Pine Needles, Prunings and Podcasts

Hello, friends.  Last week, two sweaters were mended.  Cabbage, kale and winter greens were harvested.  There is still quite a bit of the strong tasting winter squash in the freezer. I expect it came from the huge, warty mutant squash that showed up last year.  I realized I could feed it to the dogs, whom it is so good for, they enjoy it, and I was able to start working on the squash in storage.  Two were getting soft, and went to the chickens, but I cut up several butternut squash, enough to make a butternut squash crumble, and froze two additional bags.  The crumble also used our fresh parsley and thyme.  A bag of our butter beans was pulled from the freezer.  Another night dinner was pasta with pesto.  I've been wanting to try pine needle tea for a while, and made some, but was not impressed with the flavor.  I've read that different species have different tastes, but I expect the main reason is I did not make it into tea for a couple of days.  I need to try some fresh, but in the meantime, I read a post by Susun Weed, who recommended steeping the needles in ACV, so I started a batch of that.  They're an excellent source of Vit C.  There are often tufts of pine needles on the ground where I walk, I assume dropped by the squirrels, and these are what I forage.  It's difficult to get a nice pic by candlelight, but I tried.

The hens have slowly been increasing their egg production.  I had enough to share some with M, the first time in months.  I finished filling another gallon bag of vegi scraps for broth.  After an appt., I delivered soap to a nearby gallery, went by Hallmark, where I got a free greeting card, then to Harris Teeter, where I found organic butter for 4.77, and got 3#.  A batch of yogurt was made.  A frittata was made to use up leftovers, which consisted of potatoes, green bean casserole and a little cauliflower.  Pear blue cheese salad was made with one of the last gifted pears, and homemade berry vinaigrette dressed it.  Our friend, M, made an oak shaving bowl on request from one of my customers who had bought one of his shaving brushes, and wanted a bowl to match.  I think it turned out lovely.

On Friday, I cleaned up several orders.  I also spray painted a custom paint order.  On Saturday, I painted all but one order, finished the last one on Sunday, along with another custom order.  Most orders were packed on Saturday and Sunday, and the rest will be packed on Monday.  While packing orders, I so enjoyed listening to a few On Being podcasts.  The ones I listened to were with Ariel Burger, Alain de Botton, Parker Palmer and Drew Lanham.  Each of these people were unknown to me, and each was beautiful.  I've been keeping an eye on the peas and the wintersown containers, but don't see anything up yet.  The predicted wintry weather did not arrive last week, only the usual rain.  I received a small bag of cat food.  A small refund check was received from the insurance company.  J pruned fruit trees on Sunday, and the fig cuttings were shared with friends.  It was such a pleasure to have a good visit with them outdoors.  It was getting hard to remember what it's like to have good conversations with friends.  I hope it will be not too far along in the future before we can freely visit again.  Some progress was made on the workshop over the weekend.  The screws in the sheetrock were mudded, the Solatube was placed in the roof, and the wiring for the ventilator fan was run.  Little by little, we're getting there.  I hope you are moving forward in whatever ways feed your soul.