4-9-11 Saturday

A busy day for sure. A rainy cold morning turned into a lovely HOT sunny afternoon. To quote my friend Kristi, “Oh happy day!!!!!”

:) Yes this is typical!

This was actually Friday night during Bible time. So cute!

 

This morning I taught Sarah how to make our Sunday morning egg casserole. She did a good job, and Josh got to help too.

Chicks came!!!!!!! We’re missing about 60, so those must be the ones in Oregon, but at least we got some of them…although they’re pretty weak. Hopefully they’ll bounce back and thrive.

 

 

Lunch was a family favorite – stromboli, or stuffed sandwich bread. With our regular bread dough, we roll out rectangles, 1# each, and fill them with vegetables, meat, and cheese. This one is ham, sausage, and mozzarella cheese; another one also had peppers, onions, and mushrooms. Slice and dip into spaghetti sauce. YUMMMMM!!!!! And everybody knows everything tastes better outside, right?!! It was a beautiful day for a picnic!

Grandpa Kaiser helped cut potatoes.

 

It was kind of funny, because last night Dad & I were talking about today’s plans, wondering if it was too early to plant potatoes and when we planted them last year. I checked back on the blog – and it was April 9! In spite of the rain we had overnight, it was ok to plant so we did although we didn’t get them all in.

Everyone gets to help (except Joshua who has to take a nap).

Happy Birthday Aunt Sarah and Jewel!

8-27-10 Spaghetti Sauce Factory

Yesterday I was overwhelmed, as I sometimes am, at the thought of doing all our Friday jobs, spelling tests with Jacob, Kate, and Ben, school/preschool with Sarah and Jewel, picking up apples, AND saucing up the 7 or so dishpans of tomatoes sitting on the basement table BEFORE I took Levi to the dr. in Peoria in the afternoon. It looked kind of like an impossible feat. Once I made the decision to wait until Saturday for the tomatoes, and I’m not sure exactly how this works, but mentally I took pressure off myself to do it all, and then I had no problem doing – and even enjoyed – that very thing which so overwhelmed me last night when I decided to go to plan B. So. I woke up this morning planning to do just a couple of kettles and be done by noon, well before I needed to leave for Peoria; we would maybe finish up a few kettles in the evening. I really like to have the girls free on Saturdays when I know Dad is doing a project that they can be a part of, and I really didn’t want to be doing tomatoes on Saturday if I could get them done on Friday. So we started….and it went so smoothly, and we were having fun, and we just kept going, and going, and the other kids were doing their Friday jobs, and Joshua cooperated by being happy, and I did spelling here and there, and we just kept at it, and kept at it, and we got ‘er done! I shut the pressure cooker off at 1:20 and Levi and I left for Dr. Shah at 1:30. The other 8 kids had their instructions and did very well while we were gone, and thankfully we had a wonderful report from Dr. Shah – everything looks fine; come back in a year. What music to my ears. I read to girls and did some school with them when we got home, and I’m still kind of puzzling how we got so much done that by 5:00 when Levi was grilling chicken for supper, ALL 8 kids were either reading or being read to (Joshua was napping). The house was tidy, the yard was borderline immaculate, all the day’s projects were complete, the weather was gorgeous, no one was spatting (yes, sometimes even reading a book can cause friction if someone takes someone else’s chair or book or something), and life was very peaceful…I think it might have something to do with the fact that we’re going on vacation in a week (quite a strong motivator for cooperation and diligence). Life is definitely not always this idyllic, but it sure was nice while it lasted, all 60 minutes of it. We had supper outside, all 11 of us and 1,128 flies that came uninvited, and then Dad and I went on a walk. Home to play catch, Frisbee, swing, 4wheel, dirtbike, trampoline, etc. etc. Piled in the van for a Morton errand, home again for books in beds for littles until lights out.

*****

Yesterday morning I got these out of the freezer to thaw – they need a good 24 hours before they’re ready to sauce. *For the record (so I don’t forget) – the biggest clear plastic tub completely fills up the 12 quart kettle.*

Draining them before putting them in the kettle…critical step in making a nice thick sauce.

Onions, peppers, and spices ready for the kettle.

Ready to cook.

Here we go…after it boiled we added more tomatoes to fill the kettle.

Ready to sauce, about an hour (? didn’t time it) later.

Into the dishpan so we can get the next kettle cooking right away.

To the basement stove.

Joshua REALLY liked the fresh spaghetti sauce – a boy after his brothers’ heart. Jesse and Jacob both have always really enjoyed fresh sauce.

Kate is breaking up and bagging the frozen potatoes which she shredded solo yesterday (we boil up all the stuck ones which will spoil quickly if we don’t use them).

Another project done…this time all by KATE! Thank you Kaitlyn!

Lunch in the treehouse.

While I was gone Tori took this picture.

We came home to find everyone snacking on watermelon. So far no one seems to be tired of it – and we haven’t opened a bad one yet, either, which is pretty amazing. First thing I did was take the last jars out of the pressure cooker and clean up the basement kitchen – now that’s a pretty sight.

Reading time. Ok, so no more chairs in the treehouse, but since they were there I snapped some pics.

Historically Jacob has not been an avid reader (actually he hasn’t liked it at all), so this is a fabulous picture – he’s reading a funny part aloud to me amidst his own laughter. And yes, it was funny and I laughed right with him…both about the funny part and his appreciation of it!

Jesse was reading online in the house, which was quite stuffy and much hotter than outside, which is why we had supper outside.

That’s it.

8-26-10 Thursday

Just a (somewhat) calm day, if you can call any day around here calm. School in the morning went past lunch; after a wonderful walk with Karol I finished up with Jacob then did Ben’s piano lesson which I forgot to do yesterday. School done, did an errand in Mackinaw, and home to check email and blog for a few minutes. Discovered a VERY ODD phenomenon – the video which I posted Tuesday has disappeared from our blog. I know it was published because someone commented about it in an email. Levi saw the email and went to our blog to see the video and it was gone, just GONE! How can that be? No one has the password to my edit page except me and a few family members here, who I know didn’t delete it because they don’t even know how. Any ideas from anyone? I still have the video in my files here, so I thought I’d wait a few days and try to post it again. Anyway. Tori and Kate were busy almost all day for me, drying apples, helping with food, watching littles, and so on; today was calm but very busy if that’s possible. Sarah was thankfully back to normal, and since the kids were outside most of today and yesterday, I have high hopes she didn’t share whatever it was she had. Supper was a little late, then Dad and I went on a walk while the kids did dishes and put away the potato screens for the year. We saw our neighbor take off in his Ultra light as we headed north (used our road as a runway); we were almost back home when I wondered why he kept circling around us. I should have known – he was waiting for US to get off his runway so he could land! Home to play a little catch, swinging, 4wheeling, and of course construction in the potato patch. Inside for baths and Bibletime, and then beds for all (except Dad and me).

A few pictures of the day:

Shredding potatoes for the freezer.

Summer’s over – school has started – so Aunt Joyce came to read again.

Jesse brought some corn home from Uncle Randy’s; the kids were so excited to have it to shell.

This guy was flying around with 2 other little airplanes – like our kids have more fun riding bikes together, I guess it’s more fun to fly together too. This is about when we realized he was going over our heads to land behind us, where we were just walking.

Fuzzy photography, but still a neat picture.

Our walk ended, as it often does, with a walk up through the orchard. These 2 little trees are 2006 Stark Fuji Semi-Dwarfs, and this is so great because this is the first year they’ve put on apples. Around here, Fuji apples are like gold; we call them candy apples because they are so sweet. So we’ve been eagerly awaiting our own – ask anyone who’s eaten a fresh orchard Fuji – they are many many times better than store apples which have been in storage for months. Usually we get some from a commercial orchard just because they’re so good, but at about $30 per bushel (if I remember right from last year) we’re hoping these little trees grow and grow and produce and produce. And this is just a little start, but it is a start, and for that we’re glad. Of course they aren’t fully ripe for a couple months yet, but barring hailstones, high water, or hungry bears, we should have at least a bucket which will be about 5 or so apples each [smile]. Can’t wait!

From a photography standpoint, I have yet to figure out why the first picture is so much better than the second – I think the second one is overexposed, but I don’t know why. Still learning…

Mmmmm…..

This is an old Jon-A-Red tree that Grandpa planted 30(?) years ago. They won’t be fully ripe until the middle of September, although they’re edible now but pretty tart yet. They’ll sweeten up quite a bit more before we pick them.

This little Stark Braestar Semi-Dwarf is only 2 years old.

2000 Red Delicious won’t be ready until late September. For the record, a fresh orchard Red Delicious apple is NOTHING like the bright-red-painted-thick-skin-which-leaches-into-the-mealy-apple-making-it-pink-streaked Red Delicious from the local grocery store. Nope, not even remotely the same.

2000 Yellow Delicious. Last year (I think – maybe it was ‘08? or ‘07? I forget.) we got about a bushel and a half from this one tree – needless to say they didn’t last long. They are so good! (Keep in mind that’s not a terrible lot of apples because they are so big. A bushel box fills up fast.)

This 2008 Stark Grandgala Dwarf doesn’t look the best – we’re not sure why it looks so spindly and has so few leaves. We picked this one lone apple it produced – the other side was bad/moldy. After Dad and I had a few delicious bites, the pheasants got the rest of it.

Dad’s favorite trees – the walnuts we transplanted from the levee tree, maybe 5 or 6 years ago (?). They were less than a foot tall then and are now 10+ feet tall.

On to the Morton building to see the final potato crop.

Did you count 26? Plus there were 5 more not pictured = grand total 31 Bushels of Potatoes! We have NEVER had this many potatoes before! The red box on the left is Grandpa’s Red Norlands, the other reds are our Red Pontiacs, and the white (don’t ask me why they’re called white – they look brown to me) are our Kennebecs, which are the ‘keepers’ – they’ll keep until next May or so with careful management. We’re thinking we started with 25# of Kennebec seed potatoes and 10# of Pontiacs, although I can’t find the receipt or the record of it.

That’s it; good night.

p.s. found this on the camera Friday morning. Cute!