Some pictures from the cider pressing party last weekend.  It was also my husband’s birthday – I’m so glad he had a great time! (We all did!)

Most folks brought apples from their own trees and also gleaned many from abandoned orchards along country roads.

Apples were washed, wormy parts and bruises removed, and then cut in half or quarters to fit into the grinder.

Ground apples in one of the two presses on site.

Little Hen was strong enough to crank the smaller press. (The electric grinder is the wooden box behind her on the back end of the press – SO much quicker than the hand-grinding we did in the past!)

The girls carrying the pressings to the wheelbarrow (they’re heavy!).  The pressings will eventually to be buried back in the orchard, although while we were there, the deer kept snacking on them.

Tum Tum liked to hang out by the wheelbarrow.

Pressed cider, waiting to be strained through cheesecloth and bottled.

A small fraction of the finished cider – most folks froze theirs, but I canned mine, since our freezer is pretty well full.

The girls even got a chance to ride the zip line (thank you, Jody!!), which they have been talking about nonstop since. ( I’ve been informed by Firecracker that I need to plant some really fast growing trees, so that we, too, can have a zip line in our yard. )

Thank you for a wonderful time, Teacher Linda!

]]> http://www.larksongknits.com/2009/10/30/cider-pressing/feed/ 2 http://www.larksongknits.com/2009/10/07/paper-crafting-freestyle/ http://www.larksongknits.com/2009/10/07/paper-crafting-freestyle/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:50:16 +0000 Angela http://www.larksongknits.com/?p=2426

The past month has left me feeling stretched pretty thin because of obligations and responsibilities to my family and others.     Tackling domestic duties and  “home schooling” the girls while my non-stop motion toddler “explores” the house into a distaster zone has also been a challenge.  Crafting has been particularly tricky – Tum Tum either attempt to eat or destroy anything the girls are working on – and he’s especially good at climbing up on the kitchen table and flinging art supplies across the room in a lightning flash.

This day, he took a nice long nap after lunch, so as soon as he was sleeping,  I quickly whisked out some craft supplies for the girls to do a little fall paper crafting.  We didn’t have anything in mind  – I put out some supplies with a vaguely autumnal theme and let the girls’ creativity lead them.

We had a huge pad of fall-colored  scrap book paper (on clearance for $3 this past summer at Michaels),  paper scraps, some oatmeal and coffee tins, glitter glue, sequins, etc, chrysanthemum and maple leaf punches (I am addicted to the Martha Stewart craft punches – whenever they have one of those 50% off the sale price ” coupons and the Martha Stewart items are on sale, I snatch one up.).  After punching out some maple leaves for them, I went into the kitchen to make brownies, and let the girls explore on their own.

I love what they came up with – Little Hen’s (left) is a “treasure box” (it’s hard to see in this shot, but she wrote “treasures” on it) and Firecracker’s is a bank for “collecting coins for Heifer”.

We saved the last canister for Tum Tum, who was happy to turn it into a drum after he woke from his nap. 

Note : I hope to get back to some more regular posting by the end of the week.  Life has been a bit overscheduled I just haven’t found the time to sit down at the computer much the past few weeks.  We have some family birthdays, out of town company, and a trip coming up, so I hope to squeeze in some blogging late at night!!

Over the weekend, we took advantage of the Smithsonian’s annual free pass day to visit the World Forestry Center, located right across from the Oregon Zoo.  The building is light and open, and the exhibits are well designed, educational, and attractive to children.

There were displays appealing to many senses – here Firecracker is smelling the oils from different culinary trees and trying to guess their origin.   Euclayptus had her stumped – she said it smelled like “Burt’s Bees something…but that’s not quite right.”

Little Hen played the tongue drums for a LONG time – and has been reminding me daily how “if we ever find any tongue drums on Craigslist, maybe we could get them.”

Of course, all Tum Tum cared about was the MACHINES!  That boy signed “more car” and made engine revving sounds all morning.  “Driving” the timberjack and the jeep totally made his day.

Little Hen spins a Tibetan prayer wheel.

Hope you get a chance to visit the World Forestry center – for my kids, it was a chance to try their hand at some really fun virtual experiences – like parachuting as a smoke jumper, running a timberjack, river rafting and riding a jeep in Africa.  But, it was also a chance to learn more about good stewardship of our resources, the importance of conserving forests, and the blessing that their products are to us and to people all over the world, and the value in renewing those forests for future generations.  A very nice little museum -I’m glad we got a chance to visit.

Kortney at One Deep Drawer told me about the congregation of Vaux’s swifts in NW Portland, and this week we made it over to the Chapman School to see them.   For a bird nerd like me, it was a huge thrill.

We set up early, with hundreds of other families, enjoying our picnic dinner (homemade hummus, Greek yogurt, tomatoes, flatbread, pear sauce), and reading books until the sun began to set.

The school had some well-made signs up about swifts – with sections at the bottom geared for children.  One sign suggested we try  tracking one swift in the sky as long as possible before losing it in the swirl of birds (which we did!).  We learned from another that a single Vaux’s swift can eat 5000 bugs a day!

Then, the swifts began to congregate, and we got out the binoculars to watch.  It was truly breathtaking to watch the birds spiraling together and hear their constant vocalizations.   And the evening only got more spectacular as a Cooper’s Hawk attempted (and finally succeeded!) to catch his dinner from the cloud of birds.   The crowd reacted in unison to his swoops and dives – it was quite a show!

I wish I had a better camera that could have captured just how stunning the whole display really is.   If you’d like to learn more about Vaux’s swifts, and see some better images of their temporary residence at the Chapman School, check out this segment from Oregon Field Guide -

Oregon Field Guide – Vaux\’s Swifts

Today Firecracker and I are attending our church’s fall kickoff of our monthly Ladies’ Breakfast.  The pastor’s wife is hosting at her house, so we thought we’d take her (and her daughter – Firecracker’s friend) a little hostess gift when we go.

Earlier this week, we went to to the thrift store and picked up a little basket, lined it with an embroidered linen hand towel (from my stash).  We also found two little silver spoons, and paired them with two vintage Japanese tea cups and saucers.  The tea cups had a glossy opalescence that Firecracker really liked  (”the inside of the cup looks like a soap bubble!”).  To round out the Mom and Daughter Afternoon Cocoa basket, we made a batch of Not-Too-Sweet Hot Cocoa Mix.

If you’d like to make some cocoa mix of your own (which I prefer to store-bought, because it isn’t overwhelmingly sugary), prepare to get messy!  You’ll need -

Sift together 2 cups powdered sugar and 1 cup dutch-process cocoa and 2 tsp cornstarch (no lumps!).

Then stir in 1 tsp salt and 2 1/2 cups powdered milk,

and finally, add a large pinch Ancho Chili Powder.  (The original recipe is from Alton Brown’s website (love Good Eats!), although, the first time I made it, the girls didn’t like the cayenne, so now I use the Ancho chili powder, which is very mild, but provides a hint of smoky pepper flavor.)

Stir all ingredients together, and store in a large jar, sealed tight.  To make up a cup, fill your cup 1/3-1/2 full with the mix.  Add hot water, milk or coffee to fill.  Enjoy!

Hope your weekend is filled with peace and good fellowship.

Saturday,  I was blessed with the opportunity to ride with another family of volunteers out to Mosier, OR (in the beautiful Columbia Gorge) to glean pears for Birch Community Services.   The weather was very rainy, windy, and chilly, so I was grateful that the children could all stay home, snuggled up reading their latest chapter book with Daddy.

The five of us wore large canvas pear-picking bags, and picked 40-50 lbs of Bartletts off of the trees at a time and then unloaded them into large crates.  Due to the windy, rainy conditions, I didn’t get any pictures of the actual picking, but here you can see a fraction of what we picked.  The owner’s of the orchard estimated that we picked close to 2200 lbs of pears!!

You may ask, why were thousands of pounds of beautiful pears sitting unpicked, unwanted on the trees?   Well, the owners explained to me that there isn’t any profit in Bartletts – they cost $120/crate to grow,  but can only get $180/crate on the market – so by the time they pay workers to pick them, and absorb the cost of transporting them, they actually lose money on the Barletts.

The farmer makes his living growing Bosc pears for market.  So, why grow Barletts at all, then??  Bosc pears command a much higher price than Barletts, but the trees are not self-fertile, and require another pear variety for pollination.  So, for every 4 rows of Bosc pear trees planted in the orchard, the farmer must plant a whole row of Barletts in order to reap a crop.  The Barletts are generously left available for the gleaners.

After picking over 8000 pears to donate to BCS, we were allowed to harvest for ourselves as many pears as we could put up  – so I have over 150 lbs of pears sitting on my kitchen floor to ripen over the next week!  I’ll be dehydrating and canning pears and pear butter non-stop late in the week and over the next weekend.   Bring some jars and you’re welcome to join me and take home canned pears for your family, too!   I’d love to have your company!

For more on the culture and history of gleaning, check out my favorite (and oh-so-French!) documentary - Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (The Gleaners and I).

Some pictures from our nature hike at Mt. Tabor Park (which is fast becoming our favorite day hike – right in the middle of the city, great hills, great hiking, lots of nature to examine and exlpore!).   Check out those helicopters!

Firecracker stood for a long time and watched the water pouring in at the reservoir.

Little Hen picked me a bouquet of wild pea blossoms.  Sweet girl.

Firecracker got pretty tuckered out in the middle, so it was Daddy to the rescue!

Stop in at The Magic Onions for more Friday Nature Table sharing.  Follow some other families on their nature hikes at It’s a Wild Life, Living and Learning, Garden Mama, and Ordinary Life Magic.

Have a blessed weekend.

We took the children for a quick visit to the Oregon  Zoo (the best part of having a pass, in my opinion, is that you can pop in for an hour or two and just see a few things, so the children don’t get maxed-out).  This visit, we decided to go with a bird theme (surprise, surprise).

Tum Tum signed “bird”  and said “cheep cheep” pretty much non-stop the entire morning. 

We saw the penguins and the African bird aviary, but by far, the kids’ favorite stop was the Lorikeet exhibit.

I hope these last days of summer provide you with some fun family outings as well.

Last week we traveled north to Ridgefield, WA for the Clark County Fair.   The kids’ aunt and uncle, niece, grandparents, and great-grandparents met us there for an afternoon full of livestock viewing, carnival rides, and ridiculously unhealthy food.

All of the kids enjoyed the hula-hooping contest, and my niece (with the white ribbon in her hair) took first place!

And of course, we had to have a little fair food – this is a deep-fried Snickers.  So deadly.

We spent a long time in the poultry barn – I kept having to bend down so Tum Tum could get a good look at the birds.   He especially liked the runner ducks in the pens outside, and had a nice little conversation with them.

I’m sure like most spinners, my favorite place is the sheep barn (well, maybe tied with the produce competition…or maybe the preserves table…so hard to choose.)  They had a nice spinning demo and information on Kool-Aid dying fiber, and lots of 4Hers had entered their fleeces for judging.

It was hard not to be envious of the gorgeous wheel the volunteer was using.   She asked Little Hen if she knew how yarn was made, and Little Hen answered, “Of course, my mama uses a ‘drop spindler’ and makes her own yarn.  Someday we’re going to get a fancy wheel like yours and then I’ll get to learn how to use it. ” I don’t think that was quite the response the woman expected.  (That girl is never short on answers.  6 year-olds can be so…confident in themselves, can’t they?)

Have you been to your local county fair?  Or state fair?  We’re hoping to make it to the Oregon State Fair one of these years.  I hear it’s a must-see.

Thanks so much for all of the comments on my giveaway.  I never expected so many!  I hope to have another giveaway soon.  Winner will be announced later this evening.  Thank you!

To make this  refreshing, healthy summertime snack , you will first need 4 medium oranges.   Give them to the kids and let them roll the oranges around on the counter and between their hands to prep them for juicing.

Juice the oranges (you should get about 1 cup of orange juice).  If little hands are helping, I always put down a kitchen towel – juicing oranges is a messy task for a 4 year-old (or a 30 year-old, for that matter!)

If you like, throw in a chopped peach or a handful of strawberries or a mango for another layer of flavor and nutrition.  Put these in the blender.

To the blender, also add 1 cup of whole milk (or a nut milk would be yummy if you don’t do dairy, but you might want to decrease it to 3/4 cup),

one tsp pure vanilla extract,

and a scant 1/2 cup organic, unbleached sugar (or  4 Tbsp honey)  (and our oranges were very sweet, I could have cut this back even more).

Puree for 20 sec, then add

ice! Just have the kids drop them in a cube at a time until it’s a thickness that you all like.

Enjoy! (I know my kids did – Tum Tum kept signing to his sisters for sips! )

Don’t forget to check out my giveaway post! Thanks!

Larksong’s Orange Julius

4 medium oranges, washed and juiced to yield about 1 cup orange juice

1 peach or mango, chopped, or one handful of strawberries (optional)

1 cup whole milk

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

scant 1/2 cup sugar or 4 tbsp honey, to taste

ice cubes

Directions – Place all ingredients in the blender for 20-30 seconds, then add ice cubes one a time until desired consistency.   (Extra good with a bit of whipped cream on top.)