Quest for Fire....

I know the title of this post is a rip-off of the early 1980s movie with the same name. The biggest difference is my post won't win any awards (the movie won an academy award for Best Make-Up) but since I am choosing to tell my story in a language most people understand, I think it is, at the very least, more interesting. For those not familiar with the movie, it had no spoken lines, just grunts and hand gestures. Much like the movie, our quest for fire is driven by the need to find a new source of fire to replace the fire that is no longer present in our primitive social structure. Back when we moved into the house in August, fire was the furthest thing in our minds. Fast forward to December and the idea of a roaring fire takes on a whole new dimension, especially since there are still some openings in the exterior walls and it was 28 degrees the other morning.
This first picture is what was here when we got the place. Like I said earlier, fire was the last thing on our minds back then, so I barely even paid attention to this lovely unit here. It is actually a pretty good pellet stove for its era, which my guess is the late 1980s. The bin under the lid you see on the back half of the unit was even full of pellets. That should have been the first clue this thing might have some operational issues. Most folks would time the last fill of pellets with the end of the heating season so when the next cold season rolled around, a fresh bag of pellets could be dumped in. Long story short, the first time it got really cold here, I decided to try and fire this puppy up to put some much needed heat into the house and that's when things started going downhill. I won't bore everyone with the details of what didn't work and what diagnostics were used to try and determine which component was not working, but suffice to say, my OCD and ADHD brain burned an enormous amount of calories trying to solve the problem. At some point, sanity was experienced for at least a couple of seconds and I realized trying to fix a 20 plus year old pellet stove was not the best idea. Especially since there is an acre of almond trees just outside waiting, wait, make that begging to be transformed into split firewood.

That fact led to a great deal of research and the grand decision was made that a fireplace insert would be the best solution. The biggest reason for choosing an insert rather than a free standing unit similar to the pellet stove already here was to reclaim some floor space. The existing pellet stove sat on a hearth pad that sticks out four feet from the face of the fireplace. This means you have a pretty significant obstacle to walk around when hanging out on that side of the family room. With the insert, about 21 inches should be able to be cut back and reclaimed. That might not sound like a great deal of space but think about this, that is just about half the width of a normal hallway. Being able to add that much of a corridor in a family room that will have the usual array of bizarre furniture arrangements is pretty close to priceless. The biggest buzz-kill to the utilization of a family room is having it so space constricted that everyone has to follow a traffic flow diagram to get around.

This picture of the opening in the fireplace after the pellet stove was removed really serves no purpose other than to show the progression to what will eventually provide heat for our home. The new insert will sit partially into the cavity of the fireplace so the exhaust will have a very straight pathway up through the existing masonry chimney. Almost a foot of the new stove will stick out into the room and sit on the existing hearth. That part will radiate heat into the house AND provide us with a cook top surface to keep a kettle of water hot for coffee and tea. That's what really sold me on this whole concept. Who can resist not being able to have a constant source of hot water all winter long for beverages that warm you from the inside out?

This last picture is the actual stove insert that we ordered. The photo is a stock one but we'll try to get an actual one of our installation up in the near future. The new wood stove insert is the same brand as the pellet stove being replaced. One reason for this is that I admired the heavy duty construction of the frame of the old pellet stove. I did expend more than a few cuss words while I was troubleshooting the electrical components in the failed attempt to keep the old pellet stove operating, but looking back, whatever part failed on this machine probably gave a very long service life and I was just the unlucky person that came along and needed fire just after this part had given its best.
All in all, I would say we are happy with the decision to buy a wood burning stove insert for many reasons. First and foremost is what was mentioned before; when you have an acre of firewood sitting out the side door, it's a no-brainer. Equally as important is the fact that Lynda and I very much like being able to manage our heating needs outside of a blood contract with a utility company or fuel dealer. I'm not saying I don't think they have our best interest in mind every time they pursue a strategic marketing initiative, I'm just saying that as long as we can cut and stack firewood, we don't really care. Our quest for fire is over.

Using Up Leftovers

So, I know this is a bit of a departure from what I usually post here, but I thought I would talk about how to use up some leftover spaghetti in a way that doesn't feel like you have to muddle through it. This came from the fact that the new Farmville Reality Project is about a fifty minute commute now and when I get home during the week, having something that can be easily warmed in the microwave is very welcomed. It also is very much the philosophy of the project to be creative in how things are utilized. Since the project started with its focus on growing all kinds of food, to its current phase of restoring an old farm house, creative utilization of what was on hand has become a necessity. The first two pictures show the starting point for this dish. About once a month, I make a big pot of spaghetti sauce on a Sunday afternoon. It works well with the house restoration activities since the "kitchen" is out in the shop. The shop is where the noisy, loud machines are that cut and shape the wood for the various jobs going on. Keep in mind that a hundred years ago, there was no Home Depot or Lowes to pick up materials at. The majority of material available today is not of the exact dimensions as what was used back then, so just about every piece needs to be custom cut to size match with the existing parts of the house. Throwing together some sausage, ground beef, garlic, onion, herbs, homemade wine, and tomato sauce in a big pot and simmering it with a quick stir every now and then fits perfect with the work going on. As you can see in the second picture, we like to use traditional spaghetti noodles around here. We've tried the fancy little twists and shells, even the whole wheat stuff, but there is nothing like twisting your fork into a pile of spaghetti smothered in homemade sauce and trying to get as much in your mouth as you can and realizing the best you can do is getting slightly more than half of it in and the rest is hanging down your chin. A warning to any subscribers to Miss Manners, you'll probably not enjoy our Sunday night spaghetti dinners because one way or another, the sauce drenched noodles that struggled to make it in the mouth directly from the fork do in time get to where they need to be and it's not a pretty sight...
The great thing about having all this massive quantity of spaghetti as mentioned before is it makes for easy-to-heat leftovers during the week when I sometimes don't get home from work until late. The downside is around Thursday, one finds oneself a wee bit tired of leftover spaghetti. One thing growing food instills in you, because of the large amount of physical effort it takes, is to never waste things. After working in the fields as a teenager (meaning I did plenty of grunt work and didn't spend my time on a fancy tractor) I became keenly aware of the amount of resources it took to get a piece of produce to a store shelf. By resources I mean everything from the land and water to get the crop growing, to the fuel to power the tractors that keep the field from reverting back to a jungle. Then there was the manual labor aspect. One of my first jobs was to pass out the boxes the produce would be packed in and then staple the tops shut. After the hundreds of boxes were packed and stapled shut, we would load them onto a truck moving slowly through the field. Sometimes situations would come up so that it wasn't possible to get a truck into the field and we would carry the packed boxes to the truck on our shoulders. This type of work accomplished two very important things for me as a teenager, it saved me gym membership dues which would have been hard to handle making minimum wage, but more importantly, it taught me that every product represents the hard work of someone. And for that reason, wasting leftovers simply because you're tired of them is not a good thing. OK, a bit preachy and long winded but I firmly believe it to be an important thing to practice regardless of how prosperous you become.




The third picture shows the ingredients you need to transform your leftover spaghetti into a whole new dish. Maybe the Food Network will hear about this transformation and give me my own show. Similar to the ones they do on HGTV about whole house makeovers for less than X amount of dollars, mine could be about whole leftover makeovers for less than ten bucks. I'm just joking. I've yet to see anything really useful come from watching a half an hour show that fast forwards through the hardest part of the process and then at the end, everyone is smiling and talking like they truly did snap their fingers and the end result magically appeared. The ingredients for this casserole of leftover spaghetti are pretty simple and most of them I always have on hand. As a matter of fact, that's the reason cottage cheese is used instead of ricotta. Since I have cottage cheese almost daily for breakfast and I just don't see eating ricotta for breakfast as enjoyable, cottage cheese wins this round. If for some reason you have ricotta, it will work too. I chop up a few cloves of garlic and some onion. In the picture you see red onion but any onion will do. Make sure the dice on these is fairly fine so their flavors come out easily during the baking part. If the chunks are too large, the garlic and onion flavor will stay in the chunks and not get melded into the dish. Some might like it that way but I like casseroles that display the flavors of all the ingredients in every bite, not just the bites you happen to have got a big chunk of onion in. The amounts of onion and garlic are not critical and highly dependent on personal preference, so use your best judgement of your tastes or those that will be eating with you. In the mixing bowl with the garlic and onion, add about half of a 24 ounce container's worth of cottage cheese and two eggs. Then take a 9 ounce package of spinach leaves and chop them up so most of the pieces are no bigger than a fifty-cent piece. If you're like me and haven't really seen a fifty-cent piece in many years, as you would expect, it's about twice as big as a quarter. Now you will need to pre-cook the spinach and get rid of the water in it. If you use it without pre-cooking, the casserole gets soggy. I use a nonstick saute pan so I don't have to add any oil. Remember, the other stuff in the casserole already has plenty of fat to keep the dish from being bland. The spinach will wilt down quickly and it helps drive the water out if you push everything to the perimeter of the pan and slightly up the sides. This lets gravity drain the water cooking out of the spinach to the center of the pan where the pan is hottest. You should see the water steam off quickly. Let this cool a little bit and then add to the cottage cheese, egg, etc mixture. The throw in about 12 ounces of mozzarella cheese and mix with a wooden spoon. You can use plastic if you want but the dish won't be quite the same. Not really but it sounds cool when you specify the material people should have their kitchen utensils made of. It takes your expert quotient way up there.


Now for the assembly part. You might think I'm kidding again but this part is important even though it sounds like you could do it another way. When I oil the casserole pan to assemble everything in, I pour a little olive oil in and use a smashed garlic clove to spread the oil all around the pan. It's a little thing and some scientist will do a study to prove there is no perceptible garlic flavor on the bottom of each finished piece of plated casserole, but I still do it anyway. My belief is the little things you pay attention to during prep work add up to bigger things when the dish is finally served. After the bottom and sides are oiled, put just enough red sauce to "paint" the bottom. You want to keep the noodles from getting dry and sticking but the real benefit of the red sauce is to trickle down through the casserole while its baking, so make sure you don't use too much here and not have enough for later. Then put a layer of noodles and smear some of the cheese mixture over that. It's a bit messy and a rubber spatula helps. Then ladle some red sauce and another layer of noodles, repeat the cheese mixture and more red sauce.




When finished, it should look like the fourth picture. I leave the top layer with red sauce so the oven doesn't dry things out. Put this in the pre-heated to 350 degree oven (I know all recipes tell you to pre-heat the oven but I don't, I figure you'll turn the thing on when it makes sense for you) on the middle rack with some foil loosely tented over it. This provides further insurance against the dreaded drying out I seem to be so paranoid about. After about 40 minutes or so, the whole thing should be bubbling and looking like it's getting hot and gooey throughout. This is the time to take the small part of the mozzarella cheese left in the bag, I'm assuming you bought the super convenient 16 ounce size bag, but if not, do the math and you come up with about 4 ounces of cheese to use. Take the foil off and sprinkle the cheese uniformly over the top. If you have some Parmesan, this would also be a good time to sprinkle some on. Keep it in the oven about ten or fifteen minutes more to let the topping cheese melt and slightly brown. Each oven is a bit different so keep an eye on it. You don't want to scorch the cheese or in the case of a cooler oven, let it go so long that the cheese doesn't brown but the casserole starts drying out. I know, the drying out thing again. I guess I've had that happen one too many times and there is nothing enjoyable about a casserole that cuts and eats like rice crispy treats.

The last picture shows the finished product. It also makes for convenient leftovers and is super easy to take in your lunch if you have access to a microwave at work. When I make this, we literally get an entire work week's worth of meals from one afternoon and one evening's cooking effort. The economist side of me could fill up another lengthy post about how efficient this is and could help this country find its way back to a 1950s type of prosperity, but I won't. I'll just let you take my word for it. Enjoy!

Are We Making Things Better?

OK, I guess the title of this post could be a little bit self serving. It would be very unlikely I would pose that question in the title unless the answer was solid "yes". I guess the real reason for showing these two pictures is to reinforce that we are making progress. Sometimes things seem to bog down and it can cause a person to wonder if they really are making progress. Between Lynda and I, the front yard has had a fulltime irrigator working on it since the middle of August. Last weekend, after I ran the lawnmower over things, I paused and noticed the front yard really was looking pretty nice. To shamelessly demonstrate just how much we have greened up the front yard, I dug up the picture from about a year ago when the place was for sale. At that time, it appeared nothing had been watered for a long time and it showed. We still don't have the place even close to where our vision is, but I think this shows we are making things better and we both have bruises, skinned knees and elbows, and sore bodies to prove it. As has been said before, we wouldn't trade it for anything else.

Making Progress... Sort of

The title of this post might give you the idea that I'm losing steam and maybe even burning out on this whole restoring a hundred year old farm house thing. Not to worry, quite the opposite as a matter of fact. I titled this post because I do find it ironic that you can work hard all day and then when you describe what you've accomplished, it doesn't sound like as much as your body feels it's done that day. Maybe it's age catching up, I don't know. I do know these projects wear me out and I sleep like a baby at night. Except when the cats get hungry early in the morning, then sleep comes to a halt until they have food in their bowls. Their antics could fill up another blog and then some though, so we'll stick to the subject matter at hand.

As you can see, the bathroom is coming along nicely. I know it wasn't that long ago I mused about having it functional by July 1st, but that was before I got help with that delusional part of my personality. Now that has been straightened out, I'm proud to say the hall bathroom is fully functional and we achieved that status by August 15th. It's not anywhere near finished though and I'm not even going to stick my neck out and throw a target out there. I do know the upper three feet of wall above the subway tile and board-and-batten wainscoting will not be painted until November. I gave my word on this and those who know me well know that is about as rock solid as it gets.

The picture of water coming out of the shower head demonstrates just how functional this bathroom is now. It also shows the tank for the toilet mounted six feet up on the wall. The high tank toilet doesn't necessarily make the bathroom more functional but it takes the cool factor way up there. The shower also is pretty cool to use. It's quite a bit different than what most of us grew up with but every time I use it, I can't help but think about how it must have been over a hundred years ago. I'm sure a tub/shower set up like this was not found in every household back then, but those of us using it in this old farmhouse sure do appreciate it.

The last picture is of the French doors leading into what will someday be the kitchen. Before we had these installed, there was an out swinging door leading right into a wall. Because of that, the kitchen was boxed in and dark. After some wall removal and the addition of these doors, the area for the future kitchen is open, naturally well lit and easily accessible from the back part of the property. That's pretty important for us because we plan to grow lots of vegetables in the garden and we don't want to have to navigate complex walkways and entryways to get these veggies to our kitchen.

All in all, we're making good progress on restoring this old place. It just feels like there should be a whole lot more completed for how sore and tired my body feels every weekend. Truth be told though, I wouldn't trade this for anything else.

Lynda's Birthday

The picture of the antique school desk was Lynda's birthday present. We actually got it a couple months ago and very cleverly hid it in the cab of Kevin Jr's truck with the blown up engine. Yes, the same truck that was the subject of a blog post last year about taking the transmission out and living to tell the story. As you can see, a desk like this is a perfect fit in our house. The desk, much like the house, has a very high "cool factor" rating and because of that, it gets to be part of the craziness of our project. This blog post will give you an idea of what it's like to celebrate your birthday at the Farmville Reality Project. It's not for everyone but I do believe the birthday girl had a great day.

The pampering began very early that morning with me making sure she got to sleep in until almost 6:15 am. About that time, the cats were acting like they needed to be fed or they would simply kill and eat us, so we got the day started. A quick happy birthday card exchange, usual morning routine of coffee and tea, sort of healthy breakfast food stuff, and we were on our way to tile a bathroom floor. I know what you're thinking, this guy goes far beyond ridicules when it comes to helping people celebrate their birthday. I guess it's one of my strong suits.

Once we got to the house and gathered the tools, we did a quick huddle to make sure we knew what we were doing and what the final product would be. The final product would be an 8 foot by 8 foot floor of one inch white hex tiles. At very well thought out locations, there would be black hex tiles arranged in a snowflake pattern. The idea for the floor came from a blend of many different pictures we had looked at the past few months, actual places we went and visited, as well as what materials we could find in our price range. That led us to the tiles I posted pictures of and described in this post, http://thefarmvillerealityproject.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html. Through a strange twist of fate, today, Lynda's birthday was the day to get these installed.

As mentioned above, these are small, one inch hex shaped tiles and to get the snowflake pattern, it meant taking some of the black ones from some sheets to use in place of white ones on the sheets where a snowflake was to be. We did this prep work a few days prior so there were empty spots where each of the two different colors needed to be relocated to. The plan would be to install the sheets and put the relocated tiles in place as we moved across the floor.

Like all good plans, this one was little short of being realistic. We spread a section of thinset (you do remember that stuff, don't you?) and placed four sheets down. After a few minutes of over-the-top perfectionist type of adjustments, it was time to place the tiles to finish the pattern. This went fairly smooth except the thinset dried very fast in the heat, so we had to smear some more on each little tile before putting it in place. This made a bit of a mess that had to be cleaned because once thinset dries hard, it is literally like cement. Much easier to clean goopy excess up while it's still wet. Now onto the next four sheets. This is where things started going downhill. The small amount in between the tiles sticking out had dried and needed to be scraped up and new thinset troweled down so the new row of tiles would set correctly. About the only tool that worked right was my finger. A knife, screwdriver, or trowel tip were too awkward. If you misjudged and caught just a little bit of the edge of a tile already laid down, it would break its bond and cause it to pop up. The problem with using your finger is it is not as durable as the metal tools and it wears out over time from the abrasiveness of the surfaces being cleaned. Long story short, bloody finger tips that hurt really bad. That tends to slow things up. We kept plowing along though. We would spread thinset, place sheets of tile and then to the painstakingly, labor intensive process of filling in the snowflakes. As time went on, we seemed to go slower and slower. I asked her more than once if she was having a fun birthday and she always said yes every time. I hope she isn't hard at work planning something as equally torturous for my birthday next year.

As darkness forced us to scrounge up work lights, we did a survey and both of us agreed we needed to keep working and get the floor finished. By this time, some of the lay out lines were not lining up right and the thinset seemed to be drying almost instantly as it was troweled down. I could go on about how we kept our heads down and kept working but truth be told, only one of us did that. It was a she, if that helps solve which one us worked tirelessly without complaint. Don't misunderstand me, I kept working too. One thing every one who knows me will agree on, I never quit working until the job is finished. I just complained the whole time about how tired and sore I was. Somewhere pushing 10:00pm that night, the last tiles went down at the point where the doorway meets the hallway and we both breathed a huge sigh of relief. We had completely blown past the stage of being tired and were exhausted. I did what I do best at that point and grumbled about some of the places that got crooked and didn't line up right. Lynda looked at the floor and said it looked great to her and then we drove the long drive back to find refuge in a nice soft bed for our tired selves.










As you can see from the picture, the snowflakes turned out great and I have to admit, they were well worth the effort. The floor of our bathroom truly does give it a historical look and we both know it's durable enough to last a hundred years into the future. Hopefully someday, many years from now, folks will appreciate how a birthday was spent making such a beautiful floor in this old house. Happy Birthday!

Turning the Corner...Sort of

As you can see by the pictures with this post, some pretty good progress is being made in getting the bathroom ready to be functional. In fact the title of this post came to me while working on the subway tile walls. Being under a big time crunch to get this room finished so we can move in, my judgement can be a little bit to the left of that place everyone calls "good judgement". The excuse for my poor judgement is too many things to deal with and not enough resources to use in dealing with them. The biggest gaps in resources for this particular adventure were time, running water, and common sense. Time still seems to be an issue with most everything I do that involves completing a project. Then again, the common sense thing comes up more times than it should in this area too. But the running water part of this thing is solved. As you can see in two of these pictures, there is a brand new pump delivering water to our relocated Farmville Reality Project. Enough water, as a matter of fact, that we could probably run a hose out to the dry creek bed a little west of here and run enough water to get a few salmon interested in spawning. OK, maybe I exaggerate just a little.... It is nice to have this detail taken care of since the old pump was not working well enough to even get a small part of the Bermuda grass lawn green. The new set-up also has an outlet valve aimed right toward where the orchard/vineyard/garden/pasture will be in the future.
Now back to to topic of this post, turning the corner. My previous mention of being short on resources happened when I decided to tile the walls with subways tiles. I had already helped the pump guy get the humongous water tank out the building so he could use his boom-truck to swing it around and into its new location. That meant he could get busy pulling the old pump out of the well and put the new pump down in there. Using my superior math skills, it was determined I had a few hours to get started on something and tiling a wall in a subway pattern came up from a Google search, so that was what I went with. That's the part where common sense could have come in handy. Even though there was no running water, there was water in a couple 5 gallon jugs. I had already measured and scribed the layout lines on the wall, so I figured spreading tile adhesive (thinset to those who do this for a living) and sticking tiles on the wall would be a pretty easy way to spend my afternoon. With this thought in mind, I poured a generous amount of water in the bucket and poured almost the entire bag of dry thinset mix in there. This is when I discovered the first clue this might be a long afternoon. I couldn't find the big drill I use the mixing paddle on to use in stirring this stuff up. Looked high and low and still haven't found it. Since the other drills are too small and would burn their motors up if I tried to make them do this hard of a job, I mixed the thinset up the old fashioned way, by hand. After the second mixing and most of the lumps gone, I only paused a couple seconds to admire the Popeye-like muscles you develop by mixing this stuff up manually and went to work. The first couple rows went smooth with only some minor mishaps. That was about the time I noticed the thinset was getting very stiff and dry. When this happens, you need to stir it up but should not add any water to thin it out because that ultimately weakens its bonding ability. No problem. I'm a little tired and the afternoon heat has settled on that side of the house but if it needs to be stirred a couple minutes then so be it. It's actually good exercise for those that need a good workout. Think of stirring 50 pounds of bread dough with a big spoon to try and keep it from rolling up into a ball. Kind of like that. Then onto another couple more rows and it needs some more stirring. This time (and every time after that, but don't tell the tile police on me) I sprinkled some water in there to help get this goop back to a state where it could be spread and troweled onto the wall. Did I mention how tired I was at this point and how hot it was? Did I also mention how much would not stick to the wall if you didn't push the trowel with superhuman strength? The stuff that didn't stick would usually fall all over the rows that had just been set and cleaned. I could go on and on describing this but I think we've achieved some basic understanding that tile work is not fun, especially at the end of the day when you're already tired and the room you're tiling is like a sauna. Needless to say, by the time that wall was finished and the big bucket of thinset was all used up, I felt like I had been trampled by horses and tossed from the roof of a one story building. Oh well, at least the longest wall was finished and I had the next day to knock out the other two smaller walls. Of course, to be able to tile this wall in the too few of hours available before darkness set in, I had to skip the corners because every tile needed to be cut to fit. It seemed like a better idea to save that for the next day.

The next day came and that's when I settled into cutting all of the corner tiles. Still being worn out from the day before, this seemed to take a very long time. It really seemed like a lot of work and very little progress. That was up until I set the last one to finish the corners. Once that one was in place, it's funny how "complete" the walls now looked from just that one part being done. As I looked at the now finished corners, it seemed like the bathroom project as a whole was turning the corner from the torn up mess of demolition to now actually resembling what it is destined to become. It's funny how one small step can take you from a part of the journey that feels like no forward progress is being made to another part where the destination starts to come into focus. The focus for the hall bathroom is starting to get clearer and that is a very welcome sight for all of us.

Sidetracked, Just a Little...

The reason for the this title is to add context to the picture of the tomato field being irrigated with a quarter mile wheel line sprinkler system. Most of you that read this blog don't really know what I just described, but you have to have faith that I don't make these things up. That IS what it's called by those who bust their knuckles and sweat in the hot sun putting the pipe together to bring the magic of "rain" to thirsty crops in July. During the recent 4 day "surge" to get our house in a state to be able to live in (read functioning bathroom), I had to take one little mental health break. For some that might mean heavy drinking and going to Las Vegas, but for me, it means taking a drive through farm land. There will always be something about fields of crops that grounds me. The picture in this post shows tomatoes getting a much needed dose of water, but I drove past many other noteworthy fields. On this drive (Which only added about another 20 minutes, but I did have a a crazy beagle with me) I saw sunflowers, corn, cucumbers, squash, rice, honeydew melons, tomatoes, alfalfa, dry beans, walnuts, almonds, grapes, and many other crops that escape me at the moment. Since I have spent most of my life kicking dirt clods to make something grow, this break did me good.

On to the important stuff. Once again I am facing a deadline that is defined by information found on a calendar (mine happens to be hanging on the wall in the livingroom and was issued by the Pro Bull Riders Association, but this story already has enough things that don't make sense). This deadline is much like the last one where I need to have everything done in the bathroom so we can move in. I'm happy to report that the plumbing and electrical stuff is all finished. What's left is to pass a county inspection, get a water heater installed, have the propane company hook up its feeder pipes, tile the walls and floors, AND put the door back on! I think I can manage this is T-minus 12 days. The operative word here is "think". Wish me luck!!!!!

The pictures of the tiles are to give you a sense of how the bathroom will look once this whole thing is accomplished. We bought hex tiles with the flower pattern so we could "steal" the black tiles from some and use them to make snowflakes throughout the entire floor. Part of being able to do this is to visualize. That's why we we laid out the square footage of the bathroom in the diningroom. Now we can work on fine tuning where the snowflakes will be and doing the very labor intensive task of moving the tiles around to fit the pattern. I know this sounds like a bunch of work but everyone involved in this project feels like it's worth it to remodel in a way that's period appropriate. Snowflakes were very popular a hundred years ago. I think we are hoping to do justice to this fact and make this bathroom look like it existed a hundred years ago. Wish us luck!!!!

We Have Walls...Sort Of...

The reason I say "Sort of..." is it's just the corner of one room, but it is still reason to celebrate. Considering we have spent the past several weeks taking walls and floors apart in this project, it feels like progress when we start putting things back together. Before I dive too deep into this progress report, I do have to admit to not making the self imposed deadline laid out in the last post. It is almost the middle of July and the functioning bathroom needed to move in has not happened yet. The new target is the end of July for completion.

The first picture here is the new utility room. Remember that this was formerly a closet, so this is one big transformation. The second picture is what this looked like when it was a closet, so hopefully you can get a sense of what a change (for the better in our opinion) this space has gone through. The door you see in the middle of the back wall will let us come in and out from the outside without going through the main part of the house. The concept is to keep the dirt contained to this area since there will be a washer and dryer here. When kicking dirt clods and doing other equally important farm chores, your boots tend to get a bit dirty, so having this access should help. To the right of this room will another bathroom too. That way we can come in after a hard day of dirt clod kicking, throw our extremely dirty clothes in the washer, take a shower, and change into clean clothes without ever setting foot in the "fancy" part of the house. The reason the corner of this room had to have the walls sheet rocked is so a water heater can be installed in this corner. This water heater is necessary for the previously mentioned functioning bathroom, so we finished out enough of the corner to provide a place for it and our attention is now back to getting the hall bathroom finished.

The third picture shows where things are at right now. After gutting the walls and floor, we shored up the framing and also discovered some damage from water and insects. This led to taking the wall apart into the room next to the bathroom and tearing out the damaged wood. All the damaged framing was replaced and some new pieces were added to add strength so this bathroom can survive another hundred years. The foil you see on the wall insulation serves three very important purposes. The most important is it will keep moisture from migrating through the walls and damaging the framing. Bathrooms always generate a bunch of moist air that can condense on the back side of the exterior siding during the cold part of the year. Moisture behind the siding is always a bad thing. This insulation is installed so there is an air channel to help any moisture back there to dry out and the foil helps keep too much of it from getting there as well. The second thing it does is act a radiant heat barrier. Since this blog is not focused on providing physics-based explanations, we'll just say this helps it be a better insulator than without it. The third thing all this foil does is help keep aliens from outer space from practicing mind control experiments on us while we are in the bathroom. Foil does a good job deflecting their evil gamma-rays back at them.

Let's keep our fingers crossed for smooth sailing the next couple of weeks and maybe we'll see a post with a picture of a finished bathroom.

The Quest for a Bathroom

The title of this post is not referring to the situation where you may have super-sized your ice tea at lunch a couple of hours ago and now you're rolling along that stretch of I-5 in the San Joaquin valley where they have a sign just past the exit you decided to not use. The signs tell you how many miles to the next services (read bathrooms and gas) and you have decided in order to make record time getting to your destination, you can easily wait til then. That's probably about when it would make sense to fuel up anyway. It's funny how once that decision has been made and you see in plain English there is thirty-something miles to the next services, your bladder sends a message to your brain that it made a huge error by not making you take the last exit, AND, to top it off, the low fuel warning light comes on. If you're anything at all like me, your brain goes into overdrive trying to solve the one problem you never could get right back in algebra. You know the one where a car is traveling 80 mph with someone that has only fifteen minutes to live unless they can find a bathroom and you have less than two gallons of fuel in a car that can go 18.26 miles on a gallon of gas if the headwind is less than 3 knots but has to be factored down ten percent for every tenth of a knot over three? That was the one word problem I always missed and karma has made me play it out in real life the past forty years every time I go on a road trip.

OK, now that you know what this post is not about, let's get to the point that it is about. The "new" algebra problem to solve is this. We have about twenty or so days to move into our hundred year old farmhouse and a super scientific poll has indicated a fully functional bathroom is an absolute requirement. The bathroom we started with is being gutted for the most part. I call this the bathroom we started with instead of "original" because you can see from the picture, it was remodeled sometime back in the 1960s and the house was built in 1908. It would hardly be accurate to call it original.

I think the second picture pretty much captures my opinion of bathroom decor in the 1960s. I broke out the sledge hammer and wrecking bar to make some badly needed adjustments. These adjustments included removal of the tub surround, sink, toilet, vanity, and first layer of flooring. Once these were out of the way, closer inspection revealed some water damage to the sub-floor and lower wall areas. I'm a firm believer in not ignoring signs like that so most of the sub-floor and all of the lower half of the wall surface will be replaced. As you can see in the picture, this means cutting and removing quite a bit of material. One very important Law of Remodeling is this: That which is removed MUST be replaced. Being the law abiding person I am and have been for at least the past several days, I will obey this to the letter.

That leads us to the question of what will replace all of that mess? That has been the fun part of this quest. After demolishing the 1960s bathroom, we discovered clues underneath the layers of stuff that told a cool story. The way the toilet drain was constructed, the house was built with indoor plumbing back 1908. At that time in rural areas, that was not too common because of expense. Under the bathtub surround, the original linoleum was still stuck to the subfloor boards. This means there was a clawfoot tub in there too. Under the sheetrock is good quality 1x12 planking, but unfortunately it has had tile scraped off of it in the past, and is too damaged to refinish. Above this planking is a layer of cloth-backed wall paper. In those days, this type of wallpaper was hung and painted. It's almost as thick as canvas and appeared to be very durable. Given these discoveries, it only made sense to put this bathroom back to as much of a historically correct state as possible. It was very fun to research the fixtures and materials that would have been in a bathroom at the turn of the last century. You can lose yourself for hours looking at pictures and imagining what our humble little hall bathroom could look like.

Here is what we have settled on and hopefully this gives you a sense of what it will take to complete this quest. The bathtub will be a clawfoot with a tall gooseneck shower. It will sit where the original one would have sat. There will be a wrap around shower curtain hung from a rod that hangs from the ceiling to keep the overspray from going everywhere. The toilet will be the high tank type where the bowl (the business part) is separated from the tank. The tank will be mounted on the wall behind the bowl and connected by a tall pipe. I'm told these types of toilets work very well and hardly ever get plugged because of the increased water velocity from having the tank so high above. The sink will be an open console with two fancy front legs to sit on. It will be similar to a pedestal sink in that it's open under the sink deck, but will have the legs at each corner. All of these old style fixtures had their plumbing exposed for the world to see, so the new pipes and subsequent finish work is being planned very carefully. In those days, trades people took their time and fit everything together neatly because they had to. The fixtures were not designed to "hide" all of the pipes so you could just put them where ever it was easy and fast to do.

With all of this said, here is the recap of the bathroom quest we are on. In the next twenty days we need to have completely new supply and waste pipes installed under the house. It will also be very helpful to have the new electrical wiring run through the walls and connected to the light switches and outlets. Then the floor will be put back into place and prepared so that 2" white hex tiles can be laid down and grouted. Then the above mentioned fixtures will be installed and hooked up. At that point, I hope we can put up new wall planks and get them painted. We will also tile the walls behind the tub and toilet with 3"x6" subway tiles. After all of that is completed, then it gets pretty easy with painting the planks and installing some light fixtures. Finally, I will put the door back on its hinges and call the job finished. Somehow I think it's about at least a million times easier to take care of the bathroom quest of an over-taxed bladder in the middle of the San Joaquin valley stretch of I-5.... But that's not nearly as much fun.

The New Farmville Reality Project

The way things have unfolded in 2011, the Farmville Reality Project will not produce near the bounty of fruits and vegetables it did in 2010. As a matter a fact, the location of the project has moved to a place known as the "Buckle". The official name of our new hometown is Arbuckle. It's a sleepy little town along I-5. The main crop in this area are almonds. As you can see in the pictures, the new Farmville has almond trees. They have not been well tended the past several years and there are only so many almonds a crew can eat in a year, so these trees will be removed. In their place will be a multitude of trees, vines, and open garden. The new place is two acres total, and I'm willing to bet this soon-to-be-former orchard is about an acre. At this time, no real detailed plan has emerged on what will go where. Here is a list of things under discussion for various reasons.

• Boysenberries- Lynda has promised to make plenty of pies when the berries are plentiful.
  



• Winegrapes- No further explanation needed.




• Peaches, Plums, Nectarines- If you've ever had the opportunity to eat these fully tree-ripened, you too would make it your life's mission to have these very close to your back porch.




• Olives- Home cured olives are always great to have around. We also made some olive oil last year and it turned out pretty good.




• Mandarins- The absolute best mandarin is the Owari Satsuma. They have the perfect balance of acid and sugar, plus the skins almost peel themselves.




• Cherries- Although they can be a chore to pick because of how small they are, Bing cherries are a real treat.




• Apples- Since they are so versatile in the kitchen, there will be a few different varieties so we can cook with them and eat right off the tree.




• All of the same great things we grew in 2010, plus anything else that might come to mind.

How's that for maintaining maximum flexibility for the new location? I'm thinking with an acre to play with, future meals are going to be filled with ample fresh produce straight from the garden. As we get the old almond trees cleared and start planting new trees, I'm sure plenty of other things not listed above will get thrown into the mix.

For now though, the immediate chore was to cut the four foot tall weeds down so the fire department won't come out and taze me til my ears bleed. Because we tend to make things up as we go along, the rig used was the bobcat in the first picture with a hydraulic driven, front mounted mower. I called around to various rental places and this appears to be a popular time of the year to get weeds chopped down. Most tractors with traditional rear mounted mowers were already reserved. While talking to one outfit, they guy mentioned this rig and said it doesn't leave a finely mowed surface behind but it will chop down tall weeds in tight places like nobody's business. After getting the hang of driving this thing, I have to say he was spot on. I was able to turn on a dime and poke the mower between the trees, under low hanging branches and even within inches of the barns. The controls were a couple of levers that are pretty much like joysticks on a video game. The tractor moves according to if the levers are pushed or pulled and speed depends on how far forward or back they go. Same with steering. It turns left if the right lever is pushed and the left lever is pulled because the wheels on one side will move in the opposite direction than the other side. Since it is what is known as hydrostatic driven instead of direct drive, you can stop and reverse course instantly without shifting a transmission. The two foot pedals control the height and angle of the mower deck. After ten minutes of getting used to operating it (and a few broken branches), I was able to flat out slaughter my most despised enemy, the weeds. It was noisy, bouncy, dusty work. For a guy like me that actually likes operating machines instead of computer keypads, it was very satisfying.

I took a picture of one of the weed-infested areas before mowing and then the after shot so you can see what a mess this old orchard had become. It's exciting to imagine the possibilities for creating the perfect home orchard and vineyard. At this time, the olives will likely be trellised to make picking them easier but the grapes might not be so the canopy can better protect them from the scorching sun. I guess we have plenty of research and homework to do as we develop this new location. Sometimes, that is almost as much fun as enjoying the proverbial fruits of your labor.

Still Cooking with Stuff from the Garden

All right, I realize it's been awhile since the last post. The single biggest reason is this time of year is not the best for working out in the garden. However, that does not mean the garden doesn't provide great material to work with in creating good meals. The pictures with this post are of tonight's dinner. As you can see, it fit on one standard size dinner plate and in a soup bowl. Don't let this simplicity fool you into thinking we don't eat well around Farmville these days. Quite the opposite, actually. First let's describe what this meal was and then we'll describe the ingredients, and as usual, my two cents on how those ingredients found their way to my pan tonight.

The main dish, if you have to have one, was a variation of a San Francisco specialty called "Joe's Special". For those that have never had it, use Google to find out what it is. Nothing too fancy, but it hits the spot when you're hungry. Since I like to use what I have on hand, this was made up of Italian Sausage, mushrooms, onions, garlic, brown eggs, Swiss chard, and cheddar cheese. The soup in the bowl is a butternut, wild rice, and smoked sausage soup. The garnish you see on the plate is garlic chives and spearmint. We'll get into that later, if I remember.

For the Joe's Special knock-off, the tie-in to the garden and other things I tend to discuss in this blog are this. The brown eggs are symbolic of another time back in the 1970s when Lynda and I had the dubious honor off going out to collect the eggs from her dad's chickens. He got this batch of Rhode Island Reds with the belief they were all going to be laying hens. As time went on, this pretty much was the case with the glaring exception of this one rooster. Apparently, those that sorted this batch by gender made a slight error on one of them. As he got bigger, he did the usual rooster stuff and tried to kill anything he thought should be killed because he thought so. Since Lynda was the one that did most of the chores at that point in time, she had to face this crazy rooster everytime she went to gather eggs from the hens that were laying by that time. Being the crazy rooster he was, he would charge at her and attack with full rooster force. One day she told me about this situation and me, being the protective kind of guy I am, decided to go out and take care of the egg gathering myself. This rooster did his usual routine and attacked, but this time, the person he attacked had a 2 by 4 in his hands. Being a former baseball player in junior high school, let's just say I hit at least a triple that day. It didn't do much much good though, because that stupid rooster kept on doing his psycho attack routine way after I batted him into the outfield. OK, back to the eggs. Those eggs from the Rhode Island Red hens were the best I ever had. They would have free run of the garden to peck at things and Lynda and I would go to Florin Feed and get a feed mix that was formulated for laying hens. The eggs we would gather were very good. The yolks were so intensely yellow and the taste was very rich. In the years since then, I have never had comparable eggs and I look forward to being able to raise some hens again and have a steady supply of great tasting eggs.

The soup was made with Farmville butternut squash and highlights why winter squash should be in everyone's garden. What other vegetable can you harvest in November and still have around to cook with in March of the following year? All I did to make sure these would keep this long is made sure they were clean and stored in a basket with good air flow. I put this basket in the corner of the shed and have been using squash from it all winter long. The wild rice in the soup is from a farm up in Fall River. Fall River is in the northeast part of California and right in the middle of some of the best fly fishing anywhere. It was nice to use an ingredient from that area and think about next summer, chasing trout in some of my favorite creeks around there. The smoked sausage was plain old store bought, but in the future, the plan is to get back into sausage making. Who knows, once we are settled in the new place, maybe I'll raise a hog or two each year and make sausage from my own pork. I just have to keep Lynda from naming them.

OK, I did remember to go back and talk about the spearmint and garlic chives used as a plate garnish. I stumbled on both of them while I was getting the Swiss chard. Since the plan is to move later this spring, it didn't make much sense to plant anything after the fall garden wound down. This pretty much means the majority of the garden is a jungle of weeds. Under these weeds were very healthy clumps of spearmint and chives. I was feeling a bit lazy and decided to wash and use them for garnish rather than chop and sprinkle over the food. Both would have added some interesting flavors to the dishes. It did show just how hardy some herbs can be and they are definitely going to be included in the next garden project.

Reflections on 2010

The pictures above capture the Farmville Reality Project at three different points of time. There is about two months in between each shot. The first picture is just before the ground was worked prior to planting. I really should have taken a picture a couple weeks before this one was taken to show how ungarden like this site was. I had to spray the waist high weeds two times to knock them down enough to see where all the trash was to pick up. The boy and I spent close to two weeks cleaning things up between the too often spring rains. Even after disking, rototilling, shoveling, and finally raking the seedbeds, we continued to find odd items all season long. These items ranged from old beer cans to horseshoes.

The picture in the middle shows how much bare dirt there was between the various things growing. I bring this up for a couple reasons. One, by the end of the season, there wasn't much bare dirt to navigate around on while picking things. It always amazes me how much corn, melons and tomatoes grow in just a few months time. The second reason I bring this up is to somehow burn into my brain to leave more space between some of these things when planting. I tend to crowd things a bit too much when planting. I'm always trying to get the most from whatever inputs are being used, but I did learn a long time ago that crowding plants that don't want to be crowded doesn't turn out very well. The first time we grew watermelons commercially, we made this mistake. We did end up with roughly twice as many melons per acre than the traditional spacing would have yielded. The punchline was the biggest melon was only about twelve pounds, which for the variety we grew, was not very good. It was a seeded variety and at ten to twelve pounds, each melon had roughly two or three small bites in the middle before you had to work around the seeds. The next season we planted on a wider spacing and had twenty two to thirty pound melons, which sold much better than the prior year's crop. The one major spacing change I'll make next year will be for the heirloom tomatoes. Their plant type is much larger than some of the new hybrids and they need the extra room to spread their branches out. It looked like I crowded them to the point that their branches became too intertwined and did not allow enough sun to hit the plants. I think this reduced the number of blossoms and subsequently, the amount of tomatoes. It also allowed the stinkbugs to build massive subdivisions of stinkbug tract homes deep inside the canopy. This population explosion meant quite a bit of the tomatoes were damaged. These enemies of Farmville feed on the fruit and leave yellow spots on the surface of the fruit. Just under the skin, the yellow spots turn into white blotches that make the fruit taste bitter. If there's not too much damage, you can cut the bad parts out, but if there's a lot, then it's not worth it. For the sake of my mental health, I need to move on now. I can easily lose myself in the never-ending war on stinkbugs and spend every waking moment developing strategies to try and prevail over them.

The third picture above shows how it all comes together with enough sunshine and water. Although the three pictures were not taken from the exact same vantage point, with the old, dead oak tree in the background, you can hopefully get a good sense of perspective on how things went from a weed patch to having eight foot tall corn in just four months time.

The two pictures above have special significance in the context of reflecting back on 2010. The shot of the young melon plants with the morning sun bringing out the glow in the leaves was taken in early June. When this picture was taken, I had the good fortune to reunite with someone that shares this passion for growing a garden that feeds one's self in many ways and on many different levels. Beyond the countless meals that were amazing simply because the ingredients were freshly picked, the garden brought much more to the table. In our small circle of folks, it became a center of many conversations. These ranged from people asking when this or that might be ripe to planning future meals based on harvesting things we were literally planting seeds for at that moment. The picture of the sun going down behind the garden hopefully captures the simple calmness of finishing the day taking care of garden chores. On this evening, it was about watering the thirsty plants. We spent many evenings watching the sun set while doing simple chores like this. I could go on for pages describing the many things you see when you're out at sunset in a garden, but it still wouldn't scratch the surface. We saw everything from intricate spider webs getting the finishing touches to an owl setting up its perch in the dead oak tree. Actually the owl came along a bit past sunset that evening, but it still counts.

All in all, 2010 was an amazing year. The plan is keep the Farmville Reality Project going strong in 2011 and every year into the future. It's very likely the location will change but the concept will stay the same. I plan to continue posting blog updates in 2011, much the same as was done in 2010. The big wild card is that we will be embarking upon a new adventure that will become material for another blog. Then again, it might be the right time to roll everything together into one site with sections for each "adventure". Stay tuned and we'll see where it all takes us...

Not so Random Stuff

It's been just over two months since the last post. To make up for this long gap, there will be two posts today. Truth be told, the reason there are two posts is the site only allows 8 MB of pictures to be uploaded per post and there just happened to be more than 8 MB of pictures I wanted to comment on. I titled this post "Not so Random Stuff" for a reason. While these pictures and the accompanying comments are pretty random, overall it's not. Since two posts were made on the same day, as you can imagine, even in my ADHD world, there is a correlation. It is this; the fact that I'm sitting here commenting on pictures taken many months ago shows how the project became a focal point for bringing together many different aspects of 2010. It was fun to sort through the many pictures taken over the past several months and remember what was going on at the time they were taken. These particular ones stood out for various reasons, so I thought I would upload and comment on them.
Here is a picture of the crooked rows of corn from back in April. I had mentioned in a post in May that they were crooked and would bother me until the next planting hid my crooked rows. I thought I would post it despite how the middle two rows curve to the right. It stood out this morning because I was looking at other pictures where the corn planted a few weeks after this was over eight feet tall. In the next blog post, you'll see pictures of the corn and this crooked stuff is invisible.

The picture of the basil is here because we can't wait until next summer when garden fresh basil will be just a few steps from the kitchen. Although we spent an entire afternoon making pesto for the freezer, it is long gone now. This showed us we need to make at least twice as much next year to get all the way through the winter. In 2011, the pesto making will have a neat twist to it. In early December 2010, Kevin Jr, Jessica H and I spent a rainy afternoon picking olives out by the UCD airport. This was part of an event that resulted in the olives being pressed into oil. Some of this oil has been set aside to be used for pesto making next summer. This will be the foundation for some truly great meals.

The sunflower picture is here to highlight an idea that is not necessarily exclusive to having a garden, but having one helps. The idea is the act of taking pictures sets you up to see some incredible things. The sun behind the sunflower with foraging bees is a prime example. Originally, my goal was to get a shot of the sunflowers in a row. As I looked at them, the bees' activity seemed interesting and they were foraging so intently, an up close shot without disturbing them was easy. Taking the pictures involved moving around to try different angles and one of them was this one. I encourage everyone to keep a camera handy and look for great shots. They're out there, you just have to look for them. Having a garden helps because it gets you outside, where in my opinion, the best shots are at.

This bucket of tomatoes is here because I was just recently reminded about them. As part of my important mission to keep Lynda from having to buy regular old run of the mill food stuff, I sent her home with some tomato puree. This tomato puree came from these tomatoes pictured. They were the Roma variety and in addition to making nice thick puree, they are great for pico de gallo. Now that I'm writing about them, I think I'll use some to make spaghetti sauce for dinner tonight.
The pumpkin pictured here was a, in the words of my daughter, ginormous one. It took RJ and I some serious cussing to carry it from the garden to the front porch for Halloween. Not to deprive Kevin Jr of the opportunity to talk like a sailor, he and I carried it from the front porch to the back porch where I cut it up to cook. This is no exaggeration when I say I cooked less than half of it and filled the freezer up with pumpkin. It has made its way into numerous pies, batches of cookies, a pot of soup, and a casserole. I have also given a few vacuumed packed bags away and there is still a butt load in the freezer. It is amazing how much comes from just one pumpkin. The personalized inscription was done at no extra charge. This was the first pumpkin Lynda and I grew together in over thirty years and it looks like we still have the magic touch.