Day 26- A Quiet Day

The headache is gone this morning, but my nose is running like crazy.  I add some yarrow leaves to my tea pot to help combat the cold.  A good dose of vitamin C would help too.  Instead of honey I use rosehip syrop to sweeten my tea.  It's wonderful to have milk in it again!  There's a bit of cream on top that I skim off for butter.  The boys get up, two with runny noses and two with stuffy heads.  I give them each the same treatment.  Husband gets up, not sick, and cheery.  Weirdo.  The boys take turns shaking the jar of cream and passing it around the table.

What to do today?  More bear fat to clean, drain, cool, reheat, jar.  More cracklings for the dogs and birds.  The boys go out and collect snow after breakfast.  It hasn't melted, but there isn't any fresh either.  We need to get water.  They do chores. 

Husband decides to try hitching Knightmare to the stone boat.  She starts out planning to take him for a wild ride, but soon discovers that's too much work.  She settles down and starts following his cues. 

I cut the leftover roast for hash, peel a large pot of potatoes and put them on to cook.  I chop some garlic and onion, and add it to the chopped roast in a skillet.  I start a batch of bread.  I get the soup pot from the fridge and put it on the stove for lunch today.

The Littles do their school work while I tidy the kitchen.  More banana bread for breakfast tomorrow, and the soup should be good for a couple more days, so there's not much to work on in the assembly line.

With the turkeys butchered and the geese and ducks moved into the chicken pen, it should be safe for me to plant some garlic and a few potatoes.  I'll check to see if the birds left any of the beets, carrots, and mangel roots in tact for seed as well. 

Planting garlic in the snow is chilly on the fingers!  I put most of it in the hugelkultur bed, and one bunch at the back of greenhouse #1.  I can't see any signs of the root crops, but then it could be just that they're well beneath the soil.  I decide to leave them and plant more in the spring if they don't come back.

Husband and the Bigs have Samson hitched to the cart and are loading buckets and barrels when I come around the house.  They go to Sanya and Roam's for water.  Roam's taping up a window when they arrive.  They had some prowlers around in the night.  They didn't go outside, and nothing seemed to have been touched on the property, except a rock was thrown through the window.  It seems an awful long way for kids to come causing mischief, but if it had been looters they would have done more damage.    Their dogs started barking though, so perhaps that scared the prowlers off.

Husband and the Bigs drop the water off at home, then go to Mom and Dad's to pick up their barrels and buckets.  They take them to get filled as well.  One final trip, they get water for brother and Sil.  As a thank you gift I send over a small roast and a jar of beets.

We have the bear soup for lunch, which is ok, but a tad strange.  I decide to thicken it tomorrow and turn it into stew.  I add a few more potatoes to it after lunch, along with some flour.  I roll out the bread, mix the potatoes into the skillet with the roast beef, and add some bear fat to it.

We cut and pile firewood in the afternoon for awhile.  The weather's warming and the snow is melting.  I hope winter holds off a bit longer.

Supper is served, soup is put in the fridge, the oven goes on the stove for bread.  When the first batch is done I cut a loaf open and smother it with the goat butter.  It's still somewhat milky, and I never worked the buttermilk out of it, but it tastes delicious!  The second batch goes in the oven while we tidy up. 

The boys and Husband play Battleship and chess after supper.  Once the bread is done I go to bed to read.