It’s On!

Nov3

This is my favorite cooking utensil. It has no equal and I don’t even know what to call it. It is made of bamboo and came with a wok as a wedding gift, sadly its brilliance went unnoticed for the first few years of married life. But now… now, I know this thing, (what ever it is called) is perfect. It tapers to a fine point on the end, perfect for scraping up things like scrambled eggs. Its odd shape makes it perfect for stirring the entire bottom of a pan of sauce. It’s perfect for stirring pasta. It has no equal when sautéing onions in butter in cast iron. It can serve things like rice just as well as a spoon.

I love it.

When I cook at other peoples houses I always wish I had brought it with me. When I wash the dishes I never put it in the dishwasher because it would take too long to get clean and I might need it. That’s how much I love it.

Or should I say loved it.

My beloved bamboo, thing (Help? What is it called? Anyone?). Now looks like this:

And the mouse war, it’s ON!

Sadly the mice are already winning—-

–We interrupt this post with breaking news!—

Upon going to check the mouse trap set previously in the day when the damaged “thing” was found Jessie discovered a rat under her sink.

—We now return you to your previously scheduled post.—

Earlier today I set a mouse trap under the sink. Shortly after starting this post I checked on it – tripped and empty. So before relaying by how much the mice were already winning I went to check again…

…and there was the rat.

The rat was facing away from me in the cupboard under the sink, I was peering in the door and we were both frozen. I had a rat, not moving, and I couldn’t come up with a good way to kill it. So I did what any self respecting house wife would do. I grabbed the rolling pin off the counter and tried to smash it while it ran around in circles under the sink, then screamed like a girl when it came out by my bare toes. Now I had the rat corned in the kitchen and my toes were feeling awfully vulnerable. It was time for reinforcements. PIPER! Had the dog out of her warm bed under the covers at a run. Piper skidded into the kitchen and when I yelled “GET THE RAT” to my amazement, she did! When it was dead she accepted my praise, followed me to the garbage outside to see it thrown out, barked once at the night and then went back to bed.

My dog rules.

So now the mouse and rat war is on.

Trouble.

We’ve beaten the mice in winters past.

The rats are on a winning streak.

But they chewed the wrong kitchen implement this time, I’m serious now.

It’s on rats, ITS ON!

Halloween Hater Part 2

Nov2

Another Halloween has come and gone and I can’t say that I’ve converted into a fan.

There have been Halloween’s in the past that were worse.

-There was the year my roommate got into a bar fight and got punched in the face. She only weighed about 100 lbs.

-There was the year I got food poisoning. Thankfully that coincided with the year the swim team was stalking the streets of Stevens Point looking for the wrestling(?) team over some infraction I have since forgotten but it involved a lot of crying girls. I missed it all and only heard about it the next day, no big loss.

-There was the year I tried to avoid all Halloween related activities. Piper as a very large puppy gave me a black eye that night.

Last night while there were no catastrophe’s I’m not sure the amount of fun had was worth… well, all the rest of it.

The problem stemmed from the fact that I have a three year old. (If you are unfamiliar with daily life with a three year old or need a refresher Motherhood Uncensored described it fairly well today in Congrats on your 3-year old!) The three year old had a problem with her costume. It started about an hour before we were reading to go trick or treating and it went like this…

I don’t want one. I do want one. I want to be Pooh. I want to be a fairy. I want to be a princess. I want to be a fairy princess. (At this point I gently nudged us away from the princess line of thought since in the hours before trick or treating I stepped on and smashed her crown, shhhhh don’t tell!) Fairy. I don’t want wings. I don’t want a skirt. I don’t want a wand. I do want all those things. No, I want flowers not a wand. I want all the flowers. I want no flowers. I don’t want shoes.

… get the picture?

Meanwhile I was dressing Clara. She doesn’t talk. Some days I love that about her.

Finally I assembled an uncooperative lamb and a fairy in the yard: As I took pictures of the girls in the yard (quickly before someone decided to take her wings back off) I discovered something. Both real sheep and pretend sheep take about two minutes once they hit our property to get burrs in their wool.(No Clara is not picking her nose in all these pictures she’s picking the scab from getting a gigantic sliver in her face after falling in the garden, but that’s a different story)

As I deburred Clara we waited for John. We were waiting because, as everyone knows, the best time to butcher sheep is just before you go trick or treating with your kids…at the last minute he came running to the house changed his clothes looked at me and said, “Now, do I have any blood on my face?” I tried to convince by color blind husband that this was the one night it really didn’t matter… He didn’t care, something about real blood vs. fake blood… in any case we loaded up and headed into town.

When we got there the girls had an hours worth of fun filling their buckets full of candy. That night while John was back outside skinning sheep in the dark (talk about creepy Halloween activities) and I was putting Ivy to bed I tried to decided if it was worth it.

You know, I’m still not sure, but I can tell you with out a doubt that I love mini Milky Ways!

The Evolution of a Blog

Oct31

In April when I started blogging on Blogger I was embarrassed and didn’t tell anyone about it.

By May I had moved to this site and started a second blog of book reviews.

In June I sloowwwwllllyyy started working on a blog for our farm (yet to be revealed, but much closer to completion!).

It took till September for me to fully come out of my blogging closet and admit to my entire e-mail address book that I had a blog.

Now here we are almost November(!) and I’m making more changes.

As of, well I guess right now (so if you are here and everything looks all wonky give it a bit I’m mid-construction!) The Books Behind the Willows site is getting incorporated into the Behind the Willows site.

This is something that I wanted to do from the get go but at the time I couldn’t come up with a way to set it up that made me happy. Now I think I have finally come up with a plan that is workable. Here are the main changes:

-Archives have turned into Behind the Willows 2010 and will only contain archives of non-book review posts.

-While the book reviews will now show up on the main blog page all the titles will be categorized as before (including all the old posts), now to be found under Books Behind the Willows up on the top menu.

-In the side bar will now be a book topic “cloud” and a regular post topic “cloud.”

-Everyone will be required to read and give a two page book report on each book selected.

-Just kidding, I hated two page book reports, they always gave away the ending and too much of the plot. I never give away the end and I try to keep plot details sparse. The idea is to let you know if I think the book is a worthwhile read not to give so many details that there is no longer a point in reading it!

That’s it!

Let me know if I massively (or minorly) screw something up in the change over.

Keep leaving comments, I love them!

Thank you all for reading!

Halloween Hater

Oct30

I hate Halloween. It is just too scary for me!

What a wimp, I know, whatever, I can’t help it.

I just have no desire to purposefully scare myself. Scary movies, no thank you. In the brief years we had a TV, I used to try not to watch anything around this time of year. Partly because even regular shows tried to sneak Halloween in, but mostly to avoid the commercials. Even trying to watch the news, or some other innocuous show, ads for horror movies and overly creepy shows would be on everywhere. Some people have said that perhaps growing up without a TV, I was never “desensitized” to such things. I am still at a loss as to why it would be a good thing to want to watch horror movies, shows, scary ads on television, or read most of Stephen King’s books… I don’t even like creepy yard decorations. In addition to the fact that I think it’s all disgusting, disturbing, not to mention oft times down right frightening on first seeing (or let’s be honest, accidentally seeing….. I avoid these things like the plague) Halloween “stuff,” it’s the nightmares that get me.

For example last night I spent a super fun evening with friends doing one of the only things related to Halloween that I do enjoy, carving pumpkins. John and I were way out of our -triangle-circle-oval-face- league with our pumpkin carving expert friends with their scoopers, saws, books and mad carvings skills. Check out this eyeball!

As I was picking out patterns I rejected one book completely joking the patterns were way too scary for me and bound to give me nightmares.

Apparently I shouldn’t have joked about it.

Maybe my comment gave my subconscious a nasty idea, maybe I am just that wimpy about scary things. Whatever the case last night I had a grade A nightmare, complete with zombie like creatures, faces being ripped off, epic zombie battles, fire breathing dragons, space travel, spies, traitors, and one attacking wild boar. As I struggled to get back to sleep without falling back into the dream I eventually woke John up and made him talk to me with all the lights on. My -I-never-remember-my-dreams-much-less-have-nightmares- husband is fairly supportive in the middle of the night but I think it only strengthens his case that I am indeed a “crackpot.” Unfortunately John’s patience wore out before I was over my nightmare and he went back to bed. It was then I discovered an upside to crying babies and a kid who plays musical beds in the middle of the night…

…you can’t have a nightmare if you’re not sleeping!

And that was just from carving pumpkins.

I hate Halloween.

Conversations with Ivy

Oct29

Today we had a man come out to give us an estimate on replacing a few of the gutters on our house.

He had a little conversation with Ivy that went like this:

Gutter Man: “Hi, I like your boots.”

Ivy: “Oh, I don’t have boobs, see they are just little.”

Gutter Man: “No, booTs! I like your booTs.”

Havin’ A Problem

Oct28

This morning as I went about the business of starting the day I was shadowed as per usual by my extraordinarily inquisitive elder child. Since it was still early in the day I was happily answering all questions directed my way. (This differs from in the evening when I attempt to run for the hills whenever I see her pursed lips start to form that “w” sound. ) As I was getting dressed one of the questions fired off was an inquiry about the purpose of my bra. So I told her. She looked at me and said:

“Are your boobs havin’ a problem Mom?”

Now I like to imagine that I have regained the general semblance of my pre-child body, and that what has remained permanently altered is a worthwhile trade. Yet as I looked down at the objects in question, realizing that they in no way, shape, function or form resemble anything that used to be on my body five years ago. I had to admit that yes, they just might be “havin’ a problem!”

I’m Out

Oct28

It is three AM and I’m out.

I’m out of patience. I’m out of tricks. I’m out of calming ideas. I’m out of serenity. All that’s left is the tired grumpy mom portion of me and one inconsolable one year old. Since I have learned through experience that an upset, cranky, irritated mother does nothing but make the situation worse, after an hour of trying to get Clara back to sleep I’ve abandoned her to figure it out herself.

Sometimes, it is best just to walk away.

Laying in bed listening to her did nothing for my sleep or my mood. My thoughts were ranging between visions of running away to a quite place with soft feather beds where there are no children, dogs, alarms, phones or insane wind gusts to disturb my sleep, to contemplating homicide because John (after a Clara calming attempt of his own) was sleeping through everything quite soundly. I could tell from the sounds of the snoring.

So again, sometimes it is best just to walk away.

Instead of pretending I’m getting sleep I came downstairs and found this picture. A happy Clara with the classic nose wrunkle:

I’m not sure what it is about that nose wrunkle but it’s contagious. Clara smiles at someone, anyone, and they all wrinkle up there noses and smile right back. I’ve seen family, friends, checkout ladies at the grocery store, strangers at the park, all grin and wrunkle up their own noses. Which makes me smile and wrinkle up mine.

Now with a happy thought, and quite noises from above I’m back off to bed!

Warm Fuzzies

Oct26

Today’s weather was icky.

I have no better word for it. With the 60mph winds, sporadic rain, and overcast sky, it was just icky out. As I watched objects fly across the yard, including shingles (though so far none from the house), I was thinking that this was not the kind of fall weather I love. Then as the nasty weather kept us indoors and I tackled a mountain of dirty laundry I was thinking that this was not the kind of activity I love.

Today was a day that needed a bit of fun, something warm and fuzzy to brighten a nasty day.

Luckily for us the call came this afternoon that our warm and fuzzy day brighteners were just a post office away!

Baby chicks are way more fun than dirty laundry!

Key Problem

Oct25

I have a problem with keys.

The kind of problem where I forget them.

The kind of problem where I drop them.

The kind of problem where I leave them odd places.

The kind of problem where I lose them.

Sometimes Ivy pretends she’s going somewhere. She’ll say goodbye and “leave” out the door. Then she comes back and says “Oh, I forgot my keys!” gets pretend keys and then “leaves” again.

I have that kind of key problem.

John and I lived in Rockford after we first got married. We lived in the bottom half of a house and our landlady lived above us. I regularly lost my key and locked myself out. Eventually our landlady hid a key outside the house for me so I didn’t have to come borrow hers every time I was locked out again.

That kind of a key problem.

When we first moved here I locked myself out so often I hid a key in the chicken coop.

That kind of key problem.

I got a territorial Great Dane, stopped locking the door and life was good.

So today when due to unusual circumstances I locked myself out of the house I was not surprised to see that I was missing my usual set of keys (the one with a house key) and only had the spare key to the truck. Since a few months ago the rats made off with my spare chicken coop key I was left with two options: 1) Breaking screens off windows until I found an unlocked window, while yelling at my territorial dog that it was ME and to settle down! or 2) Drive to get John’s key which was thirty minutes away. I decided to take a trip into town. A few extenuating circumstances and two and half hours later I was back with a house key.

John’s house key…

My husband is fully aware of my key problem.

Honey Time

Oct23

*I originally wrote this for my farm website/blog.

What farm website?

Exactly.

While it has been in the works for awhile it’s not up and running yet, but I thought you all might enjoy pictures of our honey extracting this summer. Someday you’ll be able to see the original at htttp://thefarmbehindthewillows.com , but not today! *

We had our big honey harvest this past weekend and had our best harvest so far! Since we only have a big extracting day once a year it’s a fun event to look forward too even though it’s a very hot and sticky job!

I tried to take a few photos for a step by step extracting process but you’ll have to pardon their fuzziness I couldn’t keep my camera from fogging up in the hot humid room!

The first step is to take the frames of honey and cut or scratch the caps off the cells that hold in the honey. On the left is my Mom (who also keeps bees) using a hot knife to cut the caps and on the left is Stephanie (my bee keeping partner) scratching off any cappings that my mom missed.The wax that is cut off falls down into the big silver tank where there is a mesh grate so that the honey can drain out of the cappings. Here is a close up of the knife work.

Next the frames get set into the extractors. These have cages inside to hold the frames on end and handles on top that spin the baskets which then spins the honey out. Spin them on one side, flip them over, spin on the other and they are done.

The honey is then drained out of the bottom of the extractors into buckets.

After this the honey is poured through a cloth filter to remove any debris (bits of wax and a few bee pieces) that are still in it. The filter is inside a modified five gallon bucket with a fresh bucket underneath.