Spiced Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

The rest of our pumpkins came in.  I had a hard time not eating them all.  We have actually discussed having an entire garden just for pumpkins next year, and adding a few other varieties.  I am all for it.  I love pumpkin.

So, in the spirit of the pumpkin season, here is a recipe for spiced pumpkin oatmeal cookies.

Ingredients:

-          ½ c butter/margarine, softened

-          ½ c cinnamon applesauce

-          ¾ c brown sugar, packed

-          ¾ c sugar

-          1 tsp vanilla extract

-          1 c canned pumpkin puree

-          1 egg

-          2 c flour

-          1 ¼ c rolled oats

-          1 tsp baking soda

-          1 TBSP pumpkin pie spice mix

-          1 c golden raisins

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a large bowl, beat margarine, applesauce, sugars and vanilla together until light and fluffy.  Add pumpkin and egg and mix well. In a separate bowl, mix flour, oats, baking soda, spices and ¼ tsp salt together.  Gradually beat in flour mixture.  Stir in raisins.  Drop batter by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased shiny cookie sheets.  Bake 11-13 minutes or until firm to the touch and lightly brown on the bottom.  Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.  

No Snow Before Thanksgiving!

Once again it's been awhile since I've posted anything.  Life has still been happening.  A two-week migraine kept me busy for awhile.  It finally went away.  And then I got another really bad one; the kind where I don't drive anywhere for the safety of myself and others and spend the day sleeping.  And so I woke up in the middle of the afternoon, looked outside, and saw snow falling from the sky!  I thought I was hallucinating.  I actually went outside to check.  Thankfully I was not imagining things in my migraine-world, it was actually snowing.  Not that we haven't had snow in southern PA before Thanksgiving before; it's just unusual.  And the weather people had predicted a week of sun and no clouds.  Go figure. They are not on my list of favorite people.

In other news, I got my husband to pet an alpaca.  I have been asking for either llamas or alpacas practically since we got married.  For our 5-year anniversary we went to the Shenandoah Fiber Festival in Berryville, VA.  The weather was beautiful, the drive through the mountains was gorgeous, the fall foliage was awesome.  It was just a lovely time.  Also, I have to say that I prefer it to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  I do not like large seething crowds of people.  While I understand that, as a vendor, one might prefer larger crowds, as a fair-goer, I prefer the intimacy of the smaller setting.  We were actually able to speak with several of the vendors for more than just a transaction's worth of time, and were not constantly pushed around by other people attending the fair.

Chad petting an alpaca at the Shenandoah Fiber Festival.

Now I just have to keep working on getting my own alpacas. They are so soft and cute! And they hum! How could you not want some??

Five years together.  Toby also wanted to be in the picture.

And now for some random pictures: sunrise and sunset.

I woke up to this one Saturday morning and enjoyed watching the sun looming over the trees.  Rudolph (the goat) seems concerned about having her picture taken.
 

Chad and I were out, waiting for the rocket launch that never happened (since it blew up).  I decided to take some pictures as the evening light faded.

Month in Review

It's been a little while since I've posted anything.  Which is not to say that we haven't been busy; anyone who harvests produce will understand that this is a busy time of year.  Also the concussion didn't help (one of my corgis thinks he is a ninja and thought it would be fun to practice on me).  I had all these ideas for posts, but instead this will have to be a mish-mash.

To make up for the strawberry harvest (which was abysmal with all the spring rain), we had a wonderful raspberry and blackberry crop this year.  Since raspberry/blackberry jam is my favorite jam, I really didn't mind so much.

Raspberry/blackberry jam

I also had a humbling experience.  With everything going on (health issues, dealing with all the produce coming in, keeping up with the goats, going to my day job, etc.) I can feel very overwhelmed sometimes.  Then people come along and do the completely unexpected.  I was working with my daughter and her 4H projects, and we were at one of the leader's houses finishing up a project and talking about things.  I happened to notice that they had one of the magnetic knife strips above their sink and asked about it (I have always thought they were really awesome and wanted to get one).  Next thing I know, one of their daughters goes into a closet and hands me one.  I had no words, but am very grateful and happy.

My new knife holder.  My husband says it looks intimidating, since it is now one of the first things you see when you come into our kitchen.

In that same week, friends of ours gave me another gift: a lovely goat bag, upcycled from a feed bag, with some dairy-free cookies in it (I made sure to hide those so that I actually got to eat them. They were tasty).  The bag has been used several times since.


My new grocery/stuff bag

 

It is wonderful to have people like this in my life.  One does not need to have lots of friends, at least I don't.  I would rather have a few friends that I know I can count on than lots of friends who are going to leave when things get bad.

Okay, moving on.  So, now that the weather seems to (finally!) be getting cooler, our pumpkins are coming in.  Everyone seems to think this is too early, but one cannot argue with produce.  Also, I love pumpkin anything, so I am not going to complain.  The plan was to have some pumpkin for eating now and some to freeze.  However, the first batch came in for labor day and we already ate all of it.  I'm not sure that anything will make it to the freezer from the remaining pumpkins.  I made a lovely pumpkin bar/cake thing and a pumpkin pie (that's right, we had pumpkin pie for labor day and it was awesome).  We are already discussing dedicating an entire (new) garden just to pumpkins next year.  And this is how we end up with so many gardens.


Pumpkin bars

And this morning we had an unexpected visitor.  We live in an area with a local hot air balloon company, and they frequently fly over our house.  It still surprises me every time, although it is just normal to my daughter.  They were flying over this morning.  Even the goats were stopping to look.

The hot air balloon flying over this morning

I tried to get a picture of the goats all looking at the hot air balloon, but of course they all turned to look at me instead. I must work on my sneaking skills.  I guess it would help if I didn't have a squeaky front porch door to contend with.

The goats, turning from the hot air balloon to look at me

What they don't tell you in Motherhood Books: Plumbing

When you're pregnant, people love to give you advice and motherhood books.  Heck, they love to do that anytime they realize that you have a kid, whether they have raised one  or not.  But the things that no one tells you sometimes end up being the things you need to know.  Like how to do minor plumbing repairs on your own.

Since my husband and I both work full-time non-farming jobs, my daughter is in camps during the summer daytime hours.  Which means she comes home with all kinds of crafts and things.  Mostly these involve paper, paint, yarn, and those darn rubber band things (just like school!).  But then there are the Orbeez(R).  According to their website:

Orbeez are superabsorbent polymers—that means they are made of several smaller molecules joined together. With the addition of water they can grow to more than 100 times their volume. That’s right, place a tiny Orbeez bead in water and watch it swell! The water is absorbed into the spaces between the molecules. These polymers were invented for agricultural use back in the 1960s to irrigate crops during times of drought. Today you will find superabsorbent polymers in diapers to prevent leaks, in food packages to absorb liquid and in floral vases to hydrate cut flowers.

Of course, using them for agricultural uses must not have been profitable enough, so now they are marketing them for children to make in kits.  Colleen makes them at daycare and brings them home in cups.  I guess they stress the "water" part of these darn things, because she is obsessed with washing them; they are also slimy and attract all kinds of dirt and animal hair, which may contribute to their needing to be cleaned. 

Fast forward a week into their entry into our house.  Suddenly our bathroom sink is clogged.  My husband was the first one to discover it, and asked my daughter, as she had been washing the beads and there were some remnants of them on the bathroom floor.  She blamed the cat, insisting that the cat had somehow clogged the bathroom sink.  Right.  Later that evening I spent quite awhile pulling the things out with tweezers (for some reason our new faucet set-up does now allow you to remove the drain plug, which I think is completely ridiculous.  So, short of my husband disconnecting the pipes and removing them, which wasn't going to happen anytime soon, we were going to have a clogged drain).  Then I got out the vinegar and baking soda and let that go to work (this is an eco-friendly version of drain unclogger and works in a pinch when the clog is not horrible and you have no drain unclogger on hand).  The sink is not quite back to normal, but is much more usable. 

So keep in mind that all conversations regarding the sink/beads/clog/cat had been between my daughter and husband at this point.  I had unclogged the drain after she went to bed.  She certainly noticed the next morning when she got up that it was working, and made a comment to that effect.  I gave her a look.  And the very next words out of her mouth were, "I don't know how the orbeez got down the drain Mommy. I didn't put them there." Right.

Sadly, this is not the only time I've had to do this kind of thing.  Those tweezers live in our bathroom and are strictly for pulling things out of drains.  Colleen is in her "experimental science" and "taxidermy" phases.  This involves a lot of washing things down sinks.  I never know what dead insect she will decide has to be washed off in our sink so she can study it better. I don't mind the washing and studying of the insect so much, but we do have a utility sink in the basement for this kind of thing.

Crisp Squash Pickles

Canning season has begun!  Every winter we plan and dream about our gardens (we plant several) and they never quite end up how we planned, but that doesn't matter.  For some reason, we seem to be able to grow cantaloupes and watermelons in the dozens, but have trouble with "easy" veggies like tomatoes and zucchini.  So this year we planted an entire row of zucchini and an unfathomable number of tomato plants.  This approach seems to have worked for us, because we now have lots of green tomatoes and pounds and pounds of zucchini.

After rejoicing in the quantity of zucchini (I am less thrilled about the tomatoes, as I can no longer eat as many as I would like due to serious heartburn issues), I picked seven or so.  And there are still so many left growing!  Every time I picked one of the large ones, it seemed like there was a smaller one hiding under the leaves nearby.  It's nice that all the rain is helping with something, since it did not help our strawberry crop this year.

So, with the help of my food processor, I made four loaves of zucchini bread.  The first two will be gone by the end of the week.  The other two I froze before they get devoured. 

I then went to a book my mother purchased for me some years ago: the Farm Journal's Freezing and Canning Cookbook.  If you have a large amount of any kind of produce to deal with, or are looking for some new and interesting ways of mixing produce I highly recommend it.  Each year we try out some new recipes.  A few years ago we did Lime Pear jam.  Last year we tried Pickled Green Beans.  With all the zucchini I thought I would try Crisp Squash Pickles.

The recipe calls for 5 lbs of zucchini.  Having recently purchased a small digital scale, I had a geek moment when I measured out my zucchini, getting just the right combination of squash to equal (almost) 5 lbs.  Here is what 5.1 lbs of zucchini looks like:

I then went back to the food processor (I love that thing!) to make the slices:

From there I simply followed the recipe.  The final product looks pretty good.

Mason Dixon Fair 2014: The Storm

Tuesday night, while the goat shows were finishing up, a brief large storm system moved through the area.  Thunderstorms had been predicted for the day and evening (it's seems like the weathermen predict thunderstorms on a daily basis during the summer, just to be on the safe side).  People with smartphones who had been looking at the weather radars started warning those of us without smartphones that there was a system coming through.  It looked like a long hot dog, with yellows and reds.  They were predicting hail and winds up to 70 mph.

The storm starting to come in.  This picture does not do justice to the actual darkness of the sky.

Then the phone calls started coming in.  People close by who had already been hit were calling to warn us: this system was coming in fast and hard, with little warning.  A husband called his wife and told her not to come home, but to go to a friend's house; their roof had been damaged by hail.  Others were calling to warn us to make the tents and barns and animals secure NOW, because this thing was coming.  In the meantime, the shows were continuing, because the skies were still clear.

My in-laws had come to see Colleen show, and decided to head home based on the weather report.  My husband went to see them to their car.

Colleen was through with showing, so I started putting anything of ours that was loose and could blow around away (chairs, clothing, boots, etc.).  Suddenly the sky started darkening and the wind picked up.  Within 5 minutes, the wind was whipping the large tent around.  Then a pole must have snapped, because the tent started coming down on top of us.

The collapsed tent.

I told Colleen to run to the cow barn next to us (it was a solid built structure, not a large tent), while I helped make sure that everyone in the tent got out safely.  A few minutes later I made it over to the cow barn.  I could not find my child.  There may be a something worse than not knowing where your child is during a natural disaster, but I don't know what it is.  Those were the worst few moments of my life, and they were brief.  I started screaming her name, trying to find her.  The woman with me, who I had been working with, quickly put me at ease, telling me that she had seen Colleen earlier and told her daughter to take Colleen to their car.  She had recognized Colleen by her neon yellow shorts.  Because there were cows in the cow barn, and everyone was running into it, she was worried that the storm might spook the cows and cause injuries to people.  After a few minutes we ran out to their car, where Colleen and her daughter were both safe.  Colleen was a mess, worried about myself and Chad (we managed to reach Chad on his cell phone.  He was hiding out in the goat trailer).  I later reached his parents, who were also fine.  We watched the rest of the storm pass by in the safety of their car.

The collapsed tent from the outside.

As far as I know, there was only one person injured by the collapsing tent.  She is now recovering.  I am thankful that the damage was limited.  At our house, we only lost power for a few days.  From what I heard and saw, it could have been much worse.  Afterwards, there was a beautiful double rainbow.

Rainbow after the storm.  Colleen took this picture.

It was also interesting to see the reaction from the goats that we took to the fair.  Little Buddy, who had been quite happy at the fair getting attention from everyone, took the Chicken Little approach.  The next morning he had diarrhea and wouldn't eat.  Apparently he thought the world was going to end.  By the evening he was back to normal, trying to get everyone to pet him and wanting all the attention.  Charcoal, who wanted nothing to do with being at the fair and didn't eat much since we had gotten there, apparently figured that if that was the worst that was going to happen, now she's a survivor and she's going to live.  After that she certainly had an appetite.

Mason Dixon Fair 2014: Tuesday 7/8/14

Tuesday was very busy.  Colleen had shows basically back-to-back-to-back.  The Open Fiber Goat Show began at 4 pm with Showmanship.  Colleen won first in her age category since she was the only one in her age category.  She did not do so well once she was competing with the other first place Showmanship competitors.  Charcoal, her angora goat, was quite hot, and not used to being walked on a lead.

Colleen and Charcoal begin their walk around the ring for the judge.

Charcoal won first place in her class for fiber goats (Senior Doe Kid), since she was the only one.  She also won Champion Doe Colored Doe (she actually had some competition there).  Based on comments from the spectators, fairgoers, and even the judge, she was also deemed (unofficially) the "cutest" angora goat there.  I totally agree.

Colleen adjusting Charcoal's feet during the judging.

The Fiber Goat Show ran from 4pm until after 6pm, when the Meat Goat Show started, which Colleen was also participating in.  Luckily, they started with Showmanship, beginning with the older group and going to the youngest group.  This gave us enough time to finish the fiber show, run Charcoal back to her pen, and switch goats. 

Colleen during Showmanship with Squeaker.  Notice how she's not even looking at the judge?

Following showmanship, it was time for Colleen's last show, with Little Buddy.  At home, during the few times that she had worked with him, he had refused to walk anywhere, simply laying down.  I was wondering how this would play out in the show ring; whether his interest in other goats would keep him on his feet (he's a nosy little bugger), or whether he would just lay down and play dumb.  Apparently he was happy to stay on his feet, but didn't actually want to walk anywhere.

Colleen and Little Buddy having a battle of wills in the show ring.

I guess I should be happy that she has no interest in showing cows.