An Update and No. 71: Have a Picnic

No. 71: Have a Picnic and a Fire Update

First the Hayden Pass fire update.

We are breathing easier.  Literally and figuratively. After a week of smoldering skies and whiffs of campfire smoke, the fire is mostly under control and the smoke has been washed away.
We had rain. And lots of firefighters.

The stats for today (Thursday July 21) are 16,414 acres burning or burned. It is still slowly spreading but mostly into the wilderness area. 

There are 589 people working the fire today. 

Fifty percent of the perimeter is contained. I don't think it will ever be 100% until it snows because the back of the fire (away from me) is in wilderness area that cannot be accessed. That just gets to burn until it snows. Or rains for a while.

It is hard to comprehend just how much area is affected.

Maybe these pics can give you an idea:

                          *

From the highway

And a pic from the dump, across the river. 

These pictures are the "under control" version of our fire. 

So, life returns to normal. Or as normal as it gets here at the Western outpost of Green Acres. 

Now, on to  No. 71: Have a Picnic.

To escape the smoke, I visited Liddy's house about 2 1/2 hour west of me, across the Continental Divide, in Lake City.


I love a picnic and my friend Liddy is a pro at them. She learned from the best, her mother. Growing up I have some great memories of picnics with Liddy's family. 

And so we picnicked. At the American Basin near Handie's Peak outside of Lake City. The American Basin is known for its wildflowers and this trip did not disappoint.

We had sandwiches, adult beverages (not for the driver...this was a Jeep trip that required 4 wheel drive) and Oreos. What could be better?

Liddy, me and the picnic basket.

Braids must be my picnic hair do.

                      

Liddy's darling daughter, Emma, who was also our fearless driver,

with her pup, Milly.

Jake, Liddy's Westie, checking out the picnic offerings. 

             

And wouldn't this have been a great pic if someone hadn't accidentally 

put the black and white filter on their phone camera?!

All those flowers behind me....o well.  

The flowers were gorgeous. There were tiny white butterflies everywhere. The dogs frolicked. The people frolicked. There were waterfalls and baby Big Horn Sheep. It was a glorious day. 

                                  

A little waterfall

                 

See why it's called a basin? 

                                 

Wildflowers...

                                 

and more wildflowers....

Mama Big Horn Sheep with Baby (Not So) Big Horn Sheep

            

Fluttering butterflies all over.

No. 71 has had its basket emptied.


* photo by Lauren Murray...thanks! Lauren!

Green Acres and Charlotte's Web

Green Acres and Charlotte's Web, All Rolled into One.


The wasps have gotten out of control around here so I decided to spray under the eaves.  Unknowingly I dislodged this beauty from behind the window sill. I was worried I had poisoned her but am pleased to say she is still alive and spinning.

A cat face spider. 

Beneficial and harmless and BIG!

I like spiders. I really do. As long as they know their place which is outside or up in the high corners, not bothering or biting. I have had a few bad reactions to spider bites; one while I was in Mexico that required a doctor's visit.

But this one is HUGE.  The body is almost the size of a dime. Thinking it might also have a huge bite, I figured I needed to know it's name. Or type. You know, some background on my guest.

A few spider Google Image searches yielded nothing.

Next step: Salida Swap. This is a local Facebook page for people to find, sell, buy, or trade items or ask local questions.   

And this is where the Green Acres aspect comes in.

Not only did I get an immediate identification on my friend, I got comments, stories, pictures, videos and general entertainment. 


Screen shots of the replies, names removed to protect the innocent. 

So many people went out, took pictures of their spiders and then shared them with me. I love that.
Also love that the spider is friendly and beneficial.

She gets to stay. No more spraying around her window. But she needs to get to work on the wasp population.

Still at Green Acres....

Still at Green Acres....


O! I've been bad about updating and I know it. Summer really took over, with a lazy attitude and mindless occupations. O! And work. Lots of work.

But now it is September, Labor Day weekend is done, kids are back in school and life goes on. 

I realized over the last two years I have updated with my thoughts on living here at (what seems like) Green Acres. (Here and Here and Here.)  Except you know what?  It no longer feels like Green Acres so much. Dishes by hand? Just how it is. At least there isn't a dishwasher to empty.   The recycling center is second nature. We don't compost per se but all the veggie scraps go to the goats who come over every night to graze.   Sometimes I use the dumpster at work to dispose of trash, some Saturdays I make it to the dump. Sometimes the dumpster at work is flipped on its side by the bear. I just wait for someone to show up that has more muscles than I do and we flip it back up. This is all just daily living.

 Traditionally dumpsters work better when they are

upright.   Bad bears.

Bunny is back at school. She will graduate in December thanks to the efforts of her high school principal that did not want to lose her back to Texas for her Senior year.  I think we are both very happy with that decision. The school is reasonable about absences and it's only a four day week and Bunny is learning to think, not learning to take tests. 

But because Bunny is here that means another season of my being in limbo. Pretty much it is a way of life now. When I started this blog, "Move" was on my list. It was pretty much wishful thinking. I did not really expect it to happen. The hubs is not one for change. At all. But here I am, starting my third Fall in Colorado. Last April I would have told you I would be in Texas at this time. Same for the April before that. Things change. It's all good! 

And we still have our Third World moments.

Sunday we had no internet. For about 6 hours, nada. And we use the Internet a lot. We text to keep in touch. But not without internet because...

Verizon is not the cell provider of choice around here. We've been with them so long, and our return to Texas was imminent (so so many times), we have kept with them. That means my cell phone does not work at all at home or work or anywhere in my little town. We can text but only iPhone to iPhone and it requires WiFi.  Except. Except. It works at the cemetery and the dump. Which of course makes perfect sense.    

But yesterday, Verizon decided not to work ANYWHERE around here. A whole day of just no service. Not at the dump, not even in the next town over, nowhere. Ridiculous. Like two counties of people just didn't have any cell service yesterday. Finally came up about 7pm. 

Then this morning I was talking to my mom on the land line and the power blinked off, which made my phone blink off. Really? Is it that hard to keep phone lines open? The electricity flowing? The internet online? 

Green Acres. Still. 

#TBT: The Green Acres Kitchen

#TBT: My Green Acres Kitchen


We're continuing with this month's Throw Back Thursdays in honor of completing my second year of blogging.  I'm repeating some of the most popular posts each Thursday in November. And since next week is Thanksgiving, which means many of us will be slaving away in the kitchen, I thought this week I would repost last year's love note to my cabin kitchen.   Ok, maybe not exactly a love note.

But this was one of my favorite posts and a year later, I still love this kitchen. I bake more here than I ever did in Texas. High altitude baking at that. I've gone through a gazillion pairs of purple gloves while doing the dishes. And doing the dishes is in some way a highlight....order out of chaos and all that.

So...here's to spending time in the kitchen.   Food is love.

Green Acres/Redux: In the kitchen with Nancie

Don't panic. I'm not actually cooking anything.

It just cracks me up that I voluntarily left a perfectly functioning kitchen to come to Colorado and fix two to three meals a day in this:

Bunny playing Vanna White in the cabin kitchen.

(And let me say, for the record, my kitchen at home could use some updating, too.)

To be perfectly honest, I love this kitchen. I love the hokey cabinets. It has some nicer features than the kitchen at the real house: turntables, knife drawer, narrow cookie sheet cabinet, slide out drawers inside cabinets for the pots and pans. Many things were scrimped on when this house was built but I get the feeling the wife put her foot down when it came to the kitchen. The kitchen works. 

BUT!

We are on a septic system and we have no disposal. 

This is our disposal:

Carlos is very efficient.

And don't call the FDA.

All dishes get a bleach soak and lots of hot water.

Instead of an ice maker, we have ice trays.  I had to explain to my kids how they work.

At least we have graduated from the metal ice trays of my youth.

Those always stuck to your fingers and then threw the ice everywhere. 

This is my dishwasher:

Those purple gloves have already sprung a leak.

A new pair is on the grocery list.

Much cheaper than a whole new dishwasher.

And the thing that is most time consuming: 

Trash disposal. 

We have to pay to dispose of our trash and we have to drive our trash to the dump.  Now I know we all pay to dispose of our trash but it really hits home when you actually hand over a ten dollar bill along with your two bags of trash rather than pay that utility bill that has trash removal included. 

Here is where the trash goes:

The dump!

The bright spot of going to the dump? Cell service.

Why can the dump get cell service but my cabin can not?

Conveniently located about 10 miles away and conveniently open from 9am to 4pm on Saturdays                                                     ONLY!

In order to keep the amount of trash down we recycle everything.  

Carlos supervising the sorting.

It is a bit like a treasure hunt at the recycling center.  You have to find the correct bin for each item. Plastic in one, cardboard in another, corrugated cardboard in yet another. Brown glass, clear glass, aluminum.  At least the recycling center is open 24/7.  Although I have heard if you go too late at night, you might run into snoopy bears. 

Everything gets sorted by hand. 

Personally. By yours truly.

And truthfully, this is all pretty much the norm here. No dishwashers, no ice makers. If you live in town  maybe your trash is picked up.  But the recycling center is always busy. And it is probably not that unusual in many parts of the United States. But it is certainly unusual for where I come from.  

And here's the thing. This is really good for us. The girls know where to throw their recyclables. While I'm still working with them on the actual washing of dishes, they are good at rinsing. They know not to bring extra trash home. You go through the drive through? Dump that trash in town at the first trash can you see. Don't leave it in the car and don't bring it home. And recycle that plastic cup.

It's good to see how much we throw away. And how much we recycle. It definitely brings home the amount of waste one family can produce.  And if you are hand washing dishes then paper goods sound like a fine idea until you hand over an extra $5.00 that week. 

And the best part? It takes me back to when I was 18 and went to school in Mexico. I rented different apartments with different people and I have such wonderful memories of time spent in those apartments with those -ahem- kitchens.  

I remember the day Cathy and I blew the door completely off the oven when we didn't get the gas pilot lit like we thought we had.

There were ovens with no numbers on the dials. High - maybe 450 degrees- was all the way to the left and 350 degrees was in the middle. We still baked. 

No ice makers. In one apartment there was no freezer at all. Or oven.

There was tons of spaghetti made, not unlike here, for many happy meals.

When we were going through brown outs and had no electricity, we cooked by candle light. Thank goodness for gas stoves.
Scrambled queso con huevos. Kilos of those eggs in plastic bags. Bolsas for our groceries.

And in those kitchens I made some of my best friends.
People who have changed my life.
People who have made my life.

So here's to going back to the basics. 

..............................................................................................................................................................................

An update on Tuesday's tire fiasco.  Hat's off to Discount Tire for redeeming themselves. They called me, they sent me an email and they compensated me for the additional gas required to come back again for tires. 

Bunny's car has new shoes! 

..............................................................................................................................................................................

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If you love what you read, find me a publisher. 

A Recipe from the Blue Ribbon Winner

Blue Ribbon Baker, Blackberry Crumb Bar

After hearing her mom had been declared a Blue Ribbon Baker,  Bunny sweetly asked me to make some Blackberry Crumb Bars for her.  She had found a recipe online and sent me a text saying "Can you make these at some point please".   Notice the "please". That's about as sweet as we get around here.

Now baking in my tiny kitchen in the woods can be a challenge. Appliances are limited. Gadgets are even more limited. Heck, space is limited.  The handy dandy hand mixer we have is at least 30 years old. There's a food processor from the consignment store. It has two speeds: on and off.
I also learned to bake at sea level. This kitchen is almost 8000 feet in the air. Concessions need to be made and I am doing my best to learn how to make them. Some things come out, some things don't.

I've written a couple of posts on baking and cooking in our version of a Green Acres kitchen. If you want to read about my little kitchen, click here.  If you want to read about high altitude baking, click here.

The cozy kitchen in the woods.

Just don't plug in a 3 and a 5 at the same time.

(And if you have never watched Green Acres- go find it online.)

But the Crumb Bars got made.  And devoured. They were yummy but we felt they could be improved upon. So more were made. I think we have it right this time.

See for yourself:


Blackberry Crumb Bars

The cast of characters-minus the oatmeal and graham crackers
I forgot to take a picture the second time I made them. 

For the filling:

• 4 cups blackberries (Frozen is ok) 
• ⅓ cup granulated sugar
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• zest of ½ lemon (No micro plane here in the cabin kitchen, so I used one of those choppers that you slam down with the palm of your hand. Worked ok. Necessity is the mother of invention.)
• pinch of salt

And for the pastry:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup oatmeal  (I chopped it up just to make it a little finer but you don't have to.)
• ¾ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, cold and diced into cubes (Or just melt it. I tried both ways and both ways worked.)
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg, well-beaten
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 5 or 6 graham crackers-crushed

Place rack in center of the oven then preheat to 350 degrees. Coat a 13" x 9" cake pan with cooking spray or line with parchment paper then set aside. (I lined the bottom of the pan with parchment paper/sprayed the edges with Pam.)

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, toss blackberries with sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest until well combined then set aside.  (Frozen blackberries were used- didn't even bother to defrost them.)

Doesn't this look yummy? 

In a separate large mixing bowl, sift together flour, oatmeal, baking powder and salt. Cut the cold butter into flour mixture using a pastry cutter or fork until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs, then add ¾ cup granulated sugar and stir until combined. (Since there is no pastry cutter here at Green Acres,the first time I made it I used the ancient hand mixer on low. It worked. The second time I just melted the butter and stirred it all together. That worked too.)

In a small bowl, whisk together the beaten egg and vanilla then add to dry ingredients. Mix until well combined—the mixture will be dry and shaggy-looking. (Shaggy-looking? It was dry. Don't know about Shaggy. And if you decide to melt the butter- it won't look dry. But it will still work.)

 This is with the butter melted. 

It was a lot easier to do than "cutting in cold butter".

An option if you also happen to be lazy. Like me.

Transfer 2/3rds of the pastry mixture to the bottom of the prepared pan then press into an even layer. 
Add an even layer of the crushed graham crackers. (Use about 2/3rds of the graham crackers here, save ⅓ to add to the topping.) 

I find a wine bottle and a plastic baggie the perfect set up 

for crushing crackers. Put the graham crackers in the bag, roll the bottle over.

Feel free to sample the wine after you are done crushing.

Pour blackberry filling—including juices—over the crust then spread into an even layer.

Mix remaining graham cracker crumbs with remaining pastry mixture and crumble evenly over the top of blackberries. 

Ready for the oven.

Bake 40–45 minutes until the top becomes a light golden brown. Remove from oven then allow to cool until crust becomes firm. Serve slightly warm, or at room temperature.

Lightly browned all over at about 46 minutes. 

No adjustments were made for the high altitude and it didn't seem to matter. 

Bunny declared these "Yummy" and requested that they be made with great regularity.

Yum. 

I'm going to a Wine Festival in Lake City this weekend. These can come along with me.  
Of course, I will leave some for Bunny. 

Maybe. 

 (The original recipe was courtesy of the website CherylStyle.com BUT alterations and additions were made.)

A Follow Up to No. 41: Enter Something Into the Fair

A Fair Entry Follow Up (No. 41)


No. 41: Enter something into the County Fair was a rush job.

I just happened to be back in Colorado from Texas for one week- the same week that the Chaffee County Fair was accepting entries for the Open Class Division.  Basically that means anyone can enter a division as long as you are not a 4-H member. And I am not.

Much to my dismay, I fell into the Senior Class. Over age 55. Seriously? I'm not feeling senior-ish. They must be confused.

And because there wasn't a lot of time to plan my entry... I came up with the easiest recipe I could.
Rum Balls.

Rum Balls ready for the fair. 

So easy, that I didn't even snap to the fact that while they were entered into the baking division, the cookies weren't even baked. They were just marinated.

Fortunately the rum must have influenced the judges.

Because I just happened to find the County Fair Results special edition online while reading the local newspaper and LOOK!!!

That's me!!!

It's a miracle. Or a mistake.   My name may be misspelled, but I know it is me.

My best guess is that there were only 5 entries into the Rolled Cookie Senior Baking Division. But that's okay. Right there in black and white on the World Wide Web is my (misspelled) name with BLUE for BLUE RIBBON.

Sadly, I believe I have missed my chance to actually retrieve the ribbon and prize money.

And did you see the prize money? $1.50! That would get an iced tea at McDonald's with 42¢ to spare.

O well.

No. 41 is done and won!

Still Having the Green Acres Experience

Green Acres…Still!


I've said it before but I'll say it again.

Living in this cabin full time is like living with the Douglases at Green Acres.
If you aren't old enough to remember that TV show, click here. All will be explained.

Last week the one and only shower was having issues. Water pressure was less than perfect and the pulse part of the shower head- the one required by the three females living in this cabin if we want to get shampoo out of our hair- was not working.

Now, none of us have ever been that fond of the original shower head anyway but we've been going with the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" theory.

However, now it appeared to be broken.  Yay!

I just happened to need to go over to Cañon City anyway to pick up the newly repaired sewing machine (more on that later in the week) so I scheduled an additional stop at the Home Depot.

And there I picked up this lovely:

Ooooo! Hand held.  Snazzy.

The Home Depot employee assured me I could handle this. Consultation with a contractor friend reinforced that opinion. Plumbing is do-able. 

And guess what? It was easy-peasy and now I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner. 

You know what I had to do to get the old one off?  

Unscrew it.   That's it.   

Didn't even require a wrench. 

Didn't even have to turn the water off.   (This is a shower/bath combo. Otherwise, cutting off the water to the house would have been an important step.)

On another note, it was delightful to see that the previous owners hadn't even bothered using that nice plumbing tape which keeps things tight and leak free. O well. It hadn't been a problem.

The old non-functioning shower head. Ick.

The hardest part of this whole project was getting the new shower head out of the stupid plastic clam-shell.  Wrap rage- I didn't realize there was a name for that frustration!

 Scissors. Frustration. Foul language.

Finally success.

Because I am a goody-goody, I did the job correctly. Plumber's tape around the existing pipe.

The new shower head will not leak!

 And then all I had to do was screw on the new shower head…..

Hook up the hoses….

And Voilá!   A new functioning shower head. 

All was wonderful for almost a week. 

Then Friday afternoon I heard Bunny scream from the bathroom "Where's the water pressure???"

Uh oh. 

That is never a good sign.

The cabin is on a well. 

Well water here is FULL of minerals.

And sand.

And probably other stuff I don't want to know about.

Because of all those things that are in our (otherwise perfectly safe) well water, we have a whole house water filter. Conveniently installed UNDERNEATH the house. 

In a crawl space. 

Filled with spiders and Lord knows what else. 

I had to crawl through THIS tiny door.

I have managed in the past four years to avoid being the one that changed the water filter. 

 But guess what?  No other sucker one else was around. 

So Saturday I got a new filter and picked up my assistant from town. (That would be my sweet friend Cherrilla who was visiting from Martha's Vineyard.) 

And she helped me change the filter. Sort of. 

Mostly she took some really delightful pictures.  (NOT)

Into this tiny space under the house I went….

Spiders, mice, and what else??

I don't want to know.

See?

My (former) friend took this lovely shot.

Amazingly we are still speaking.

Fortunately the space was high enough for me to kind of sit up while I worked.

I'm sporting the hub's one piece jumper purchased specifically

for crawling under the house. 

Stylish!

And finally I managed to remove the (disgusting) filter holder and hand it out to Cherrilla to be rinsed out.

Yep. That lovely brown stuff is what the  filter removes from our water. 

This filter change was a few months over due. 

Success. I survived. Nothing bit me. Nothing leaks. And we have water.  Clean water.

And we have great water pressure. Yay!

Which brings me back to that new shower head. 

The old one probably wasn't broken after all.  

I just needed to change the house filter. 

O well. 

We are loving the new hand held.

And I am feeling like quite the plumber. 

Cue the theme song:

                     

Click HERE if it doesn't come up automatically.

SPRING!!!

SPRING!
And still working on No. 39: Grow a vegetable.

Believe it or don't.   Today is the first day of Spring.  It says so on my calendar.

Gorgeous, huh? Look at that moon just hanging in the morning sky. 

So of course, this is what I woke up to on the last day of winter.

Apparently Mother Nature is not a fan of paper calendars.  Or maybe she just wanted Winter to go out with a bang.

Anyway, by 3:00pm, the snow was gone and I went out and played like Oliver Wendell Douglas.

Look what is coming up in my flower beds!

Fenced in so the deer don't snack on them…

I think these are tulips. About a year and a half ago I asked the hubs to put some bulbs in the bed just in case we might be back in time to see them bloom.  I never really could tell if they came up last year- we missed that month entirely, I guess.   But I'm pretty sure these are the same bulbs.  It's kind of like Christmas, I'm not 100% sure what is in the packages.  

Lesson #1: Draw up a map of the beds as you plant things so you know what is coming up and where things are planted.  

And look what has decided to sprout after all!

Look closely on the right. There are small green sprouts.

See? 

Even though I was positive nothing would come of these seeds if they hadn't popped up within two weeks, I was wrong. 

It took almost three weeks and now I have 9 little plants. 

What are they? 

No idea.

Either tomatoes or peppers.

The two pots on the left are still just potting soil. I really am giving up on them.

Lesson #2: Label everything. 

And since Spring is upon us I decided to leverage my odds of some vegetable actually growing to fruition.  (Vegetition?)

So I planted these:

and these:

I'm going to accomplish No. 39: Grow a vegetable  if it kills me.