Monday, January 4, 2016

Today it was back to school. The students don't show up until tomorrow, but today it was full of meetings and preparation for the students.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Not a lot happened today. It's Sunday so it's supposed to be a day of rest, right? Anyway, church was nice. I had the opportunity to voice the offertory prayer, something I had never done before. After church, we came home and had lunch. I wanted to do some yard work because it was so nice outside, but I didn't have hardly any energy, so I took a short nap. After the nap, I felt better and decided to start working on the riding mower.

It had been leaking fuel and I have needed to repair it for quite some time.  Once I removed the tank, it was easy to see where the leak was. The fuel line had become brittle and cracked. All I have to do is get a replacement fuel line and filter and it should be good to go.  I went ahead and washed the tank inside and out and let it dry upside down. By the time I put it back together, the tank should be plenty dry and ready for fuel.


Erin finished her desk and we moved it back to her room. We also almost finished up packing the Christmas decorations. That was something none of us was looking forward to, but it must be done. Catherine and I took a walk because of the nice weather. The girls went to youth band practice at church and after they returned we had dinner and watched some TV.  Tomorrow, we go back to school. I'm not looking forward to it, but I am ready for some routine back in our lives.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Today was a pretty relaxing day. My biggest accomplishment was cleaning the oven. It doesn't happen very often and so it was actually pretty nasty. The oven does have a self clean function, but it seems to get so hot, it almost seems a little dangerous so I did it manually.
Besides, it was so bad that I don't think the self clean function probably would not have been sufficient. Anyway after a few coats of oven cleaner and some elbow grease, it came out pretty nice.

I also painted a little on Erin's desk, but didn't last long, It was a little chilly on the porch.



The other cool thing that happened today was that I received my new leaf shredder.
I wasn't expecting it until Tuesday, so it was a nice surprise to see it show up on my front porch early this afternoon. I got to try it out a little and it really does shred the leaves very nicely. I will give it a better test when I have more time, a little more help and warmer weather.

The last and very least thing that I did was some very necessary grading of student work and planning for school next week.

Erin worked about 4 hours today and Amy went to a friends house to watch a movie. The friend happened to be a boy, but it was just a friend thing, so she says. Catherine cleaned out her side of the closet and studied her Sunday School lesson.

The evening was spent with a nice fire in the fireplace, eating frozen pizza for dinner and enjoyed a semi-old movie called "Radio Flyer", starring Frodo, I mean, Elijah Wood. We also spent a few minutes putting up some Christmas decorations.

Welcome 2016

Goodbye 2015 and hello 2016!  It's a new year with many, great new opportunities! Many people make new year's resolutions for many things such as lose more weight, save more money, visit more places, etc... I don't really like to make resolutions. I just try to make the new year better than the one before and try to make realistic goals that I could possibly reach. Here is my goal for this blog; to use it as a gardening/hobby blog and also a daily journal with the goal being "daily". That's the tough part. But this is a good year to make this goal. If I live to be as old as my dad, I've only lived half of my life, 50 years. That, to a teenager, is old, but to me, not so much. My dad is turning 100 this June and if everything stays the same, he will blow past this one like it's nothing. He is nothing less than amazing! We will probably do something big for him, but not really sure what. That's one reason this is a big year. Another reason for the big year is that my twin daughters will begin their senior year in high school next fall. It will be a big year for "last time" events; marching contests, homecomings, football games, etc.. It will be an emotional roller coaster for them as they prepare for the next chapter in their lives and I'm glad that I can be a part of it. Another reason that this year is big is I get the honor of celebrating 25 years with the love of my life. It's amazing that she has tolerated me this long. 25 years seems like two and with people we know divorcing left and right, this should be a wonderful celebration. Plans are up in the air right now, but I know that whatever we do to celebrate, as long as it's together, it will be fun.

So that's the big ones for this year, and since I want this to be a daily journal/log, there will be many days of entries that will be short and probably boring, but I hope to do at least one thing noteworthy every day to keep life exciting and enjoyable, so here goes.

Friday, January 1, 2015

Happy New Year! Today we went to my dad's house to celebrate the new year by eating ham, black eyed peas and cornbread.  My dad feels that he must have black eyed peas to give him good luck for the coming year. He's almost 100 years old! Who am I to disagree. We met my sister, Jeanne and her husband, Bob at my dad's house and had a wonderful lunch. I baked a ham that I purchased from a FFA fund raiser at school and it was yummy, especially after a honey and brown sugar glaze I put on it. Jeanne made one of her signature coconut cream pies that are the best!

My daughter Erin is redecorating her room starting out by painting her desk. She put the second coat on this afternoon.  This is a desk that has been in my family for as long as I can remember. In fact, this was my desk growing up and was dark blue. Now, it has taken on a more "Erin" look. She has to finish the second coat before she takes off to work at Cheddar's, her first official job that she has held for about 2 months now.

The weather was nice today, so Catherine and I were able to take a walk. It wasn't a long walk, but any little bit helps and is nice. We watched the Dove Awards from sometime this last October. It was a good show and I realized that if it wasn't for my teenage daughters, I would not have known the majority of the musicians represented on the show.

Pollen Coming In

It's January 30 and the temperature is in the mid 50's. It's partly cloudy and we are expecting rain tomorrow. I got home around 4 and noticed that the bees are bringing in Pollen. Not a huge amount but many of the bees were returning with full baskets. I saw this activity from all five hives which makes me pretty happy.

The pollen must be heavy because several of the bees came in a little too low and had to come up to the entrance. One girl decided to take a little rest on my pants before she entered the colony.

                                                    I haven't gone in yet this year to check to see if the queen has started laying. I suspect she has, because we had temperatures in the 70's and 80's pretty much all this week. A cold front has come in and temps next week are going to be back to normal with highs in the 40's and 50's. If there is no wind and the sun is out, they will be able to get a lot done. I looked in the two, single deep hives and check on the sugar that I gave them about two weeks ago. They are really starting to eat that and I may
have to add some more at some point.  It won't be long before I can do a complete inspection and see what's going on in there.

Well, it's almost the end of January 2015 and I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted. I really have no excuse and looking back, I really wish I had posted more. But, no sense looking back. We must look forward to bigger and better things to come! I'm not even going to say that I will try to keep this up, because it may jinx me.

Okay, an extremely quick update. Since catching a swarm of honeybees a little over a year and a half ago, I now can say I have been pretty successful in the hobby beekeeping department. I have 5 hives now and really enjoy working with them. I built a stand during the early spring of last year and expanded enough to have to create a little temporary stand for the fifth hive.


None of my bees were purchased. They were all from traps, swarms or cutouts. If it is true that time is money, then these hives are worth quite a bit. Some of the colonies that I have acquired took quite a bit of time.

In the year and a half of raising bees, I have learned so much about this cool little creature but still have a lot to go and it seems I learn something new every day that I look at them.

At this time of year, the bees don't come out much because of the cold weather, but we do have warm days where they are able to do some house cleaning and stretch their wings a little. I am really looking forward to March where they will really be expanding and building.

I really haven't decided what I want to do ultimately. With three hives, I was able to get enough honey to supply us for a year and give some to family and friends. I do know that I want to get about twice as much this next year. I would like to be able to sell a few jars.

Update!

To make a very long story extremely short, I have bees again! And boy, do I ever! This post is going to be long, really more for documenting this journey than for just enjoyable reading, but here goes!

Some time ago, a couple of years in fact, I tried to build a bee swarm trap. I was successful at building it, but unsuccessful at catching a swarm. When I lost the only colony that I owned, it kind of took the wind out of my sails, but I really did enjoy trying to raise bees and they were so fascinating to watch and learn about. In the back of my mind, I wanted to try again, but it seemed that timing was everything and ordering bees was kind of tricky and expensive and I was struggling with what to do. About 7 months ago, I called Dadant to put my name on the list for a nuc of honey bees. Dadant is the company that I purchased my first colony from two years ago and I thought that I would go ahead and do that again. That idea was quickly squashed when I was told that they don't offer nuc service anymore. My other options were to order a package of bees or try to find a friendly, local beekeeper that would sell me one of his young colonies. Both options are expensive and not really something I wanted to do.
 
I then decided to consider swarm trapping once
 again. The website from which I learned about swarm trapping in the first place is a wonderful site to learn about beekeeping and the guy's videos are very informative and I felt like connected to what he was saying. I learned that he had written a book about catching swarms and so I purchased it. The book really doesn't say much more than what was in his videos, but I enjoyed reading it and I learned a lot about swarms and bees in general.  I learned that swarm season in Texas starts about the middle to late March and that traps needed to be placed during that time. By the time I found out this information, it was already close to March and I needed to build my traps and decide where to place them and pretty quickly. I already had one that I built a year earlier and I decided that I would build 3 more for a total of 4 traps. I had been on a frugality kick lately, so I thought I would try to build them out of scrap wood or anything I might find cheap or free. I ended up deciding on used wooden fence planks I got from a friend who was repairing some of his fence. For a beginner, 4 traps is pretty good I guess, but I have heard of people having 20 traps that they place all over. I had become resolved to the fact that since
this was my first official year and without having very many traps to improve my chances, I would be okay not catching a swarm. This was going to be a year of learning.


Once the traps were built and ready to deploy, I needed to find a place to put them. I really didn't want to put them too far from home, but I needed to place them in different locations. A neighbor of ours, down the

Swarm trap in back yard

hill toward the highway had a yard sale one weekend. I went to the sale and started talking with the gentleman about different things and I found out that he owned acreage across the  highway. It's a large field that's primarily used for hay. Along the back side of the field is a tree line and creek that runs the entire width of the field. Thinking about the book I read, I knew that a good location for a trap is at the edge of a forest or tree line next to a field. I also thought that the creek would also be a good place. I didn't read that in the book, however. I asked the man if he would allow me to place a few traps at the edge of the field. He said that was fine as long as I would give him some honey. I chuckled and said I would be glad to, but I really didn't have much hope. I really was not wanting to set myself up for disappointment.

Trap by creek's edge

Well the days passed and life happened. I really don't remember the exact day that I put the traps out, but I know that it was way passed the middle of March. And I think it was closer to the end of April, maybe even May. That's why I should keep this blog updated. I would be about to know for future reference. Anyway, it was late and I knew my chances were not very good. I placed one trap on a nice sturdy tree about 6 feet from the ground. It was about 10 feet or so from the fields edge and out of view. It was also about 20 feet from the creek. I hung it, baited it and left. I placed another trap probably about 300 yards away along the same meandering tree line and not far from the creek. I also placed this trap about 6 feet off the ground. I then placed a third trap on a tree in my backyard.  I know that's only 3 of the 4 traps. I just never got around to hanging the other trap. So then I waited. I checked the traps about once a week and nothing had changed. In fact, one of the traps close to the creek had become a home for a bunch of roaches and rollie pollies. We had had some rain, and the fence boards that made up the trap had soaked in a lot of moisture and the bugs loved it. I had to kick out the unwanted bugs several times. I thought that if I was a bee, I wouldn't want to live there.

Then, during the week leading up to Memorial Day, I walked down to check the traps by the creek. I came to the first trap and to my surprise, I saw bees coming and going from the trap. I couldn't believe it! It's hard

Bees in trap

to explain the kind of feeling I had when I saw those bees. I immediately realized that if nothing else happened, then this year would be a success! I almost skipped to the next trap, not really caring that it would probably be empty. the next trap indeed was empty except for useless bugs that had yet again moved in. I dumped them out and re-hung the trap. I went home at a more happy pace and tried to figure out what to do next.

Rendering Lard

Not too long ago, I began a quest for the perfect biscuit. I think some people say, that biscuits are the easiest bread to make and they are probably right. But I think that there is somewhat of an art to making biscuits. There is just something about that light flaky texture that sets it apart from other breads. And when it's done right, you just know it. My daughter says that my biscuits don't need anything on them so in my mind, I guess they are pretty good.

I always make my own biscuit mix and until now, I have used shortening for the fat content. After all, that's what gives biscuits that flaky texture. Then I found out that you can make your own lard, by rendering down pig fat. I have heard that lard makes the best baked goods including pie crusts and biscuits. Lard is available in a plastic tub off the shelf from my local grocery store, but everything I have read says that if you don't have to refrigerate it, it's no good. It is filled with preservatives and other oils. So I began looking for pig fat and quickly found out that it's not that easy to find. Just recently, I discovered a slaughter house about 30 minutes away and spoke with a really nice gentleman who made me a deal.

This is 1/3 of the total fat I received. He actually gave it to me in a frozen state, and I let it thaw in the fridge for a couple of days. I didn't weigh it, but it's probably close to two pounds.

 This is after cutting it up. It's best to cut it into small pieces because it will render more liquid. This is the hardest part, because you need a really sharp knife to cut it. Some people are able to get the butcher to run it through the grinder for them. That's probably a really good idea, but I didn't know to ask at the time and it was frozen so I didn't want to trouble anyone. One good thing about cutting it myself is that I was able to discard of any remnants of meat that may have been left. If you render the meat along with the fat, it may tend to add some flavor to the lard and it might not be good for pastries or bread. If you are just going to use it for frying or adding to savory dishes, a little meat is probably fine to leave in.

 

The fat cannot burn while it's rendering. That will also add flavor and I don't want that. The best way is to cook it slooooow. I decided to use this electric skillet. Since it has a thermostat, I don't have to worry about it getting too hot. I also added about 1 cup of water before adding the fat. This kept the fat from heating too quickly and potentially burning at the start. I really wasn't sure at what temperature to set, so I averaged around 225 degrees. I think this worked pretty well, because it did cook very slowly. Maybe too slow, I'm not sure.

This is the fat at the beginning in the water.

This is after about 90 minutes of cooking. One thing for sure is that you have to have some time to do this. It's very time consuming.

This was after about 3 hours. It looks a little like cooked onion. Now it's time to drain.

 

 I decided to use small jars, a canning funnel, a fine metal sieve and a couple of sheets of cheese cloth. I simply tipped the skillet and spooned the fat and liquid into the jars. Even though the fat was not completely  finished, I collected the liquid. Once the fat drained, I returned it to continue melting. I will then use that liquid for frying and flavoring. The longer the fat cooks the more flavor it adds to the rendered lard.

This is what I got from the first pour. It's a really beautiful golden color. I'm not sure how much this is, but I think it's about 3 cups so far.

This jar is from the second pour, about 90 minutes later. You can see it is a little darker in color than the previous two. This one will probably have a little pork taste to it. It's probably fine for baking, but I may use this in flavoring beans and maybe frying an egg or two.

This was the final product of the "cracklins" or fat that did not render. I really don't think that they were completely finished, but I was on a schedule and needed to quit. It just didn't seem like they wanted to give up anymore liquid. I decided that I may have been a little too careful not allowing them to burn. I probably could bump up the temp to 275 and be okay. Maybe on my next batch, I will try that.

But, I would say the job was a success. These are the three jars completely cooled. The one on the right is just a little darker than the other two. This is probably about 4 cups of lard.

Final thoughts: This is a long process. I will do it again and you really don't have to babysit too much. Is it worth it? I think so. After spending so much time on it though, these are really more valuable in my mind than you average can of Crisco. If the saying "time is money" is true, then these are really expensive. I will try them in my next batch of biscuits and that will really tell me whether they were worth the effort.


Presto 06852 16-Inch Electric Skillet with Glass Cover

Update on estate sale find

Well, what do you know, another post. And it hasn't been a year since the last one. Maybe I'm on to something. One of the things that I hope to do is complete some jobs that I start and one of those was to redo the director chair that I obtained from an estate sale. It was in the last post. Here is the picture again.

At that same estate sale, my daughter saw a brand new seat and back replacement for a chair such as this. I can only assume that it was meant to be used for this actual chair. Anyway, I decided I would paint the chair and make it look nicer than it was, then use the replacement seat and back. Here is how it turned out.

 

The chair really came out nice, I think. The total price ended up being about $2. This style of chair sells on the internet for around $120 so I think we made out good. I don't plan on selling it yet, but if one of my readers really likes the PINK fabric, let me know. I will make you a deal. By the way, did I mention it was PINK!