Farm Fresh: Creating and Clearing Away

Baby preparations have officially begun. This week we received our shipment of cloth diapers, wet bags, and diaper pail bag from Alvababy.  And I finished the first hand knits for the new baby boy.  Full disclosure, both were things that I had already started with someone else in mind and just didn't finish in time. The sweater will be good for his second winter - about an 18-24 month size. It is my long time favorite button lovers pattern. This is at least my fifth one and I expect to make many more.  The buttons are so convenient for getting baby in and out of.  

 Both items are 100% wool and I hope will be warm.  Since babies are not supposed to wear coats in car seats anymore, I plan to use this thick wool blanket like a coat. Should be nice for wrapping up in on our way out and in from the car.

 And I finally finished the 25 pairs of underwear with all the leftovers from making other clothes. I love that they are much thicker, sturdier, and mostly darker colors than regular kid underwear.  But oh my that was a lot of work for an item of clothing that gets so little appreciation.

Our washing machine has started eating our clothes from time to time. Miss L lost a dress and my sturdy denim and ticking slipcovers! Two fell prey to the washer's wrath. 

The other cover is still in good shape. And I have a lot of projects that are higher priorities right now so I opted to patch it with some similar fabric that I had on hand. Definitely not "good as new" but endurable for now. 

Not too bad when looked at from afar.

And since I was feeling sad about the state of my furniture in this room I made some new throw pillow covers that can work for winter holidays through Valentine's day. 

And this part is mostly for our W family buddies.  More than a year ago we found a little hole-in-the-wall Ethiopian grocery store together. I love their food and have been wishing for a way to make it myself for years. The grocer sold ready to use injera (Ethipian flat bread), teff flour, the essential berbere spice, spiced chick pea flour for making shiro, and yellow split peas. I made shiro and another spiced stew when we first found the ingredients and had the injera bread on hand.  A few weeks ago I finally (yay!) got up the courage to make my own teff sourdough starter so that I could make my own injera.  Making the starter was way easier than I expected. The hard work was making enough flatbread for the whole family (just like making enough crepes to fill 6 people up!)  but it turned out delicious and with just the right sour tang.  I'm so glad that I still have plenty of the ingredients to make more!

 Here are the recipes that I used: Kik Alicha (vegan split pea stew), shiro wat, doro wat, and I like this injera recipe.  All were delicious - especially the shiro wat.  Ethiopians like things mouth burningly spicy so I only put about 1/3 of the berbere spice mix in that the recipe called for and it was a nice medium heat.

On Saturday snow and freezing rain were in the forecast all day long. When I woke-up things were still clear and dry so I decided to tackle some farm chores while the weather held. Ta-da! This is what I accomplished after 4 hours of cutting and clearing. Not too impressive looking is it?

It is much more impressive when you consider the tangled mess it was before I began. 

I talked to our tree guys and they are going to help us clear this section of the property by cutting down the big trees, but they wanted us to clear the brambles and little trees before they get started.  Their concern being that things might sort of "bounce" on the way down with so many obstacles in the way.

I have a long way to go to finish clearing the rest of the brambles running along the front of the tree line. 

Our kind tree guys have also been dropping off some nice large loads of mulch.  Hubby helped me move it with the tractor and we spread it around all the trees in the orchard and the front line of comfrey, blueberries, and jostaberries.  

 It's not the most ideal time of year for mulching, but after three truck loads we needed to get it moved into place so that he has room to bring more when he has some.