Fall Is Almost Here...

3:37 pm - 63 degrees - mostly cloudy, light breeze...

The nights are getting colder, the mornings are getting darker, and the rain is slowly returning.

Yesterday was a soggy, soaked to the bone, wet reminder that Summer is almost over and Fall is nearly here. 

Jack's second soccer game (they won 11-5),
 and we all got soaked to the bone!

As much as I love the lazy summer months (although this summer was insanely busy and very short), I have to admit that I am happy fall is here.  Yes, I enjoy all the Northwest rain, listening to it hit our metal roof (one of my favorite sounds) while we’re inside all warm and cozy (not outside getting soaked to the bone).  I live for the occasional thunderstorm and truly am a homebody at heart.  I could curl up on the couch and watch movies with my hubby and kids all day with the flames blazing in the fireplace.  The crispness in the air, the brilliant colors of the changing leaves, the fall scent outside, the spicy scent in the kitchen from all the fall favorites being baked, I love it all!

However... in order for us to have those warm, flames blazing in the fireplace, we need dry, seasoned firewood and our woodshed is still in the planning stages.  So Tony had to run out yesterday morning and try to cover the majority of our firewood with plastic and tarps to help it stay dry. 

I cannot wait until Tony’s woodshed is done!  So far he has marked out an area that is 24’ wide x 16’ deep.  Hopefully posts will be going in this coming week – that’s weather dependant of course.

Mountain Chores...

7:45 pm - 59 degrees - clear, calm night...

...firewood splitting and stacking continues.

For the past month, in between work and other activities, we have been spitting and stacking firewood (I saw we, but it's mostly been Tony).

I started out splitting the huge pile of rounds with an axe.  After about an hour, my arms were killing me.

Some friends lent us their log splitter, which has made the chore of splitting firewood a breeze!

  

Tony only has a few more rounds to split and then firewood will be done.  Then we need to stack it all.

Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream In A Bag...

2:20 pm - 61 degrees - mostly cloudy, light wind...

This past weekend we went camping at the beach and we made some homemade vanilla ice cream in a bag to go along with our Dutch Oven Peach Cobbler.  Let me just say... it was an amazingly simple and delicious camping dessert!

Everyone made their own individual servings of ice cream, in their own baggies and it took maybe 15 minutes... or less.  The hardest part of the whole process was shaking the gallon sized bag, half filled with ice for about 10 minutes.

~ Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream ~

2 Tbsp Sugar

1 Cup Half & Half

½ tsp Vanilla Extract

½ Cup Coarse/Canning Salt

Ice

Pint – size Ziploc Bag

Gallon – size Ziploc Bag

Mix the sugar, half & half and vanilla extract together.  Pour into a pint-sized Ziploc baggie.  Make sure it seals tightly.

Take the gallon-size Ziploc bag and fill it up halfway with ice and pour the salt over the ice.  Now place the cream filled bag into the ice filled bag.  Make sure it is sealed tightly and start shaking. 

Shake constantly for about 5-10 minutes.

Open the gallon-size bag and check to see if the ice cream is hard, if not keep shaking.  Once the ice cream is finished, quickly run the closed pint-size baggie under cold water to quickly clean the salt off the baggie.

Open the baggie and pop in a spoon and enjoy! 

Firewood Cutting Is Underway...

12:43 pm - 60 degrees - lightly raining...

A wood-burning fireplace is one of the simplest joys of the winter months.  It’s also a lot of work.

For us, our wood burning fireplace is currently our only source of heat, so falling, cutting, splitting and stacking firewood is an important skill for us to know and do.

  

Tony does all the falling of trees and cutting those logs into rounds.  Thankfully we live on many acres of wooded forest so we are able to start at the source.

  

I help Tony with the splitting.  Even when log rounds are small in diameter, it makes sense to split them.  Splitting speeds along the drying process and improves the burning qualities.

And we all pitch in to do the stacking.

Even though the ideal time to cut firewood is in the late winter and early spring months (this allows for the maximum drying time), we usually have so much going on, that we don’t get around to cutting, splitting and stacking our firewood until the end of July, beginning of August.

So firewood cutting for this coming winter is underway.  Tony spent last weekend cutting this pile of logs...

...into this pile of rounds. 

Now the splitting and stacking starts.  How much wood could a wood stacker stack if a wood stacker could stack wood?  We’ll soon find out...