These Dang Birds Are Like Toddlers

You know how hard it sometimes is to get toddlers to try new foods?  I was having the same trouble with our wild bird life and something "new" I've slipped into their hanging log feeder.

I've had some rendered lard that has celebrated several birthdays in the bottom of my freezer and I was about to toss it when I wondered if the birds would like it in this cold weather.

I went to the handy-dandy, know everything Internet and checked to see if feeding them lard would be sending them to an early grave and was pleased to find that it's just fine for them and shouldn't clog their little arteries or do other deadly damage.

I did remember that long ago, in a different place and time, I used to fill the peanut butter hanging feeder with half peanut butter and half melted beef suet.  This lard I have is from butchered pigs and it's lovely, pure white stuff but has just enough of a "flavor" that I don't care for when I use it to make pie crusts.  So it has languished in my freezer for long enough and that's why I decided to offer it to the birds.

Well, said (ungrateful) birds cleaned out all the holes I filled with peanut butter twice now, but didn't seem to get the idea that the white stuff is good for them.  I even mixed some sunflower seeds in with the lard thinking that would entice them to try this new taste treat.

But, now, I think I've finally (possibly) found a solution to get them to dip their little beaks into the lard and give it a try.

The last time I had the feeder in to fill, I smeared a light peanut butter coating over the holes filled with lard.  And look!

See those little beak marks on the lard?  And the fact that nearly all the peanut butter is gone so they've started eating the lard?

And even though some holes still have plenty of peanut butter for them to eat . . . 

This hole that was full of lard is well on its way to being devoured!

Now if they continue to clean out the lard filled holes, I can consider myself smarter than the average chickadee.  (It's the little things in life that count, right?)

An End to Monday

And I'm glad to see it coming to an end.  No, nothing terribly awful, bad happened today.  It was just one of those days where nothing went quite right.

One little snafu thrown into our day was that our Internet service was down all day . . . and just came back on about 30 minutes ago.  I'm thinking it's not good when I realize how much we use the computer during a day's time.  This, of course, becomes very evident when you can't use it.

Granddog Tucker was out helping Papa Pea do some work in the yard when he (that would be Tucker) barked at the back door to be let in which I did.  However, I failed to let my dear husband know I had done so and same dear husband spent a bit of time hiking all over the acreage looking for Tucker thinking he had taken himself for a little walk in the woods.  Given the possible presence of one or more wolves roaming about, this would not have been a good situation.  I will not eleaborate on the conversation between us when my better half came in the house to share his concern regarding Tucker being missing only to find that I had him in the house with me.

The day seemed to be filled with little irritating thorns of the same kind all the way through our dinner . . . which I was about to put on the table, assuming I had communicated to Papa Pea I was doing so, only to have him disappear somewhere outside for better than a half hour.

Get the drift?  Yeah, just one of those days.

* * * * * * * *

The good news (for us snow lovers) is that we got at least 8" of heavy, wet snow late yesterday afternoon/early evening in the span of four hours.  And for snow that is that heavy to be blown into impressive drifts, you know we had some strong winds along with the snow.

So we had a lot of snow moving to do today.  Bless our daughter and her honkin' big snowplow, now that she is living much closer to us, we can borrow her rig and her expert services.  Papa Pea did a small amount of clearing with the plow this morning and then Chicken Mama (snow plower extraordinaire) did the whole driveway and front and back work areas after she got off work tonight.

Dear hubby and I did our fair share of shoveling by hand (he more than me) so got our daily exercise and fresh air.

Sorry I neglected to get any pictures.  (The way the day went if I had taken my camera out I probably would have lost it in the snow.)  Our driveway had a whole new look to it with trees on each side so heavily laden with snow that some areas took on an almost tunnel-like look.

Well, it's late enough now into the evening that one of us (that not being me) is ready for bed and sitting in the living room for some wind-down reading time.  Time for me to be doing the same.

Knitted Afghan --- Done!

Finally sat down this afternoon and finished sewing the last strip putting my knitted afghan together.

The afghan is incredibly soft and is going to be warm and cozy as a throw on the couch.

The pattern didn't call for any kind of finishing edge and I'm wondering if something is needed.  I'm not particularly fond of fringe so don't think I want to do that.  I could crochet some kind of an edge all around the four sides . . . but which color of yarn would I use for that?  Any suggestions as to a finishing edge?  Needed?  Or not?

After all my fuss and worry about how to sew the five strips together, the idea I had in my head worked lickety-split.

I laid two strips side by side, wrong sides up.  Because all the rectangles had a seed stitch edge on each side, I just picked up a "nub" (or collar from a purl stitch) one stitch in from the edge . . . first on one strip, then on the other strip.  Back and forth, back and forth the whole length of the strip.

This is the front side.  You can't see the yarn I used for the joining at all.  Even the back side (shown in the second picture with the needle) doesn't look that bad.

Big knitting project finally completed.  Whew!  But I've got to admit, I think I'm gonna miss having it to work on.  I got kinda attached to it!

Seventeen Above, Bright Sun and No Wind

What better time to take a hike in the woods!

We've had so little snow this winter that we've never packed down our loop trail in the woods with snowshoes.  Hiking just in boots has been easy so far.

But we're being warned (snow lovers that we are, we can only hope!) of heavy snow and high winds coming this Sunday and Monday so we decided to strap on the snowshoes and make a wide, flat base on the trail while the snow level was not too high.

Holey moley, did we ever see heavily traveled wildlife trails in the woods.

We could identify wolf, rabbit, deer and fox tracks.  None of the tracks in the above two pictures were made by humans . . . just the wildlife we're lucky enough to have roaming our woods.

When returning to the house, Papa Pea talked me into walking out with him to get the mail.  After stashing our snowshoes, we walked out the driveway, got our mail and then hiked back in.

In the last week or so we've had a couple of fleeting glimpses of what looks to be a really good-sized timber wolf snuffling around the property.  Today we could see a line of his tracks going both ways on the driveway.

This one (between my two feet) was clear enough to give you an idea of the size of this guy.  I'll not be planning on walking our quarter mile driveway in the dark any time soon, I can promise you. 

Shelling Corn

Last summer I experimented growing some Painted Mountain corn in our garden.  This corn is ultra-early (85 days . . . a real plus for our far north location), and developed in the mountains of Montana for its hardiness and colorful display.  You can use it by grinding for cornmeal, roasting the fresh ears and, of course, decorating.

Unfortunately, we missed sampling any as roasted eating corn this past year, but will be sure to do that this coming season.  

We let the ears mature on the stalk, harvested them from our little plot (just 4 rows in a 6' x 9' plot), dried them and this afternoon I finally got around to shelling the corn.

First we selected the nicest ears to save for seed corn.  (Those ears are shown on the table above.)

We had purchased a hand sheller so it was time to see if it did an adequate job.

Our ears of corn grew quite a bit longer than the advertised 6-7" length.  Some were 10" long!  But they were quite skinny (that's what I want to be . . . skinny and taller), and so didn't fit in the sheller as well as a fatter ear would have.

I still didn't have much trouble getting the kernels to pop right off the cob.  (And pop they did . . . in the bowl in my lap, onto the floor, clear across the room!)

Our little harvest yielded a pint jar and a half gallon jar full of corn for grinding (on the left in above picture) plus one very full quart to use as seed corn.

I'd call the experiment a success so far.  The corn is touted as making a high-nutrition flour so now grinding some and baking with it is next on the list.  

Bread: French and Spelt

A week or so ago, I came upon a recipe for "Easy French Bread" in my More-with-Less Cookbook.

I can't give the Mennonite folks who put this cook book together enough praise for their concern for our health, environment and world food needs.  All of their recipes are simple, presented with nutrition in mind, and darn good tasting.

Back to the French bread recipe, it did indeed look easy and since it was well into the afternoon before I got around to starting some bread, I decided to give it a try.

EASY FRENCH BREAD

Dissolve:
    2 pkgs. (2 tablespoons) dry yeast in
    1/2 cup warm (approx. 120 degrees) water with
    1/2 teaspoon sugar

Combine:
    2 tablespoons sugar
    2 tablespoons butter
    2 teaspoons salt
    2 cups boiling water

Cool to lukewarm and then add yeast mixture.  

Stir in:
    7-1/2 to 8 cups unbleached white flour
    (7 cups was all I could get mixed in.)

Knead 10 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic.  Place in a greased bowl, turning once.  Let rise until doubled  (I let it rise for one hour.)  Punch down and let rest on counter (I covered with a cloth) for 15 minutes.

Divide dough in half.  On floured surface, roll each half to a 12" x 15" rectangle.  Roll up tightly, starting at the 15" edge.

Place loaves on a greased cookie sheet and make 4 or 5 slashes diagonally across the tops.  Let rise until doubled in size.  (Again, I let the loaves rise for one hour.)

Mix and brush over loaves:
    1 whole egg, beaten with
    2 tablespoons milk

Sprinkle over top:
    Poppy or sesame seeds

Bake in a 400 degree preheated oven for 20 minutes.

The two loaves were the biggest and nicest looking loaves of French bread I've ever made.  (The knife shown in the picture is a full 12" long for comparison.)

Was the bread tasty?  It sure was!  Although, I have to honestly admit that this was the end of only half of one of those giant loaves, and Chicken Mama stopped in just in time to help us with the sampling.

I was so enthused about this recipe that the next day I made it again, but used a combination of 4 cups of spelt flour and 3 cups of white.

This time I divided the dough into three portions and made one round loaf, one long loaf and spread the rolled out rectangle of the third portion of dough with brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins and pecans.

The cinnamon bread was heavier than a regular cinnamon bread made with all white flour would be but still made a very tasty sweet bread that we enjoyed toasted with several breakfasts.

Papa Pea, who isn't fond of "white" bread, commented that if he was limited to only one kind of bread (which he's not, lucky-ducky that he is), the recipe made with the spelt flour would satisfy him.

All in all, this turned out to be a really good bread and I'm looking forward to playing with some other variations to the basic recipe.