The Smoke House, Done

I burned the midnight oil finishing the Smoke House this summer. It's not like I had a lot of spare time around here, but it was something I wanted to do and I had some real fun doing it.

 I mounted some old rusty Buck Saws that I'm sure were my great grandpas on the outside.

  The Smoke House is electricity free, so candles and solar lights are a necessity. June found this super cute lantern.

You can see there is plenty of daylight peeking between the boards, but this little space is just meant to be a dry place to camp in the summer.

 On one window hole I added a sheet of wavy glass that was laying in the barn, and a few bottles (also laying around).

 On the other two holes I just put in those adjustable window screens.

I have several old paintings from generations of artistic relatives floating around. This was painted by my grandmother.

Outside I added some solar lights to guide the way and transplanted a few native ferns here and there and some chain from the hardware store as a rain chain to reduce erosion.

And as an homage to one of the many incarnations of the Smoke House, I got out my paints and added a few friends to peek out at guests.

 

 

Apple Squeezing

The Gravensteins were ripe, falling to the ground. It was time to begin the picking.

It is not an easy task, picking a tree like this. Ladders and poles with picking baskets get you to most of them. Jake, Hank and Phoebe helped out.

 

Several hours of picking over a couple of days got us a fair number of apples.

Gravs don't keep, so you eat them right now, cook them or squeeze them. We did some cooking and eating, but the squeezing is the big job.

 

Our press is a homemade, picked up from a 2nd hand store 10 years ago or so. You can see it in action in the video below.

It has a shredder powered by a small electric motor. It is a fierce device. Apples go in whole, stems and all, and come out in bits. The PVC cylinders catch the chunks. When full they get slid down under the press, which is a screw jack. Tighten until it gushes, then let it finish.

It gets poured from the catch pan, through a sieve and a funnel, into clean water jugs. I don't use cleaned out milk jugs; I worry to much about the unpasturized juice and the possibility of something going wrong. So only clean, new jugs for me.

 

We squeezed over 12 gallons, and still had a bushel of apples to share with friends. The juice goes into the freezer, to be thawed out in October when the rest of the trees are ripe and we can do some blending.

The squeezed bits go back into the soil. The chickens are temporarily interested, but there are so many apples on the ground that they have their fill all fall.

I have a mixed relationship with squeezing apples. It is a lot of work to get the apples down, get enough to press, then store and clean up. This is such a busy time of year, and it is always HOT when it is time to pick.

But I am always glad that I did it. This year was made even better because both of the kids were home to help. Jake has been away for so long he has never squeezed apples. June has, but she has been traveling and living elsewhere, so we don't get a lot of time with both of them here. Having them, and our new friend Hank, there to help was the best part of the process.

 

Since neither Hank nor Jake had squeezed before, they had not tasted the fresh, raw juice. Gotta have a little tasting before the clean up. It was wonderful.

The ground is still littered with apples, slowly rotting. There are some left in the tree, including the ever tantalizing big ones out of reach at the top. The other trees' apples are still growing, the branches are straining and sometimes breaking. The press is cleaned up and put in the shed, until October, when the weather will be cooler, friends will gather, and more cider will be squeezed.

Naughty Homesteaders

Shame on us.

We are living up to our reputation as the Reluctant Homesteaders.

Instead of saving our pennies to buy a tractor, we have higgledy-piggledy-willy-nilly purchased ourselves a couple of old Honda Trail CT90's. Mine is a 1970 and Buck's is a '86.

This summer I mandated that some fun was in order after our long slog this year, so, much to our children's chagrin, we took our trailer on a trip around Oregon and bought his and hers MOTORCYCLES!!!

For those who are not familiar with the beloved Honda CT90, it is an on and off road bike that has an automatic clutch. There is a switch on the transmission which allows you to switch from a very low, off road set of four gears to a high set of four, which are suited to local roads. Top speed for these puppies is 45.
I grew up riding these great old bikes, but Buck is new to the concept. He's already had one hilarious adventure across the road and through the field.

Despite these photos we are being very good about wearing our helmets. We will be taking our Safety Class at the end of the month so that we can ride them on the road.