It's winter

 If anyone have missed, we all have winter.  Last weekend we got a foot of snow, and next weekend there will be as much. So it looks like a proper winter, but it surely doesn't feel like one. We'be had a one really cold day, -25C or something. You could think this is a real winter.

The truth is we are having abnormally warm winter once more. We used to have long stretches of real frost, like -33C for two weeks and then -27C felt like a three-week heatwave.

I've been busy, or I've been making myself busy. This is second week hb was able to go to work, he's not fully recovered yet, but at least he's able to sit. He's not the only fallen one. F fell down the stairs, but weighing less than half of what hb weighs she got only huge bruises but nothing as bad as hb. Then our electrician slippes on a snow covered piece of plastic and twisted his ankle. He was using crutches only for two weeks...

Hb has excelled himself lately. He got tax return, a nice sum of money, on August, and we agreed he'd use them on a new suit (needed for a wedding and FIL's funeral) and shoes. The rest went to d's school books. And just before new year I found out that this thickhead has used his credit card very freely, because he thought he was using his tax returns now. I mean... I can't even... And he's used twice or trice the money he had in first place.

For two years I've been telling him we need to watch our money because I don't get any extra now while I'm working from home and he's been spending more than ever. I'm considering confiscating his card and give him a lump sum to use, because nothing I say or do has any impact.

Yes, I will sort this out like everything else, but I'm so mad and tired right now.

Work, on the other hand, has been nice. I feel I know what I'm doing and I feel my work has a meaning. It might not be as important as some other jobs, but who cares? We can't all be Elon Musks, nurses, teachers or rocket scientists. 

Last goodbye

 FIL's funeral was few weeks ago. FIL himself told he didn't want to have any fuss, no big gathering, no big flower arrangements... We had a memorial service at the Church, which was attended a lot of people (MIL has a huge family, she had 10 siblings with 9 surviving to adulthood), family, friends, neighbours... 

People were asked to bring just one flower per person/family to lay next to coffin, because FIL would be cremated and all those beautiful arragements would have just gone to waste.  Everyone did as asked - well, there's always first time to everything.

Funeral service is a basically a consentrated mass,  so the priest sings a hymn - this priest can't sing and I got a bit hysterical, you know, he was singing some very touching psalm and so off tune and everything was so sad and he was so off tune I couldn't help laughing and tried to stop laughing and it got just worse and worse. Luckily we were keeping social distance and had masks, so no-one but d noticed. 

We has a smaller gathering after the service, just sandwich cake and cream cake, coffee, tea, cookies etc.  If it wasn't FIL's final wishes and Covid19 we would probably have had gathering closer to 100 people with a real buffet with hot meals... And coffee and cake.

Two weeks after that hb fell on  our slippery driveway and hurt his buttoc and tight big way. He just told me he won't wear his slippers because they are, well, slippery and put his winter boots on. Aaaand down he went. So, for three weeks he has not been able to sit, to drive a car, and for the first week he couldn't even walk, he kind of shuffled.

So, he wasn't able to attend for the laying down his father's ashes. Again there was the same priest,  but luckily we sang only one, very familiar hymn, but I think I was the only one singing with the priest. The grave sits by the lake, it's an old graveyard from the 13th century, and FIL's home  at the narrow headland can be seen, just about 300-400m away. FIL was born on the other side of the lake, just behind that headland, it was an ancient Russian horsefarm, and before that there was a blacksmith. 

Once hb is able to sit in a car I will drive him to the grave, I can drive all the way down to the grave, so there is no risk for him to fall again.

FIL is in peace now, right by his beloved lake.

Time is a-flying when you're having fun

A lot has been happening. Most important, no matter what, is that D finally - finally! went to her prom. And she was lovely I never was that pretty when young. And on the very next day she cut her hair 🙄

Autunm is here in full force.  Leaves are all fallen and ground is yellow, I'm still foraging mushrooms, yellowfoots and chanterelles. I've tacled the 11,5kg pumpkin and now I've been left with 10 litres of aronia berries. Mead? Jam with brandy? Freezers a full to the brim so I need to figure out something that doesn't include adding something in freezers.

I've found myself in my first ever EU position. I've worked in EU projects before, but this is more permanent. I'm just happy that I can't travel for now because of covid. Two years ago I thought my future was somewhere between cow dung and harvesters! But just like Forrest Gump said, life is like a box of chocolates, you'll never know what you'll get. But I DO love cows and harvesters... I have wowed I'll never leave them completely.

But on much much darker note, my father in law is just hours or days away of passing away. He has terminal cancer and is now on palliative care, he still eats a little, but his only medication is strong painkillers, actually he's getting morphine. He's way over 90 and had been poorly over three or four years now, so this is to be expected, but his death will still be a great loss.

Hb's family is one of those families where everything is someone else's fault, and I know that fil's death will cause not only much sorrow and sadness but also a lot of bad words and fighting. I admire my fil, in his own way he is a great man, but I'm also aware of his darker side, which I can't talk about even with hb. Mil has shared those things with me, but hb refuses to see any flaws in his father, which is understandable.

Everything has a season, autunm is a season of death, loss and leaving things behind, giving up. But autunm is also a season to prepare to new seasons, groundwork for spring is done in autunm. Without autunm there will be no winter and no spring. Our next month is actually named month of death.

Better gardeners

I think I've been moaning enough about my poor poor garden. Endless rains and hot and dry weather  both sucks when you have clay as soil. This soil is blue clay, so you can't even make bricks out of it, bah.

But it's not all misery. I've been improving soil in my veggie plot for 7 or 8 years now, and I see so much changes! There's plenty of worms, weeds have changed from thistles to nettles and chickweed, and after even this summer of floods and drought my soil is still workable, I can dig it easily. Of course it would be much much better if I could use mulching to cover everything, but right now I can't get enough mulch to to that (a lot of little things like a new mower which shreddes grass into atoms so I can't use that anymore). 

Another thing is that water was an issue this summer. We have our own groud water well, and when groundwater levels are low,  we have only little water. And due to several little things, again, I didn't save water for watering (like breaking tap in my huge watertank, it's about 20 years old and the tap was plastic...).

Weather is something I can't change, but I can prepare for it. Next summer I will be better prepared, that's ok.

But. There are bunch of much better gardeners around. 

I was at 'Sumawalk and dug some potatoes from my parents potatofield. Their potatoes have grown nicely,  sandy soil that keeps moisture is ideal for potatoes. Well, it's ideal for everything but beets. But those cucumbers?

Our neighbour ( half a kilometer away from our house) was fetching his dinner ingredients from his garden/field and greeted us with "Would you like to have some cucumbers? I don't want to toss them to compost and I already have my share at my root cellar." It was very fortunate indeed that I had my potatoe bags with me. I picked 10kg of cucumbers- some of which were way too big - that was all I was able to carry home. I had those potatoes already...

I've made a test batch of relish, in next batch I need to reduce amount of sugar and use just a bit more vinegar.

Another walk in the woods. Yellowfoots are there. Mother Nature is so much better gardener. 

That's about it

Last night was 1,5C. Haven't checked pumpkins yet, but if they have survived this, next cold night will kill them. I tried to close polytunnel door, but zippers broke, or rather the plastic around zippers. I need to order another cover before spring. And I need to relocate anything worth saving from polytunnel before we'll have anothet cold night.

Gardening wasn't very productive this summer. Too hot, too dry and then too cold, whole August has been around or below 15C,  and nights have been cold. My damson was eaten by hare,  so I got like 5 fruits. Oh well, if hares were so hungry they needed my damson to survive, I let them eat it.

But I'm lucky my family will survive without my gardening skills 😁 It's just it would be nice to be able to feed my family myself, you know?

No waste pie

Or quiche. I found a packet of thinly sliced sandwich ham ( pålägg) which was already past it's use by date. There's two kind of dates here, best before and use by; best before means that product is at it's best until thst date, but it stays edible a lot longer (if it ever goes bad at all). Use by is more strict, it means this stuff is safe to eat before this date,  and might be bad or even dangerous later. I opened the packet and it was fine. But it was way too much to eat in my breakfast bun, so I thought I should bake a pie. Or quiche. Whatever, pie is easier to say and write.

I made my basic pie pastry and rummaged fridge for other ingredients. Some old hard Italian cheese (best before 27th July; it might be past it's prime because I've opened and eaten some of it but I quess it will keep until Christmas) and leftover of some emmental and soft cheese. End of zucchini, some wilted beet leaves. A carton of cream (best before 22nd July, but cream keeps a lot longer).

A much more than just a packet of ham about to be fed to 'Suma. She got few slices, so no worry.

I'm trying to avoid food waste, and these savoury quiches are easy and tasty way to use up leftovers and forgotten treasures. This one will be our lunch today, and my lunch tomorrow.

Just add mushrooms

At some point I calculated our gamily needs about a ton of vegetables (veggies, fruits, berries etc) in a year in order to get out five a day portions. And about a ton of carbohydrates, like potatoes, rice, pasta abd so on. So that's two tons of food from plants. Then add bread, crisps, popcorn and other cereal or potato based snacks... No wonder I feel like I'm just going in to the shops or coming from them...

It would be a cheap solution to grow everything by myself - if only I could do that. I might have mentioned few times our soil is dense clay, and there's not many plants that thrive in clay. And we have groug water very near surface, so fruit trees don't grow in our yard (even if we wouldn't get frost until late June and again in early August).

Being stubborn I still try to grow at least some of produce we use. I have some plants growing directly in the soil, and I have 5 raised beds/grow boxes.

This year I've been lucky with lettuce, it's been way over 6 weeks since I've bought any lettuce and there's more to come. I planted all lettuce in containers,  lettuce don't grow in clay at all.

All green beans we eat come from my veggie patch ( it's only up to 5kg, I use green beans in soups/stews, curries, stir fry's and chili con/sin carne type of things. Should eat more, green beans are one of crops that actually give a good harvest in most years.

I had high hopes for potatoes, but this dry and hot summer meant I have only small (cherry sized) potatoes. I guess I planted about 5kg of souds and might get harvest of 20kg? Anyway we have our own potatoes until September, it's not much but it is at least something.

Tomatoes are producing. Pea sized cherry tomatoes and cherry sized beef tomatoes... and I don't think it's all my incabability of growing, because my mother has been complaining the same thing. Plus they had someone eating tomato plants in their green house!

I've got two pickling cucumbers so far. This is the last year in the ground, next year I need to plant them in grow bags, containers or raised beds.

No glut of zucchinies, I've only got one so far. Only male flowers on any of my pumpkins and courgettes. I just don't get it - I've plants in directly in soil, in raised beds, in containers... I've been fertilizing them, and watering. Some of them frow in shadow, some in direct sunlight... I just don't get it. What's wrong with me and my cucurbitas?

Even my beets are sulking, those few which survived that thunder storm right after sowing... next year I'll plant seedlings again.

And my poor peas. Pidgeon hunting season is on...

Carrots are doing fine. Corn is still not producing cobs, but they are growing nicely. Might be too late to hope any harvest, there might bee frost nights soon.

At least my black currants were producing a lot of berries this summer.  I froze as much I could fit in the freezer, maybe 10kg? And myother made us cordial/juice to drink.

But now it's autunm and rains are here. I have foraged mushrooms every day this week, and we have been eating them every day. Chanterelles and porchinies. Os has porchini slices in his pizza instead of bought mushrooms. So far I think we have eaten about 10kg of mushrooms! And that is a lot!

When I take 'Suma to het morning walk,  I usually pick some porchinies, they are dense mushrooms so if I have five it's over 300g, and after work I take anothet walk in the woods and pick a small bag of chanterelles and few porchinies, so it's about 700g per day!

Soon we have eaten enough, and there's some left I can freeze/dehydrate. If I can get 40 bags to freezer, that's enough for the whole year (one meal per week during the off season). One bag is roughly 500-600g of fresh mushrooms, so one meal=one portion per person. Some years we have more, some years less, mushrooms are wild produce and I have no control what so ever over them. But so far nature seems to be much better in this producing edible food thing that I am.