Our Vintage Life is getting more interesting each day. We have no problems sleeping is the only way I can describe our life.
Our diet has changed since the garden has been producing wonderful fresh vegetables and fruits. Doing things the old way takes longer to do most anything so there is always something to do. It is a good tired because everything we are doing has a purpose.
I am always chopping something.
Sometimes it is to put in jars to ferment or from canning or to go in the dehydrator.
Then there is supper...
My two new favorite meals is mixed veggies stir fried or stewed or grilled eggplant.
We are eating very little meat these days and we don't miss it nor are we making very many trips to the grocery store which is always a good thing.
Since we got rid of our large refrigerator and started using Windsor our 1920s ice box and Lady Enid our college size dorm fridge we just eat up our leftovers the next day.
Keeping fresh veggies from the garden and leftover fruit used up calls for cooking up some special treats.
I like to sprinkle just a big of sugar over our fruits to make a fruit syrup with the fruit and this always goes good over sponge cake or pancakes.
Let the strawberries sit in the sugar for a few hours and it will make its own light syrup. I juiced the leftover lemons and also zested them before juiced them and I will use some of this to make some lemon bread then I will freeze what is left.
Today was a dirty day for us between some shop work and garden work Charles got pretty dirty. He dug up the small garlic bed today. I planted garlic last fall and today it was time to get them out of the ground. We are a little late harvesting but that is ok.
If I had known how good they were going to do I would have certainly planted more. We harvested 37 heads and there are probably a few left behind. I was not sure about the space to give them since we made the tiny victory garden/secret garden but there are plans for expansion and I will for sure plant extra garlic this fall.
The garlic heads need to dry and this one lost its stem as did some of the others so I will lay them out on newspaper and let them dry with the dirt on them.
We have a serious problem at our house, our pecan trees have become too large for our yard and the limbs are hanging over our house. It is not touching our house like it looks like in this picture but the canopy has become dangerous for our house.
We have contacted a tree cutting service and they will be coming remove three large trees and trim and shape one. It will be sad to see them go but the good news it will open new projects as we will expand our gardening.
Down at the back of our yard we have a cluster of small buildings and small garden shed, a small workshop and since this tree is sitting right in front of these buildings they will bring a crane to lift the trees out. I don't even want to know or look they just need to do it and get it over with!
It seems our storms get more severe all the time so these trees are very dangerous for us and the one in the background has been dropping limbs and putting a few holes in our carport so it is certainly time to go. At least now I will have more sunshine at my clothesline :)
We will most likely plant a fruit tree or two.
Each day Charles and I look forward to our evening, fluffing our pillows and making our reading nest before we go to sleep. This is something Charles and I never did before we got rid of our televisions. Life seem so much more exciting to us since we hardly ever turn on the one remaining tiny television we kept for storm news and such. At first we had plans to watch a Friday night movie for our once a week movie night but we are not even interested in doing that anymore because we have more interesting things to do.
It seems that now we cannot get enough knowledge about things. I want to study all the time and learn all I can how to be as sustainable in our tiny place as we can possibly be. We have increased our books about nutrition, gardening, homesteading, Charles has become serious about journaling because the journals help us for reference so we can refer back to how things worked or did not work so we know where we are going next. As I have mentioned before we journal our usage such as our daily meter readings for our water, electric, gas mileage and such.
We are both much more serious about not wasting our food which brings in food preservation. This is how it was in the past and we just lost our way and have come back to our common sense.
We have taken control and wish so much that we had not waited so long to do so. I urge you if you are young to start doing this now because living with purpose is so much better than living with no direction.
Well, I am off to bed soon, Grandma Donna
