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Misc Things
Mar. 6th, 2023 08:35 amI made maple banana cream pie this weekend since I had bananas and cream I needed to use up. It turned out super tasty, not too sweet despite the 1/4 cup of maple syrup. I made a crust with some coarser ground sorghum and rice flour and the texture was good and crunchy, I just needed to get the crust a little thinner and it would have been perfect.
I'm back on work emails today, so many emails. Busy week ahead too. The difficult project has been getting out to my coworker's place to look at garlic mites because it is tedious as hell. 10 bags of garlic, we pick 5 heads from each, peel every clove, photograph, inspect for mites, take a slices sample if it does look like mites and photograph under microscope to confirm. It takes most of a day to do one rep and I think we've got two more to go.
The storm on Saturday gave us a wet 4 inches of snow and it's been 40f the last few days, so it's melting and refreezing each night. But at least I cleared the driveway relatively easily.
Sidejob stuff is continuing to be busy, I've got 8 plans in the queue and since I'm teaching the work class on Wednesday and Thursday nights, I don't work on them at all during the week. But I've been cranking through 3-4 each weekend so I should catch up soon if they don't give me more. Which they probably will. Oh well. Money is good.
Mara's having trouble with her back legs, she's still getting up and down okay, but in the last three or four months, she's lost all the muscle that used to be above her hips and shoulders and it now kinda bony. I managed to feed her weight back up after the antibiotics in september to treat a skin infection when she was down to 85 lbs. Most times she stands on her own okay but if the surface is at all slippery, she needs help up. Still going to the bathroom okay, so I don't think we're at the point of harnesses to help. She also still seems in good spirits and is eating well and in fact, spent a solid 20 minutes yesterday wandering around on the balcony and barking her head off. Which was after the fenced play area 5 minutes of barking at the woodpeckers. She's a good dog.
I'm getting excited for spring and growing things although the weather has decided to keep us in winter for now. I need to get the garden space measured out and mapped so I know how much growing space I'll have. I'm doing a big grow out of chickpeas for sale at my coworker's place, partially as a work thing and partially because it'll be fun. I'm doing a bunch of direct seeded crops, corn, sorghum and cowpeas since those all are things I eat regularly. Especially now that I've gotten in to the habit of grinding sorghum for flour. I will be doing dye plants in the bed by the house and using the sand pile for some things too. Not too many tomatoes or peppers, but something I can save seed from probably. I've got one chickpea that I want to grow out but I'm going to wait a year since I only have 20 seeds or so and the company selling them doesn't have them this year and they're relatively rare.
I think maybe this weekend I'll try and do some natural dyeing of fleece. I've been thinking about it for a while and I want to do it! Starting with the dried flowers and then moving to the barks that I bought at NEFF in November. I also have a bunch of indigo that I didn't have time to use and threw in the freezer so it'd be interesting to see if that's still usable.
I'm back on work emails today, so many emails. Busy week ahead too. The difficult project has been getting out to my coworker's place to look at garlic mites because it is tedious as hell. 10 bags of garlic, we pick 5 heads from each, peel every clove, photograph, inspect for mites, take a slices sample if it does look like mites and photograph under microscope to confirm. It takes most of a day to do one rep and I think we've got two more to go.
The storm on Saturday gave us a wet 4 inches of snow and it's been 40f the last few days, so it's melting and refreezing each night. But at least I cleared the driveway relatively easily.
Sidejob stuff is continuing to be busy, I've got 8 plans in the queue and since I'm teaching the work class on Wednesday and Thursday nights, I don't work on them at all during the week. But I've been cranking through 3-4 each weekend so I should catch up soon if they don't give me more. Which they probably will. Oh well. Money is good.
Mara's having trouble with her back legs, she's still getting up and down okay, but in the last three or four months, she's lost all the muscle that used to be above her hips and shoulders and it now kinda bony. I managed to feed her weight back up after the antibiotics in september to treat a skin infection when she was down to 85 lbs. Most times she stands on her own okay but if the surface is at all slippery, she needs help up. Still going to the bathroom okay, so I don't think we're at the point of harnesses to help. She also still seems in good spirits and is eating well and in fact, spent a solid 20 minutes yesterday wandering around on the balcony and barking her head off. Which was after the fenced play area 5 minutes of barking at the woodpeckers. She's a good dog.
I'm getting excited for spring and growing things although the weather has decided to keep us in winter for now. I need to get the garden space measured out and mapped so I know how much growing space I'll have. I'm doing a big grow out of chickpeas for sale at my coworker's place, partially as a work thing and partially because it'll be fun. I'm doing a bunch of direct seeded crops, corn, sorghum and cowpeas since those all are things I eat regularly. Especially now that I've gotten in to the habit of grinding sorghum for flour. I will be doing dye plants in the bed by the house and using the sand pile for some things too. Not too many tomatoes or peppers, but something I can save seed from probably. I've got one chickpea that I want to grow out but I'm going to wait a year since I only have 20 seeds or so and the company selling them doesn't have them this year and they're relatively rare.
I think maybe this weekend I'll try and do some natural dyeing of fleece. I've been thinking about it for a while and I want to do it! Starting with the dried flowers and then moving to the barks that I bought at NEFF in November. I also have a bunch of indigo that I didn't have time to use and threw in the freezer so it'd be interesting to see if that's still usable.
