Half Way

We finally have half of the metal on our south roof.  Sure looks nice!!  My contractor and a friend got two panels (24' long) up on Saturday and they put another four up today.  They are really moving right along.  They told me they thought they would be expert metal roof installers when they get finished.  Oh, that's good.  Guess they were just learning on my roof?!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know you're thinking that yesterday was Thanksgiving, and you're right, but we were busy working on our house all day yesterday, so we decided to celebrate today (Good choice since the wind decided to blow all day today).  On Thursday we finished getting our south roof completely sheathed and tar papered.  It really looks nice and now we are finally ready to install our metal roofing on the south side.  Here's what it looks like now.  See, completely closed all the way to the top.

You think that looks good, just wait until you see the next picture!  To celebrate Thanksgiving I made a home-cooked feast that was absolutely the best Thanksgiving Dinner I have ever prepared .  Since my tin oven is rather small, I opted for a whole chicken instead of a turkey.  I found a small blue-speckled roasting pan that fit in my tin oven perfectly.  I stuffed the bird with delicious stuffing and surrounded it with potatoes, carrots and onions.  My tin oven gets placed on top of our wood burning stove and then the blue-speckled roasting pan is placed in the tin oven and four hours later-- wal-la -- the best Thanksgiving dinner ever!!  (WARNING!!  Only view image below on a full stomach or you'll get REALLY hungry.  Our cabin smelled so wonderful, too!  Maybe technology will be available someday to put scents with your pictures??!!)

Here we are after our feast breaking the wish bone.  Guess what I wished for??

Jam Session

We haven't done any work on our house this week because my contractor caught the flu. So, today I got to do something I enjoy (besides working on the house)--make some apple butter.  I have recently learned how to can and I really enjoy making delicious jams & jellies. So far I have made grape jam, chokecherry jelly, raspberry jam, and now apple butter.  The really awesome thing about all my jams and jellies I have made is that the fruit has been grown by local gardeners and not purchased from a store.

Anyway, I thought today would be the perfect day to can because there was snow predicted and I figured I wouldn't overheat the cabin.  Wrong!  It never snowed and I had to open all the windows.  My sick contractor kept complaining it was too hot!!  I think it only got up to 80.  :o)

The recipe was very simple and easy to make.  I found it at Heidi Swanson's blog called "101 Cookbooks". The only things I did differently was I used some cloves that a friend from work grew, dried and gave to me (same friend who taught me how to can-- "Thanks friend!"), then I ground them myself--which was REALLY hard.  Probably because I don't have a mortar & pestle.  And I've seen "Julie & Julia" tons of times--Julia Childs cooking instructor at the Cordon Bleu says, "You must have a mortar & pestle!".  I guess I just didn't listen!!  Here's my pretend mortar, pestle, and ground cloves.

(By the way, I had store bought ground cloves in my pantry, but wanted to use the home-grown cloves.)  The other thing I did differently than the recipe is I didn't blend the apples.  I just cooked them and smashed them a bit.  I left some chunks--very yummy that way!

Since this is my blog, let me take just a minute to go off-subject.  Has anyone besides me noticed how much food is coming from other countries?   In purchasing apple juice for this recipe I had a hard time finding juice from the USA.  I finally found Tree Top, which said it was 100% USA apples.

If you are looking for juice from the USA, be sure to check on the plastic bottle too.  Some of the brands didn't say where the juice was from on the label, but had printed on the plastic bottle where it was from.

Anyway, after heating up our cabin to over 80 degrees, I ended up with lovely apple butter we'll enjoy all winter long.

I used our Jotul woodstove to cook the apple butter

and our Coleman cookstove to process the jars

This stove was given to us by my Mom & Dad.  It originally belonged to my Grandma & Grandpa.  I bet they never thought their granddaughter would be canning apple butter with it in 2011, in a cabin!

I Dare You To Walk The Ridge-Pole

 

If you have never seen "Anne of Green Gables" (I would suggest you watch it-- it's an amazing movie!  Then you'll be hooked and want to watch Anne of Avonlea.), then you wouldn't know that this is Anne walking the ridge-pole of Moody Spurgeon's kitchen roof, on a dare.  In a matter of seconds she finds herself on the ground with a twisted ankle.  She lost the dare and soon finds herself walking home, with her twisted ankle through the haunted woods with her bosom friend, Diana Barry.  You'll have to watch to rest to see what happens, but this scene popped into my head while building yesterday.   

This is our "ridge-pole" right after we installed it.  Doesn't it look lovely?  And, no I don't have any pictures of me walking it. 

Happy Halloween!



The Case Of The Turkey Feathers

That's me above (you can see our house in the background--don't ask me where the tree came from) acting like my heroine, Nancy Drew   I'm looking a pile, of what looks like turkey feathers on our property. 

You might ask:  Where did they come from?  How did they get there??  Where's the turkey???  Why are you wearing high heels????  That's just the way my mind works-- I always revert back to my childhood days of reading Nancy Drew novels.  You might also be wondering how I found them--with my magnifying glass, of course.  Not really.  Nancy would be a big nobody with out her sidekicks Bess and George.  Well, my sidekick is our dog, Patsy.  She has the best nose this side of the Mississippi and can smell out trouble anywhere.

As the mystery started...We were headed out for a walk on a cold, windy night.  We usually let her run free on our property to burn of some of her over-abundant energy, so we can have an enjoyable "walk" instead of a "pull".  Tonight she headed directly for this part of our property

 at top speed-- like she knew it was there, like she saw it happen.  Or maybe it was just that incredible nose of hers (most likely, but it's always fun to jump into "Nancy" mode).  Anyway, Patsy enjoyed what she could nibble on, but the killer didn't leave much for her--just the feathers.  We didn't find a weapon and no traces of footprints, but Patsy did find more feathers just on our neighbors side of the fence.  We're both suspicious of the neighbor dogs.  Maybe this mystery will never be solved.

I have on occasion, seen wild turkeys around, but never near our house.  The ones I have seen have been a really nice "platter-type" size.  I don't even think the killer took the time to stuff it--stuffing is always good with turkey.

Oh, this blog is supposed to be about building our house.  We had planned to work on the roof today, but our famous wind was blowing just a little too hard.  Instead, my contractor did some much needed research on the next steps of our project and I did some sleuthing.

Roof-Roof (but our dog would say "howwwll")

We're getting ready to put the south metal roof on our house.  As you can see, my contractor has the tar paper on most of the roof, but you're probably wondering why we have gone with the scandinavian look??  Those 2 x 4's are to hold the tar paper in place (we get a lot of wind around these parts), plus my contractor can use them to get around on the roof--he's not used to walking around on such a steep angle, up so high.  The wood will come off as we put the metal on.  We need to keep the neighbors wondering what we are doing, right?!  You'll also notice my supervisor chair on the right--I need something comfortable so I can make sure my contractor does the job right?!  Anyway, we're hoping to start getting the tar paper covered this weekend, as long as the weather cooperates--there was snow a few miles south of us, but we didn't get any.  The weatherman says things should look pretty good through the beginning of next week.  Yippee!

Goat For It!

As we work on our house, we dream of what our property will be like when completed and what animals we might raise.  One animal we have considered is goats--they are a managable size and don't supply a super-sized quanity of milk.  On the down side you hear about what a hard animal they are to cage and their stubborn personalities.

Last week in a paper there was a article inviting locals to "Victoberfest"  at Victory Hill Farm, where they raise dairy goats and make goat milk cheese.  Wow!!  Just what we needed--a place to see how others keep, feed, and raise their goats.  Victoberfest got marked on our calendar right away!

What fun Victoberfest was!!  They had goats, pigs, chickens, horses, and lots to see and do.  We toured the farm and found the goats to be a lot of fun and it didn't look like they had any trouble keeping them caged.  It was fun to imagine our property like theirs someday.  Maybe we'll goat for it too!!

Welcome to our new blog!

This is our new blog so we can keep you up to date on the progress of our house and property.  I'll also show you how we manage to live without any running water, electricity or gas.  Join us at our little house on the prairie!  

This is what our house looks like now.  I'll be filling in the blanks with pictures as I have time.  It's come a long way, but at a very slow pace.  We're hoping to get it totally closed up and move in before "Old Man Winter" comes for a visit.  Then we can be working on the inside as the storm rages outside!

We have installed the north steel roof, one chimney, the front door, two north windows and one east window.  Our house is going to be white and we are staining the wood before we put it on so, as you can see, it has a "finished" look to it as we get the siding on.  The left window is our kitchen and the little shotgun window is in our pantry.

This is the east side of our house.  It's hard to tell in the picture, but behind the ladder is our kitchen window and it's installed.  That whole section has been sided-- at least we can say that something is complete!

And one last picture... our new foxhound, Patsy.

She was one in April.  I got her for my contractor for his birthday.  We've only had her since June, but she has won over our hearts and since we are "empty-nesters", she is our new "baby".