Bells of the North Homestead

Once again, we are rebuilding, starting from scratch.  A new yard, new plans, this time more permanent than the last time in Aberdeen, Maryland. Originally, as we moved back into our home in Fairbanks, Alaska we had plans, great plans, for a garden of permanent raised beds, for chickens and honey bees.  Then it was just the honey bees.  Then it was just the chickens.  We’re still certain about the raised beds.  Now we have decided however that what is needed more is patience.  Saadi, a Persian poet from the medieval period once said “Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy”.  I think that applies here. Fairbanks growing season is extremely short.  Our last Frost free date here is approximately May the 25th.  Our first usual frost is approximately August the 30 th .  That gives us a little more than 100 days total to get our raised beds built, filled with soil, compost and vegetables and fruits and tr...

I've given up on my nails.  At least for now. My goodness do my fingers hurt.  My nails hurt, the pads of my fingers hurt.  Thankfully the soreness in my knee, ankle, shoulder and hip joints has passed.  That is probably because we're taking small breaks now.  30 to 45 minutes here, an hour there.  Earlier on I was using our much larger soaking tub A LOT.   The quote from Under the Tuscan Sun keeps reverberating around in my brain.  "Pick one room and make it yours. Go slowly through the house. Be polite, introduce yourself so it can introduce itself to you." - Frances Mayer. Funny, this house was already mine, I already knew it. It already knew me.  Four years ago I moved away from this house. So for me, this is a getting to know you once again type of deal.  The house and I have both been dinged up a bit, we both might be showing our age a bit more, but we're working on getting comfortable with each other once again.  We'...

I always seem to feel this way when I haven't written in a while and yet in the past I always find myself at a loss of words. What can I share that is noteworthy? What can I share that would be interesting. Now instead I find myself overwhelmed. There is just so much, too much to share. How can I capture all the moments in a simple blog entry? Approximately two weeks ago our journey began from Aberdeen Maryland to Fairbanks, Alaska. It all started with a small amount of downtime right outside of Washington DC. That was a long weekend spent relaxing, shopping, movie going and eating out. Almost all of those are somewhat unknown pleasures to us. We rarely go shopping in malls, we usually prefer to save our money that could be spent on eating out and use it towards building our savings or purchasing larger items that could be useful in the future. Even attending movies in the theaters, ridiculously expensive in my opinion, are a rare treat for us. The positive to this gl...

Wow, the past few days have been...odd, filled with things we never get much time or money to do. We arrived here to Washington DC, in the Falls Church, Tysons Corner side on Friday and since then we've been sightseeing, people watching, watching movies, museum visiting and shopping . Well actually, sightseeing is not new to us at all but over the past several years shopping, the kind of senseless, walking around the mall type of shopping and buying whatever tickles our fancy kind of shopping has been more or less non existent. Our son has been in heaven as the three of us walk miles upon miles each day visiting malls and museums.  We even brought him to see Enders Game which he said afterwards was worth "two thumbs up".  As a parent of an almost 8 year old, I have to say, the movie was great.   I can't wait till I can get my son to read the books!   Today we took a break from eating boring leftovers, eating boring sandwiches and eating whatever we have left fr...

Wow, it's finally here. Moving Day. The employees (three of them!) have been busy packing things up since about 2 hours ago.  The sound of paper tearing, packing tape and music from the packers IPODS fills the air.  It even smells like packing tape in here.  Already my hands are drying out from even thinking about unpacking all this stuff later on.  Edward asked me at one point this morning "when are you going to ever use this parrafin wax thingy for your hands?" In about a months time I will.  Today there is not as much hard, back breaking, nail breaking, hand cracking work.  In a month from now things will get crazy.  So, after about tomorrow, for the next three weeks I get, somewhat, a life of leisure with just a bit of heavy driving and entertaining an almost 8 year old as he repeats for about the 30th time "are we there yet?" Fun times are a comin'

My most recent item to dehydrate is a sweet potato we received as part of our CSA share from Brads Produce.  This, I actually did not research ahead of time like I typically do simply because I was in a hurry to "git'r done" so I am writing about it to simply remind myself later "uhh how did I do this one?". First, I baked it along with some other items in the oven just until it was starting to get soft. I like to wrap my sweet potatoes in tinfoil because they make a horrible mess in the oven otherwise. Next, I sliced them up and placed them in our 5 tray Excalibur dehydrator for about a day and a half. I checked several times to see if they were "crunchy" yet.  Each time, even today these remain pliable and soft with crunchy parts around the edges.  Hhhmm, frustrating. A friend had remarked how this can be difficult to dehydrate these.  I can see why. Okay, so today I did a test .  I tried cutting up the now mostly dehydrated sweet potato pieces ...

I started making my own Kombucha tea over three years ago when I read about all the health benefits and I have to admit, only now I thought maybe I should write a bit more about it! Kombucha is simply green, white or other varieties of tea that are fermented, and after a few weeks turns into an effervescent healthy beverage.  It is fermented simply with a bacterial and yeast culture that sooner or later, in the right environment creates a SCOBY.  Scoby stands for Symbiotic Colony of Bacterial Yeasts.  The Scoby is not actually the main part of the kombucha tea, it is just a by product of the bacteria and yeasts at work. First, a bit of the history behind Kombucha tea.  Kombucha originated in Northeast China or Manchuria and later spread to Russia and from there to the rest of the world.  It was thought that this showed up in China as early as 206 BCE.  It became the norm over time to always share your extra kombucha tea and SCOBY mamas as this allows othe...