Town House Homestead Tuesday

First day of Spring and it is still so cold. I think more snow is expected too. All we can do is take it one day at a time. Right? My blog posts seem to be a bit boring lately and not very colorful. I cannot wait for the gardens to awaken and bloom. 

For now, as my daughter says, if we want green we can look at the bathroom as work continues. She thought that the sink area would be the hardest job, but it appears that the window is requiring a lot of work that was left for us to do after it was replaced. Molding was not put back right, lumber they used was different sizes, and neatness was not their cup of tea. Lots of filling and sanding to get it to the quality job she wants it to be. 

With all the snow and cold I've been making lots of warm winter meals. Thanksgiving casserole and Shepherds pie are two favorites and stretch a ways.

I've also been using the abundance to fill the pantry. This is turkey and turkey broth. I will have it ready for when we need to make quick meals or we are strapped for grocery money. Planning ahead means we can do more to fix up the homestead.

There are signs all around that Spring weather should be on the way. Pots and trays for more seeds to be started. My main goal this summer is the pollination garden and a couple of raised beds. So far we are on course to meet this goal.

The seeds are sprouting in egg cartons and Solo cups. Mostly flowers, but I have peppers started too. So hoping they sprout this week. Tomatoes will be next. Most everything else will be planted in containers again this year, or in the two new raised beds.

This is Tobias. He's a German Shepherd and he came to play with Hunter. He is much older and put Hunter in his place a few times.

This is Kayia and she came along with Tobias. She is nine years old, also a German Shepherd, and wasn't having much of Hunter's child play, so Tobias guarded her for most of the visit. She has arthritis in her hip and running around with Hunter was not going to happen, but he was exposed to more dogs and that's what he needs. He is growing up. Still very rambunctious, but the change to adult is happening. 

Hunter was the little guy. At the end of the day we heard that Kayia and Tobias were as zonked out as Hunter. It was a good visit. So that's what is going on here at the Town House Homestead. Lots of work, lots of fun, and most assuredly lots of growth. Thank you for stopping by and have a great week.

Town House Homestead Tuesday.

Well I must say, the the milder temperatures were nice while they lasted. Today starts a long streak of colder snowy days, but work continues. Now that we've taken some time off, (inserting laugh here), we are starting new projects and getting back to the homestead things that need to be done while we are shut up inside, or at work.

The only one happy with this windfall of snow is Hunter, but he's learned to come in when he gets cold without being summoned by a treat, so this is progress. It took him long enough to learn how to be out by himself, so it's great to see him adjust. He's one year old this week and his birthday present is going to be doggy day care. Just so I can work a day here and there around the house. He also needs to socialize with other dogs.

I love that my friends and family know me well enough to give me gifts of meaning. These are some vintage cooking and canning items I got for Christmas. 

It was my goal to finish this queen size scrap quilt before the end of January. I completed it a week ahead of schedule and it is now on my bed and keeping me warm. It's taken almost three years to complete. 

My daughter's house, our home, is sixty years old this year and she got it as a flipped house. It was not done well at all and a lot of things we knew we would be fixing. This was the condition behind the bathroom sink. Not even any grout in the floor tiles they put in, and pitiful painting around the sink if any. No one would see it I guess, but they don't know us. 

We are do it yourself kind of gals and in one week, working a little here and a little there, it's looking better than the original pink.

We are working on fixing the grout and sealing things so that the sink can go back, but since my daughter is ahead of schedule with the renovation, she is going to complete this nook of the bathroom before it does. Yes this is slowing down to us, but it's the best time of year to work indoors. 

While she's been working on the bathroom, I have been catching up on some canning. It started with orange juice and apple cider that had to be put up before they were lost.I had a good stash of vegetable scraps in the freezer and for the past four mornings have been busy boiling them into stock and canning it. I ended up with twenty six quarts of stock for the deep pantry and all of the boiled vegetable that were strained out, are now in the compost bin. 

Today there are canning jars on every counter in the kitchen in every stage of canning. From empty and new  to fresh from the dishwasher or waiting for a label, or to come out of the canner itself. I live a canning jar life and it has cut down on our use of plastics and waste. I use my jars to vacuum seal dry goods and hold spices too. It's great to buy items on sale and know they can be kept for a while. 

These are some older jars that I keep on the counter for my garlic and shallots. The jars can't be used for canning any more, so I use them for storage. 

And finally last week I received this in the mail. It's a wall mounted plug in heater. I won it in a Face Book contest. I enter those on occasion, but this one was just a share and I did it because other's were. I was surprised for sure, but skeptical because I have been told I won things before and never received the prize. Well it came and I am so excited. Some time soon the insulation goes in and I am going to mount it in my seed starting room so they will be warm and I may have more success this year. I was going to buy heat pads for the shelves, but this will save me from spending. We'll see what happens. 

That's what's been going on here at the Town House Homestead. Thank you for stopping by for a visit and have a great week. Remember to share your abundance and love. Doing for others always brings it's rewards. 

Town House Homestead Tuesday

Well here we are in 2018 starting new again. The severe temperatures took the last of the surviving bees, but we will begin again in early spring 2019. We will take the time to plant a stronger pollination garden and prepare better. Although we are saddened, we did out best. It warmed up enough to bring the hive box inside so that we could clean it, and retrieve whatever honey and wax for our use. Needless to say everything is frozen.

My daughter managed to clean one side of a frame and simmer down the frozen wax and honey. The bee shaped jar we found thrifting, and she promised it would hold the very first honey she got from her own bees. We will be able to fill this jar and maybe another. We are not sure of the amount of wax we will have, but all will not be lost.

There is canning on the horizon. Soups, broths, and stocks from the stock up in the freezer. This has been a blessing for us because we actually eat what we can. I like my deep pantry. I also use canning jars to vacuum seal everything from cooking and baking supplies to dog food. Extra work, but safer storage.

You know it's winter and a time to slow down when a shoe box of knitting is on the end table. A pair of socks here and there and small things made from leftover scraps. We try to use everything if we can. I also have a stack of patterns that I'm searching through for my next winter knitting project.

My quilt is closer to being done. Much more to do, but I'm making progress. My goal is to have it on my bed by the end of this month. I'm just hoping I have made enough binding for it because my scrap pile of this fabric is quite small.

Yes, this little guy and I had a good Christmas. I'm still working hard at the bonding with him, but he's learned to leave my bare feet alone, not chase my feet, not touch my sewing or knitting and he tries hard to listen. Our major goal with him is to stop the play biting and jumping, but everyone tells me he's still young. Hunter will be one year old February first. 

I hope that everyone is surviving the cold winter. I have a bad case of Spring fever today, but I have seeds to organize and lots to keep me busy. Thank you for stopping by and have a great new year.  

Town House Homestead Tuesday

Spring has been popping her pretty little head around here lately. Temperatures in the mid sixties for several days, then back to the mid twenties and snow overnight, only to melt the next day. The flower beds are starting to show off all the life we planted last year along with a few new surprises. Bulbs that were probably tilled to the surface and will now grow well again. We just can't wait to see how it blooms. Of course there's all the new work outside to be planned for this spring reaching the top of the agenda lately too. My daughter is recovering from a couple of herniated discs, but surgery is probably not necessary. Yay! So grateful. It's still been busy for me, and with the help of Emily we keep moving forward.

The germination shelf in the basement got it's first light attached this week. I could not believe the simplicity of this task. I'll be ready to attach a second in the near future if finances permit. This has been a life long dream for me to have a place to start my seeds and be able to garden.

This happened just yesterday. To my surprise. I had tossed this pot of flat leaf parsley in a pile of pots last fall. I harvested all that I could and didn't have time to dump it outside before cold and snow arrived. I headed out to find pots to clean for spring, and there was the pot of five parsley plants starting new growth. I re potted them and  hope they grow, so I'll be able to cross parsley off my list of seeds to start. Who knew?

Here's the parsley and a small pot of basil under the new lights. They stood up straight as if they were as excited as I was that spring is almost here. 

This is a pot of garlic started from some that had begun to grow in Emily's refrigerator. I tossed it into a pot to see what would happen, and they are starting to emerge. There are eight of the largest healthiest cloves in this pot.

Outside on the other hand, I have about 34 cloves of garlic doing their thing. I put these in the front flower beds late last fall, because the back yard garden is still in the dream state. For this year the only new garden will be the pollination garden for around the bees, and I'll put in a few small items like onions and herbs. Baby steps, but we've only been here for ten months and have accomplished so much. 

I canned clementines and oranges this month. Not without one disaster as you can see, but one pint out of twenty four isn't horrible. I've been quite fortunate not to have many jars break, and since I buy second hand it could have had a crack I didn't see. 

I'm fermenting more garlic in honey. this is a quart jar, one third full and it's bubbling away on the counter. I cook with it and just chew a sweet clove when I'm feeling a little under the weather. This has a ways to go before it's ready, but there's a few cloves left in the pantry.

This is the second bag of vegetable scraps that will be boiled into stock shortly and canned. Once it's canned I have ready made soup. Just open a quart, add a bag of mixed vegetables and some noodles and in less than twenty minutes dinner is on the table with a slice of home made bread. Yes, I manage to stay busy. That's what's been happening at the Town House Homestead. Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful week. 

Town House Homestead Tuesday

Oh what a wonderful feeling today. We have been in our new home for seven months exactly today. We'd like to say that we slowed down, but we are just beginning to unpack more boxes and the work will continue forever. 

We continued this past weekend with painting another section of the basement floor. Walls have divided it into rooms/areas that we are naming. This will be the pantry. The freezer will be placed along the back wall and shelves organized with our canning, cooking and baking supplies. It may even have a couple of chairs and a table along with a coffee pot and be a break room too.

By this weekend it should be cured enough to work in there more, but it sure looks clean and usable. 

This is the cart she painted with the microwave just set on it for now. It will be moved to the pantry when the floor is ready so she can do projects and have that cup of coffee. Still lots to do, but things are out of the garage before cold weather set in.

We have been finding the boxes with the vintage sheets and to my surprise my daughter has had a sheet in her stash that I had been stalking for months on eBay. It's the yellow one and she gave it to me to combine with my other vintage sheets and spreads. I purchased a used sheet and made two pillow cases from the better parts to go with them. I also matched some spray paint to change the colors of some wall decorations and we got those hung. We are moving along and it's beginning to feel like it's ours. I did can some butternut squash and some butternut squash soup, but pictures have not been taken. Everything is just being set in the laundry room until we can use the pantry. We did some cement repairs in the garage to seal holes and raise the floor in one corner so the door fell flat against the floor preventing critters any entry. With the holidays quickly approaching we need room to have company so getting the jobs done so we can unpack has been steady. That's what's happened this week at the new Town House Homestead. Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful week. 

Town House Homestead Tuesday

Today is a very exciting day for me. The blog post I have been waiting so long to write is ready. Now to get it out of my head and on to this page. For the past few months I have been posting so many adventures, but the one we've worked hardest for is close to done and more than functional as of Sunday. This is how it began. 

It was a dark and dingy basement. This photo is after we pulled down a drop ceiling and dragged out bags of refuse like old wood, broken cement, and left behind trash from previous owners. The windows hadn't been opened until we opened them, and the breathing status of the basement was very poor. After pulling out a lot of the old fiberglass insulation, after the wasp situation, it was doing much better. As of last week the new furnace was installed, and a dear friend of my daughters spent an afternoon placing the washer and dryer in their proper locations and got it vented correctly.

So this is what all this progress has been for. Five months of hard work with the help of several friends and this is what it is now. This portion of the basement any way.

One up and coming work/sewing studio. Room for growth and more than one person to work, play, create, and imagine. It was a race against mother nature to get most of the boxes out of the garage and unpacked before cold weather, but they did it and as of Sunday my daughter has had a couple of hours to relax and sew. But, all our time was not just spent on the basement renovations. 

This was a side project. We found this vintage cart on Craigslist for $25 and took it apart, and spray painted it. Now that it's cleaned up it has been set in the basement to use for the extra microwave and coffee pot. She will need coffee to keep going while she works and the microwave will be used for projects she loves to do. 

I have been busy during the day time hours taking advantage of sales and enjoying cooking in my cast iron dutch oven. This is a BBQ pork shoulder that I made into pulled pork and there it is all canned for the pantry along with another slow cooker batch of apple butter. 

I also cooked a reasonably priced turkey and canned some meat, made some soup, and put more broth on the shelf in the pantry. We are ready for cold weather when it finally arrives. Can you taste the pot pies and casseroles yet? 

For me canning is never over. There is always something to put up. I went to the farm market for my butternut squash, so next week it will be canned squash, canned squash soup, and for the holiday a squash pie. I was able to stock up on a few jars for the next month or so to insure that I could keep going. With all the expenses fixing up the house it has been a blessing knowing the pantry shelves are filling up. Along with what we did before we moved I think we'll be able to survive the winter. That's what's happened the last couple of weeks here at our new Town House Homestead. Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful week. 

Town House Homestead Tuesday.

We are taking our time and doing it as right as possible, but the waiting is killing us. We had a couple of days at the end of last week that we really did not feel well. Tired mostly, but Sunday with the help of a dear friend we pushed through. The floor was washed three times and vacuumed even more to get it as clean as possible. It was worth all the scrub. We got all of the walls touched up and started the trim and down went the first coat of floor paint. We let it dry and got the second coat on. This basement tear out and renovation is coming along great and barring no further delays in a couple of weeks we can move the studio in and re shelf the pantry.  Wish us luck. We are racing mother nature because as soon as the studio is moved out of the garage we need to fill holes to keep critters out of it.

While the second coat was drying we moved on to the third portion of the basement. We'll call it the furnace room and got the cement walls coated in white with the primer. The further wall will be blue and the wall on the left may need another coat.

A portion of the space that will be the food storage room got a start with the floor. We did just enough to be able to move shelves in and organize the pantry when the time comes that we can walk on the floor.  

As I said we are doing it to the best of our knowledge and ability. Thanks to friends, YouTube and research it is going to be nice. We have even found some one who can help with the 59 year old screen windows that need replacing.

Once the shelves are in place we will be adding the canning that we have been doing, yes, while we've waited for paint to dry and in between the regular work. Here we have pasta sauce and apple butter. 

My daughter wanted to make something from scratch doing all the work herself and the canning herself. So she spent time making the apple butter and I gave her the first basic lessons in water bath canning. It was a job well done. We put the apple peels and scraps in water with sugar to make vinegar. It's doing well and fermenting in the cupboard.

Today's adventure in the kitchen was a batch of root beer jelly. The root beer was from a recent trip through a drive through for a quick bite and it never gets consumed so today I made jelly. It tastes like root beer candy. It will be shared with friends and the excess added to the pantry.

That's what's new at the Town House Homestead this week. All the work is beginning to feel great and the results have been amazing. On October 15th we will have been in our new home for six months and it feels like it's been home forever. We still love her. Thank you for stopping by and have a great week.