While working on last week’s “A Day in the Life” piece, I found myself drawn to the little odds and ends sitting around the house. Those objects that often go unnoticed because we see them each and every day, yet it is these objects that make our house a home. Today I share with you some of the odds and ends of our home on this sixth day of September.
Amid the labyrinth of power lines and close proximity to our neighbors, we are slowly but surely developing for ourselves a bit of a suburban homestead paradise all our own. When we took possession of this property four years ago, we were given a perfectly blank slate to work with because the previous owners had just filled in their in-ground pool. This left us with a lovely, flat, fenced-in canvas that we are now able to glean a great deal of food from.
{Before. Late July 2012.}
The gardening space we previously had contains 12 4X8 foot raised beds and one 4X16 foot raised bed. Then just outside that space we have a smattering of lavender and rhubarb and some heirloom perennial flowers. Last year we added 2 apple trees, an asparagus and strawberry patch, raspberry bramble and an herb garden to the mix.
And now, here we are…
I am so thrilled by how the space turned out. I must say I was a little skeptical for a while there, when the vision in my head did not seem to match what lay before me. But with a bit of digging, a little building and a whole lot of hauling, I am satisfied to say the very least.
We used the beautiful circa 1850 barn timbers I mentioned in a previous post to create a more permanent border for the existing asparagus and strawberry patch. We used the remaining timbers to create a brand new perennial vegetable bed that will soon be home to more rhubarb (rhubarb wine here I come!), asparagus and Jerusalem artichokes.
We then added three additional 4X8 foot raised beds and one 4X4 bed. This fall these beds will be loaded with cold hardy annual vegetables that we then hope to cover with a hoop house of some sort. We are crossing our fingers this will give us delicious, fresh vegetables year round. We also plan to add some gorgeous tree stumps around the fire pit for prime seating for those s’more-roasting evenings right around the corner.
This past weekend we opted to stay close to home because many of us in our little household of four were getting over the lovely beginning-of-the-school-year sniffles. It always seems so odd to me to have a cold in the middle of a ninety degree heat wave, yet that was our particular situation this weekend. So with lemon tea and honey in hand, we set to having a fun-filled weekend none the less.
The first pumpkins of the season made an appearance at Friday’s market, so we had to buy just a couple. The girls worked hard all of Saturday morning, digging out the seeds and preparing for some roasted goodness.
While the girls worked hard on the pumpkins, I got busy making my homemade granola. We were able to purchase some delicious home-grown oats from Hazard Free Farms, which helped to make the granola extra yummy.
I also tried another treasure from Grandpa Dit’s recipe box: piccalilli. I must say, standing in the kitchen over a giant pot of boiling veggies on a ninety-seven degree day was not one of my brightest ideas, but the final result was quite tasty.
And I chopped the day away, getting food ready to put by in the freezer for the winter months. Andrea Hazzard, from Hazzard Free Farm, gave us a great suggestion for preserving watermelon. Pour boiling water over a bit of honey, making honey water. After cooling down the honey water, pour it over diced watermelon until all watermelon is covered. Then freeze it for enjoyment in the winter months.
Rajah enjoyed finding a new hiding spot. Oh my.
And Tyler enjoyed some brewing time. He concocted a batch of caramel creme ale. Yummy.
I have also been hard at work in the backyard, continuing with our garden expansion. I am so excited to bring you the finished product in tomorrow’s post. Hooray! See you then.
My children have an addition. They cannot seem to get enough Master Chef action on Hulu. My oldest especially, wants to audition for the next season of the show, or at the very least, start her own restaurant in the very near future. In fact, she recently asked the owner of our favorite local restaurant if she could live there. Precious.
So to curb their enthusiasm, I told each girl she could prepare her own dish to serve at dinner. And I must say, I was thoroughly shocked at the result. This five-year-old and three-year-old created two different dishes that not only tasted good, but in the words of Gordon Ramsay were “visually stunning.” It is truly fascinating to me what the minds of small children are capable of when left to run free without boundaries or restrictions.
This past week has been one of the hardest in my role as Momma. I cannot quite articulate what it is, but I have just felt as if the wind was taken out of my sails. I am unsure if it is the fact that my oldest daughter is off to school, or if it is the realization that summer is quickly drawing to a close, or maybe it is a combination of both. Whatever the reason, I yearned for something, anything, to pull me out from beneath this rubble.
It wasn’t until early this morning, when my two little ones sat on the deck, still in their pajamas, watching the sun rise above the roof of our house, that the clouds seemed to part in my mind.
I am truly blessed to have these little ones before me. To have a husband who works so very hard so that I can stay home and be the homemaker that I truly believe I was meant to become. To have a lovely roof over my head that shelters my family. It is with humbling gratitude and a sense of renewal that I face my day and week ahead.
Wishing each and every one of you a wonderful week filled with gratitude for the blessings in your life.
At this moment I am…
~thrilled that it appears we will have a bit of a raspberry crop this year after all.
~watching two pajama-clad girls running around the yard on this beautiful morning.
~proud of myself for overcoming some major fears this past weekend in The Warrior Dash.
~tearful about Wednesday, the day my oldest baby will head off to all-day kindergarten.
~saddened that this week marks the end of summer.
~getting that itch for fall and everything that comes with it: leaves, apple cider, football and woolens.
~excited to pick the next piece for my book club 🙂 I’m thinking of choosing this one…One of my top three favorite books of all time.
~thankful for a lovely afternoon yesterday with a wonderful group of women and their families.
~wishing you all a wonderful week filled with fabulous memories!
We have yet another project in the works. In an effort to add more perennial and annual growing space, we are again (for the forth year in a row) expanding our garden.
We are trying to keep renovation costs to a minimum so we are repurposing materials we already had on our property. We were also lucky enough to obtain reclaimed timbers from an old barn to create some raised beds. (Remember the ones we were going to use for a new dining room floor? Enter new idea.)
As you can see, it is definitely still a work in progress. Hopefully, I will have pictures of the completed project soon.
Mom (standing with hands on hips, a bit overwhelmed): What am I going to do with all of these vegetables?
Five-year-old Preservation Expert: Mommy, there is a lot of stuff here.
Mom (hands still on hips, a bit more overwhelmed): Yeah. Got it. I’m still trying to figure out what to make with all of it.
Five-year-old Preservation Expert (with a look of absolute clarity): I know! I think we need to have a canning day! Like, a whole day when all we do is can and freeze stuff for winter.
And so continues a day in the life with a very young child that just gets it. Of course. Why wouldn’t we put some of this food by for when the bounty is less? Sometimes it takes youth to open our eyes to what is right in front of us. Wonderful suggestion my darling girl.
Here is a walk through our day of food preservation…
{A wonderful new idea I got from this magazine. What a fabulous idea!}
{Salsa, salsa and more salsa}
{Got to love hot pink fingers for a day.}
{I struck gold this week! I found my grandfather’s recipe box in the back of my parents’ pantry. It contains all of his old canning recipes, including his bread and butter pickles, my favorite of all his canning greats.}
One of my favorite times of the year has arrived, and that my friends is peach time! I love fresh peaches so much in fact that I only eat them when they are in season, in their absolute prime, in the middle of the August heat.
We buy our peaches locally from a family fruit farm where they grow all of their own peaches in their orchard, and they are to die for. After the market last week, we ran home and got to work on my favorite pie on earth: Grandma Dit’s Peach Pie.
I still remember being in about forth grade and I was home sick from school because I was running a high fever. It was late fall, the time when most schoolchildren begin to fall ill, and I found myself buried beneath the afghan on the couch, watching reruns of Saved By The Bell. My mom asked me if there was anything she could get me to eat that would make me feel any better. I told her the only thing that would heal what was ailing me was Grandma’s peach pie. There were no fresh peaches available in late fall in Rockford, Illinois, so my mom did what any good mother would do. She improvised. She went to the grocery store and bought a pre-made peach pie. I took one bite, spit it out and said, “This is not right. It’s not the same. Never mind.”
I don’t know why this story has stuck with me for so long, but I think it is because there is no replacement for real, in-season peach pie, using my grandmother’s recipe. So here goes…
I make my own crust (recipe found here). Then I fill it with delicious sliced peaches.
I add about 10 tiny dollops of butter on top of the peaches, and then create a mixture of 1 cup sugar, 4 tablespoons flour and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. I scoop this mixture over the peaches and butter so the entire pie is coated. I then add just a touch (about 1/4 cup) of water to the pie. This creates a delicious custard-like consistency. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes and then reduce the heat to 325 degrees for 45 minutes.
I truly hope you enjoy this recipe that I hold so close to my heart. Enjoy!
Here in the Fagan house, we LOVE mushrooms. Because of our love of this delicious treat, we have tried our hand at growing mushrooms multiple times with limited to no success.
But, it appears the tides have turned. And it all began with a roll of toilet paper.
My brother-in-law surprised my three year old (perhaps the largest fungi fan in the house…seriously!) with a very creative birthday present: A TeePee Pink Oyster Mushroom Kit from Fungi Perfecti.
Since we had attempted mushroom growing in the past with limited luck, I was skeptical to begin the process again. But low and behold…it worked! We now have beautiful PINK oyster mushrooms, growing out of a roll of toilet paper!
I would highly recommend trying this project with young kids (and let’s be honest…big kids too). It was so interested to learn about the entire growing process of fungi, and then to watch the mushrooms grow (and grow VERY quickly) right in front of their eyes.
{We took step by step pictures of the entire growing process. Enjoy! }
{After three weeks in a dark cabinet.}
{After sitting in the fridge for 2 days to start the fruiting process, we then let it sit on the table in our dining room and after 2 days this is what happened.}
Making of a Home 