There’s been no shortage of things to do these past few weeks. Other than the usual building and gardening tasks, there’s been a lot on the list of items to complete.
I realize it’s been a while since I’ve posted any new photos of work on Strawtron… I promise we are not slacking. Nothing has jumped out at me as really photo-worthy just yet. Although that will change soon, as we are closing in the north porch and will soon be doing some light clay straw work. Yea!
Just when I think we’re done with work on Gobcobatron, we find more to do. As we are converting the cob house to a rental this year (see how you can stay in our cob house this summer!), it means we’ve taken some time to do some maintenance work — re-grouting parts of the tile floor, oiling the floor (finally), tearing out the mudroom floor to put in a more durable tile floor, making a brandy new bed frame to accommodate a queen size mattress, dusting the rafters… Didn’t I say I was “done” with this house before?
Things are looking really good in there with all of the clean-up work and fresh new coat(s) of lime wash. As soon as we iron out a couple of small details, I’m going to post some new photos. We even went for a new re-arrangement of the furniture… (Er, maybe that’s actually only interesting to me? Anyway…) I’m pretty happy with the new bed frame, too, and I want to show that off as soon as the mattress has some sheets on it…
Our new ducklings — exploding by the minute
We’ve got 20 chickens and 16 ducks to our name now, as well. The chickens had a few rough first days, as the temperatures decided to drop significantly as soon as they showed up, and the sun simply vanished. The ducks are doing just dandy, and they’ve got ravenous appetites. It shows, too — I swear they more than doubled in a week’s time. I am personally really excited to finally try my hand at raising ducks. I have been wanting to get some for a few years now. Duck meat is one of my most favorite foods of all time. We’ve got Pekins and Rouens (all males, for meat).
Our first morels of the season
On other food fronts… it’s morel season, and the land provideth. I hear folks are pulling in some good hauls. I haven’t gone too far and wide myself, hitting only a couple of usually productive spots, and I’ve been pleased to bring in at least a couple of meal’s worth. The first bunch made some absolutely yummy mushroom gravy. Mm.
Don’t you love the rush of adrenaline when you spot the first morel out on the land?
Fresh out of the oven
I’ve been really into making bread lately (even though we are trying to limit our grain consumption.. yea, it’s tough). Lately, I’ve been whipping out a few loaves a week of the NY Times-style no-knead bread. The recipe works wonderfully, and Prairie Gold’s White Whole Wheat flour is super yummo for this application. (Really, it’s great flour all-around. My fave.) Topped with a healthy slab of butter from our Mennonite neighbors, there are few things better.
April’s sweet walnut slab bench
Ok, enough about food. I realize I never posted pictures of April’s finished walnut bench that she started while we were at Greg Pennington’s shop in Tennessee. It looks amazing! It’s a real beauty, and garners lots of attention thanks to its really unique shape. The gorgeous wood doesn’t hurt, either. April uses it at her sewing machine these days.
Well, more news as it happens… hopefully one of these days our live edge oak siding will show up for the porch, and we can close that sucker in.