The Gleaners

I had this print of The Gleaners, by Jean-Francois Millet, hanging on my dining room wall for many years until it faded beyond saving. ~

Only recently I discovered it wasn't a depiction of a biblical story but rather a criticism of the French upper class and the poverty it imposed on the lower classes.

Gleaning bits of grain left behind the harvest does indeed show a hard way of life, but I focussed on the resourcefulness of the women, who found ways and means of feeding their families.

I admit I am a diehard gleaner. It makes me feel good to busy myself in the fall gathering and storing for the long winter ahead.

The last of the tomatoes go into the pot to peel and freeze. ~

Basil is chopped and covered with olive oil to freeze. ~

The last of the corn has been blanched and frozen and the chickens, the ultimate gleaners, have feasted on the kernels left clinging to the cobs. ~

The girls are scurrying about the yard all day at this time of year, pecking at bugs, fallen fruit and grasses gone to seed to put on the extra weight they will need to keep warm in the winter months. They've finished molting and grown a nice, thick coat of feathers.

Don't you just love Vivian's bloomers? ~

This year I've added nutting to my foraging.  My sister called to say the row of hickory trees just outside the village were loaded with nuts. No one has ever gathered them to my knowledge. To be honest, I didn't even know what one tasted like. A little Google session later, I discovered Hickory nuts are right up there with macadamias for a gourmet treat. Shelled, they sell for $24/lb. online. One site said that while walnuts are the Chevys of the nut world and pecans are the Oldsmobiles, hickory nuts are the Cadillacs. They were right! They are murder to crack, but the fruit is soooo worth the effort!

The temperatures dropped dramatically here last night and it's time to haul the potted herbs indoors. The freezer is full and the sealer jars are lined up on the shelves. ~

Yup, I'm happy with my tendency to be a gleaner and storer!

Did You Know Ovarian Cancer Researchers Need Your Help?

I'm using a new colour for my fall decorating this year, and for a very good reason.

I'm breaking out the colour teal and loving it! ~

Acorns are getting painted teal and nestled in coffee filter roses, beside vintage globes sporting teal oceans. It's all nestled beside a shabby plaster angel on my bookshelves.

It is a daily reminder that the race for a cure for ovarian cancer needs the help of legions of angels and each of us can be one of those angels.

I'm going to do some blatant bragging about my son in law, Dr. Trevor Shepherd, now. He leads a team of scientific researchers at the Lawson Health Research Institute, in London, Ontario.

They have recently made a breakthrough discovery of what is being called a Jekyll and Hyde molecule and this discovery can have a profound effect on treatment protocols for women suffering from ovarian cancer. To read about this discovery, you can click on the link here. Ovarian cancer is a silent stalker, usually not diagnosed until it has progressed to the later stages. This kind of research can save lives and, with 2,800 women in Canada alone being diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year, that's a whole lot of women praying for angels to step up and help fund life-saving research.

Ovarian cancer research is poorly funded. It doesn't have the corporate sponsorship that breast cancer research has through the pink ribbon campaigns. Think of all the products you see with a pink ribbon on it. We are always happy to know that a portion of the sale goes to such valuable research. 

Teal is the colour for ovarian cancer awareness and raising research funds. How often have you bought a product with a teal ribbon on it? It's just not out there for us to buy.

Trevor spends countless hours filling out grant forms and drawing up research proposals to keep his research funded. It uses up valuable time that would be better spent in the lab and in working with physicians on clinical trials. Still, there is never enough money.

I've often wondered if local fundraising was truly important to this kind of work. Trevor tells me it is critical to his work. He praises the organisers of fundraising events in his area and considers them important members of his research team. He never spends Mother's Day with his own mom or with his wife, the mother of his six kids. Instead, he gives a speech and joins in the London Run For Ovarian Cancer. It costs $200,000 to $300,000 to run the lab each year. This year, the run raised $189,900 of that money.

This is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to be shining angels. Small donations, even as little as $10 can make a big difference to your local ovarian cancer fundraisers. I urge you to look up your local fundraiser for this cause and give a little (or a lot if ya got it to give!). I guarantee you will be encouraging some research team to keep fighting the good fight!

This fall, bring on the teal. Wear it, paint it, talk about it and donate to it! ~

Don't forget to add an angel to the decorations because your help officially makes you one!

Why I'm Making My Own Cat Food

Poor Maeve became very, very sick this summer. She developed urinary crystals, a painful and potentially life-threatening condition. I dealt with that. Next, she showed symptoms of a thyroid condition. Veterinary treatment for hyperthyroidism in cats ranges from daily medication to radioactive iodine therapy. Neither is a good option in a cat that has started having violent allergic reactions. There was even a question of her being diabetic.

This little gal is only 4 yrs. old and her internal organs were failing, one after another. Treatments would run in the thousands of dollars and the prognosis still wasn't good. The first clue to what was making her so ill was a simple attack of hives. She was covered in them and clawed at them until she was raw, bleeding and almost bald. I took her outside with me to let the sun give her some relief. She seemed to feel much better and the hives began to heal over after a couple of days in the yard. Then, I discovered she had picked up a bad case of fleas outside. A single drop of the flea treatment you put between the shoulder blades caused such a violent reaction that she nearly choked to death.

That's when I decided to take matters into my own hands and go the holistic route. Maeve is a true feral cat, meaning she comes from multigenerational cats that have lived without human contact. She was undersized and only weighed in at 3 lbs. at her heaviest. I know all this information will make this a long post but I think important to any decision you make in changing what you feed your cats. Ferals survive on eating rodents and birds. The feline digestive system naturally breaks down the raw food and takes the nutrients, moisture and protein it needs and regurgitates the rest. That's the nasty, gooey thing your cat throws up if it eats the prey it catches. It's a perfectly normal process. My cats stay indoors and don't have access to wild food.

I had been feeding Maeve, and two younger ferals I've taken in, with a diet of canned cat food, a small amount of dry cat food and the odd serving of canned fish. It was the equivalent of Europeans introducing their diet to the North American Inuit people. Their systems couldn't handle it and neither can my feral cats. The dry cat food had grain in it. Removing the dry food immediately stopped Maeve's skin condition. Over the next few weeks, her urinary tract problems improved as well.

The food I found worked the best for her was Freshpet Select, a semi-moist food. Even grain free kibble had an immediate bad effect on her. Maeve is tiny and I'm treating her like the canary in the mineshaft. If a food isn't good for her, it most likely will start to compromise the health of the other two cats in time.
The problem I had with Freshpet Select, is that it is only available at one store in my area and they didn't always have it in stock. It was also a little pricey at $1/day per cat. It did have all species specific ingredients, but they weren't organic and I didn't know if there were chemicals that would build up in her system and cause new problems. I've done a lot of research on cat food now. Raw food is probably the best for felines, but I just can't bring myself to do it.

After that long preamble, I'll get to the cat food I made for round one.

I had 2lbs. of organic, chicken stock bones. I put them in a large pot, covered them in water and brought it to a boil. I reduced the heat to a simmer and cooked it just as you would making soup stock, for about six hours. ~

I'm going to add 2 hard boiled eggs, 2 organic carrots, 1/2 cup chopped parsley, a can of kippers and 2 Tbs. of coconut oil to the finished chicken. ~

Kippers, sardines or canned salmon have soft bones that the cats need for calcium. The carrots and parsley are great sources of vitamins and minerals. The eggs provide protein. I could crush the shells and add them to the food for extra calcium but didn't want to have anything the cats might find odd in this new food while I was switching them over.

I cut the carrots into a small dice and chopped the parsley ready to parboil it when the chicken was done. ~

I put a colander in a large bowl and poured the chicken pot into it. This separated the chicken and bones from the broth. The broth is reserved. While it was cooling, I used 2 cups of the broth to boil the carrots and parsley for 5 mins. That's just to soften the carrots and get the chicken flavour through them. I don't want the cats eating around veggies and missing out of those nutrients.

Being careful to remove all bones, I combined the chicken, carrots, parsley, chopped eggs, kippers and coconut oil with two cups of the chicken broth.

This is what it looked like done. ~

It may not look pretty, but you could feed this to your kids. Seriously, there's nothing in here but good food.

This recipe gave me 2 lbs. of pet food. I'm not sure how to cost it out for you. The eggs come from my own chickens, the soup stock bones were free with an organic meat order, the carrots might have cost a quarter each and the parsley is from my garden. So far, I've spent $1.09 on the can of kippers and a few cents on the coconut oil. In the future, I'll introduce other meats, probably leftovers, and use the remaining chicken broth for flavour and nutrients.

Next weeks food and the extra broth is all ready for the freezer! By saving the broth, I can make another batch by simply cooking some chicken and veggies and adding the other ingredients. It isn't a six-hour process every time. ~

In case you would like to give this a try with your cats, I've done a printable of the recipe for easy printing or pinning. ~

Did Maeve, Michaela and Clara Jane like it? Never in my life have I heard cats purr that loud all the way through their dinner! I couldn't even get them to lift their heads for a picture. ~

Not one speck of food was left in the bowls!

Vintage Sealer Jar Meets Vintage Sewing Supplies

What are you going to do when a friend brings you a whole case of vintage sealers that she has taken the time to date?  Why, you match them up with collectibles from the same year!

A little rummaging in my stash of hoarded junk fabulous vintage sewing supplies yielded metal sewing machine bobbins, wooden spools of thread, Bakelite buttons and snaps and hooks still on the cards. I never could bring myself to get rid of these goodies, so carefully saved by generations past.

Marilyn has dated this jar as 1944. World War II is still raging and the folks at home are struggling to make do, with what they have, under rationing conditions. I remember my Auntie Kay talking about taking her sister's winter coat and making it over into a coat and leggings for her own little girl. Her sister wouldn't be home for awhile to need it as she was serving overseas as an RCAF nurse.

A bit of vintage lace wrapped around the neck of the jar makes a pretty backdrop for a scrap of fabric stencilled with the date. Of course, I used teal coloured paint in honour of September being ovarian cancer awareness month.

I think it's a lovely way to organize this little collection and I hope it conveys my appreciation to all those clever ladies who kept the home fires burning and the children clothed, without taking a thing away from those who were so valiantly serving their country.

Well, to be honest, my RCAF aunt wasn't all that thrilled to come home and find her sister had chopped up her good coat for a snowsuit. The reason I know the story is because she was still complaining about it twenty years later!

Thanks for the jars, Marilyn. I had fun with this project!

I'm joining the parties at - Make It Pretty Monday

Making Soap From Scratch

The first half of this summer has just sped by and I've been very remiss in getting blog posts up. The good news is, I've been learning some great, new stuff to share with you!

I had the most wonderful time taking a two-day soap making course. ~

My friend, Wendy's, husband gifted her with the course for herself and a friend for her birthday. I was the lucky friend!

I'm glad we had someone as knowledgeable as Kerry Turcotte, from Lyer Lyer Soapcraft to guide us through the process. It is chemistry and a whole lot can go wrong (really, really wrong!) we discovered. When things go wrong in soapmaking someone gets burned, something blows up or the plumbing gets destroyed. Kerry made sure none of that happened to us.

We're the kind of gals who want to know how to do everything from scratch, pioneer woman style.

The first day we rendered tallow from beef fat. That involved cleaning off any meat bits, chopping the fat into pieces and boiling it for hours and hours. ~

Watching beef boil down to separate fat is a tich on the boring side. We felt a nice bottle of wine was most helpful in whiling away the hours. We call this the Tipsy Tallow soapmaking technique.

After chilling the liquid in the fridge overnight, we had pure tallow solidified on top of the buckets. A bit of a scrape to get rid of the gunk clinging to the bottom of the tallow and we were ready to go. ~








When I feel I've done the whole thing by myself often enough to feel sure of what I'm doing, I'll do a step by step tutorial for you. Dealing with the chemical reaction of the lye heating up and mixing this hot mixture with a hand blender was, shall we say, a bit of a scary experience. Or, maybe I'm just a chicken about thermal burns.

Here's my friend, Wendy, suiting up for the scary part. Rock those goggles girl! ~

And, me carefully pouring the hot soap into the mould. ~

The really fun part comes in mixing up the dye colours and

choosing the blends of essential oils to scent the soap. ~

Voila! Twenty-four hours later, we had one batch of tallow based soap and two batches of vegan (vegetable oil based) soaps ready to cut into 72 good sized bars and curing in a drying rack for 4 - 6 weeks! ~

Oh, the scent of satsuma/mandarin/jasmine or rosemary or lemon/ylang ylang! I'm hooked on soap making now.

Give me a bit of practice time and then I'll try to get you all hooked on it too!

It Took A Lot To Become Canada & I'm Proud Of Us!

It's Canada Day! We are celebrating everything it took to become this wonderful nation and keep it "The True North Strong And Free".

If you aren't quite sure how we became a nation, here's a brief history.

The French and English fought it out for who would claim this expanse of bountiful land. It wasn't a question of the French and English settlers  being unable to get along or even the First Nations people refusing the immigrants a place here.  It was a political, territorial fight between England and France. To make a long story short, in 1763 France relinquished her claim.

In 1867, four regions, Upper Canada, Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia thought it would be a great idea to form a country and call it Canada.

Canada's revolution for independence consisted of nicely asking Queen Victoria for it in 1867. She said "yes".  Yay! ~

It's a good thing she was so nice about it because she was sure going to need our help, on August 4th, 1914 when Britain declared war on Germany.

It was during WWI that Canada became a full fledged nation. We didn't even have a flag before the war, just an ensign, usually used to identify ships at sea.

Our Maple Leaf flag is only turning 50 this year.

The boys came from the forests, the fields, the towns and the fishing villages to lend a hand. They came as colonials, but by the end of the war, they were undisputed brave Canadians.

They took 'untakeable' key positions from Passchendaele to Vimy Ridge and even the Kaiser referred to them as Storm Troopers.

We came of age in a time of terrible conflict and showed the world it is much better to have us as friends than force us into a fight. As a nation, we prefer the, "Be nice to us and we'll be nice to you" attitude, but don't ever mistake us for sissies.

I've commemorated Canada Day 2015 by honouring this coming of age era.

The Victory Garden was an integral part of supporting our troops during the two, great world wars. When the government said to plough up our yards and plant potatoes, that's exactly what we did.

I love the idea of a Victory Garden and have painted and aged an old board in replica of a WWI sign as reminder of how important it is for all of us to do our part to preserve and protect our Charter Of Rights and Freedoms.

Happy Canada to us!  We earned it!

Second Season For The Lavender Bed

I have my first lavender harvest! ~

Last year the bushes were teeny, tiny things and they had to survive the coldest winter on record in my part of Canada. ~

I followed all the instructions I linked to in the original post about planting lavender. You can read that post here.  All but one of them made it through. Because of the harsh winter there was a fair bit of deadwood to cut off and a few of the bushes didn't reach the size they should have, but they should catch up over the summer.

I managed to harvest about a pound of blossoms. Then, I trimmed the bushes back by about 1/3 and pruned away any straggler branches around the base. ~

From what I've been reading, I may get a second blooming. Fingers are crossed!

My entourage has come out to inspect our progress. They helped with the planting and weeding, so it's only fair they get to be there now. ~

After several failed attempts at growing lavender, I can't thank A Guide To Lavender enough for finally showing me how to do it right.

Lavender's blue dilly, dilly

Lavender's green

When I am King dilly, dilly

You shall be Queen

There's no sign of a king around here, not even a rooster, but I feel like a medieval princess with bunches of lavender hanging to dry all around the house! ~