garden and sewing

It´s the last of January today, so the first month of the year is already passed away. Last week we did some work in the garden and also this morning! But now the fine weather is over and it´s snow raining here.

 

But there is enough to do inside as well. I´m cooking a delicious stew. With potato´s, mushrooms, carrot and onion, this goes well to the nasty weather.
 I´m busy with making a new dress. A wool dress this time. I bought this very lovely checked fabric.

 My dress will be inspired by this dress.

 But first I made a new corset, with front and back lacing this time. Most is machine sewed but all the eyelets are done by hand. 12 front eyelets and 28 on the back. I made also a nice crochet lace on top. It turned out very well and I like the colors to.

Longing for summer and a stable tour

Mmm, freshly baked cupcakes and a cup of tea, that´s what I need to write my post

When I would use my camara some days ago I found some movies of last summers hay harvest. It gave me a lot of happiness to see everyting so green. I long to the springtime and long to work in the garden again. But now is everything covered with snow and the ground still frozen. So I spend some time with planning my garden instead. I think it´s good to have something to look forward to. It gives a lot of pleasure. Sometimes is longing to even better then that you were looking forward to.
I hope this little silly movies will you make happy to.. please enjoy.

The last weeks my husband is working in the barn. We have 2 ponies on one side of the stable and our horse stands on the otherside in a large box. She can see the other two but not make contact them and now we have sold one pony we have one box empty on the ponyside. This will be her new box. Only the railing was to low. She is 150cm high instead of 95cm. I think she could just step over it. So that is what we needed to change and she needed also a larger door. This is done by now and the last step will be to cover all electricity cables.

 Vera´s new stable/box, on the left jou see a bit of the pony boxes

the pony stables just next to her. 

Our chickens are also waiting on warmer weather. When it is snowing they don´t like to be outside... I hope now the daylight is become longer again that I might have our first eggs soon!

 little Betsy is waiting to go inside again, she follows me everywhere😺.

The kitchen, the heart of the home, part 1

The kichen is one of our most important places in our little house. Here do we cook our food, bake our daily bread, preserve food for the winter months and heat water for bathing. All through the history the kitchen has been an important place. Long ago this was the place where it was warm all day round and where you would have light from the open fire. In the 19thcentury this changed when the more economic woodstove made his entrance. The smoking open fire became past time, although in some houses it stayed in use until 1930´s.

I´m not certain when our home got it´s first woodstove but you can see that the timber above the stove has been burned and I suppose that they had an open fireplace back in the 1850´s when the house was build. When we moved into the house, a large ¨Skillingaryd¨ stove was build in but unfortunaly it was damaged and could not be repaired. Without the stove the kitchen was useless so we did buy another stove. A Näfvekvarn 19 B, I think it was build in the early 20th Century and it was renovated before we bought it. I´m very happy with this woodstove. Most of the early Swedish woodstoves have very little fireplaces, you almost need to split your firewood into safty matches formate. But this stove has fortunately a large fireplace. I cook on it, bake bread or cookies but also cake goes fine, even when I have to turn the cake  after half the time, it never collapse. I know a lot of people where that happened despite the have a modern oven.

This time I made some picture how we clean the inside of our stove, we need to do deed every other week or so, it´s important to clear out all the soot. If I don´t do that, I can´t  regulate the oven tempature that well, and the stove smokes when I lay new wood on the fire. I also blacken the stove  this time, I often forget to do that but now he is black and shiny again.

 On the picure above, you see the right cook plate, this plate is provided with extra iron on the underside, this makes that the plate stays  longer hot. A lot of soot is collected here.

 Also above the oven you´ll find a lot of soot and ashes. These scratch we beside the oven where it falls down...

 Last we clean in the sootvalve. Behind this little valve all soot and ashes are collected now and we can scratch is out and put it away.

 Brush the blacken on top and polish it out

And black and shiny after all work!

HAPPY NEW YEAR and news from the homestead

hello everyone!

It´s a long time since I posted my last update, but I had some trouble with my computer and it took a long time before we solved the problems but now I´m back!

Another year has passed by. A lot has happened. We get some goats and we gave them away again, we made a lot of hay, we sold one pony, get some new chickens, had a very good vegetable harvest and made some new ideas for the future...

I finished my first knitting project

We have decided to reduce our numbers of animals. It´s a lot of work to feed them all through the winter, and making all the hay they need. Last year we start mowing hay, a little before midsommer and we were done just before the first of oktober. It gives satisfaction to see the quantity of hay grow on our hayloft and gives a feeling of safety to know that there is enough food for the animals to eat all through the cold winter months. But spending almost 3months on hay making was a bit to much. I like the job but I like to do something else also... So now with less animals we need less food and it will be less work. We ´ll have some more times to do other tings, like working in the garden or maybe even to enjoy ourselves with dancing on a sommer ball.

some christmascarts I painted last year

The past 3 weeks I was in full speed with sewing a regency dress, a regency shift, a pair short stays (or corset) and a tucked petticoat and making a new pair of trousers to Sander. I readed on Facebook about a Regency ball or assamble in Skåne, not to far away from were we live and decided to go. But I didn´t have the right dress to it and I had only 3 weeks to finish it. But I made it. Last saturday was the ball evening and it was wunderfull! I and my husband enjoyed every minut of it! It was very well organized. The room was delightfull decorated with paintings and candles. Very enjoyable dances we learned, it was just perfect! And now I dream to organize a ball to, we´ll see....

and a Picture from the ball, I´m in the Blue dress

in the upcoming updates
Were going to step by step learn our little pony to pull and drive
A lot about our vegteble garden 2018
how to sharpen a scythe
and much more!

how to build a Scandinavian haystack

  The day's are become shortening again. At 9 Pm we really need to lighten our lamps, and a view day's ago, when it was a really rainy day, we needed light far more early. The weather is a bit wet lately, a view days dry alternate with a couple of days really wet. It's not the best weather for hay making but we will make it do.

  A week ago, we decide to bring some hay into the barn. It was not a very bright day, but the sun was shining and only a view clouds where hanging on the horizon. So we prepared everything and went to get the horse, Vera. She likes to work and always she comes first at the gate, but not this day! We called but she would not come, Sander decide to go and get her, but when he almost could get her, she ran away. What is this, I thought! Is she playing with us? After 10min we get her and take her with us. I looked up to the sky and realized it was not so bright anymore, the view clouds hanging on the horizon, has grown fast and now almost covered the hole sky. Maybe the horse tried to tell us something, maybe we go to have rain.
"I remembered a day for more than ten years ago. Almost the same weather and I would go out and ride for a while. Vera had no sense to come and after I had saddled her she was really slowly and annoying. I decided then it was better to ride homewards and before I was home, it was a hail and thunderstorm. Then I knew she tried to tell me, it was not save to ride out, and I praised her when we were home again".
 I told to Sander were I was thinking about and give Vera the benefit of doubt, and brought her back on the field. You will believe it or not but just after 15 min it was raining! She knew it and lucky for us we listened!

With this rainy weather I'm happy that we have a methode of haymaking that has been proved since the middle ages. Always have and had farmers problems to get the hay from the fields. Before the tractors it was very labor intensive. The small farmer needed a methode to spread out the haymaking season. Not being so dependent on the weather. In almost every country they invented a type of haystack. The hay now needed a shorter time to dry on the fields and lay save till the day you would bring it into the barn.
We use the same type of haystack as they did in the time of 'Carl von Linné'. I made some pictures of it and describe how we're doing it.

 The grass mowed we the day for and the same day we're building the haystack. It was not nice weather so it is still very wet. Also is the grass very short what makes it not so easy to build. The best haystack you build with very long grass. On the picture above, Sander is digging the first hole for the first pole.

 We use always 10 poles to one stack. Around 1m metre apart the first two lean a bit outside, like \\, the six in the middle stand in zig saw and the last two lean out to the other side //. so it will look like \ \ | | | | | / /.

 Here I'm laying the first layer of hay/grass. We strung a wire about a 40-50cm from the ground. This is were the grass is hanging upon. Just fill it up with a 10 a 15 cm grass when it is wet, like it was this time. If the grass should have been more dry, I would lay maybe twice that much on it.

 First layer done. You can see that there is a opening on the front, as well on the back. It allows the wind to go trough, and will dry the hay.

 Making the next layer. A second wire is strung 10 to 15 cm above the grass layer. Fill it up like the first one. Make sure it is evenly spread and hangs in the right balance.

 Here I'm making the 4th layer, you can see how the wire twisted on the pole.

 Higher and higher!

And done! 5 layers of hay, will now dry 3 weeks on the field. Protected from rain and sunshine. The hay is drying without becoming brown. A nice green hay, rich of  nutrition. The animals will love it.  

sommer pictures

'the season now is all delight,

Sweet smile the passing hours,

And summer's pleasures, at their height,

Are sweet as are her flowers;

The purple morning waken'd soon,

The mid-day's gleaming din,

grey evening with her silver moon,

Are sweet to mingle in.

How sweet the fanning breeze is felt,

Breath'd through the dancing boughs;

How sweet the rural voices melt

From distant sheep and cows.

The lovely green of wood and hill,

The hummings in the air,

Serenely in my breast instil,

The rapture reigning there.'

Clare

I have not that much time to writhe right now but I like to share some pictures with you. I made the pictures a couple of days ago and actually I should have taken some new ones. Everything is growing so fast! But it gives you an idea how the kitchen garden looks  right now.

Two weeks ago arrived some new livestock on the homestead! Seven small wyandotte chickens. They are so cute

The haying season has arrived again. How strange it feels that it is more than one year ago I wrote about haying and making haystacks and now where doing it again. Look how the hay is drying on the field!

How to get aphids away

It's  half June already. After a very dry May month, rain has come and everything is growing fine.
Now we are preparing for the haying. Sander is already mowing with the scythe on the lawn between the house and the barn. Also needed he to cut  all grass away under and around the electric fencing. That is now done.

Every day I work a bit in the garden, for not only our crop is growing nicely, the weeds also....
In the broad beans I discovered some aphids. They sat in the young top leafs. It's very common for broad beans to get aphids, unfortunately. To get away with them you can just pick of the top, the rest of the plant is not tasty to aphids so they will stay away then. But my plants were not that big yet, so I was looking for some other methode to get away with them. I find a methode by squirt them away with water but we don't have running water and therefore also no garden hose, how can I do this?? While thinking about it I went on with some other chars and I needed something from the barn when I spotted a high pressure spray bottle. Maybe that will do the job. I cleaned it and filled it up with water and it does the job excellent! I'm very happy now!