Now that's really hot

Apparently Paso Robles will be relocating to the surface of the sun on Saturday...just for the day, though.

Independence Day

I give you this today, a great and short article on the agrarian nature of our nation and its founders.  We'd be doing ourselves a huge favor if we all endeavored to get back to this kind of life, to either a large or small extent.

A Nation Founded By Farmers:

http://modernfarmer.com/2013/07/the-founding-fathers-on-farming/

Routine Day

I love having a varied life where I do many different things, because the fact is, I crave routine.  That's right, it's the various and sundry things in life that make my regular routine special.  Tomorrow I will have a plain old regular day.  I don't have to come down off the hill, so I have plenty of time to cook, to harvest, to clean and to organize around here.  I can put the laundry away that's been sitting in the basket for two days.  I can de-clutter the kitchen counters.  I can sweep the patio. 

It's the kind of day I love most, but the kind of day that quickly becomes boring or tedious if I get too many of them in a row.  

That's why errand days in town, relatives and friends visiting, a little winery work on the weekends and days at the beach are so important.  Because once they're done, the blessed routine resumes, and I see it with new eyes, and appreciate it, each and every time.

Add and Subtract

The homesteader's dilemma

One of the basic tenants of homesteading is to turn one's home from a zone of consumption into a zone of production.  But it also means that if you use x amount of energy, you try to either reduce or at least maintain that amount as you go along in life.  Meaning you don't add appliances without thinking about their impact on your household bills and the environment.

Sometimes this is a challenge.  Right now, for instance, I have realized I am accumulating a pretty nice collection of wines, some of which are new and could do with a nice laying down for several years.

A laying down, you ask?  Yes.  If you know wines, you already know that this means.  Get a bottle of, say, 2010 Cabernet, and while its drinkable now, it will be even better in a few more years.  Laying it down means just that:  Setting it aside and, just as important, storing it properly, so you can hang onto it until it comes to the peak of its deliciousness, when it's truly ready to be opened and enjoyed.

Laying down on the job

The other day at the winery, for example, the staff sampled a 2009 Cabernet, which everyone thought was delicious, until the manager opened a bottle of the 2005 Cabernet, which had been stored in the temperature controlled wine library to age for four years longer than the 2009.  The change was remarkable; the "laying down" truly took a good wine and made it great.

Wine is an investment.  I have a coworker who collects new wines, allows them to age, then checks on a wine brokers website to see when it's selling for the most money. That's when the wine is at its peak, so that's when he opens his bottle.  He said usually a good wine will double in price by the time it reaches its peak, and some become more expensive even after that.  

So as I'm working for wine now and amassing a pretty nice collection of wines, I need something to store them properly in, i.e., a decent wine refrigerator (rather than the 8 bottle one we currently have), so I can do the same thing as my coworker and open no wine before its time.

Investment receptacle

But we're homesteaders, and so begins the homesteading thing of adding and subtracting  as far as our power usage goes.  When we get rid of the inefficient 8-bottle cooler we have now, that will save some wattage.  Moving the chest freezer indoors has saved us a lot of wattage also.  So now I can justify buying the wine fridge as we've created energy savings elsewhere.

These are not hard and fast rules; we're not energy-use zealots, but we do believe in not wasting finite resources, like those that bring us our power.  So we check and we balance, and we find a way to preserve our new and delicious investments.

Hot

We've been in the midst of suffering through a massive heatwave, which I have heard is affecting the entire southwest United States, so most of our energy has been directed towards keeping ourselves and our livestock cool.

And our appliances.

One of the things I managed to cajole Big Ag and Groceries to do this weekend (early one morning, before it got hot) was move our chest freezer from our sweltering garage into the cool, air conditioned spare room.  It does not look great; there is no way to make a white Kenmore chest freezer stuck in a spare bedroom look chic, but I can at least say that since moving it, it runs far less often and probably with a lot more ease than it did in our 110 degree garage.  Plus, since no one us currently using that bedroom, there's really no reason not to do this.  We actually had a power outage for several hours on Friday night and that got me thinking about the year's worth of frozen veggies, plus the half-hog we bought from my sister-in-law.  To have all that go bad would be not only a huge loss for us financially, but also a waste in terms of time, effort, and in the case of the hog, a life.  

The freezer can go back into the garage in a couple of months, once we are clear of the possibilities of triple-digits, but I think I'm going to leave it there for now.  

In other news, we've been putting gallon Mason jars filled with ice water into the hens coop to give them something cool to lean up against, and they are using them.  Yesterday we fled to the beach, where it was only in the high 50's and I had to pull on a sweatshirt for our walk alongside the water.  It felt good.

Triple digits are in the forecast until at least Thursday here, so we'll be doing all our chores before 9 am and hunkering down in the house for the rest of the day.

One of the best things about working at the winery is that on hot days, they open the barrel room up and serve in there, where it's always a brisk 65 degrees.  Doesn't get better than that in heat like this.  I worked Saturday, and will again next weekend, so it makes for a good choice on weekends:  The beach or the barrel room ... your choice of where to stay cool.

Here it comes

111 degrees on Saturday.  Could I be more excited?  No, I think not.

Pick and Eat

So it's been two years since I was really able to plan menus around what we were growing.  Last year we'd barely moved in here and had no time to put in a garden, so we ate out of the grocery store and farmer's market most of the summer.  

But this year....ahh, this year is the culmination of a year's worth of planning, building, digging and seeding.  And it feels so good to me, this routine of heading out into the garden with a big basket to pick ripe zukes, eggplant, onions, scallions, cukes and squash, then heading inside to make something fabulous out of it all. It feels healthy and it feels self-sufficient.  Add to that the 15 or so eggs we're getting a week and we're in the food business, at least for ourselves.

I'm a little sad that in another three weeks or so, we'll be demolishing the kitchen, at which point my kitchen meals will become camping meals, as I try and suffice with no counters, no sink, and no stove or microwave.  But I'm taking it as a challenge, because obviously, the ripe produce in the garden cannot wait until the cabinet and counter installers are done here.  Things will still need to be picked and eaten.

But for now, I'm loving the routine of pick and eat, pick and eat.  It feels so simple and so natural, deep down inside.  It's this kind of food that's good for your soul (not to mention your pocketbook).