Introducing Clive and Clara

Greetings family and friends!  We have been plugging away at home school lessons, chopping down trees, stacking wood, and upgrading our grey water basin.  We have been enjoying crisp sunny days amid rainy storms.  The forest looks so lush and green.  We can see a light frosting of snow on the mountain peaks that are partially covered with mists.  It is quite scenic.

Our first autumn at Haefen is going well, and among several projects we have added a couple of new animals to our family.  We of course still have Willa, our Irish Terrier who seems to like her new forest home.  She has plenty of room to run and roam.  Unfortunately our two acres aren't enough and she has been exploring our neighbor's property as well.  We have placed fence-fixing to the top of our to-do list.

Willa posing for Esther and Lillia on the wood pile

Ella and Clara

Before we left Nampa, Eleanor made it clear to us that she really wanted her own hamster.  Esther and Lillia have both had hamsters who have lived out their short but tender lives.  Caring for them were both great learning experiences for the girls.  We promised Ella that when we found a new home she could have her own hamster. 

So several weeks ago, after Eleanor had read a couple of hamster books, we drove to a pet store in Spokane to find a hamster.  They only had one "Robo" hamster left.  Roborovski hamsters are from Russia and they are the tiniest hamsters, about the size of a golf ball, and the last one was a female so we snatched her up, bought some hamster gear, and took her home.

Eleanor decided to name her Clara after a character in the book Dutch Color by Douglas Jones.  Eleanor thinks that her hamster is kind of reckless just like the character in the book.  Clara is pretty crazy, always very busy, and hard to hold.  We had a fun time trying to take this picture.  Eleanor was so worried that she would drop Clara.  So far, Eleanor is a careful caretaker and she really cherishes her first pet.

Clara was a planned pet but the newest member of our family was unexpected, at least to some of us.  Last Friday, Corey came home and asked me to come outside because he wanted to show me something.  I thought that maybe he had found some amazing thrift store treasure that he is known for finding.  He had all the children and I come out to the Suburban and right before he opened the passenger door I asked, "Did you get a dog?".  I thought that maybe he found a stray dog on his route somewhere - you never know what Corey might bring home.

meet Clive

I was on the right path, but strangely this dog was a small puppy with a blue collar with an attached metal tag that read "Clive" and Corey's and my cell phone numbers were engraved on it.  Hmmm... this seemed premeditated.  This dog was probably not found on the street.

Sure enough, Corey "found" Clive online and flew him here from Missouri, which is the same state that Willa came from.  Clive is also an Irish Terrier.  Corey picked Clive up from the airport after work and brought him home as a big surprise!

As is the custom we named him after one of our favorite authors.  Willa is named after Willa Cather and Clive is named after Clive Staples Lewis.  When we found out that C.S. Lewis grew up with an Irish Terrier it just seemed natural that we should name ours after him.

Of coarse, all the kids adore Clive and Corey is so happy to have the long-awaited partner for Willa.  We hope to breed Clive with Willa when he is old enough.  Right now Willa is not "too into him".  She usually stays upstairs to avoid the puppy terror, but he has figured out how to climb the stairs, so Willa has retreated to Corey's and my bedroom.  Willa has seceded the rest of the house to Clive, but she refuses to give up her master bedroom retreat.  Clive receives a strong growl when he comes too close to Willa's hideout.

Hopefully Willa will come around to the program and embrace her husband-to-be.  It has been six days since Clive arrived and Willa has shown some progress.  She will come downstairs when Clive is asleep!

Apples, Plums & Pears Oh My!

Last week was positively beautiful here in the woods.  Not too cold and not too hot with a cool breeze blowing through the changing leaves.  The bright, glorious sunshine filled the sky.  We completed week three of homeschool lessons and curriculum, projects, and instruction are all falling into place.  So I had absolutely no valid excuse for not doing something with all the fruit that keeps falling from my old, wild trees.

We have several varieties of plum and apple trees and one pear tree.  Although the pear tree is dry and sparse, the kids and I did pick a gallon bucket full of pears.  We laid them out to ripen and will dehydrate them after they soften.  Christi, Corey's sister told me about the yumminess of dried pears, and now we like them too.

just a sampling of the fruit from our trees

Esther and Lillia picked all the prune plums off the tree.  They are dark purple, oblong plums referred to as prunes as I am told.  They are sweet and have a mushy texture.  The girls halved and pitted them, and put them in the dehydrator.  They really do make tasty prunes - yum!  Esther cut up the extra prunes that did not fit in the dehydrator and I made plum sauce with them.

dehydrated prunes and apples

My Mom has been making plum sauce for years and raving about it.  I finally broke out the Ball Blue Book and found the recipe for the sauce.  I happened to have all the ingredients on hand except for mustard seeds.  So I chopped and mixed what I did have and decided to run to the store when Corey came home.  It is an Asian type sauce with plums, fresh ginger, raw garlic, chopped onion, sugar, apple cider vinegar, jalapeno pepper, and mustard seeds.  You simmer the sauce and pour it into jars.  I mentioned canning the sauce and Esther and Lillia said, "Too bad Grandma Chismar isn't here, she loves that kind of thing!".

My Mother does enjoy the benefits of canning and is very enthusiastic about helping other women can.  In fact she is probably canning right now as I write this.  She has helped many interested but scared women can their little hearts out.  She and my Grandma will show up at your door and before you know it, you will have glass mason jars, metal caps, and lids submerged in hot water with a steaming pot of water boiling on the stove top.  Jars filled with various concoctions of fruit and veggies making popping noises will adorn your kitchen counter top.

I can imagine a show like, "Call the Nanny" that is called, "Call the Canner,".  A young woman is overwhelmed with all the craziness of chopping, boiling, and sanitizing so she makes a phone call and the next clip shows my Mother and Grandmother knocking on her door with their suitcases full of canning tools.  Seriously, they are pro's and make the whole process much more sane and enjoyable!  I actually feel a few tears welling up in my eye-sockets right now just thinking about our memorable canning adventures.

plum sauce with pork and sauteed cabbage

The sauce did turn out lovely, but I decided not to process it in a hot water bath since it was time to make dinner.  I just put the jars in the freezer the next day after they cooled.  We actually used the sauce to make Asian pork wraps for lunch.  I think that some chopped scallions and cilantro would make perfect additions. I think that this sauce with be so handy to have on hand.  My Mom likes to cook it with meat for flavoring.

As I was checking out the plum sauce recipe I saw an orange-plum jam recipe that looked promising.   It called for orange liqueur and that sounded exciting - liquor and jam, Nice!  I searched for more plums and found three different varieties hanging from the trees in my yard.

As usual I didn't follow the jam recipe in the book.  The recipe called for 4 pounds of plums and 5 1/2 cups of sugar!  Yikes!  Why do jam and jelly recipes call for so much sugar?  I only added two cups of sugar and used Pomona's Pectin.  I did not have time to simmer the jam to thicken it so I tried this low sugar pectin.  You can use other sweeteners with this pectin and it has a calcium packet that you mix with water.

I did the gel test with a cold spoon and then added the orange liqueur.  Oh my goodness, this jam is so tasty.  Before I added the Grand Marnier the jam was a bit too sweet, but afterward...  perfection!  The jam has a tangy, slightly sweet taste, kind of like a sweet red wine with a hint of orange. We have already emptied this pint size jar shown in the picture.  And no, I did not can the jam either.  These jars went into the freezer too.  I hope to make better use of my plums next year and do some serious dehydrating and canning.  I know that we will need jars and jars of orange-plum jam.

I thrice toasted this piece of gluten-free bread, slathered it in butter, and smeared on the jam.

As for the apples, along with dehydrating thin slices to make "apple chips", we also made apple sauce, a gluten free apple crisp cake, and grain free apple turn-overs.  I really want to make an apple pie.  It seems so wrong to have oodles of apples falling from my trees and not make an apple pie.  The problem is that I love pie and I am not disciplined enough to make the flaky, cinnamon/sugar sprinkled, apple-filled pastry without consuming at least one piece!  My mouth will be so happy to savor that buttery goodness, but my stomach and intestines will be angry and create problems that last longer than the time it takes my mouth to chew and swallow.  However, I have found a gluten free pastry crust recipe that I want to try, so apple pie is on the menu for this week.