How Does Your Garden Grow?

The Sheffers have been running at full steam for weeks now. It is amazing just how much work needs to be done in the short time left before Old Man Winter blows into town.

This year was the year of the pumpkin for us. We had planned on keeping things small this year in the garden and only using the western garden which is much smaller than the one to the east of the house. The plan was to just work on turning the compost, putting in raised beds for the garden, and fixing the fencing. Charlie tossed a couple of very, um, overripe pumpkins in the area intending for them to just compost. Before we even realized what was happening, we had pumpkin vines growing over almost the entire garden. So much for raised beds. Yesterday, I went out to the garden to harvest the pumpkins that we had literally done no work to raise.

We didn't even water it. The result of this serendipitous turn of events was almost four dozen pumpkins. They filled a 20 gallon tote to overflowing. We'll obviously save some seeds for next year (which probably won't grow nearly as nicely), and I will be spending the winter making lots of pumpkin goodies. I am thinking that pies and bread will likely be in abundance for us. Although, I have a huge pile of summer squash to be grated for breads too.

It is a really good thing that the pumpkins grew like crazy because the tomatoes did not, and they were really the only thing that I planted besides a few herbs. A variety of 20 heirloom plants and 5 volunteer cherry tomato plants that I transplanted (plus a few that I didn't) went into the ground with all sorts of warnings that we would have more tomatoes than we could handle. I would have to check my records to verify, but I would be surprised if we averaged even six pounds per plant - definitely not what we had expected although the summer was rather cool. Sure, more than a hundred pounds of tomatoes is not a tiny amount. My recipe for spaghetti sauce uses 25 pounds though. Plus, the plan had been to have enough tomatoes to have stewed tomatoes and sauce canned for chilli all winter, slices for sandwiches this summer, and a bunch of salsa too. At least I can hopefully salvage the situation by making some green tomato salsa. I am currently enjoying the sound of jars pinging as they seal. We will taste test a couple of versions of the recipe before making the rest of the salsa. There is a good chance that this will make more than a year's worth for us.

Last but not least, the garden that Dad had out at the Farm this summer produced a LOT of beans and cukes. I made dill pickle slices, dill pickle spears, sweet pickles, and dilly beans from them. Guess what we are bringing for Thanksgiving....

Make it a fantastic day!

Pull My Finger

Last night while hanging out with Daddy, our Little Girl invented a new game. It started with sticking her foot up like she wanted it kissed, then when he leaned over to kiss her toes, farting and flashing Daddy a grin like it was the funniest thing ever. Let's be honest. It probably was.

This afternoon, she had her 18 month check-up. (Already? The math must be wrong.) She grew almost 3 inches in the last 3 months and is up into the 90th percentile for height. However, she only gained a half pound and dropped to the 12th for weight. It seems that she is just going to be a tall string bean.

In other news, our Little Girl is walking all over, starting to really show a goofy sense of humor, and now uses about 6 signs mostly correctly.

Window shopping at the mall

("Milk" is this week's catch all for anything that she wants though. We will get there someday.....)

I have been working like crazy to find and test recipes for our garden goodness. It has been pretty exhausting. I did find a good one for butternut squash pie, and I have two batches of the pie filling frozen for later. Other than that, I have been making lots of spaghetti sauce and zucchini bread, and I am still working on making more pickles and trying out something to do with a lot of summer squash.

Charlie spent a day working on organizing the basement. It is absolutely fantastic! There is a huge open space now that I have totally taken over for drying clothes since the wind keeps blowing over my drying racks outside. I love when he has time off and uses it to make my life easier. (Now if only his instructors would assign less homework, so he could do more of my projects.....)

Until next time!

Summer Vacation Fun

This morning, Charlie headed back to school after a two week vacation. His solid "B" average last term was a huge encouragement to him as he got ready to take on the new challenges before him. This term, they will be building an actual house, so he can learn about reading blueprints, framing, trim work, etc. I am getting really excited about all the new skills that he is learning. He is going to have a lot of projects here on the home front in the near future.

The Little Girl and I are marking today much as we do most of our days. Playing, reading, learning sign language, cleaning, and doing "homestead" type chores (gardening, canning, etc.). Today we are listening to Beowulf on audio book, cooking down some spaghetti sauce for canning, working on day 2 of our 7 day pickles,

Big girl enjoying S'mores and a bonfire at the Farm.

doing our weekly cleaning, and trying to learn how to sign cheese. The latter is proving to be a bit challenging as "grapes," "milk," "more," and "please" are much easier, but we are having more luck than "crackers" which might be a lost cause. We shall see. She has surprised me more than once.

Favorite pastime? Reading (and mischief)

The garden is really starting to produce the harvest that we had been praying to get from it. So far, we have had almost 60 pounds of tomatoes from it, and there are lots of green tomatoes still waiting to ripen. I can only imagine how much more we would have right now if one of the varieties (accounting for 4 plants) had not proven to be susceptible to blossom end rot. It has proven to be quite the learning experience though because researching its cause and cures has resulted in lots of new information that I never would have gotten otherwise. We have really been enjoying the different flavors from the various heritage tomatoes that we planted and definitely have a few favorites. Ok, they are all delicious. I get that they are often less

Camping at Perot Park

uniformly pretty than the grocery store varieties, but there is no comparison when it comes to the flavors. If I had been able to get tomatoes this delicious my whole life, I probably would have eaten a lot more of them.

We have been starting to taste test some of the canning recipes that I have been finding to determine which ones make our family cook book. After my first attempt at sweet pickles, I have decided that I will only make a single batch of an untested recipe. Instead of doing three batches of all different recipes, I used the one that sounded like it would work the best. Well, learn and do better next time. 

Last but not least, our Little Girl has finally decided that walking might be a better mode of transportation than crawling. It has taken months of cruising along furniture and our holding her hand as she walks, and we are finally to the point where she will crawl to within two steps of her goal, stand up, and make the final push upright. We still are not to fully walking about the house, but I am certain that it will come soon.

We hope that everyone else has had a wonderful summer as well. God bless!

Happy Birthday to Me

My birthday present from Charlie

Tomorrow night is fancy date night. The Little Girl is not invited, my dress is getting cleaned, Charlie is making reservations, and there will be live music with a promise of some dancing. If tonight's dinner guests assist, I might even convince Charlie to learn some grown up dancing. (Nothing wrong with 8th grade dance slow dancing, but I would love some swing, or latin dance moves too....) 

Buckets of sweet pickles and piles of fresh produce.

I have been spending quite a bit of time in the kitchen lately. It has resulted in a few things. First off, I am going to reread the book Once a Month Cooking and start putting it into practice. Second, we have three batches of sweet pickles sitting on the counter.

Popsicle in Door County

Third, I have really been enjoying the deliciousness that is homemade ice cream. Last week was raspberry (from our garden) chocolate chip, and today I am making chai flavored ice cream.

Earlier this week, Charlie installed a diaper sprayer for me. By random chance, all stinky diapers since then have happened when a certain little girl was wearing a sposie (left over from a weekend out of town at a wedding). However, I am very much looking forward to having it to use. I do not even care if you judge me. I am thrilled to have a little bit of shiny to use.

The Little Girl and I went up to Door County, WI for a couple of days last week. We had a lot of fun camping with Papa, picked up a lot of cherries, and went to a lot of antique stores.

What's in here Mama?

The amazing part? Despite the fact that someone was too excited to nap, she was not really fussy or crying at all. Too tired for her eyes to focus or her fingers to work well enough to pick up an ice cube? Yes. (She sucked them up off the table instead.) She even stayed up extra late, so she could sit on Papa's lap and enjoy the campfire for a while. Charlie, unfortunately, had classes to attend, but he did not complain, and Gretl probably appreciated that she got to stay home in the air conditioning.

After weeks of blockading all of the bookcases to prevent damage to books, I decided to remove all of the grown up books from the lower shelves and let the Little Girl play. Unfortunately, her playing resulted in the little clips holding the shelf getting wiggled enough that a shelf of books came crashing down. Luckily, she had moved on

to causing mischief elsewhere, but it was enough that I decided to make some changes. Almost all of the big people books were boxed up and taken downstairs. (If we want to read a book, I will get it from the library.) Also going downstairs were three of our four bookshelves. Furniture was rearranged, and the new set up makes the whole space much more open. There are a few more things for me to do in the dining room before we are totally finished with moving furniture, but it is pretty much finished in here. I love that it is much more open and less cluttered in the small space. Plus, there is totally room for us to practice some fun dance moves now. Next quest my dear Dread Pirate Roberts? Dance partner. Music to be queued up as soon as he gets home today....

Too Tired for a Decent Title

So much for my nap on the floor...

Summer continues to fly by us, and it seems like I last posted yesterday though the calendar tells me otherwise. 

Gretl is now mostly trained. The only thing that we still need to correct is her recent decision to bark before dawn because she's bored and wants to go sniff the flower beds. We would be fine with it if it was an emergency,

Smell my stinky feet fuzzball!

but stumbling out of the bedroom and trying to not have the Little Girl wake is getting old. One of these days, someone is going to break a toe on the door frame or something..... We are open to suggestions on how to correct this. Please. Someone tell me that you know how to fix this.

King Kong!

The Little Girl is getting to be a lot less little. *sniff* She has learned how to sign milk, more, and please - although at this point she really just sticks with please most of the time since it's pretty effective for getting whatever it is that she wants. While we normally do not cave into the pint sized dictator's demands, she occasionally

No? But this is so fun!

gets a few extra delicious snacks like grapes, corn on the cob, and cheese - her favorites. She also can point to her ears, nose, mouth, eyes, and toes, but her favorite is nose. It's the only one that she tries to say herself.

About two weeks ago, she decided to show off for her Lita and Gigi (my mom and grandma) by taking her first solo steps without the aid of furniture. She continues to show an extreme preference to crawling and scooting though and has only even attempted steps a couple of times since then. 

Charlie aced his math final ensuring that he will get a high enough score in the class to take Math 2 next term and continue in the wood tech program. The Little Girl and I are both proud of

Reading with Gigi

his efforts though we have missed having him around since he spends most afternoons and evenings in his study cave. 

I have continued to work in the garden attempting to overcome my brown thumb. All of the varieties of tomatoes now have fruit on them, but my San Marzano plants are suffering from blossom end rot. The rest of the plants seem fine, and Google seems to think that more water will help with prevention of more fruit going bad. The pumpkins seem to be doing really well - although this is little comfort to me because they were practically volunteers (we just tossed pumpkins in the compost pile, and the seeds sprouted), and I have done nothing to encourage their growth. 

Last but not least, a couple of months ago I got an activity tracker from Aldi. (Basically a Fitbit but at a much lower price.) I figured that it would show how much walking I was doing to get all my chores done around the house since it feels like I'm constantly walking, and I totally expected that I was getting my 10,000 steps daily. However, after looking at the numbers, I discovered that I was often getting much less than half of that number. Facing this reality, I committed to making sure that I get a minimum of 10,000 steps every single day. It has not been easy for me, but I am very proud to say that I have finished 15 days straight. Sometimes not until 11:30pm. Sometimes it took doing 4 miles on the track next door after putting the Little Girl to bed. While it isn't second nature to me yet, at least my muscles are getting used to the extra work and complain less about it. Once I get to 50 days straight (hopefully just before Labor Day weekend), I'm going to get a membership to the Y, so I can change up the exercise routine a bit and take advantage of their free childcare while I work out.

Summer (and Everything Else) is in Full Swing!

The Sheffers have had some action packed days this last month, and there is no sign of it letting up any time soon. Getting a nice long chunk of time to sit and write a post about it is unlikely to happen until at least Thanksgiving after we bring in the goods from the garden and everything is stored for the winter. (My "helper" makes it an even greater challenge as she loves pushing the keys on the laptop almost as much as she enjoys playing in the dirt and mud.) I'm going to attempt a work around for this difficulty though, and we'll see if I can write a coherent post from the kitchen while I work on everything else that needs doing. You'll have to excuse what might be a slightly disjointed post.

Charlie is now in the full swing of his classes for the summer term. The first week or so was pretty rough until we figured out a decent place for him to do his studying and homework. I wish that there was a nicer place for him than the basement at my laundry table, but at least I was able to get the wall by his workspace scraped and painted to make it less dungeon-esque. The mauve paint probably would not have been my first choice, but when you're buying the goof up gallons at $5 for Dutchboy paint, you can be a little more flexible on the colors. 

Drawing board - guess what I'm using the next time I can actually sit!

I am absolutely loving the class projects that Charlie has been doing this term. There is nothing wrong with pieces of metal welded together that he was doing last term. However, they're not as useful around the house as the beautiful cutting board and drawing board that he has made in class. 

Gretl and Elska are really becoming the dynamic duo. I spend a fair bit of my days enjoying their playing or stopping their mischief. Elska is without a doubt the instigator in it all, and while Gretl tries her best to be a good pup, there are times that she just can't resist the charms of her two legged

sister. When she's not being tantalized into trouble, Gretl has really gotten to be a well behaved pup. She generally does a good job of coming, sitting, staying, laying down, heeling, and even not eating food that she hasn't been specifically given by an adult. She has been good about staying in the yard and has been almost completely broken of the whole "jumping up on people" thing. The training has really been starting to pay off, and it has resulted in her spending a lot more time just relaxing out of her crate. At this rate, we might not be too far from being able to put the crate in the basement and have our floor space back! We are still planning to train her to pull a cart and get her certified as a therapy dog. However, with everything else going on, it is hard to add in anything else no matter how much good it would do.

Elska is has been learning so many new things. She can stand up on her own in the middle of the room, walk along furniture and walls, and climb pretty much anything that she can get her foot on. She's grown 2 inches taller since her last doctor's appointment. (Not an ounce heavier, but she's just always on the go and can't eat enough despite constantly eating.) We have also been working with her on sign language, and she's pretty much got "more" down and "please," "milk," and "all done" only need a little prompting for her to remember them. She's gotten over her dislike of the grass and now finds great amusement in pulling grass and weeds and throwing dirt. The amount of joy she has in it totally outweighs the extra work of scrubbing her clean every night.

Mama's garden helper

Finally, the projects that have been keeping hold of much of the daylight hours. The big one, of course, is the garden/yard. I've got a small herb garden that I've been working, and we put in a lot of heirloom tomato plants. We have Mr Stripeys, San Marzanos, Amish Paste Tomatoes, German Queens, Cherokee Purples, and Black Krims - 20 total plants! On top of that, I found 5 volunteer tomato plants yesterday (probably cherry tomatoes) over by the compost pile and transplanted them to a more hospitable space. As of right now, all of the plants have survived my gardening skills. The grapes managed to make it through another winter and continue to be Charlie's pet project in the garden. The pumpkin vines are growing like gangbusters, and we are hoping for a bumper crop to make lots of pies, muffins, and bread this fall. We are also in the middle of raspberry season right now.  To date, I've picked over four and a half pounds of raspberries, and I didn't get out yesterday or today yet. 

All of the garden fun has already been making kitchen work for me. There's plenty of rhubarb in the freezer for Charlie's favorite muffin recipe and a couple of pies, and I made lots of strawberry rhubarb jam. I should really get started on the strawberry raspberry jam, but it's hard to get enough motivation to heat and steam up the kitchen all day. Instead, I've been freezing the raspberries and will probably wait for some cooler days to get the jam made.

Finally, about half of the wallpaper in the kitchen has been removed, and I'm continuing to work on it as time permits. (Ok, when the weather is too miserable to do any of my outdoor projects.) Once it's done and everything is sanded, paint and new back splashes are going up. I could probably rush through and just be done with it, but I really want it done right, so it's going to take a bit longer. If any of you absolutely love removing wallpaper, I'd be happy for the company while it's coming down. 

The Sheffers at the end of the day....

Working Without a Net

Bring it fuzzball

Recently, our Little Girl has turned into quite the fearless adventurer. While we knew that this day was coming, we were in no way really prepared for it. Is it even possible to be prepared for it? Do they make safety harnesses and nets in toddler size?

The last couple of weeks, a certain little someone has:

• Learned  how to crawl into the recliner while someone is sitting in it.
• Started standing "no hands" for a second or two.
• Become an expert at switching between furniture supports while cruising around the house.
• Decided to start crawling up a flight of stairs. (She was caught at step number two, and a baby gate put in place to prevent further climbing.)

  

  Exploring the yard

• Climbed on barriers that we had to keep her away from the dog's fan in the living room. Poor Gretl no longer gets the extra fan since we can't keep it out of the Little Girl's reach.
• Wrestle and pin the dog. (And any playmates roughly her size or smaller.) I also caught her today wielding my cooling rack like a folding chair in a WWF match. Poor pup.
• Managed to crawl onto the door of the dishwasher and a living room end table. (We're trying to put a stop to that before she gets big enough to damage the door.)
• Fear of grass has been mostly overcome, and it has resulted in a desire to explore the yard. We are going to be purchasing one of those play area fence things shortly, so she can explore while I work in the garden.

 In addition to her adventurous exploits

A hungry little girl

• Six new teeth popped through in the last two weeks bringing her total to 16.
• This week's favorite toy is a colander that makes an absolutely wretched noise when she scrapes it across the floor.
• It has become more fun to "read" books on her own than to have us read them to her. As I type, she is currently reading a book to Gretl.
• She has become an ever-hungry bottomless pit. It doesn't matter if she's just had something to eat. If we sit down with food, she's at our side begging for demanding whatever we're having. Quaker Oatmeal Squares are pretty much her favorite, but they're nowhere near as yummy as she is convinced that Daddy's Skittles will be if we ever let her have them. She has also started to "blow" on her food to cool it when we do and tries to feed herself with a fork with some success. Her next goal is drinking from a glass, but we're not nearly as close with that one.
• No amount of scolding or redirecting can stop the siren's song of all things tech. Laptops, phones, stereo systems....she just can't resist touching them.
• Everyone she meets gets a high five if they'll play along. She also has started trying to use this as a distraction for us when she's into mischief. 
• Either she's blowing kisses or saying "thank you" in sign language. We can't quite tell yet.
• Snuggling and hugs for everyone! Favorite target remains the dog.

In other news, the car still was stalling after we got the new alternator put into it. We took it back to the shop and asked them to check for loose wires in it and were told that it was fine and they couldn't replicate the problem. The day after we picked it up, we ended up stranded at 11pm in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, the AAA truck that arrived was able to jump it and get us home. We took it into a different shop where they actually checked what we asked.....it turns out, there were a couple of loose wires. Huh. Who would have thought?

Charlie starts school on Monday, so we are off to get the last minute items that he needs. Have a great day!