friday the temperatures dropped precipitously.

Both highs and lows are 10-20 degrees F lower than they were at the beginning of last week – from low 80s and low 50s (28°C/12°C or so) to low 70s-> mid 60’s down to mid-40s at night(18°C-4°C or so). It came on literally overnight, and here I am, hoping the chimney sweep and the furnace check-up guy get here soon. Brrr!

In the meantime, we’ve been chopping brush to burn, hauling firewood into the house, moving firewood around the garage… cleaning the garage so we have room for the firewood (that’s mostly T)…and pulling the gutters down on the short front of the house.

(Our house has two sections: a one-story section that houses the kitchen & utility room (and dreaded foyer) and a two-story section with the rest of the house.)

The gutter was… interesting. When we pulled down the rotted board BEHIND the gutter, we found about a jillion dead wasps nests, some dead wasps… and a skeleton mouse. Yay nature~

Autumn is here, ‘though the leaves haven’t started to change yet. Home repairs are going into overdrive in anticipation of the cold that’s coming, and the cats are growing an extra coat of fur for the winter. “Winter is coming,” Oli insists, as he devours an extra helping of food.

“Winter is coming,” I agree, and stack some more firewood.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1176916.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Weekend, Pinterest, Instant Pot, etc.

Aug22
  • If you use Pinterest, have you ever found yourself in Pinboard Bloat? Like, you start a board, Pinterest suggests some similar boards, so you follow them, then Pinterest is like “try these suggested pins” so you pin those and the next thing you know, your little board of, say, Addergoole Changes is a giant behemoth of mermaids and satyr beefcake and winggy people?

    Or, ah, is that just me?

  • Have I mentioned I love our InstantPot? So far, we’ve only made two dishes in it, but love it!
  • If you haven’t checked in on the new Addergoole page, you can still earn fic with comments!
  • And if you know anyone who might be interested in supporting my Patreon, Nimbus is stuck in the man-eating plant, and only the patrons can get her out!

    (a couple patrons had to reduce or drop patronizing due to funding issues, and thus we are back down below the $40 net “serial episode a month” level. Poor Nimbus! Stuck! ~Woe~!)

  • And this weekend: We installed a toilet!
    Seriously, even if they tell you when you buy a toilet that there’s a wax ring in the package, buy two. Not one, two. You won’t regret it.

    That being said, our pretty new reasonable-height dual-flush toilet is in and goes, YAY!

    Our old one had been first stained by our rusty water.

    And then some previous tenant had used something so corrosive to clean the orange that it had stripped the enamel off the porcelain.

    And then the house was winterized, and the blue dye… stained the porcelain.

    Black veined toilet! Ick!

    (we’re looking into water softeners now…)

    That’s one more step towards a non-ugly bathroom!

  • I’m low on interesting links this week, so how about you? Share your cool links!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1161402.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Weekends, Links, and other fun things…

Aug1

 

  • I got stung by a bee for the first time in my adult life the Sunday before this one.  The poor thing was probably just looking for something alive, considering the drought-ridden state of our yard.  Still, I’ve learned a) I’m still not allergic to bees (somewhat of a concern, as both my father & my maternal uncle had adult-onset of bee-sting allergies), b) there’s quite a range of non-allergy-based reactions to bee stings.  In this case, “where did my ankle bone go?”  It took about a week for the swelling to vanish — I have my foot back, finally! — and I am left with an itchy spot and a strong resolve to not get stung again.

  • I have gotten Thimbleful Thursday prompts scheduled out through the end of July 2018!  I wanted to make sure I had a year in the hopper after I, um, got distracted and forgot to post prompts from December through May.  I think I’m set, now.  I could ignore it for 2 years and it would still be there.

  • We are building a bed!  We bought a new mattress during July, going from a Queen (second-hand, 1000 years old) to a new foam California King (and when I put it “cali king,” I giggle every time) mattress.  Thus, need a new bedframe.  
    Because our bedroom is narrow and longish (7-½’ by 14-½’), we’re building a storage bed with drawer/carts coming out the long way — from the foot.  This is leading to a frame that looks something like an elongated E.  We’ve got the lumber; next stage… cutting!

  • You can make a Suicide Squad-style icon of yourself! Or, in my case, sort of a wishful-thinking self.

  • If you’re interested in paranormal romance, check out Selena Page.  I’ve beta-read both extant novellas, and there’s another one coming in August!

  • Cutthroat Kitchen fan?  Did you see this post from Jet Tila?

  • There’s still slots open — comment on Addergoole’s new site and get a ficlet in return.  Make the pretty new page look less lonely!

  • …I really gotta get around to renewing my DW subscription…

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1147885.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

The Sink Is In – Homeownership at its finest

Jun28

(I shall try to get a photo, I promise)

We have a sink and faucet!

(New ones, that is, and finally installed.)

This project, like all home improvement projects, expanded and expanded and expanded – but it’s done. Well, at least for the moment.

So, problem one: Our walls are nearly-solid wood, not studs. They’re 2″x~15″, 16″-on-center.

That means the sink plumbing does down, not into the wall and then down.

That means our solid-bottom pedestal doesn’t fit, ’cause the solid bottom would go right over the encased-in-cement drain!

So, fix one: we bought two ~4″x4x”x24″ pieces of very pretty maple, sanded, stained, and polyurethaned them. Instant (ha) stand-out.

Then we got food poisoning.

Then the P-trap didn’t have a down, because plumbing goes into the wall.

Then the hot water didn’t work.

Fixed!

It took – well, don’t ask, but it took 2 weeks of working on it regularly, but now we have a beautiful functioning sink.

Next step: toilet. Wish us luck!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1133921.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable