Apples!

We go pick up apples at a local orchard every year and dry them or press them into cider. The owner lets you take for free all that you want of the windfalls. Today was the first time we went this year and this is what we came home with. The orchard owner told me the varieties but I've forgotten; there are 4 different kinds anyway. We will go again on Wednesday to get some Grimes and more Yellow Delicious and maybe press some, although I was going to wait a few weeks. Those apples will give about 10-15 gallons of cider and we *love* ciderptation is great to get these pressed, but later apples make better cider. We'll see.

I really love the Autumn. How it smells and how it looks. It makes me happy.

Unexpected "blessing"

Upon coming home from Church the boys discovered where one of the missing banties has been, she went broody in the barn roof overhang and hatched out 6 babies. The children are happy, Mama is not. Chicks in September mean potentially freezing to death in the winter, plus, we were trying to thin down the flock so there won't be so many to feed. Anyway, they're here and that settles it. The children have spent the afternoon holding them and could only eat lunch in shifts so that somebody could "babysit" at all times.

Two happy girls. They didn't even change their dresses before racing for their turn to hold the new arrivals.

Root cellar progress, new chairs & birthdays

The root cellar is coming along nicely. Aleks and the boys work on it pretty much everyday. With all the rain we got it flooded, so they had to bail out the water and frogs that had taken up residence there. ;-) You can't really tell how big it is, but it's about 4 feet deep (so that's 2 feet under the frost level) and about 8 feet long. The doorway will go about where the shovel is now. Aleks dug it by hand and only uses hand tools for all his work. It is such a good feeling to see your children embrace your values and ideals; I couldn't be more pleased!



Below are the chairs that I kept forgetting to take pictures of. I have had these for years and finally this year they got re-upholstered. They date to the 1920's which is an era that I find really pretty, furniture-wise. My sisters had just dropped off the bedframe in the background, BTW.

Levi and Micah's birthday was August 29 but we didn't celebrate it then as we were all sick. We gave them their presents yesterday; Levi wanted a box trap and Micah wanted a knife. Knives are really expensive, *way* more than I thought they would be, but it was all he asked for and I know he'll take care of it, so we bought him a nice bone handled one. They also got a DVD of Buster Keaton's The General, we're in a silent movie phase right now and had rented this fron the library before. They think it's hilarious. ;-)

For those of you who find birth stories boring or nauseating, you might want to skip this next part. I was going to give a recap of the twins birthday on their birth day but better late than never.

We lived in Yanceyville, North Carolina at the time (1996) in a log cabin. It had heat and running water but was pretty quaint and primitive. There was no bathtub or air-conditioning so I took about 3 showers a day to deal with the heat. I knew I wanted a homebirth as we had one with Katie and it was wonderful but I wasn't overly concerned about going preterm because I had followed the midwives advice and eaten a lot of protein to give the babies the fuel to grow. So, we get to my due date. We get a week past my due date. In August. In North Carolina. With twins. Enough is enough already! The midwife brings me castor oil. She isn't sure about the dosage so she brings me 6 ounces of the stuff of which I manage to drink 5 ounces. As a side note, that is WAY too much castor oil, a regular dose is a tablespoon or two. So, the castor oil does its job and I'm thoroughly cleaned out but the diarrhea keeps coming. Hours worth of racing to the bathroom to go and all there is is an oil slick in the toilet. OK, I know that is too much information but remember, you were warned! I feel horrible. We go to bed around 10 and I get back up at 10:30 to go to the bathroom and my water breaks. I call the midwife and say in a *very* whiney voice "I can't do labor NOW, I'm so sick!" She gets there about 11 or 11:15 and contractions have started, we fill the pool because I'm having a water birth. I get in and it feels really relaxing. The midwife checks me at one point and says that I'm at "6" so I jump out of the pool to go fix my hair remarking that it's almost transition so I better hurry! There were 5 midwives there and 1 accompanies me to the bathroom, I'm not really sure why. At 1:19 Levi is born, he weighs 6 lbs 14 oz. I hold him in the water and he looks at me and all around for about 5 minutes and then I don't want to hold him anymore. A midwife takes him but his cord is really short so she doesn't go far. The midwife checks me again and she feels the other baby's cord prolapsing. She says we have to get the baby out NOW! So, I stand up and push and push and push. With contractions and without. Micah is born quickly and weighs 7 lbs 15 oz. At the time they were my biggest and littlest babies. They both nursed like champs though I never got the hang of nursing them together; they were weaned at 16 and 17 months respectively. And now they are 12. How did that happen?

Last of the potato harvest

After lunch today we all went out to dig the rest of the potatoes. Aleks is digging a root cellar to store them in, that's a dream come true for me! Katie took some pictures of the boys especially, since they haven't been in my blog before. This is Levi below.And Micah, Levi's twin. ;-)

And, greatest wonder of all, here is me! I don't think I've ever posted a picture of myself before because I almost never look good. Anyhow, that's me looking about as good as I'm able.

A new pinafore for Abby

I found this apron check fabric hiding today and decided to whip up a pinafore for Abby. She needs a whole stash of these so hopefully I can get her some more made up soon. I think she and Elisabethe are going to wear the same size aprons, which is good as they can share! I sewed this while Daddy was in Columbus this A.M. so when he got home Abby went out to meet him and he noticed right away that she had something new. He's *so* good that way; always notices the new things that the children get! ;-)

Recent sewing projects

I've already posted most of these on the Sewing Academy, but for those of you who haven't seen, here are the most recent projects I've been working on.

Elisabethe and Abigail's brown dresses were first in line. Elisabethe's has a yoked bodice and bishop sleeves with shirring at the upper arm. Abigail's has a smooth bodice and coat sleeves. She also has growth tucks in the skirt. Right now these are their Sunday dresses.




Next, was Rebekah's 1840/50's fan front dress. I wanted to do a fan front after looking at Sarah Elizabeth Craft's dresses. The fabric is a reproduction fabric that dates from 1825-1850 so it matches the era I was attempting to replicate. It has flared sleeves with 2 self fabric ruffles and the skirt has 3 half inch growth tucks.

A close-up of the fan front.

Sarah Elizabeth Craft was born in July 1841 and died in

December 1852. After her death some of her clothing and possessions were packed in a trunk, this trunk was auctioned off in May of 2008. Among its contents were 2 dolls, letters, needlework and a silk Easter bonnet that she never lived to wear. Very sad and unfortunately, very common. The picture to the right shows

2 of her frocks.

Fabric, fabric, fabric

Ah, the joys of finding period correct fabrics at really good prices! I'm one happy person today. We went to Zinck's looking for some good wool for little girl coats. They've usually got some really good deals, but not today. Instead, I found 8-10 period correct cottons for girls dresses, I narrowed my choice down to 2 and these are they:

The bottom brown is a Windham and the middle green is a Solebury, both were $2.99 a yard. The top is a plum that I got at Jo-Ann's a while ago.

Then, I found these! The top 2 are a 55% linen 45% cotton blend, they were $1.99 and $2.49 a yard. The bottom was listed as a "wool blend", the picture makes it look drab but it is really a bright fabric, plum and royal blue stripes on a tan background. It felt like a wool flannel but I only got a yard and a half to use for trim because it isn't 100% wool. Well, I got it home and did a burn test and there isn't any synthetic content at all! It might be a blend but if so then it's an all matural fiber blend! I'm so excited. Oh, it was $2.70 a yard!

School bells are ringing

Here is what we've spent the last couple of days doing. We completely re-painted the livingroom and got the desks set up. A few of the desks I already owned, the littlest and the biggest, but the trio of mid-size ones I found this past week. I'm not an all out desk enthusiast, but for subjects that involve neat handwriting, I really like the children to be properly seated. The problem is that in the winter no one wants to sit at the kitchen table; because we don't have central heat it gets a bit arctic out there. ;-) So, problem solved, hopefully. The minute we got these set up all of the younger 6 children scrambled to find their seat and whipped out schoolbooks from last year and...... started doing school. I guess they miss it, lol.

Hale Farm

We had our first and only event this weekend, the annual Hale Farm reenactment. Unfortunately, the event itself can best be described as mediocre; and that's being kind. Still, I got to meet some people who frequent the Sewing Academy and it was nice to put names to faces. First was Bevin Coggeshall, then Glenna Jo Christen, Bill Clark, and finally Kay Gnagey. Mrs. Gnagey asked the children to be in the fashion show on Sunday to illustrate how period correct children ought to be dressed. They were quite excited to be asked. We videoed the whole thing but didn't take any still photos (sorry Angie ;-) ) Bevin, Chris and Bill brought a croquet set and Tabitha and Rebekah enjoyed playing on the lawn.






As you can see, somebody else thought this was worth photographing, I didn't mean for him to be in the picture but, so it is!






These are some girls who were interested in trying on Tabitha and Rebekah's bonnets. Their Mother hadn't brought her camera so I took the picture and e-mailed it to her.

Done at last!

I decided yesterday so sew a little bit on Tabitha's dress. It was already cut out thanks to Katie. Well, anyway, 3 hours later it was done except for the buttonholes which I did today. So, without further ado, here she is.

Hers was also the last corded bonnet that I had to finish. I was pretty tired of bonnets long before I was finished but they needed doing so........ Suffice to say, I won't be undertaking anymore anytime in the near future!

Rebekah's 8th birthday

We celebrated Rebekah's birthday today, though it was actually yesterday the 3rd. We've had her for 8 whole years! We modeled (loosely) her birthday off of Tasha Tudor's book Becky's Birthday.


I sewed her a new dress and pinafore and then Katie hid them until after Rebekah was asleep so that the first thing she saw upon waking was the outfit. When she saw it she smiled and immediately put it on and was very happy, dancing around, laughing...... ;-)


Katie helped her braid her hair and then after breakfast I put the daisy crown that I made her on her head and she opened her presents. She asked for:

1. new underwear
2. a singing bird (this is a stuffed songbird that sings its call)
3. books
4. a new dress

We got her everything that she wanted plus some sea shells and 3 nesting boxes that I found at Goodwill. I made her cake and decorated it with Chicory flowers.

Then we borrowed a friend's icecream freezer and made peach icecream. I'm no great fan of icecream or desserts in general, but I must say that it was the best icecream I've ever had. All in all a very nice day!

Making pickles

Well, my sewing machine died. *Right* in the middle of sewing Rebekah's birthday pinafore that I need to have done by Sunday. No local repair shop could get it fixed by Saturday so I drove it to Walnut Creek which is 22 miles away. They will have it done Saturday morning. I have a back-up machine but it too needs adjusted, so that's no help! Since my sewing is derailed I decided to make more pickles; this brings my total to 30 pints. I'd like 50 which is very do-able since there seems to be about 4 metric tons of cucumbers in the garden just waiting to get big enough for me to pickle. This is my own pickle recipe, if you'd like to try it. We'll call it...... Pastoral Pickles in honor of our farm.

Slice up your cucumbers into a 1 gallon container and add 1/2 cup of salt and cover with cold water overnight. In the morning drain and rinse. Pack into jars and place in your oven or dehydrator on 145 to 180ish. This is so they aren't stone cold and will seal better. Then put 3/4 cup water with 2.5 cups vinegar in your blender or Vita-mix or what-have-you. Add 1 medium onion and 2 cloves of garlic and whiz until pulverized. Pour into big kettle and add 4 cups sugar (I never said this was healthy), 1 t turmeric, 1 T pickle spice, 1/2 t celery salt and 1-2 T dry mustard or 1.5 T dijon mustard or pretty much whatever you have. Bring this to a rolling boil and pull your jars out one by one, fill with sauce, remove air bubbles, wipe rim, put on lid & band, and return to oven/dehydrator until your jars are all filled. Turn off oven but leave jars for an hour or so then place on counter and voila'! Pickles! Well, not really. They need to "pickle" for a week or two but still.....no canner to tend in July. ;-)

I have also been dehydrating my green beans. I've got almost 2 gallons so I'm pretty pleased with that. We've got potatoes too, but I haven't canned any yet. Yes, I can my potatoes; we can't store anything in our basement.

Elisabethe's new dress

Here is Elisabethe's new dress, all done at last! I did the sleeves on the bias and added a ruffle like a little girl in a CdV that I have. She actually has 2 ruffles on hers whereas Elisabethe only has 1. She's pretty pleased with her new dress in case you can't tell. ;-)

Shoes and dresses

Finally, this week, after a long wait, I got my Robert Land boots! I'm so thrilled. The really neat thing is that he made them just for me, how rare is that?!? An actual shoe maker made my shoes. OK, so other people probably think I have a real problem with the stuff that I get excited about; but I can't help it! Here's a picture because I knew you'd want to admire them for yourselves.
My other great project has been to finish up the dresses that the girls need for ---. I finished Katie's on Monday and Rebekah's today. Rebekah's is for her birthday and I'm pretty proud of the fact that I got it done with 11 days to spare. Now I need to sew her pinafore. Here are their pictures.
Katie's really laughing here; hence the look on her face!