Knitting Iris

'tis that season

moving right along

 

 

getting into the spirit a little earlier this year.

so very much

  

 
 

 

 

Thanksgiving is a significant time of year for our family, as it is for others also, I know.

This year, however, it holds much more meaning for us than ever before.

Ultimately, there is one overarching thing to be grateful for this year.

And yet there are just so many things, and so many people to thank, that they are far too many to list, although I've tried, for the sake of remembering each and every one of those things, however little or BIG.

So many to thank, in fact, that the only way to thoroughly do so was to put a thank you notice in the local newspaper.

I'm not sure how we might have managed the past several months without all the help we've received, from friends, family, neighbors, acquaintances, perfect strangers, and even former adversaries.  Life would have been and would still be very rocky indeed. 

Instead, we've felt supported, carried, cradled, cared for, strengthened, through it all.

Wednesday afternoon was spent at the community Thanksgiving dinner/potluck held in the gym of the boys' school, such a nice way to ease into our long weekend together.

Thanksgiving was spent with friends, neighbors, and family this year, at our house, with the usual Hutterite raised turkey but also a smoked wild turkey bagged down the road by a friend, and a goose raised by us, along with all the fixings, much of which came from our garden and the gardens of friends, not to mention "Great Aunt Mildred's Famous Refrigerator Rolls", arguably the most anticipated part of the Thanksgiving meal by all the cousins and myself while growing up.

For those of you celebrating too, I hope you are enjoying your time and nourishment with you and yours.

And, thank you to you too.

long into fall

 

 

 

 

 

 

Iin the thirteen years we've been here, i don't recall a fall that has extended so long into November.  Early hard frosts in the first part of October certainly left the deciduous trees bedecked, far longer than they usually are, in their leaves in deep browns and subtle oranges, rather than bursting quickly, as they more often do, into brilliant shades of yellows before just as quickly dropping them to create a rich, rotting carpet on the forest floor.

Even the larch (tamaracks) have held their needles far longer than than is typical.

The colors may have been damped this year but the subtleties of colors and the length of time they've lasted have been much appreciated.

it's all about food

Roasted tomato soup:  garden tomatoes and onions.   garlic from local health food store.  pecorino romano cheese.  w/ 5-minutes a day bread.

Quiche: homemade whole wheat pastry flour crust.  our chickens' eggs. onions, potatoes, broccoli, spinach & roasted tomatoes from the garden.  foraged morel mushrooms. costco kalamata olives.

 

Grouse stew: 4 wild grouse hunted by C, roasted with rice & yams in coconut milk (with lots of spicy cayenne pepper shake on top as i was coming down with strep throat at the time of this pic.)

 

Mussel chowder: Costco-bought mussels.  all veggies from our garden except the corn from a friend's garden.  broth made from wild grouse carcasses.  As we're landlocked here in the middle of the country, seafood is something we treat ourselves to only when our "local" Costco has it's seafood stand, usually only around long weekends, holidays, and the Super Bowl.  We get a big bag of mussels (the cheapest seafood they carry besides being a favorite of ours), steam them up  in white wine and garlic, feast on all we can, and then shell the rest for dishes such as this.

 

Sloppy joes:  ground venison.  garden onions, peppers & tomatoes.  bulk rolled oats. bulk tamari.  Wheat Montana bread.

 

Heart sandwich:  fresh heart of venison simmered for hours with cinnamon.  roasted garden tomatoes.  Dubliner cheese. storebought lettuce.  One of many Le Petit Outre "Daily Wheat" loaves brought back from Missoula.  Maille dijon.  (Yes, heart!  and it is SO, SO, SO, SO good, and such a treat)

 

Liver dumplings:  fresh venison liver.  garden cabbage.  bulk lentils.  spicy pepper shake.  (recipe for the dumplings, also called "Leberklosschen", from a friend.  the dumplings didn't really hold together this year.  could be the substitution of wheat bread for the white bread.  C altered it, for the better I think, by adding the cabbage and lentils to the cooking broth.)  storebought lettuce and cucumber.  garden tomatoes.  (and there's lots more liver in the freezer for more of this this winter)

 

Good ol' chicken noodle soup:  one of our own chickens.  broth from the bones.  garden carrots& onions.  bulk garlic ordered from Azure.  costco bought celery.  bulk basil from Azure.  Noodles made "locally" a couple hours drive away.  juice of a lemon from local health food store added last minute.  The boys and I had this for dinner 2 nights ago, they brought some to school for lunch yesterday, and we'll have it again for dinner.  Normally, if C was home, we'd have finished it off for lunch.

So, it's not exactly the stuff (nor pictures, that's for certain!) fancy cookbooks are made of, but we say it all the time and I'll say it again:  We eat well.

And what with buying in bulk and eating from the garden and the world around us, I've been spending a lot less time and money at the grocery store.  Sure the gathering, growing, and preparations certainly takes plenty of time, but I almost always prefer that over parking lots, grocery lists, and check out lines.

(I can't believe there's a different bowl in every picture.  Scratch that.  Actually it's not all that suprising if you could see the shelf of bowls in their cabinet.

Prettier fall pictures coming next...

missoula overnight

 

2 weekends ago already.  How does that happen?

Just the two of us went down for the night, to deliver a piece of furniture to a gallery there, and to attend the opening night of the woodworkers show they are holding there over the next couple of months.  

Rather rushed it was, to be back home in time for e's role as a magic jumping bean in the Missoula Children's Theater's performance at the local school of Jack & the Beanstalk:

 

and for the a party immediately afterwards, and to finish off the three pinatas we (I) made for the 40th (thus 40 pinatas) birthday party.  I never did get a picture of them stuffed and finished off but here they are in progress:

 

left to right:  black widow spider, alien, bunch of grapes.

and what a party it was.  let's just say the birthday boy is in a cast.

keeping the home fires burning

 

while he's away on an 11 day hunting trip at a forest service cabin way up in the mountains.

will try and play catch up around here, both online (lots and lots of pictures i could upload) and in house  (thinking of starting with that front door, taking down those halloween clings, wiping off the paw prints).

piles o' pumpkin

This pile o' pumpkins...

...from this BIG pile o' pumpkins (the early hard frosts this year forced them to pull the whole crop into one big pile and cover it with a tarp during the nights)...

 

...and the pumpkin patch from which they came...

...provided a pile o' entertainment...

 

...and nourishment...

 

...for the birds...

(Usually deer get the pumpkins.  Instead, this year, this morning, we found a confused, trapped deer inside the garden fence who was having a hard time finding it's way back out while the chickens and geese feasted in the compost pile just outside the open garden gate.)

...and for ourselves as well: pumpkin butter, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin soup, and still there are a couple of little ones leftover for pumpkin pies or pumpkin bread.

halloween 2009

 

 A pirate captain and woodland elf are who we had on our hands this year.

And a mama pirate who stayed out way too far into the wee, after-trick-or-treating, hours for the first Halloween in about 11 or 12 years while papa elf stayed home watching over said pirate captain and woodland elf.

h.a.double l.o.double u.double e.n !

h.a.double l.o.double u.double e.n !, originally uploaded by knitting iris.

walk a mile in my shoes

working down the road for the neighbors for a few weeks right now making christmas wreaths. 

yes, christmas in october.

a skiff of snow this morning helped some in setting the mood.

the patchwork truck above (that i adore!) is part of what i see out the window while working away.

we sold the VW bus to a friend recently to pay for a new wood stove that will hold a fire for hours, even overnight.

and the minivan has been broken down for almost two months now

so, this afternoon, after turning down several rides,

i got to walk the mile home, by then in the drizzling rain,

ending with a shortcut through the woods that left me soaked through and through.

just what i needed.

and a warm, cozy fire, still burning, to come home to.