566

That's how many unread blog posts are waiting for me, 

now that I've got the laptop back!

My non-audio books are going back onto shelves and under plant pots, where they belong.

Lady Without A Laptop.
Add some (many) years and pounds, and this portrait looks amazingly like me. Including the crazy hairline.
Darn it.

Dear blog readers, thank you so much for checking in and leaving comments and sending messages during the Horrible Laptop Collapse of 2013. I've missed you and your blogs!!

The ancient Emergency Thinkpad allowed me to briefly check email and twitter, but at less than dial-up speed. And if I dared try to open tabs in a browser (which of course I did roughly 400 times), the OS would hold its breath til it turned purple, then shut down completely.

Good times.

But now I'm getting back to normal, and hardly know where to begin. Maybe just a few notes and snaps?

There's been some of this, and there's more falling right now:

~~~

It's been bitterly, truly, too-soon-for-this-cold.

Which has resulted in not only homemade stew, 

but homemade stew eaten in bed.

Apparently, when early February lands with a thud in mid-December, I become a wimp.

And I think maybe I'm okay with that.

~~~

When morning chores are done and Piper has been toweled off and all my work clothes are hanging by the heater to dry again, I sometimes turn on the oven and bake something - anything! - to make the house feel a bit cozier. Roasted chicken, turnip and cream casserole, baked sweet potato slices...whatever is on hand.

This morning it was baked eggs with gruyere cheese and portabello mushrooms:

Full disclosure: this dish was not as tasty as it looks.

Rather dry and bland, I'm sorry to say.

Seemed so promising...

I'll try to work on it.

~~~

Meanwhile, the snow has been coming down all day and it's time for another coffee-and-cocoa delivery to the goats.

It's not really coffee or cocoa.
It's just warm water. 

But if you don't tell them, they'll never know.

It was 2 degrees F this morning, and they had warm water and carrot pennies for a little "hey-look-we-all-survived-another-night-in-the-Yukon!" treat.

Really, they are fine and dandy.

Perhaps a bit bored with the snow, but after their breakfast buckets of grub they have an endless supply of nice hay and they all go back and forth between the shelters, in ones and twos and threes, bumping each other off the decks and checking to be sure no one else has:

better hay

or more hay

or different hay.

Goats are funny.

Oh, and we have a visitor:

Meet Paul.

I'm glad I took a picture before the first snow.
It's challenging to photograph solid black;
even more so when it's surrounded by solid white.
There may not be any Paul updates for quite a while.

~~~

Time to suit up again, whistle for Piper, and try to get us both out the door without Piper bumping into either me or the water buckets.
Somehow, the splashes only seem to land on one of us, and it's never, ever, Piper.

I'll be gradually catching up on blog-reading over the next few days, so I'll see you soon!

~~~~~

technical difficulties

Dear blogfriends,

dropping in (via an ancient creaky Thinkpad) to report a total laptop implosion.

hope to repair laptop, retrieve contents, and be back to blogging soon!

Q
~~~~~

thankful thursday

My world.

It's filled with things that make me feel thankful.

I tend to notice many of these things, daily.

Maybe it's years of practice.

Maybe I'm just lucky that way.

~~~

With the theme of thanksgiving so prevalent today,

I thought I'd share a few of the things that came to mind.

No strawberries in my garden this year,

but many in my freezer. 

Sweet-smelling reminders of hot summer days.

Today, this little bowl took the edge off a day so cold

the gate latches were all frozen shut.

~~~

And this bird?

It may not realize by what amazing luck

I was able to (somewhat) repair this feeder,

previously dismantled by several bears.

But I'm confident this bird is 

pleased with the outcome.

Which makes me very glad I decided to try.

~~~

And do you remember 

a couple of months ago,

when Lily was suddenly dead lame?

This morning, like most mornings,

when I hung up Lily's feedbucket 

I gave her a pat and told her how glad I am that she healed so quickly and so well.

A happy outcome with any animal, and any injury,

but this was a little special.

Because this was Lily's first year as a mamagoat,

and she is a natural.

With a good, sound attitude.

She has a lot of promise.

So every day that she was on three legs

gave me cause to feel anxious.

Likewise, every day since

has given me cause to feel joyous.

And I do.

~~~

I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving Day - today or any other day - has a lovely one! And I hope all your days are filled with things that make you feel thankful.

It's a nice feeling.

~~~~~

monday note

It was a bit cold when I woke this morning.

Fortunately, by the time I went outside to feed,

the temperature had risen.

After chores, I lit the first fire of the season.

November is often a mishmash of weathers, and I won't be at all surprised if we see a return to warm - or even downright balmy - days before the Real Cold settles in.

But this Autumn day was a Winter day.

~~~~~

apples

Miss Ruth Kellogg demonstrating correct postures for various forms of housework. 1921-26.
Source: Div. Rare & MS Collections, Cornell U. Library

Since my first trip to the orchard, I've been doing a little bit of this nearly every day. Peeling and slicing a few apples.

Some of the slices have been going directly into the freezer, lined up neatly on a tray. The following day, those individually-frozen slices are popped into a labelled bag, and the tray is used to freeze the next batch.

Can you see traces of pink?
These are Macintosh.

Come Winter, I hope to do some very nice baking with these beautiful frozen apples. Won't that make Winter a warmer, friendlier place to be?

Well, that's my plan. Here's hoping.

I'll let you know.

~~~

Meanwhile, there's been some Autumn baking with fresh apples. Mostly, I've been tinkering with one simple recipe, changing up and experimenting. Remember the accidental apple-cranberry bisconey?

Last week I tried making it again: with apples, no cranberries, less sugar, and lots of cinnamon:

It came out with a dense, moist texture.

Not bad.

And yesterday, I tried another riff: making the batter a bit richer and more cake-like, mixing a whole cup of cranberries into the batter, and then adding sliced apples to the top.

Again, quite different in texture and flavor. Again, not bad.

Very surprising the way some of the cranberries migrated to the surface, right over the apple slices.

How did they do that?

~~~

For a person who doesn't really cook much, I am having a lot of fun in the kitchen lately. And it's all because of this:

A small, nearby orchard with a wonderful array of apple varieties. Such fun choosing! Hmmmm...certainly the old familiar Macs I grew up with, but also, well, I'll try a few of these Spitzenburgs (could Thomas Jefferson be wrong? about apples???) and I'll add a few Winesaps, and some Rhode Island Greenings, and oh, I almost missed the Golden Russets, and...excuse me for a second, I'll just carry these out to the car and then I'll be back in for the cider.

Oh. The. Cider.

The gloriously fragrant, snappy-sweet cider.

In the past two weeks, I have never been far from a glass of cider. I think this pressing may be the very best fresh cider I have ever tasted in my entire cider-loving life.

I wish I could pour you a glass right now.

Come on over.

Seriously.

~~~

I'll be going back to the orchard in a day or two, because I am out of apples (!) and about to open my last gallon of cider (!!). I'm waiting for a day that's warm enough to take Piper with me, for a walk along the stone walls.

It's a pretty place, this old orchard, where hard work - so often the backstory to "pretty" in a human-altered landscape - is evident everywhere you look.

The view also offers a nifty example of relativity!

I mean, look here:

Trees, right? An orchard full of big, fruitful trees.

But then you put those very trees next to a forest: 

Whoa! Quite a shift in perspective, no?

And then, you put that forest into a forested landscape as far as the eye can see:

Relativity: just something to think about while you're peeling Autumn apples and keeping an eye on Winter.

~~~~~