2011 Heritage Days At the Mountain Home Place: Day One

Here are some scenes from Day 1 of Heritage Days at the Mountain Homeplace. It was mainly school groups coming on this day, although there were also some tourists from Georgia and several other visitors from the public. I'm only putting up pictures of my family right now, even though there were many more re-enactors present demonstrating a whole variety of old fashioned homestead skills.

Simon played the spoons and demonstrated 1850 style wooden toys, Christina learned about and then showed how to use a spinning wheel and also demonstrated how to make corn-husk dolls, Timothy pitched in all over and looked cute running around wearing his coon-skin cap (but I didn't get a picture of him wearing it), Matthew led the talk about sorghum and demonstration of the cane press, and Lisa helped in the old church and explained about the Underground Railroad quilts. (I was only there for about an hour and a half, so I didn't get to help in any homesteading demonstrations).

I may write more about our experiences in a later post, but for now I'll just let the pictures from Day One do the talking!


















Days Two and Three of Mountain Homeplace Heritage Days coming up!

Adirondack Blue and Red

Lisa dug some of our red and blue potatoes yesterday from the main garden and we are getting ready to eat some of them for lunch right now! They are supposed to be an extra healthy potato rich in various antioxidants! This was the first year we have grown such a uniquely blue colored potato, and they seem to have done very well. The blue are bigger than the red, but the plants seem to have produced the same large crop, based on the couple of hills Lisa dug into.

The Adirondack Blue potato is a dark blue color on the outside and is blue on the inside as well! Since we have never had them before, it is quite a novelty for us! Here is a picture of one of the blues whole next to one cut open.



We grew red potatoes last year and saved some for seed which we planted on the river bank. We haven't checked on them yet, but we also grew a new variety for us called the Adirondack Red potato in the main garden. Here is what they look like.



And here is a plate of them cubed up, ready for fixin'. A colorful plate of potatoes, isn't it?



I'll let you know how it tastes after awhile. I plan on putting cheddar cheese and cottage cheese on mine!

They were delicious and now I am rather full! Actually, I couldn't tell much difference from the potatoes we usually eat, bought from the store. But these are far superior, just because of the fact that we grew them ourselves and know for sure what went into them! There are no pesticides or chemicals of any sort to wonder about, and they have not traveled thousands of miles in various conditions to get here. They are guarenteed to be fresh!

A very good lunch indeed on this Labor Day!

Meet Thor, The Mighty!

I thought I should take a few moments to introduce the newest addition to our homestead. This is Thor, the mighty guardian and protector of Pure Water Hollow!



OK, so maybe he is not so "mighty" yet, but he is mighty cute! And mighty soft! He is a 4 week old Norwegian Elkhound/Great Pyrenees crossed puppy! He needed a home and the children were happy to provide him with one. We got him from the Stephens on Wednesday, August 31st.

He looks very much like the pictures we see of the Norwegian Elkhound, even though he is half Pyrenees. I didn't know anything about Elkhounds before, so I found it interesting to read up on the breed. They are supposed to be a medium sized dog, getting to be 60-70 pounds and about 20 inches tall, but the Pyr in him may make him a bit larger. Here are some excerpts from the Wikipedia article about the Norwegian Elkhound:

The Norwegian Elkhound is one of the ancient Northern Spitz-type breed of dog and is the National Dog of Norway. The Elkhound has served as a hunter, guardian, herder, and defender. In a land of subzero temperatures, deep snow, thick forests, and rugged mountains, only the hardiest of the breeds could evolve to perform the variety of jobs at which the Elkhound excels....

Norwegian Elkhounds are bred for hunting large game, such as wolf, bear and moose. Although the breed is strong and hardy, the dogs typically have an inseparable bond with their masters and are quite loyal. All Elkhounds have a sharp loud bark which makes them suitable as watchdogs.

Norwegian Elkhounds are loyal to their "pack" and make excellent family dogs given proper attention. It is bold, playful, independent, alert, extremely intelligent, and, at times, a bit boisterous...

Since the breed is the national dog of Norway and is also nicknamed "the dog of the Vikings", we thought a powerful Norse name would be fitting for him. Thor was always one of my favorite characters in Norse mythology, as well as in the comics, so Thor was the first name I thought of. For me the name conjures up an image of a powerful guard dog that will strike fear in the hearts of would-be evil doers that may dare darken the confines of our fair abode! I guess everyone else liked the name, too, because it seems to have stuck with him!

Luna and Chief are already great guard dogs and they have always detered the bad guys from coming around Pure Water Hollow. I think they also help keep the coyotes and bears away from the stock. Hopefully, they will train young Thor to also be a great guardian and protector of our homestead! Chief is getting old, and soon Thor will be the new sidekick for Luna. I think he will make a very good one!

He is rather small, cute and helpless now, but I'm sure he will grow quickly. I wanted to get some pictures on here of when he was small and cute so here are some of that were taken earlier today.








Luna seems to like him very much!





I think it will be fun to watch Luna and Thor play as he gets bigger and fiestier. Sometimes Luna tries to get Chief to play with her, but he is seldom interested in that foolishness! Soon, she will likely have more to handle than she may want! But it will be good for her to have a friend to chase around in circles and wrestle with.

We are praying that Thor will be a good dog and a great addition to our homestead!

Ripe Tomatoes!

Today was Tuesday and this is my first "Tomato Tuesday" post!

The harvest of the first truly ripe tomatoes are always an exciting time around our homestead! Lisa especially loves them, so she was very pleased to find many ripe tomatoes in the garden this afternoon. They are rather late, due to the fact that we had all that record rain in May and she could not find a dry time to put the plants out in the garden. But better later in the season than never! Neighbors have complained about their tomatoes rotting on the vine this year before they ripened, but not ours!

Here is what some of the plants looked like almost 3 weeks ago when they were smaller.



And here again a couple weeks earlier:



I used these pictures so you could see the tomato cages we used. I made them last year out of cattle fence by simply cutting up a roll of fence and then twisting the ends together to make a circle. The ones that worked the best were those we cut the bottom line of fence off which left wire prongs that could be stuck into the ground. Some that we did not cut off the bottom fell over when the plants got too big and heavy so we had to put a stick inside the cage to keep it from falling over. If I took a picture now, you wouldn't even be able to see any of the cages because the plants have overgrown them!

The squares in the fence are small at the bottom and get larger as they go up, so there is plenty of room for the branches to come out, or to reach a hand in. Here you can see what the squares looked like about a month ago.



The cages are doing great keeping the tomatoes off the ground. We also used newspapers around the plants to keep the weeds under control, which also worked well!

The nicest looking ripe tomatoes that Lisa picked this afternoon were the Rutgers and Black Prince, both of which were grown from our own seed saved from last year! As a matter of fact, all of the tomatoes picked today are from seed from tomatoes grown last year.



The Rutgers, a canning tomato, are huge this year! Lisa is going to use some of these for sandwiches.




The Black Prince is a good meaty sauce tomato, and they are also bigger than they were last year!



The Romas and Mountain Pride gave us some nice tomatoes today as well. Here are some of the Romas, which are a great sauce tomato.



I didn't take any pictures of the Mountain Pride, even though I like their name the best. They look just like the Rutgers, except smaller. They are a canning or stewing tomato.

God is blessing!

Target Practice

Matthew, Simon and I had the opportunity to take the Kentucky Hunter's Education class on Saturday. It began at 8:00am and lasted until 4:00pm and I was proud how well Simon paid attention the entire time. There was a 50 question written test at the end of the class and Simon scored a 94% on it, which I thought was great for an 11 year old who has not had many experiences hunting at all. It was a long day, but well worth it, and we had a lot of fun!

Squirrel season is set to begin next weekend, and we may go squirrel hunting the first day! It appears that squirrel population around here has exploded and we are thinking we will be able to really fill our freezers up with squirrell meat this year if we want to.

The class yesterday got us thinking about guns and hunting so after a wonderful service at church this afternoon it seemed that this evening would be a great time to get in some target practice! Matthew went with Rocky and John to shoot behind the fire house down the road and the rest of us went up into Pure Water Hollow to shoot at pop cans and pizza boxes at the clearing.

Simon likes the .410 shotgun the best because it is more his size. Here he is with some practice shots, first with the .410, then with the single shot 12 gauge.




Here Simon is shooting the big double barrel shotgun. You can tell that it is a bit bigger and heavier than the other two, and he has to stand a bit differently to support it. But he could hit the targets with it as well as he did with the .410!



Christina also got in some target practice. She prefers the .410 as well.




I wonder what Timothy thought about all this shooting?



We were using those foam ear plugs but Timothy did not like to leave them in his ears. He preferred using his hands! He actually did not seem to mind the loud noise and would yell "boom!" after the shot was fired. You can see him covering his ears again in this next picture taken from the other angle.



You got a peek of Lisa in that last picture, sitting with Timothy and Christina on the bench. I didn't take one of her shooting, but she is very comfortable with guns and is a good shot!

Simon fired off more rounds than the rest of us, but between the 4 of us, we went through about 40 cartridges. I think some of our shoulders are going to be a bit sore tomorrow!

Here is one of Christina shooting from the other angle. I'm glad she is not afraid of shooting a gun!



We had a lot of fun with the target practice and then did a bit of walking around looking at the various wild plants up in the hollow. Here is what the mint looks like at this time of year. I think it is pretty and it is very aromatic!




These next two pictures don't go along with the idea of target practicing or wild plants, but I thought I would put it up here anyway. For the past couple of days Simon has been working on carving a head out of the dirt mound next to the house. I thought it turned out pretty cool and decided to take some pictures of it today. Sometimes I am amazed at what a creative fellow Simon is! His finger can pull a trigger dozens of times and destroy the targets he is shooting at, and his fingers can also delicately carve and create a masterpiece!