The best way to learn how to build anything!

There are things you know you know,
things you know you don't know,
and even things you don't know you know.  
But it's the things you don't know that you don't know that will get you in the end.
-paraphrased from some politician I can't remember.

I've been working with spinning wheels for nearly 20 years.  Repairing, assembling, using, spinning, buying and selling, teaching, technical support, writing, researching, and other adventures.  I know a lot about spinning wheels.  

Or at least I thought I did. 

What I didn't know is how much you can learn by building a spinning wheel out of gingerbread.

That's right, gingerbread.

Gingerbread must be the most unforgiving substance to build from ever!  Rigid when you don't want it, crumbling at the wrong moments.  Even making the parts thicker doesn't guarantee strength.  But rather, understanding the forces at work and the stress points is key to successfully building something out of this crazy material.  

I learnt more in two days of failure and one wheel-shaped object than I ever knew I didn't know.

My first attempt was not as awesome as the image in my head.  Actually, it has no resemblance to the image in my head at all.  

But I kind of think I might try again next year and see if I can do better.  

If you want to build or repair spinning wheels, and you want to do it well, build one out of gingerbread.  You will learn more than you ever knew you didn't know.

If you love Bees...

 If you love bees... or eating food in general (without bees there would be almost nothing to eat, except maybe Soylent Green), then here's something you need to know about.

The bees are disappearing.  Even The Doctor knew it was important.  As weird as they are, bees aren't actually aliens (probably), but rather are a vital part of our ecosystem.  Not an ecosystem, but our as in the Human ecosystem that we depend on for survival.  Bees make the plants go happy (reproduce) which in turn participates to our breathing and eating abilities.  There are places in the world without bees, and they suffer.  It is unlikely that the amount of physical labour involved in living without bees could produce enough calories to sustain the population needed to produce that labour.

So basically, no bees quickly leads to no humans, or very few of us surviving, probably not you or me.  Even if we were only to loose the plants requiring direct bee intervention to stimulate their sexlife, then the other plants, the ones that don't need bees for all or any of their pollination would suffer.  Out of those plants we eat (or can eat) as humans, many of the ones that do not rely on bees, rely on human labour.  So reduction in food, leads to reduction in population, leads to a reduction of human labour... which will mean less food...  On top of that, the plants that don't require bees, do require plants that require bees for long term survival.  For example, bigger plants protect smaller ones from extreme weather and capture (and slow the release of) water, which limits the extremes the smaller plants need to endure.  Smaller plants die off quicker, creating better soil conditions, but they also have lovely root systems that are good for reducing erosion, protecting the soil from extreme temperature fluctuations... and so on ad infinitum.  No bees means a good chunk of that sustainable system is lost, which puts more stress on the rest of the system, which soon leads to less food for humans... It's more complex than many of these 'what if there weren't any bees' theories take into account.  We can extend the time humans survive through chemicals, however, it appears that this technique only works as a short term solution, and actually reduces the capacity of the land to support food growth over the long term... and, in theory, long term survival of our species should be important to us.

We need to do something about this.

Here's something:

This is a beehive.  What's really neat about it, and why it captured my interest is that it combines really old and really new technology together to create something more accessible and functional than the modern or ancient technology can do on it's own.

It's called an Open Source Beehive and it's plan is to provide a make your own, printable top bar beehive.  You use this mighty router table printing thing and special, bee friendly plywood to make a flat-pack hive that fits together like a piece of Ikea furniture.

Now I've been wanting a beehive like this for years.  I've even started building (not one, but) two.  Only things came up and the wood I had ready got used for other things.  It takes many tens of hours to make one of these things if you don't have the skills or tools (or in my case, neither).  So being able to 'print' a beehive in about half an hour or so, is fantastic.  I just need to find a router printer thing big enough.

The other half of this project is to monitor the health of the hive using a sensor.  This part doesn't interest me as much, I don't have wifi and cell coverage is poor here.  But for those of you who are interested in this, it attaches to the beehive and tells your smart phone (something else I don't have) if there are any changes in air quality or hive temperature.  It's really useful if you aren't talking to your bees daily.


This open source beehive project is currently in the crowd funding stage.  Basically they ask people to donate money if you believe in this project and want to support it.  You can donate one dollar or one million... they probably accept euros and yen as well.  If you go to the link and look at the right, at different donation marks, you get a reward.  The theory behind crowd funding is a lot like knitting.  Every stitch counts towards a sweater, every dollar donated adds up and make the project happen.



My motive for sharing this isn't just to rant about the importance of bees.  There is a method to my madness:

First, the crowdfunding only has a few days left and they aren't quite at their goal yet.  Even if you don't donate, maybe you could mention it to your bee loving friends.

Second, I'm searching for people in the local area interested in working together to make some of these hives, with the theory that if we buy in bulk, it gets the price down and when the bees arrive, we can support each other with advice and stuff.

Joyful praise for the kitchen

This is what my kitchen looks like today and for the first time in months I feel joyful.

pasta sauce and maple syrup, true heaven.

sourdough bread in the oven

Shepherds pie, or a very close approximation.

I'll have a write up about them soon on my food blog, but what's most important is that I'm feeling glad to be cooking again.  Been a bit of a dark period for me the last couple of months, so hopeful this gladness will stick around for a while.

Having the kitchen to myself to create consumable works of art really makes a difference.   It inspires me in the most primal way.  How I love it.

Last of the winter chard and leeks

Fry me up with two rashers of bacon and call me lunch!

Must watch for keeping food fresh

See also this entry on the etsy blog.

Japanese-ish Radish Pickles

I have a confession to make. I don't actually like radishes. It's not as though there is anything wrong with them, exactly, it's just they have never ingratiated themselves to me. The roots are too crunchy, the leaves too prickly. They grow too quickly in the garden, often going to seed before you get a chance to pick them.

But they are very pretty, and I would love to love them.

I decided to try a Japanese pickle recipe from Just Bento. It took very little time to prepare a weeks worth of pickled radish. Plucking a few pieces out of a jar is far more convenient than going down to the garden, picking, washing, cutting...&c. radishes each day.

It tastes good, but I bet it would have tasted even better if I had some Ume Vinegar and daikon. Here's what I did:

About 20 small radishes, fresh from the garden

1/2 cup rice vinegar

1/2 cup raspberry vinegar

2 Tbs Honey

• Prepare the radishes, cut the leaves and tips from the root. I'm keeping the leaves to make one of these two rice spice recipes: Spicy radish leaves Furikake or Radish leaves, bonito and shrimp furikake. Put in a ceramic or glass jar with a lid.
• Mix the vinegars and honey together, poor over the radishes. You want the radishes to be covered by the pickle juice so if you don't have enough, see the original recipe for adjusting the amounts.
• They are ready to eat the next day, and will keep well for a little over a week.

This recipe makes radishes quite acceptable to me. But I be some of you are wondering why bother? If I don't much like radishes, why eat them?

I want to eat vegetables that I usually shun because I feel it's important to get more variety in my diet. If I can eat more of what I grow and increase the number of different kinds of plants in my diet, then maybe I can acquire a greater range of nutrients from my food and spend less money on vitamins and supplements.

It's actually great fun trying different recipes. The best part is working with fresh from the garden produce. It's so colourful.

Now, if only I could find a way to like Kale.

Happy Pancake Tuesday everyone

Today is the day we call Pancake Tuesday in our house.

It's one of the few remnants of religious holidays that we celibate in our house. This is a modern day version of food traditions that go back several thousand years in Europe.

This time of year (going by the lunar calendar) is the end of winter. In much of Europe, new shoots are starting to show themselves and there is enough fresh food available to get by on. The larders are almost bare, but there should be some apples, but more likely quince or meddlers, some dried fruit, some flour and lots of eggs. The chickens have just started laying like crazy a few days ago, as opposed to the sporadic efforts to give us eggs during the darkest months.

In much of Europe, there is a tradition of making a heavy, egg based bread, often with dried fruit and lots of fat. Hot cross buns are a rather yummy, modern equivalent.

Also in parts of Europe, during different times in history, the use of ovens was strictly regulated (land owner also owned the oven and the farmers had to pay to use it). Most of the cooking was done in a pot or a pan. So if you say, wanted to make a cake in a pan, you could make it a bit runny and then, presto, you have a pancake.

An over simplified, over romanticized explanation of why we tend to eat pancakes this time of year.

How Pancakes have become associated with Shrove Tuesday? I just figured that the Church new a good thing when it saw it, and adopted many of the yummy food traditions.

We eat English pancakes in our household. Although, I've discovered that what the term English Pancake means, depends on where in the UK your family is from. This is what we enjoy:

English pancakes

2 cups of flour

2 eggs

2 and 1/2 cup of milk.

makes enough for 4 to 6 very hungry people.

• Beat together with a fork until there are only small lumps of flour left in the batter. It should be quite runny.
• Heat up a fry (or crape) pan, cast iron is best. You need to grease or oil the pan. It's a bit hot for olive oil, so grapeseed oil is a good choice if you are going for healthy. Lard works best, but many people don't like to use it.
• Poor enough of the batter onto the pan to just about cover it in a thinnish layer. Note, this is going to look like a crape, but be several times thicker.
• When the air bubbles in the batter pop and don't close up again, it's time to flip the pancake. Sorry, I cannot help you there, it's the tricky part.
• Cook the other side briefly and plate.

Now for the important part: sprinkle a good tablespoon of sugar on top of the pancake. Poor lemon juice on top, enough to soak into the sugar. The heat of the pancake somehow makes the sugar and lemon syrupy. It's very yummy! Roll up the pancake into a tube, and eat with a spoon (or knife and fork).

Oh, and if you have a diabetic in the house, may I recommend some extra protein to balance the carbs and sugars. Bacon or sausages go very nicely with pancakes. And for a more complete meal, some OJ or fruit help. But a pineapple for desert would be the best. All those lovely enzymes helping digest the fried foods. Perfect!

Happy Pancake Tuesday Everyone. What a wonderful excuse to eat pancakes for dinner.

Mulled apple juice

A whole 6 inches of snow this morning when I woke up, with another inch fallen before I had a chance to finish my coffee. So much for going down town today - even if they only got a light dusting of snow.

Even the chickens won't venture out of their home.

I had to shovel them out as the snow had all blown against the side of the house and blocked their door. I needn't have bothered.

I might as well dress my loom. It looks cold.

Mulled Apple Juice

• 2L apple juice (the real, cloudy stuff works the best)
• 1tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp grated nutmeg

Heat in a sauce pan on medium until boiling (this cooks the spices and makes it so much better than serving just spiced juice). Reduce heat and serve. Careful, HOT!

If you like, once the juice boiled, then put it in a slow cooker on medium/high, and drink throughout the day. Yum!

Holiday prep.: The Marshmallow and the Pudding

I am in love with my kitchen.

Even though it was a stay at home in my PJs kind of day, I still managed to do a little bit of baking.

I made some plumb pudding for Christmas by modifying a combination of one of Mrs Beeton's recipes and a recipe I found here (a sight that seems to have vanished over night but I'll link it here just in case it comes back - it was really awesome and had all sorts of holiday foods that are free of the common and not so common allergies). It's so yummy. Only instead of making one pudding as I expected, it instead made five. I'm not complaining.

I also made marshmallows. As icing sugar is out, I dusted the marshmallows with cocoa. I think that corn starch might have worked just as well. They taste incredibly sweet and I just can't stop eating them. In fact, I'm off to eat some more pre-breakfast marshmallows right now. Chow.

Holiday Prep.: The icing

Does anyone think that Marshmallows would be good for making the gingerbread house? I was thinking that it might dry hard and act as an icing. Thoughts?

I found a recipe here that I thought would work. It uses...

3 Tbs. (21 g) gelatin
1/2 cup water

2 cups maple syrup

1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. vanilla extract

Holiday prep.: The Gingerbread house

I've been working hard on getting ready for Christmas. It's going to be quite the adventure making a 'traditional' Christmas that I can participate in, especially giving my food limitations.

Foods to be excluded include soy, sugar (from the cane plant), all dairy products (save from goat), peanuts processed grains, barley, and eggs. Foods to be limited included yeast, garlic, sesame, tomatoes, and potatoes. I tell you, this is one heck of a challenge. I was tempted to simply let everyone else have bought treats, but it's so depressing to watch everyone eat foods that I use to love. It reminds me of how ill I am and that's the last thing I want to think about at Christmas.

So, I've been baking gingerbread. I took the ginger snap recipe from Vegan a Go Go and modified it to become a ginger bread that I can eat. It's really yummy and if I roll it out extra thin then I can cut it into shapes that will be hung on the tree.

Of course this is just a practice run to see if it can be done. What I really want to do is to make a gingerbread house that Peggy Sue (my on line name for her) and I can decorate together a few days before Christmas. Which leads to the next challenge: How do I make icing that does not have any sugar in it? I've seen lots of recipes for sugar free frosting but all of them so far have other forbidden foods like Splenda (made from sugar) or sugar free pudding mix (made with soy). I've seen one recipe that might be acceptable at Nook & Pantry that uses only cream cheese and maple syrup; however, I don't know how sutible it would be for a gingerbread house. I can make the cheese from goats milk, but would it hold up the house? Would it go bad quickly? Would I have to keep it in the fridge and if I did, would the gingerbread go soggy?

As I understand it, sugar does three things for icing - it makes it taste sweet, it helps to harden the icing and it helps to preserve the icing so that it lasts longer. How do I get these three qualities without using the one ingredient that is so good at producing them? Any thoughts?

The chickens are coming

Yesterday was the most beautiful weather we have had at the farm so far.

When we got up to make some coffee, the sun was shining on the world. A rainbow glistened above the western hills. Then, as we drank the coffee, the sky clouded over and dark, dark rain descended upon us. But, by the time that coffee was drunk, the sun returned and spring arrived.

Yesterday was the day that the world woke up. It was finally warm enough to open up all the windows and doors to get some air in the house. I also cleaned the oven. It self cleans, so it was pretty stinky which is why I do it on a warm day with all the windows open.

As the stink chased us out of the house into the sunshine we pottered about the farm. We pulled up some brambles that were trying to conquer the front lawn. We examined the buds on the fruit trees that G'pa planted in February. The weather was so warm that you could swear that you could see the buds opening in front of your eyes. We tidied up here and there.

It was a day's worth of good weather that is directly responsible for what we did next.

We ordered chickens.

We ordered 50 Red Sussex Cross unsexed chickens from a local farm feed shop to be precise. This is a duel purpose bird which is good for laying eggs and for meat. They don't fatten up as quickly as your regular meat chickens which is good because those chickens tend to have a rather unhappy life with high rates of heart attacks and what with a tendency to grow so fast that their legs cannot keep up and support their weight. Not all meat breads are like this, but I'm not going to risk it because if I'm going to raise and eat an animal, I want to know that it had a good and healthy life with as little discomfort as possible and with an environment that fulfills it's essential nature. Think Michal Pollan's book the Omnivore's Dilemma. One point Pollan makes is that if you are going to choose to eat meat, and it is an active choice in this day and age, you should be aware of the standard of life of the animal you wish to consume. That's what I want to do.

We are going to build what are called chicken tractors. They are a long cage about 8 foot by 4 foot and 2 to 4 foot high with a shelter up one end and the rest of the cage with wire mesh which are more for protecting the chickens from the many predators than it is to keep the chickens in. There are a lot of hawks, eagles, vultures, mink, cougars, wild dogs, raccoons, feral cats, cougars, and other wild things that like to eat chickens around here. If I am going to be responsible for the life of a chicken, I don't want to allow it to die a slow and painful death when I can prevent this. However, I also want to give the chicken an opportunity to live according to it's chicken nature. The qua that makes chicken, chicken.

In each tractor will go about 8 or 10 chickens. It could easily fit 16 chickens according to the common practice of 1 chicken for ever 2 square foot of space, but to keep them so densely populated would put unnecessary stress on the poor birds and increase the risk of illness. These tractors are small like this because they are mobile. Instead of housing the chickens in a coup and giving them a run which tends to destroy every non-chicken living thin in that exercise yard in just a few weeks; these chickens will be moved to a fresh spot each day so that they have access to fresh grass and bugs. Chickens eating the bugs will be an essential part of our relationship because we won't be using pesticides on anything. And since chickens like eating bugs, we just put them where the bugs need eating. It's a good relationship.

The chickens are unsexed which means we will probably get a mix of girls and boys. They arrive at our home as only day old chicks which means they should be extreemly cute. After a few days we should be able to tell the girls from the boys. The girls and one rooster will live in chicken tractors with a special hut for laying eggs and the batchelors will live in the regular tractors. Or at least this is the plan so far.

The chicks should be here around Easter which is just perfect.

The only thing is, this morning it's raining so hard that I feel that I should start building a boat and gathering up two of every animal. Was it really such a wonderful spring day yesterday? Am I insane for ordering chickens? I know that Dad and G'pa have raised them before, but I have almost no idea what I've gotten myself into. To be responsible for fifty little lives... wow... that's a daunting thought.

Happy Home Maker

Over the last few weeks, I have had a similar kind of conversation with several different people. It's about what can I do with my life; how can I take my new chemical sensitivities and make something positive from them? I tell you, it's a pretty difficult topic. There is a reoccurring theme and it has come up over, and over, and over again. It is Domesticity.

I'm not talking about your 19th Century ideal of an angel in the house, nor even the 50's ideal of a stay at home mom who spends every hour of the day preparing the house for when her husband comes home from work. I'm talking about reclaiming the word homemaking so that it becomes a non-gender-specific term to describe the process of simple every day living.

Look. If you have a roof over your head, by my standards, you have a home. Quite often, the people you love most share this place with you. It doesn't matter if you are male or female, single or married, a single parent taking care of a child, or a single child trying to take care of your parents. How you care for them, how you care for yourself and how you care for your home, speak volumes about your life. Your choice of food, how you cook it, how you clean up afterwards, &c.. All these things and more are a statement of who you are. It's about taking pride in where you live. It's about empowering the individual with the knowledge of how to live well. This is homemaking.

About a year ago I read an article in the local paper. It said that in our city, the average four person household requires over 60 hours of labour at just under double minimum wage (so that would be 100 hours at minimum wage) to provide the basic necessities of life. These necessities are things like rent, clothing, and food, but didn't include such luxuries as TV or bus-fare. That's a lot of work for such a small return. I thought certainly they must have got their numbers wrong, so I read on. Apparently, most of the money went into food, then rent, then clothing, cleaning supplies, and so on down the line. But, what really astounded me was how much these people (as it was an actual survey of people living just above the poverty line) were spending on all these items. They were spending more than three times the amount of money it actually costs to eat and up to ten times the actual cost of cleaning supplies. Were they exaggerating what they spent? I don't think so. What they were doing was wasting money by buying the wrong things. They were doing things such as buying ready made meals at, say, $6 a plate instead of cooking a nice oven roast at $2 a plate. For four people, that's a waste of $16 for just one meal. Multiply that by three meals (one day) and you get a waste of almost $50 a day. Not only that, but by buying prefabricated food, they are hurting both their health and the environment.

I wondered, do people do this because they are working too hard to prepare a proper meal? Maybe they just don't have enough time? Then again it takes as much effort to make an oven roast or a slow cooker meal as it does to make a prefab meal. Even less effort with the slow cooker as it is ready to eat as soon as you get home from work. So why then would the average working class Jo or Joanne waste that much money on something so damaging to their health?

Then, someone mentioned to me, maybe people don't know how to make food. Maybe their mothers (or fathers, or uncles, or aunts, or grandparents, neighbours, &c.) never taught them how to roughly chop some vegetables to make a soup in a slow cooker or how make leftovers yummy instead of depressing. Maybe they never learnt to buy vegetables when they were in season so as to get the best value and the highest nutrient content. Maybe they don't know what the best cut of meat is or how to cook it.

Just think what a family of four could do with 50 extra dollars a day. They could buy some of those little luxuries like bus-fare. Or perhaps, even better, they could work less. And that's just food. Imagine what could be accomplished by saving money on all other aspects of homemaking.

Perhaps, a person would say, that it takes too much time to live this way. It doesn't. If you can afford the time to eat at a restaurant or to open a packet of food and stick in the oven, then you have enough time to keep a good home. Not to mention, with the money you save by proper homemaking, you can work less and thus have more time for yourself.

Perhaps you think that helping the environment and saving money just don't go together. That's just not true. You can save money, help your health and help the environment. This is the trifecto. These three things go hand in hand. And they can be customized for vegetarians, vegans, omnivores, meat eaters, raw fooders, anything. Homemaking is just learning how to live the way you want to, only to do it smart.

Homemaking is old fashioned. No! And yes, people have been homemaking since the first shelter was built. This is not something that goes out of fashion. It is not something that is restricted to the middle-class stay-at-home-soccer-mom. Homemaking is empowering. It is taking back your life from the clutches of big businesses. It is "sticking it to da man". It is a powerful way to do your part for the environment and for yourself, and in my book, that never goes out of style.



So, why the big long rant? Well, if you are still with me after such a long blog post, maybe it was interesting.

The idea is that I would love to write a book about this. A book that would take what I have learned from 19th Century domestic manuals and make it applicable for people who live in the world today. I want to write something that would empower individuals to take back their lives by learning about good homemaking. I want to abolish the stereotype that a homemaker is chained to the stove, barefoot and pregnant.

When I think about the books that have changed my life more than anything else, I think of Frugal Indulgence and The Fabulous Girls Guide to Decorum. I want to write something like these, and when it comes to what I know best, it's homemaking.

Now, do I pitch this to a publisher first, or do I just start writing it? I've already made an outline.