Studying Minerals in General Science

TBear was working on a module about geology in his science this week.  One of the assignments was to study what a mineral looks like in its natural state.  Alum is an easily obtained, pure mineral that you can buy at the grocery store; however, it's sold as a smashed-up powder in a little can.  So, the experiment, then, was to dissolve it in water and let it reform into its natural crystalline structure in order to take a look at it with a magnifying glass to see what it looks like in its natural form. 

First, he dissolved the alum in boiling water, then he poured it into a mason jar.  There was a string with a nut tied to the end of it for the mineral to crystallize on so it could easily be lifted out of the jar.

More alum crystals formed on the bottom of the jar than on the nut, but it was still easy enough to get the crystals off the bottom.

 

After picking a few crystals out of the jar, TBear took a closer look with a magnifying glass.  Rocks are composed of many minerals; because of the mix, they don't look like any particular crystalline form.  The pebbles in the background were to compare what a mix of minerals looks like (a rock) as opposed to a pure mineral (the alum crystal.)

 

He was so fascinated by the cool geometric pattern of the crystals that I pulled out the microscope for him to take an even closer look.

The microscope proved so fascinating that other things were found to look at...such as the wing of a fly that had the misfortune of being swatted on the window.  I never knew there were tiny hairs on a fly's wing.

Muddled Monday

Today was one of those days.  I don't know how or why days like this happen.  You get up in the morning, everything seems to be going according to plan, but then you look at the clock and suddenly discover that it's lunchtime and all you've accomplished with your student is a lot of history reading!  (Said student thinks it's been a fabulous morning. :)  Well, okay, and the chores, and violin practice, and breakfast got done, and he did bring his laundry down to get started...plus I mixed up a batch of bread to rise.

TBear made macaroni and cheese for lunch (Home Ec) while I compiled a list of turkey orders for this weekend.  (The Thanksgiving turkeys will be going to the butcher on Saturday morning, bright and early.)  After a post-lunch 15-minute recess, we were back at the books again.  Math, Latin, Writing...suddenly it was time for chores!  Well, okay, so TBear's sister stopped in for a visit, and I had some cheese customers, but how did the time get away from me?!   I didn't fill TBear's workboxes for this morning, and I think that made a tremendous difference in what got done, not that anyone could accuse us of sitting around watching soaps and eating bon-bons all day.  Not by a long shot.   Still, I had additional ideas of what I wanted to accomplish today.

I also forgot about the laundry I'd hung on the line at lunchtime.  I was trying to take advantage of one of our last beautiful, breezy, sunshiny days.  I wound up wearing my headlamp out just to find the laundry at 5pm!  (It gets dark early here at this time of year!  It was actually dark around 4:15...I missed that by a mile.)  I also forgot about that bread I had rising in the oven!  It's finally baking now. 

Dinner is going to be late because that bread was for the toast under the chicken and gravy, which pretty much sums up the way my day has gone.  Oh well, some days are like that.  I'm glad we have Monday's Muddle over with.  Tomorrow is going to be Terrific Tuesday!  I can just feel it in my bones.  :)

A Weekend of Chickens and Hockey

Okay, so we went from snow last week to sixty degrees today.  I'm confused, but then again, this is New England.  It's been a very busy weekend.  Saturday morning our meat chickens went to slaughter, and we had two hockey games to attend that same afternoon, then another three this afternoon.   While Whit took the meat birds to the slaughterer, I went shopping for my Secret Sister at the Maine Craft Fair.  I had a great time with my friends, but got home just in time to head off for the two hockey games Whit was reffing, and we were keeping score for.  The birds had to sit in ice baths until we were done.   The weather wasn't too bad when we went into the rink, but by the time we were done, it had started to pour.  We got the leftovers from Hurricane Ida.  We slogged home, and after a fast dinner of pizza, I got to work cutting up chicken and bagging it for our freezer.  My wonderful friend Brenda came to help; a dozen of the chickens were hers.  It was very late by the time we were done, and I didn't get to bed until even later, after bleaching all my counters, cutting boards, utensils and floor.

Today was another big hockey day.  Today, TBear had a game to play.  I've decided that TBear and I are a great team at the score-keeping job.  I keep the score sheet while he runs the clock.  I don't have to think about what's going on with the electronics, I just write the score and penalties and watch the game.  However, a few minutes after we arrived at the rink for TBear's game, it became apparent that the scorekeeper for his game was a no-show.  I was summoned.  Uh oh... I had never run the clock.  I have nice, legible handwriting; my job is to keep the scoresheet while TBear runs the clock!  Now, I had to do both our jobs for his game.  The learning curve was rather vertical, but I managed.  (Thank goodness for all the mental Mad-Math Minutes TBear and I do! : D )  Nobody threw tomatoes at me, and the coaches cut me some slack... in spite of my not being able to post the penalty times.  Oh well.  I figured out how to enter those half-way through the first period.  Meanwhile I had  scratch paper handy and just told the guys what time they could get back on the ice.  It sounds easy when you're sitting at your computer reading this, but it does get kind of busy, and I don't like making mistakes, so perhaps that makes me more neurotic than most. 

After all the hockey excitement today, I got to come home and finish boiling chicken carcasses down and packaging the remaining meat for the freezer.  I am so thankful for the Food Saver vacuum packer that my mom gave us years ago.   Hopefully, the 20 cut up birds I have in my freezer will carry us through at least until next summer when we will raise more meat birds. 

Meanwhile, it's late again, I'm done for the day, and I think I will turn in soon.   Tomorrow begins our last week before we take a week-long vacation from school for the Thanksgiving  holiday.  I am also really looking forward to spending some time with my daughter, (whom I see infrequently, and who will be home soon,) making good things to eat, perhaps doing some knitting, and just generally enjoying her company.

I'm glad tomorrow is Monday though.   I need a break. : D

Making Cheese

Yesterday the weather was cool but lovely.  After our recent snow, it seemed wise to me to finish pulling up the rest of the carrots  before they were permanently buried under snow for the winter.   TBear helped by pulling them, rinsing off the dirt and leaving them spread out to dry before we put them away.

My garden looks sad now.  The sheep and goats, on the other hand, thought the carrot tops were yummy.

I also made cheese yesterday.  We still have two goats in milk, which are producing about a gallon a day.  That's an awful lot of milk for just the three of us to drink, so I've been making cheese with the extra milk.  Thankfully, I have some friends, whom we see on Thursday afternoons at fiddle class, who like to buy my cheese or we'd be eating an awful lot of stuffed shells, lasagna, enchiladas, and cheese and crackers! 

The cheese I make is a pretty simple, mild Queso Blanco.  All it requires is the goats' milk and some vinegar.  Whit created a pasteurizer/double boiler for me, which is pretty cool.  I usually do up about 3 gallons of milk at a time, primarily because that's all my pot will hold.

We filter and store the milk in half-gallon mason jars.  I pour them into the pot when I'm ready to make cheese.

 

Whit put an electric heating element in the bottom of a larger pot, which I fill with water.  I have no idea what the element was cannibalized from, but it works fine here.  The top of the milk pot has a hole in it through which I can insert a digital thermometer probe.  The milk needs to be heated to 175-180 degrees, so I set the alarm to go off when the milk reaches about 176 degrees.  (That way I have some leeway for the temperature to rise a little more without scalding the milk.)  Then I unplug the pot and set the timer to let the milk sit for 10 minutes.

After taking the milk pot out of the pasteurizer pot, I slowly stir about 1/4 cup of vinegar per gallon of  milk into the pot to form the cheese curds.

I line a colander with cheesecloth (butter muslin is best) and put the colander over a bowl to catch the whey as I pour the curds into the colander.

Tying the corners of the cheesecloth, I then hang it over the bowl to finish draining.

We like herbed cheese, so I put the curds into the mixer, and add in some olive oil, salt, fresh garlic (not too much, perhaps 2 cloves), oregano and basil.

Finally, using my nifty digital scale, I measure it into 1 pound containers.  I usually get about 5 pounds of cheese for three gallons of milk.  Not that the cheese lasts that long around my house, but it will keep for about 7 to 10 days in the refrigerator.  I've read that you can freeze it, but I haven't had enough left over to try that.  TBear loves to eat it on crackers as a snack.

What happens to the whey?  My chickens love it.  I also use it as the liquid if I'm making a soup or chowder.  It's very nutritious.

Probably Should Have Checked the Weather...

Most of the time I'm pretty aware of what's going on around me.  Most of the time.  Yesterday morning Whit said, "We're supposed to have some snow flurries today."  I know what snow flurries are.  He didn't have to define this for me.  They're fun to watch and they melt when they hit the ground, and that's just what they did for a few hours of false starts and spitting.  By about lunchtime they were finally starting to look a little like real snow rather than just flurries.  Did I check the weather to see if this was going to be an issue?  No, of course not.  It's the first week of November and I don't remember snow being an issue the first week of November here for at least the last five years.  No weather report required.  I'm not a weenie.  Just do what we have to do and be sensible in my driving. 

By about 1:30 it was snowing for real, but it wasn't sticking to the ground... at least, not at my house.  By the time we got to TBear's violin lesson half an hour east of here, it was starting to stick, and I was beginning to think, huh! we might really get an inch or so.  I admired it through the window during his lesson, feeling secure in the knowledge that this wasn't going to be a problem because my car drives great in the snow.  We're good.

However, after I got home I saw the 2-wheel drive pickup truck sitting in the barn with a half dozen bales of hay.  I was reminded that I was supposed to deliver these to TBear's fiddle teacher's house, which was our next appointment.  I started to have a few qualms at this point.  I don't like driving that truck in the snow.  It makes me look like a total idiot...and it's scary.  Still, the snow was melting almost as fast as it hit the ground...at my house.  Because I didn't check the weather, I didn't realize this was a storm from the east - off the ocean.  Our fiddle teacher lives east of us, so the further east I was to drive the more snow I ran into.  And it was sticking and accumulating.

But back at home, I didn't know that.  I figured, what the heck, I can do anything I set my mind to.  Just ask my mom.  She's told me that my whole life.  So I set my mind to getting TBear, and that load of hay, to his fiddle lesson.  We did well until we got to his teacher's road, which went uphill, and hadn't been plowed or sanded or anything.  My momentum carried me up the hill part way, but not quite to the top.  We slowly slid sideways toward the ditch as we struggled to make forward progress.  I stopped, not wanting to have to be pulled out of the ditch, and called Whit.  He wasn't happy about it, but he was prepared to jump in my car and come rescue me.  However, after hanging up, I decided I wasn't going to be beaten by this weenie truck, drat it!  So I put it in gear again and got it going.  We skated kind of sideways up the hill.  I called Whit and told him never mind, I'd managed it.   We unloaded the hay, TBear went to his lesson, and then we skated home again.  At least the unplowed scary part was downhill.  :)

Later, over dinner, Whit informed me that my struggles were probably greater than usual because the tires are bald.  Sigh.  I really think we need to get new tires before real winter weather sets in, especially since this is the only vehicle we have that will pull the horse trailer.

We went to bed wondering if it was going to keep snowing all night, which it did until at least midnight.  This morning I was up taking pictures of the "dusting" at 6:30.  TBear went out with the ruler and measured 4 inches on the grill and arms of the Adirondack chairs (which, ahem, it might be time to put away for the winter.)  The ground was warm enough that it only accumulated about 2 inches.  I took a few pictures to share.  So silly.

 The Farmall C.

 

 Magnum and Pat patiently waiting for breakfast. :)

 

It was a real winter wonderland for a few hours.  Actually, most of it is still on the ground.  It didn't get warm enough today to melt it.   It also made me really appreciate the fires in the woodstoves, and the hearty soup I had made the day before.  Tonight it's already below freezing.  I don't think it's going to melt soon.  On the other hand, I haven't checked the weather report lately.

Hanging Around

I was going through the pictures I took last month, and thought you might like these.  Grandson Sonny spent the night with us about a week ago.  TBear is good about practicing his violin daily, and Sonny loves to sit and listen...or play something too.  Usually he accompanies TBear on the piano, but this time he discovered the banjo.  Oh, man, was that a treat!  He fell in love with it, but it was too big to hold so TBear set him up on the chair with the banjo across his lap and the two of them practiced fiddle tunes together.  :)

 Marissa and Jake came to pick Sonny up the next day.  After hanging around with us for a little while, they got into the big, red truck and left. 

 

However, Sonny is coming to visit again tomorrow, and I can't wait! :)

Don't Tell Me You're Not Tired of This Yet...

If you're tired of reading about Whit and the horses, or seeing pictures of them too, then just flip to another page now.  I don't know if that's really the most interesting thing that went on here in October since I last posted, but that's what I have pictures of.  Whit and the horses.  I'll look some more and see what else I might have photo-documented.

Anyway, last weekend Whit and friend Jake had a job doing some low-impact, selective clearing of a few trees on a piece of property down near the pond.  They chose to do the job on a very rainy Saturday...as opposed to sunny Sunday afternoon.  I don't remember what else was going on that weekend, but it made sense to them to do it in the rain.  It was cold and windy too.  It was not my idea of a good time, but I took them some lunch and brought my camera.  I stood under the porch to take the following pictures.  TBear stayed and helped.

 You can sort of see the pond in the background behind the trees.  It really was a good job for the horses.

 

The scenery was beautiful, even if the weather wasn't.  The gold of the autumn leaves gave the whole woods an apparently cheerful, if wet, golden glow.

 

Reality check: 1-2 inches of rain that day.   (Yeah, I'd have picked that day to work too.  Not. :)

 

I'm sure it's a guy thing.  Even the horses didn't look that miserable.  They all came home still happy.  (And happy to be done.)