Friday Favorite: Apples
This edition of Friday Favorites is for Mr Chiots. I’m actually not a huge fan of apples, in any way shape or form. Mr Chiots, on the other hand, LOVES apples any way he can get them.
We have a few different apple trees in the garden, lovely old apple trees. A few are over 100 yrs old and have many different kinds of apples grafted onto them. As the apple season is progressing, we’re tasting them and trying to figure out which varieties they are.
Just recently we picked a big bag of these beauties, I’m thinking they might be a Macintosh. We used them to bake a cheddar apple pie and I mixed the apples with pears, figs and cranberries for a winter fruit crumble (recipe in Rustic Fruit Desserts). The pie was so-so, the winter fruit crumble was AMAZING, and I don’t like cooked apples. They’re also great to eat out of hand. Mr Chiots is certainly in seventh heaven with so many apples to eat. Now all we need to do is get a cider press so we can make some cider!
Do you like apples? Do you like them cooked?
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A Piece of Chiot’s Run
Our nieces and nephew were planning on visiting this week, but the trip got cancelled for a few different reasons. Since they can’t make it up to Maine, we decided to send them a fun activity. Over the past few months I’ve been gathering feathers as I find them in the gardens. Most of them are from our birds, the ducks, guineas, and chickens. There are, however, a few wild turkey feathers in there as well.
I put all the feathers in a bag and made a poster with photos of all the different birds the feathers came from. The kids will are supposed to try to match the feather to the bird it came from. Some will be easy, like the polka dot pearl guinea feathers and the big wild turkey feathers, but others will be more difficult. There are about 50 feathers in the envelope.
Hopefully they will have fun with this activity. I remember that I loved collected feathers when I was a little girl, hopefully they enjoy this collection as much as I enjoyed mine.
Did you ever collect feathers as a kid?
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Herbed Chicken – Not the Cooked Kind
Yesterday, I spent some time gathering fresh herbs for the nesting boxes. Soon enough the herbs will be gone and the snow will be flying. I’ve been harvesting herbs all summer long and drying them in the attic of the garage for this purpose, but when I have them fresh I use them that way. In the winter I use dried herbs for the same purpose. In this bucket is a mix of: calendula flowers, marigold flowers & leaves, peppermint, thyme, sweet annie, oregano, and lime basil. A handful was placed in each nesting box and now the coop smells amazing.
I think the chickens rather like the herbs, if I only put herbs in one nesting box they seem to choose that one over the others. These herbs are supposed to help keep away parasites, lice, fleas, mites, ticks and other little creepy crawlies. You can also add other herbs like lavender, bay leaves, eucalyptus, catnip and catmint. Next year I plan on growing a few more herbs in the garden just for my feathered ladies. Even if they didn’t help with little crawlies I’m pretty sure I’d still do it, the coop smells great and the chickens are happy.
What’s your favorite herb for scent instead of eating?
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ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz
Yesterday was a soggy day here in Maine. No garden work was done, the chickens & pigs barely got fed between the rain storms. My day was spent working in indoors, canning tomato soup, making an apple crisp, cleaning, working in the office. It’s nice to have some time indoors, my house can get a bit untidy when we have weeks without rain. Sometimes, however, I need to take a cue from Dexter and just spend some time relaxing. This cat has the relaxing thing down pat.
That’s what I did last night, I spent an hour reading instead of writing an in depth blog post – hope you don’t mind. I figured the pictures of Dexter would make up for it – he’s one cute cat!
Do you find yourself putting off inside chores when it’s nice outside?
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Cultivate Simple 48: Building Community
On this weeks episode we celebrate one year of podcasting by talking about building community.
Retail Me Not – great place to find coupons for things, particularly large companies.
My favorite accounting software is AccountEdge (formerly Mind Your Own Business). I’ve been using it for years for our personal and business needs.
Jeannette asked about which loaf pans I used, you can guess that they’re cast iron. They’re made by Lodge so they’re made in the USA. I love them for yeast or quick breads. I even bake chocolate cakes in them.
Lodge Cast Iron Loaf Pan
Building Community
- Get involved
- Support a farmers market
- Get to know your neighbors, organize things like community events, neighborhood yard sales, etc
- Whenever you see a garage/yard sale stop and talk to your neighbors
- Get outside, sometimes all it takes is getting outside for people to see you and get to know, walk around your neighborhood
- Attend community events, volunteer to help is possible
- Develop patterns. Always patronize the same post office, businesses, etc. Take a few extra minutes to get to know those people at those locations, use your local library
- If you like sports attend local sporting events
- Read a lot and educate yourself on a variety of different topics so you have conversation starters and fodder for when you meet people
- Volunteer locally if you can
- Find a local church if you’re religious, if you’re involved in the local church try to encourage them to have events that benefit the local community
- Join local clubs, visit your local library
- Start clubs or events if there aren’t any, book club, coffee klatch, etc.
Books of the Week
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:41:39 — 70.5MB)
