Betty saved the day

Christmas morning began like any other, Robbie & I piled onto Brad at 6:15am screaming that Santa had been and left presents! Time to get up!! Robbie is very patient but sure does love Xmas morning and opening presents. I bought a stocking from Walmart with a bunch of toys in it and wrapped each toy individually so he had a lot of presents to unwrap. He just loves it so much!

A gift from my Mum

Robbie opening one of his presents, we just hold it and he pulls the paper off. He gets soooo excited.

A gift from Brad's Mum, a letter opener from his Father's desk

Excitement 101

Opening another gift

Psycho Xmas morning dog

Elephant gift from Stacey

Robbie had about 8 gifts under the tree, including cookies from Grandma, which he looooooves

By the end of it, he was worn out from the excitement

On to making our Christmas dinner....

Brad always makes Christmas dinner so he was in the kitchen having just put the turkey into the preheated oven, we were talking through the pass through when something went bang.

The cooktop and oven are each on their own and separate individual breaker boxes which are in the cupboards below them and they are each about 6 feet apart.

The cooktop flipped a breaker -- except it wasn't even on! I flipped it back on and it started sparking. I quickly reached in to turn it back off while Brad was yelling at me not to touch it.... I didn't think we should leave it on given it was sparking and smoke was billowing out of the knob which is missing (we have to use needle nose pliers to turn it because the knobs are made of plastic and the stove is often hot - go figure, so they have all to some degree melted and split making them hard or impossible to turn anymore)....  Man, the electrics in this house are certainly questionable, this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened since we moved in.

Cooktop in question

Flipped breaker

Oven stayed on.... 

Since the oven remained working, and the potatoes were in with the Turkey, we decided (since we can no longer use the cooktop) we could boil the kettle and finish our meal that way. We had Stove top stuffing (in a box), and plenty of freeze dried food so I went downstairs and found some freeze dried gravy I made last year and corn. We just boiled the kettle, added the hot water to the gravy and corn and managed to salvage a smaller but wonderful Christmas meal regardless of the cooktop. 

I messaged our Landlord and advised her of the situation and she is having someone come and fix it after the holiday. We don't have a operational woodstove either, she has been sending someone to fix that for the last couple of months. Hope the cooktop gets fixed faster.

Turkey out of the oven

Freeze dried foods soaking in hot water

A lovely dinner in spite of it all

Robbie with his new toys

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with as many friends and family as possible given the state of the world today. 

PS Betty is the name of our Freeze Dryer.

Busy day on the homestead

Thursday Dec 23rd

Having 1.5 Gallons of raw milk in the fridge, I decided to skim the cream off the top and make butter...

Churning cream to butter

Finished butter (spoon for scale)

I pulled out a load from Betty. 

1 tray of 18 farm eggs, 1 tray of lemon peel, 2 trays with 1 Liter of raw milk on each.

Egg load

I also had over 60 eggs on standby and so I prepped 3 trays (18 eggs per tray) and 1 tray of crushed egg shells which I feed back to the chickens to return the calcium to them. This load will go in first thing in the morning.

While I was waiting for the butter to finish, I figured I'd start a quick loaf of bread.

Voila, soft, chewy and delicious

My ever faithful assistant was at the ready to clean up any mess

Brad found a great deal on chicken breast and turkeys at Superstore yesterday. I threw the chicken in a crockpot with chicken broth, garlic, salt & pepper and put them in the oven for an hour and 15 min.

First load of 7 chicken breasts

Added a second load of 8 chicken breasts for a total of 15

I then split the breasts to thin them slightly (with Brad's help) and put them on 3 trays to feed to Betty along with 1 tray of the chicken broth I cooked it all in (waste not want not). 

I had time to kill while waiting on the second batch of chicken breast so I made some Lemon & Lavender body lotion. 

Once cooled

1 for my Mother

1 for Brad's Mother

1 for me

To be perfectly clear, this is not a normal day around here. It was a day when I had no need to leave the house and so I was able to get some stuff done. 

Tomorrow -- ordinary laundry day.... 

But Saturday...

Merry Christmas one and all!!

Great day at the local market's first day

I had a great day at the market yesterday, the island's north end farmer's market runs from 10-2 on Saturdays with most of the custom done in the first 2 hours. Throughout the 4 hours I sold 20 items and actually had to have Brad bring me more stock. For reference that means I earned over half the price of the stall spot for the entire summer in 1 day, so I am thrilled with that.

Freeze Dried Foodie stand

If you recall during the winter I was doing the pop up market on the corner by the local grocers. The woman who runs the island's south end market approached me to go there today (its only Sundays). Drop ins are $20 but the south market is much more vibrant than the north... The north is very quiet while the south has music playing, a food truck and a much more vibrant vibe. I will see how today goes and I may pay for the summer down there also. 

I do have to be careful though because I don't want this to become overwhelming. As it is I only have 2 liver (dog treats) left so I'll be spending the week doing up more liver, strawberry and banana and I haven't done the south end yet. I don't want to over burden myself and/or make this a fulltime job.

In any event, I'm very pleased with how the north end market went for a first time showing. I had a few 'regular' customers from the local online market pop by which was nice and I suspect more of them will be in the south end too.

Stacey came by and sat with me yesterday for a couple of hours, bless her pointy little head (its not really pointy - for the record) and that helped ease the nerves and helped pass the time for sure. She may come today also but I suspect she'll be worn out since she biked up to the market yesterday.

I have not purchased a canopy yet, I wanted to see if people would buy the stuff first, so one of the guys brought me a spare which was much appreciated. Highly doubt I shall be so lucky at today's market so my cutie patutie hat will have to do. I'll pack an umbrella too - just in case that'll help somehow.

Pork roast, taters and Yorkies

I made a Sunday dinner -- well, on Sunday. It was delicious and for the first time I actually got the English Baked potatoes right! 52 and finally twigged to the secret, okay I finally remembered the trick. Anyway, it was fabulous!

Pork roast, roast potatoes and Yorkshires

I had another recipe which required a lot of lemons - peeled... I saved the peel, it is in the freezer now and I will FD it and make a powder.

Peas are doing fantastic. I transplanted them to the deck pots and brought the pots inside (too cold outside). I have them in the window for now, once they get bigger and stronger and the outside temp warms up, I will move them to the floor.

The broccoli microgreens were ready to harvest yesterday but I just didn't get to them so I hope to do them today and get another batch started. Pics of that to follow.

 

This past week

I have now begun a powder line for smoothies, soups, dessert toppings, etc.. So far I have apple and asparagus completed. We are calling the line Dust.

Apple Dust

Asparagus Dust

Brad made another batch of Beef Stroganoff to feed Betty

We were invited for a walk along the waterfront with Stacey and her husband Jon

(she knows about the coat, we've all told her. LOL)

On our walk we came across our friend Jim (left) 

My favourite part about this island is this: Often times when it is dark and gloomy everywhere, this island - Entrance Island, is lit up brightly by the sun illuminating the sharp white buildings with their red roofs.

This past Saturday I was invited to join the popup market again and I was able to use my new banner, although I need a larger table, for sure.

My two favourite boys looking for a noise Robbie was sure he heard, Daddy is being supportive.

We took Robbie to the vet again yesterday (Tuesday) for his 2nd in a series of 4 arthritis shots. He is noticeably feeling better, she will not weigh him again until the month is up because she says weekly weighing can be depressing. I hear that.

Tomorrow (Thursday) I am off to Nanaimo for MY massage - I know, right?!. So excited for that although my back is so tight I'm not sure she'll even be able to touch it but we'll see how it goes.

...And the New Year begins.

Nothing has really been happening here so far this year. Other than Pickleball has returned from the holidays. We are only allowed to play singles which means one person per side of the court instead of the usual 2 per side. We are all happy to make that work but I think I speak for all of us when I say we want 'normal' back.

The local online market shop reopened on New Years Eve and I received 2 orders that night. I've been averaging an order a day since then so I'm happy with that since I was sure Jan/Feb would be a wash after Christmas but it seems word of my product is spreading. Asparagus and Brussels are still the hot ticket items with Rainbow Chunks (salt water taffy) coming in 3rd but only because there is a woman on the island who is addicted - she buys so many I have created a special discount for her so if she gets 5 she gets 1 free. 

We've finally begun making powders, which we call Dust. So far I have made Apple Dust and Asparagus Dust with Kale coming online shortly. These are powder for use in soups, on deserts, smoothies and the like. Most people will use the vegetable powders for smoothies I assume but then I wasn't expecting Asparagus and Brussel Sprouts to be such a hit so you never can tell.

I've been online sorting through seed options for our garden and have a load waiting in my 'shopping cart' that I need to review and purchase. We also want to get a hot house (greenhouse) and I've chosen one on Amazon but I think we'll take a look at Costco because I hate buying expensive stuff on Amazon although I have done that without any trouble in the past..

Robbie has been having some issues with his hind legs so we are off to the puppy Dr this morning to have him checked out.

What happened to December?

My Mother-in-law rang yesterday and noted that she keeps checking the blog for an update but I haven't posted anything for a week. Having had my hand slapped - here I am, posting.

In looking back at pics to see where I left off I realized I haven't posted any for all of December! My Dec picture folder is (was) empty... I have taken plenty of pics but haven't uploaded them to the laptop so I have now corrected that and here is December in short form.

I asked my Daughter-in-law what the kids favourite cereals are. I thought they would find it cool to get their morning cereal in FD form.

One Granddaughter likes Fruit Loops, the other Granddaughter and our Grandson both like Krave which I had never heard of before, but its tasty (I tried a few pieces) with chocolate in the center.

Lined up on the trays and ready to freeze

'

Once frozen it was off to Betty's belly

Freeze Dried Krave cereal

Packaged up and ready for Santa's bag

I did up some Xmas advertising photos

Made a Candy Gift Basket (3 -all sold)

A few times I have seen a few people flogging their wares on the corner by the grocers, so I popped by to say hi and ask if I could join them. I was invited to come that very day, so I did. A very quick grab of whatever I might need and off I went. Today (yes, its every Saturday without rain or other bad weather) I have a banner which will change the look of things quite dramatically I think. I haven't tried it yet but I guess I will have to do that before I go and make a fool of myself on the street corner ;)

My quickie setup at the pop-up market last week

There are about 6 turkeys that live wild around the market, they are treasured island birds.

My new pop-up friend Megan trying to sneak up and take a picture of them.

One night we decided to try some of our FD'd Beef Stroganoff, I enjoyed it which is weird because I do not like Beef Stroganoff usually. Brad is a good cook, let me tell ya.

Brad had given some of his Beef Stroganoff to his massage therapist to try as her husband is a hunter and is familiar with FD food (Mountain House and the like). So they made both and compared the two. Apparently, there was no contest. Brad's was far superior to the commercial version, as one might expect.

Fruits, yes Tomatoes are a fruit so I put them there with the Banana and Apple since I only have those 2 fruits ready ;) Although Strawberries are in there now.

Asparagus, Brussel Sprouts, Kale, Pickled Beets

Rainbow Chunks, Unicorn Poop and Reindeer Poop

I've been crazy busy just trying to keep up with orders. I am currently at the point of making mass amounts of 1 thing each time instead of a bit of this and a bit of that so I guess that is progress.

I created a FaceBook ad yesterday on a Salt Spring page - of Candy- and 1 person enquired about Strawberries, I said they were in the machine currently and now have 3 people who are waiting for Strawberries, one also wants a few candies too. So it looks like I'll be on the hunt for some more Strawberries and taking a trip down to Salt Spring again very soon.

Well that is December in pictures. Mostly just making product, selling product, eating product.... 

I may have to stop advertising as I can see it has potential to soon be too much and I'm not (right now, anyway) interested in it becoming a 'thing'... although Brad did try to order a second machine a couple of weeks ago - I stopped him, at least for now but we shall see. They hold their value anyway, so if we were to get one and not need it later on, we won't lose anything. I just think we need to build it a bit first, its actually only been 2 weeks as a 'live' business..... although it seems like forever.

Here is the banner on the table, a bit wonky but I'll work on it.

I bought a stand for the shower yesterday but the shower floor has too much slope - so I shall use it on the table so I can add more product as it's a small table and I ran out of room last time.

Most likely will post again Boxing Day, unless something good happens in the meantime.