Moving to Bramblewood

Life got really busy there for awhile after my last post. Even with some relaxing down time, I got out of the blog habit. I have been writing in my journal, which is satisfying in a different way than blogging, but I do miss the very visual aspect of the blog.
July and August saw the final building of the house, which was incredibly exciting and stressful beyond most projects I undertake. Not only was there all the paperwork and last minute well issues (who is going to come up with $5000 quick?!? Builder? Owner? Lender? etc.) but we had to paint the entire interior and exterior of the home. That was a seriously huge undertaking on our part, yes indeed. Not only did we save over $4000 doing it ourselves, it was something we got to physically contribute to the building of the house. Sinse I had the dream of building my own home for over 15 years, I think I needed that involvement and control physically and emotionally.
We spent the last half of July painting the interior, meanwhile maintaining 3 4x15 community garden beds, 3 4x8 garden beds at the upper meadow that needed water hauled in (yes, it's true), 10 chickens and 2 cats that needed looking after, 2 kids that were under a lot of stress themselves (but they did awesome, those guys!), keeping the ice cream business afloat, and working on my resume. After a completely grueling 5-day stint scooping ice cream at the Hood River Fair (Columbia Valley Cone's official last event...sniff) I was out starting on the exterior. Bless the boys; they really did a lot of work. Ealom and Gil pretty much did all of the interior ceilings, and Aidan and I painted walls. Outside, we all pitched in, working our butts off in blistering hot weather to get the paint done before closing. The timing was excellent though; painting in extremely dry weather is a true blessing around here.
Things got really crazy when on August 22, I took a new job as the Head Cook and Food Manager for Skamania County's Senior Services Food Program.
We did our final walk-through with the builder and signed the closing papers with USDA on September 1, and we spent Labor Day Weekend moving in. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we moved most of our belongings and Sunday was the big day of bringing over the beds and cats. So, September 4 was the official starting day of living at Bramblewood. The cats are happy here, and of course, so are we.

Here are the garden beds at Bramblewood:


And here are the guys with our community garden bed that won "Best of Show" at the county fair:

Wildcrafting at the Property

So, the previous property owners were telling the truth; there are indeed apple trees down by the creek, and while I had thought there wasn't any fruit, we found some. It was nearly three weeks ago when we found the apples, gleaned about 2 gallons from the ground and picked a few from the trees. The trees are old and neglected, but we got enough apples to make a crisp combined with blackberries. Yum!
Here is our harvest, along with gift veggies from our next door neighbors garden:

Here is the crisp:

Black bears love apples also. This picture was taken yesterday. Yep, that's black bear scat chock full of apples. The fellow wildcrafter was spotted on the neighbor's property the night before. Wishing we had a really big dog.

When life gives you cherries...

Get pitting! A fellow homeschooling mom whom my friend Deanne knows had an overabundance of cherries and because this has been a banner year for fruit (and everything else that grows!); there's a glut in the cherry market. This kind lady offered as many free cherries as a body could pick to whomever wanted to do so. Funny, I had just been wishing for some cherries to come our way, so it was quite serendipitous.
We went out early with Deanne and her boys and picked well over 100 lbs. We were guessing it was close to 180, but we didn’t have a scale. However much we got, it was plenty. The freezer is full of pitted bags full, I made cherry crisp, canned up to 7 quarts of pie filling and 8 pints of brandied cherries, started almost ½ gallon of cherry extract in vodka, sun-dried several lbs., and we are still eating fresh cherries 2 weeks later. I will make some cherry jam also, but I just may wait until it cools off and do it with frozen cherries, which works almost as well as fresh ones. Since it’s been in the upper 90s and low 100s, I actually canned the brandied cherries outside on our Coleman camping stove and started to do the pie filling, but had to finish up inside when I ran out of propane. So, before I can again, I have to get some more gas. Canning outside is SOOO nice! When we build our dream house, it will have an outdoor cooking room for sure! ;-)
Here’s a pic of the bountiful harvest, which took the boys and I three hours to pick. Btw, Ealom wins the prize as the fastest cherry picker – I think he picked the most.
Vans, Lamberts, and Royal Annes:
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Both stores near us were out of cherry pitters (of course!) so I borrowed this cutie from my neighbor. It took about an hour to pit 5 lbs. of cherries and my hands were not liking the repetitive motion, but it is much more handy than nothing. The next day I had to go to Portland, so I picked up a large plunger type pitter, which pits oh so much faster; about 30 lbs. an hour. There is no way I would’ve gotten through all those cherries with that single extractor, but it is so cute, when I saw the exact one at a garage sale last week for 10c, I picked it up. Now two people can pit and trade off pitters. Yummy stuff; I love gleaning! :-)