A dirty job

It's been a dry summer, and our pastures – already limited in size to begin with – are pretty much eaten down. As a result, we've been supplementing the cows morning and evening with oat hay.

We only started purchasing oat hay from a local farmer as a stopgap measure last year, and the cows adore it so much that now we prefer to buy it over any other feed source. In fact, we have eight tons being delivered this upcoming week.

But oat hay – or at least last year's batch – seems to pick up a fair amount of dirt clumps in the process of being baled.

When we put flakes of the hay into the feed box, these dirt clumps migrate to the bottom of the feeder and accumulate.

It was on my mind to clean out the feed box from this accumulated dirt. Yesterday afternoon I locked the cows out of the corral (so I wouldn't get any "help" from curious critters), collected a few tools, and got to work.

It became apparent within minutes that this was a far, far bigger task than I anticipated. I don't know why, but I had it in my head that there was maybe a few inches of accumulated dirt. What I'd forgotten is that the angled feed box actually extends to the barn floor. What I was seeing was an accumulation of dirt about 22 inches deep.

Conditions for removing the dirt were cramped. I had to bend over, put my head through the slats (like a cow!), and remove the dirt one-handed. This small broken-handled shovel proved perfect for the task since I could wield it with one hand. The three-pronged garden cultivator was helpful for breaking up packed-down material.

It was like digging a ditch, but a ditch that could only be tackled one-handed while bent over between slats. Because it was hard going, I ended up alternating sides – ten scoops with one arm, ten scoops with the other, etc. I scooped everything into the wheelbarrow.

When the wheelbarrow was full, I wheeled it out of the barn and dumped it on the pile of barn waste.

Progress. (I can still smell this photo.)

It took five full wheelbarrows and an hour's solid work to empty all that dirt. Then I filled another wheelbarrow with the material that had fallen on the barn floor between the feed box and the wheelbarrow.

Task finished.

And look how clean that feed box is!

After all was said and done, my skin was caked with dirt, and after my evening shower (which required the vigorous application of a washcloth) I consigned everything I was wearing to the dirty clothes basket. I woke up this morning with sore arms ... but hey, a dirty job is now finished.

Calling fall

This morning, standing in front of the open kitchen window, a zephyr breeze brought the scent of earth. "Hmm," I thought. "It's almost like fall." But I didn't say anything, because Don is the official "Calling fall" guy. He just has a good gut instinct for when summer is over.

Mid-morning, I was out picking blueberries. Don was up a ladder, painting a portion of the house siding. He was wearing his radio earphones and wasn't paying much attention to anything else. But something, too, caught his attention. He removed his earphones, sniffed the air, listened to the sound, and called fall.

He came out to where I was picking blueberries and told me. "I called fall at 10:05 this morning."

"Funny you should say that!" I exclaimed, and told him about that little zephyr breeze I felt earlier.

He leaned in and kissed me. "First kiss of fall," he said.

What determines his decision to call fall? The grasses whisper. The sound is sharper. Noises carry farther. Breezes rattle the leaves. The landscape looks tired.

And the birds are quieter. The day when birdsong is less common is one of the triggering events. The birds know.

Our work schedule will gradually shift over the next few weeks to begin battening down for winter. Putting up firewood. Harvesting the garden. Such are the seasons on a homestead.

So yeah ... fall is here.

Survival cookies

When I put up the recent post on making strawberry preserves, a reader asked why I canned it up in quart jars instead of pints.

Short answer: Just about the only thing we use strawberry preserves for is as a filling for so-called "survival cookies."

Back in our old home, these incredibly delicious filled oatmeal sandwich cookies made the rounds among our group of homeschooling moms. They became dubbed "survival cookies" because they require no fresh ingredients and can be made completely with dried or preserved ingredients.

Because I tend to make survival cookies in large (quadruple) batches at a time, using a quart of strawberry preserves is not unusual.

I thought I'd walk you through my latest batch of survival cookies. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients
• 1 1/2 cup shortening, lard, or butter (I prefer shortening)
• 1 1/2 cup brown sugar (or half brown, half white sugar)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda mixed with 6 tablespoons hot water
• 3 cups oatmeal (thick or thin cut)
• 3 cups flour (may use white or whole wheat – I use half-and-half)
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt

• Filling (we use strawberry preserves, but use whatever your family enjoys)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350F. Blend shortening, sugar, and vanilla. Add baking soda (in water), nutmeg, and salt. Mix in the flour. Using a stout spoon, stir in the oatmeal by hand (do NOT try to use a mixer for this step, as the dough is too stiff). Stir the dough until it’s thoroughly mixed.

Flour a large breadboard or other surface. Roll the dough thin. Cut with a round cookie or biscuit cutter (I use a clean tuna can). Stack the round cutouts aside until the dough is used up.

Lay the rounds on a cookie sheet and place one teaspoon of the desired filling in the center (dollop it, don’t spread it). Lay another cutout over the top to make a “sandwich.” It is not necessary to seal the edges.

Bake at 350F for 10 to 15 minutes (depending on your oven) until lightly brown. Do not overbake.

Tips
• The cookies do not expand while baking, so they can be (reasonably) crowded on the baking sheet.

• The dough is sticky during the rolling and cutting process. Be very liberal with the use of flour on the breadboard, rolling pin, and dough surface.

• Use a spatula to lift the raw dough cutouts so they won’t tear.

• Because rolling and cutting the cookie dough can be labor intensive, I usually quadruple the recipe and make an enormous batch at once. The recipe multiplies well and surplus cookies freeze beautifully.

• If you’re feeling extra fancy, drizzle a little frosting (powdered sugar + milk) over the baked cookies.

Steps:

Rolling and cutting the dough:

Stacking the cut rounds aside:

Darcy parked under the table, hoping something drops:

All the rounds from a quadruple batch, cut and stacked:

By the time I finished cutting the rounds, it was too late in the day to bake, so I slid two-gallon Ziploc bags over the baking sheets for the night (to keep the dough from drying out);

Dollops of strawberry preserves on the lower layer of the cookies:

Cookies sandwiched and ready to bake:

Enjoy!

One of the (many) reasons I hate AI writing

I came across an article today about a wild animal encounter in Poland: "Wild Video Captures Giant Bison Flattening Tourist, Refusing to Let Him Escape."

As the title suggests, a tourist got too close to a European bison, which proceeded to knock him flat. Several nearby people acted to save the man from additional pummeling. But while reading the article, it soon became apparent it was written by AI.

I've touched on my gripes with AI writing before (most recently here), but it seems AI has "improved" in the sense that it seldom uses the identifying "trigger" words it once did (unwavering, intricate, commendable, innovative, meticulous, notable, and versatile).

So how did I know the above-linked article was AI?

A couple of things. First, AI loves to use similes (comparing two things using "like" or "as"). From the article: "Video shared on social media shows the bison looming over the fallen tourist like a living wall of muscle, making it painfully clear who controlled the situation."

No journalist worth his salt would ever use a simile in a news article, at least nothing that florid.

Second, AI tries to tell the reader how to feel about the subject in question through the use of over-the-top adjectives. Examples from the article:

• "A tourist learned a brutal lesson..."

• "The terrifying encounter was captured on video as stunned witnesses scrambled to save the man..."

• "Without much warning, the hulking creature surged toward the man..."

• "...making it painfully clear who controlled the situation..."

• "Nature photographer Grzegorz Ryński recorded the frightening scene..."

Et cetera ad nauseam.

Now I'll give this article one benefit of the doubt: It might well have been translated from Polish into English. Had AI not been available for this purpose, likely the subject would never have hit an American news site, so there's that.

But sadly, AI is taking over the written word in so many categories, including journalism. Aside from concerns about factual accuracy (and I have no way of know what, if anything, was factually inaccurate about the tourist/bison piece), AI writing is just ... bad. I know that as soon as I see similes and unnecessary adjectives in a so-called news article, I shut down.

Part of this aversion to AI writing is obvious. I'm a writer. I can see the handwriting on the wall for my beloved craft. I'm grateful beyond words that both my nonfiction editors (the various magazines I write for) as well as my fiction editors (Harlequin et al.) have no intention of using AI-generated content anytime soon.

I hope.

Wealth untold

This. This. This!

Here's a transcript of what the woman says:

"One of the greatest luxuries in life is being married to the handy guy. Not 'yacht or private jet' rich. I'm talking about a level of wealth that is way more realistic. The dryer starts making a weird noise, and your husband goes, 'Let me take a look at it.' That is wealth.

"Because you know what I do when something breaks? I immediately start calculating how much money it's gonna cost to fix it. My husband hears a strange noise and he gets excited. Excited like the appliance just challenged him to a dual. That man will spend $47 on parts, watch one YouTube video from a guy named Rick in Iowa, disappear into the garage for three hours, and somehow save us $1200. It's unbelievable.

"And handy husbands don't just fix things. They know things. Things that no normal person should know. This man knows the inner workings of every appliance, vehicle, outlet, pipe hinge, and mysterious thing in our house. The best part is the confidence, because I have never seen a handy husband look at a problem and think, 'Hmmm, maybe I should hire a professional.' No. He IS the professional.

"So marry the handy guy, because one day your house is gonna make a noise; and instead of panic, you'll hear the most comforting words a woman could hear: 'I know what's wrong.'"

Amen!!!! Preach it, sister!!!!

A garlic "Eureka"

When we lived in our last home, I spent years cultivating a beautiful German porcelain-neck variety of garlic. I routinely harvested cloves approaching eggs in size.

When we moved here to our current home in December of 2020, I brought several heads to plant in our future garden. For a variety of reasons (late in the season, no where proper to plant them, etc.), the garlic failed to thrive and my original line of garlic died out. Bummer.

The problem was, I couldn't remember what kind of garlic I had originally ordered so long ago. I do know the company was no longer in business. I ordered what I hoped was something similar online from a different company and was disappointed with the results. I mean sure, it was garlic, but it wasn't jumbo garlic, if you know what I mean. Still, last year's harvest was abundant (21 pounds) and I canned up a staggering 28 pints of chopped garlic. I put aside the largest cloves for replanting.... uh, wait a minute....

Jumbo garlic. That's the magic word I was looking for! I should have been looking for jumbo garlic to plant. (NOT elephant garlic. That's too mild for my taste.) So last fall, I ordered and planted one pound of jumbo garlic (which filled half a bed) and planted the remaining bed-and-a-half with the regular garlic I'd been growing.

Last week I harvested the garlic.

There was no question about the results. Eureka! I have my large cloves back!

It was pure joy to dig up these heads and see the size of the cloves.

It didn't take long to harvest both beds.

I ended up with two crates.

I set these near the back porch to cure for a couple of days.

Then I snipped off the stems.

Here's a better size comparison between the "regular" garlic and the jumbo stuff.

Once again, I have cloves approaching an egg in size. Woot!

I don't plan to mince and can this year's crop. I still have plenty of "jarlic" left over from last year. Instead, I'll store this and use it fresh, and probably give away a fair bit to friends and neighbors.

Oh, and just because I want a record of where I ordered this garlic, and what variety, here's photos of the invoice that came with it:

Right now the bowls of garlic are sitting on the kitchen table. Every time I catch a glimpse of those gigantic cloves, I grin.

Silly to be so thrilled over jumbo garlic, ain't it? I always knew I was weird.

Peach purée

Five years ago, we planted four peach trees.

Peaches are, hands down, my all-time favorite fruit, so I was anxious to get some trees established as early as possible here in our current home. We chose four different varieties that are resistant to peach curl.

Despite cages and fencing, it's been a battle against the deer, who want nothing more than to consume these poor little trees down to nubbins. As a result, they are misshapen and a few branches are dead from the times the deer won.

Despite that, these brave trees are producing fruit. Last year, I harvested about ten pounds. This year ... yowza. One tree in particular came into its own, and its branches were heavy with peaches.

It's the first time we've had anything akin to a decent crop, and I was giddy with delight.

A couple weeks ago, I went and cleaned out the one tree whose peaches were ready to pick. (The other trees, being different varieties, are lagging behind and will be ready to harvest in early September.)

I filled a 30-gallon tub about half-full of fruit just off this one tree.

Curious, I weighed them. Forty pounds. Forty. Pounds. Off one tree. Remember, last year I only got a combined harvest of ten pounds from all four trees.

The next step was to let them ripen. I put down a towel and spread the peaches out on the surface of the woodstove.

They didn't all fit, so I put overflow peaches on a couple of cookie sheets lined with dish towels.

I covered all the fruit with netting to keep the fruit flies off. That prevented a huge source of spoilage.

After a week, the peaches were ripe enough to process. I pulled aside a bowl of the best ones for fresh eating.

I decided to turn the rest into peach purée, since I still had plenty of sliced canned peaches in the pantry. I use peach purée a lot to flavor yogurt and ice cream.

The first step is to scald the peaches in hot water for a few minutes so the skins will slip easily. I completely forgot to get a photo of this step. By the time I remembered to document my progress, I was elbow-deep in the process. Cooling peaches on the left, debris (including small unripe peaches) on the right.

Since I was pureeing the bunch, I didn't bother trying to make tidy slices. I just gutted the peeled peaches and tossed them in a bowl.

As each batch  got processed, I ran the peaches through the blender.

Then I poured the purée into gallon jugs. By this point it was late enough in the day that canning would interfere with our evening chores. After all that work, the volume was reduced to two full gallons of purée. I put these in the refrigerator overnight.

Here's the debris, ready to go into the compost tumbler.

The next morning, I assembled lids, rings, and clean jars.

Filling the jars.

Final tally: 18 pints.

In a tremendously exciting turn of events, my birthday water-bath canners held all 18 pints at once! How wonderful is that? Honestly, why did I wait so many decades to get these canners?

I set two timers, one for each pot, for 35 minutes. I only started the timers when the pots reached a rolling boil.

Out of the canner. This is plenty of purée to last the entire year. And I can't forget, I have three other peach trees still to harvest!