Gina Jeffries

Doing the dishes.  I loathe them.  I skip doing many things in the kitchen just so I don't have to do them.  But I still have to do them.  Ugh

Ben Zumeta wrote:I would bet I am in the 99th percentile of heat lovers in the US, but speculate I’d be closer to the average in India or Thailand. I think people have different tastes because it increases the diversity and of foods available to a given population, and reduces competitiveness for foods that could lead to social strife. I will let you enjoy your goat cheese, and fewer people will compete with me for the hot stuff.

Just had to comment here.  I make Cowboy Candy for gifts but always have some of the juice left over after packing the jars.  I mix that into my freshly made chevre and it's fantastic!

I didn't see anyone mention used coffee grounds but that's what I heard years ago.  I've done it a few times,  don't know if it worked.  We have 2 tanks,  one drains the main bathroom so, toilet,  shower, sink. The other one handles a half bathroom (no toilet paper gets flushed) and the kitchen sink,  dishwasher,  and the laundry.  The drainage from thar tank collapsed several years back when roots grew into the pipe and my husband rebuilt it.  No problems since.  

The other tank is under a couple feet of dirt.  The drainage from that tank also was totally plugged with roots and dirt and he dug it up and replaced it with new pipe as well as adding drain rock around it (something that evidently wasn't done originally as both systems were homemade and about 70 years old)  i need to stop putting TP down that one but trying to get the family on board.

My emergency solar backup is actually a Jackery power station.  I bought the whole shebang which was the battery and six solar panels that each fold up into a thin suitcase with a sturdy handle for packing them around. I use it occasionally so it's not just sitting.  Giving my husband (or the dog) haircuts on the back porch with the horse clippers, mostly.  

But I love having that thing available in case we lose power.  Unfortunately,  it won't be much good in winter as we're too far north and generally have months of cloudy skies...

It's humiliating.  I started a new job a few months ago and right off the bat,  I confused a couple of people with each other.  And I also have a special funnel in my brain that's just for forgetting names.  The instant a name enters my ears,  it gets shuttled into that funnel,  which is highly greased,  and is gone forever.  

And it's bad enough when I've only met someone a couple times,  but when I've known someone for ten years in a specific environment (with hard hat, safety glasses,  and coveralls that make them look like 200 other people) and I run into them outside of that environment,  the only thing my brain can latch onto is their voice.  And it completely disorients me.  

When I was diagnosed with autism at 45 years old,  I realized the face blindness was probably part of that,  but that doesn't do anything to relieve the embarrassment of it all.

I use both in my house. I make my own soap from my goat's milk and beef tallow along with other oils and use it in the shower. Otherwise I use Dr. Bronner's peppermint castile soap for shampoo and when dealing with really greasy pots. I don't believe in contagion or germ theory so I don't think one form is superior to another.  My homemade soap has a 5% superfat so it is awesome for skin but not so much for dishes or clothes. My dishwashing liquid and laundry are Charlie's from Azure Standard.

Judith, that fence is lethal looking!  We found a fence exactly like it at the back property line when we went to clear it to build goat fences. It was easily 500 feet behind the house with nothing else around (like maybe there had been another house way back there?) It was overgrown with blackberries and almost entirely disintegrated but you could still tell it was a picket fence.  If only they could talk...

I love these pictures but at the same time,  they break my heart,  especially the old wooden buildings that are sagging under the weight of their age. They seem so sad,  like the love they held at one time is gone and all they have are memories.  Am I being ridiculous?

My own house is over a hundred years old with such a unique story but there's no point in pictures because from the outside,  it just looks like any other house.  The garage is pretty neat though,  the inside is built in so many stages and you can see where the original structure is and what they added.  It had a Concord grape growing up the back side of it when we moved in.  I didn't know what it was and kept cutting it back to the ground so it wouldn't lift the shingles.  When I discovered it was a grape vine,  I was horrified and let it grow.  It's forgiven me because I get gobs of grapes every year now!

paul wheaton wrote:

mark ludeman wrote:Paul do we get to see you Novermber 9 for your return visit? thanks

At the moment, I am talking to a couple of different people in bellingham to see if there will be something there. And then I have hopes that somebody in olympia or yakima will set something up - which seems like it won't be happening.  In a few days, I will have clarity on where portland fits into all this.

Probably?

If you'll be in Bellingham, I'm there! That's about as far away as I can get without hiring a goat milker/sitter.

Hi Kate, I would love to be a tester!  I've been nursing along a nice starter fed with rye flour and using it with flours from a local mill (I included a link to it if it works)  which is awesome because the grains are grown in my region in the Skagit Valley.  

https://cairnspring.com/pages/our-story  

The loaves I've made with their flour (sourdough and non-sourdough) always taste delicious but I have trouble with them coming out like a brick. I get little to no oven spring and I REALLY want to know what I'm doing wrong! I went to culinary school but it was on an injured worker program and they wouldn't let me focus on the advanced baking (I had to take the management track). I worked at a gluten free bakery after I graduated, which was a whole new learning curve and they made sourdough as well, although I only made it a few times before I had to quit for health reasons.

My husband is building me a mobile kitchen (like a commercial kitchen) on a flatbed trailer we have, so I have a separate space to make my goat milk soap, cheese, and sourdough bread. I will have a propane range in it, but for now I have an electric oven. I like to make my bread in a cast iron dutch oven but I've also made it using a pizza stone with steam generated by pouring water over lava rocks.  Anyway, I didn't just want to yell 'pick me pick me', ha ha!