Springing into February

Check out this before & after picture of Hidatsa Shield Figure beans! They really plump when you cook them, and taste great. Hidatsa is the name of the tribe that originally grew these beans, and the dark part of the bean is supposed to resemble they way they painted their shields. I haven't seen any Hidatsa shields, so I can't verify that ;)

These beans were recently boarded on Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste. (Be sure to check their site out for all kinds of amazing foods in danger of disappearing.) We've grown Hidatsa beans for 2 years, and will keep them in rotation as a house favorite. Dry beans take up a fair bit of garden space, and take a long time to mature, but it's worth the trouble to find out for yourself just how tasty heirloom beans can be. You can buy your own Hidatsa bean seed here, or check out Local Harvest to see who's growing them near you.

Finally! Paychecks, days off, and end of road restrictions all aligned so we could have a load of gravel delivered. It was a fun day of being local. The gravel came from the pit nearly next door, then we drove 3.5 miles to our local Breckenridge Dairy for milk (check out this picture of the dairy drive-thru during our recent floods), ran into a neighbor who had just seen a friend/coworker/neighbor coming down the Pole Rd. on his tractor to spread the gravel for us. He brought his cute little dog, Roxie, with him, and took some of our homemade goodies back with him. We had to leave for grocery shopping and traded our hard earned cash for more local delights - fresh oysters from Taylor Shellfish farms. We grilled the oysters on the BBQ and ate them with lime wedges, hot sauce & melted butter.

Stewart, doing his lapdog impression. He's going on 3, but still a puppy at heart.

And as usual, Magnus, demonstrating how stressful his life is.

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We also attended a day of classes in assorted farm & livestock management called the Cattlemen's Winterschool. Here's this year's class schedule, so you can get an idea of what is offered. It is a program of the Washington State University extension, and they have an incredible amount of useful information on their website alone, not to mention all the classes and publications available through them. More about our day of agricultural fun later this week!

It never rains but it pours...

When it comes to crises, that is. The main 'stead wagon, Pearl the 99 Outback, went in for a routine oil change and a check-up on some ongoing issues. Well....a hefty chunk of change later, and she should be good for another 5 or more years. Brakes, a bevy of assorted gaskets & seals, and the tensioner and idler that the timing belt spins around. Amazing how much car repairs cost, but still much cheaper than a new car. And our main 'stead dog, Stew, went to the vet today, as he's been feeling poorly and limping the past few days. Turns out he may have torn some ligaments in his knee. He & Fergus have some vicious roughhousing sessions, and it looks like the Corgi has scored some hit points on mighty Stew. So now he has to be sedentary for 3 weeks, plus take assorted medications, to see if he heals on his own. If not, we're looking at surgery for the big guy.

In the meantime, we are starting to put the garden to bed. Not much left but chard, lettuce, spinach, beets, carrots, potatoes and the last peppers under their little plastic tent. Some of the peppers went into a batch of chili, which I canned the other night. I've never canned chili before, and it went great.

The pressure canner we have was a yard sale find from our neighbor. He tested it out and even showed me how to use it. It's a '70's Presto brand, but still works like a champ.


Can you see why we want to build a canning kitchen? Not much elbow room or counter space here, and heaven forbid both of us want to work in the kitchen at the same time.
Here's the impromptu bean processing area - the hearth. Usually dry beans are ready to harvest when it's hot & dry, so we put them in the greenhouse to finish drying. This makes the pods crack open so shelling them is easy. Bit this time around it stayed cold & wet and we had to pick them greener and set them next to the fire to dry. So now we shell a few every night and let the beans finish shrinking up in the cardboard trays. Not so fun in our tiny house, but that's farm life. We're planning a taste test between the 2 varieties soon.

We also went to the county planning office today, to see what our options are for the new garage. Turns out we straight up can't put in a mother-in-law apartment with our garage. Just plain can't. Our house was the original homestead for the 40 acres behind us, but as our title paperwork shows, the land was chopped up and sold off over time. Now we have a tiny percentage of the 'stead, and it's too small to allow a separate apartment according to the county. We have some ideas for workarounds that will suit our needs, and we're having fun plowing through plans before we go talk to the bank.