Sunshine, lollipops......

What a beautiful day!!  Frost this morning, even a little ice on the dog's pool, but oh so nice to see that blue sky and sunshine.

Was trying to do my 'homework' for my photography class today, well the last part of it anyway.  There are so many settings on this camera, and coming from the 'never take it off Auto, just point and shoot, and sometimes use the zoom' camp, well I find it all very much overwhelming.  I am playing with the settings, and sometimes getting it right, or close anyway, and am having fun doing it.

Oh Luna, what big ears you have!!

The frost made the ground very interesting. I had to take some 'texture' photos for my homework

 

The moss and lichen on this fence rail was quite something

In the afternoon we went to the dyke along Nathan Creek, which is surrounded by blueberry fields and cranberry bogs

And Mt. Baker in the distance

The dogs turned into water monsters

But oh that sun was nice.....

A boy and his dog,

well okay, a kinda older guy and his dog:)

Do you have treats????

Speak no evil

Calli can't, with that big rock in her mouth

Smell no evil

Luna can't, with her tongue plugging her nose

See no evil

Jake can't, he's got his eyes closed

No evil here
They're too cute to be  evil, NOT!

                                             Me and my shadow...
 

                                             on the long way home

It's marmalade season

Marmalade oranges, also known as Seville or sour oranges, are only in season for about a couple of months at the beginning of the year.  Sooo, I have to make a wild guess at how much of this marmalade I am going to need in the year, and buy enough oranges to fill the bill.  I usually only buy enough at a time to make two or three batches.  I am one of those people that are great at buying things, and not always so great at doing something with the things when I actually have them.  So I like to get the oranges for those two or three batches prepared, before I buy more.  I do have to keep in mind though that the season is only short.  So then I start to panic and worry that it will be over before I have prepared enough, so sometimes end up with quite a few bags of oranges in the fridge.  They keep for quite a long time in the fridge, but even so, I have left them long enough that I have actually had to throw them out.  Here's a link with all sorts of information about the oranges.

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/sour_orange.html

I start with 10 oranges, which is about 3 lbs.

They are juiced

And strained

The pith is cleaned out.  A grapefruit spoon that has a serrated tip works great for this.  You just run it around the inside of the peel and everything comes out in one piece

The pith is added to the seeds and contained in a cheese cloth bag.  This all contains pectin, which helps the marmalade to set.

The peel is chopped by hand.  I always laugh the odd time I am asked if it is 'fine cut' or 'chunky cut'.  I tell them it is 'Karen cut'.  Probably more chunky than fine.  Looks so much nicer in the jar when it is hand cut, compared to the peel being grated.

The juice, sliced peel, water and the cheese cloth bag are boiled until the peel is tender.  The sugar is added and it is boiled again until the setting point is reached.  Determining the setting point doesn't seem to be a very exact art.  I was using a thermometer, but even though the marmalade reaches the right temperature, it seems it is not always guaranteed to set.  Lately I have been using the 'blob on the cold plate' method, and so far so good, although I seem to have to boil it longer that way, which can make the colour of the marmalade darker.

Nothing more frustrating than going to all that work and then ending up with 20 jars of marmalade that refuse to set.  It has happened many more times than I would like.

You have to admit though, it looks lovely in the jar.

A game of fetch

We have had some really nice sunny days lately.  The dogs always expect to go for a walk off the property in the afternoon, but we don't always oblige.  Sometimes you are just involved in other things, so we can take the edge off by playing a game of fetch.  The 'pinhead' took the camera out.

Flying Squirrel incoming....

The Flying Squirrel has landed

 Jake and Luna will fetch just about anything.  I prefer something that hovers, compared to a ball.  With a ball you can get get a lot of quck slamming stops which is hard on the body.  If the Flying Squirrel is thrown right, it hovers just above the ground, and is still moving as the dog catches up to it, so no sudden jerking stops.  Of course it doesn't always work that way, and a lot of the time tends to lift up at the end of it's flight, hence the jumps.  Neither dog jumps very high, so not worried about it.

Calli will only fetch one thing, so we use the Chuck-it (you can just see it above and slightly to the left of Calli's head)

The body slamming thing is not such a big deal with her.  She can only use her front legs for power, so can not get the speed like the border collies.  Each dog has their own toy to retrieve, so as I throw it, I say 'this is Jake's, or Luna's, or Calli's,' depending whose turn it is.  That avoids any crashes or snarking at each other to determine who gets the toy.  The dogs picked up on that concept really quick.  The incoming dog makes a wide loop to avoid being run into by the outgoing dog.

Long tongues, tired dogs....

Into the pool to cool off.  Ewwww, more like a mud bath. 

 That pool is out year round, because even in the dead of winter, providing it is not frozen, Luna especially likes to lie in it if she is really hot.  It also serves as a foot wash before they come back inside.  Anyway, the dirt that had settled got all stirred up...

So time to clean out the pool.

Jake and Calli make themselves scarce when the hose comes out.  Never know when I might actually want to rinse them off with it.

  Luna loves it.

The pool's all clean, ready for the next time.

The Olympic spirit is alive and well in Abbotsford!!

The Olympic torch arrived in Abbotsford last night. We managed to catch up to it in the last hour before it entered Rotary Stadium. It passed by on the street, and them we saw it again as it came around the block and was brought down into the stadium by the second to last torchbearer.


Larry and I (waving at the camera) are standing in the background.

Larry carries his own torch:)

The exchange is made, and Gerry Swan, a local sports celebrity, carries the torch on a lap around the track bearing his name.

An estimated 20,000 people were there to greet the flame, and watch the community cauldron being lit.

The entertainment continues. I was happy to see such great local support for the torch relay.

Chicken Class

Last night Larry and I went to a free class at the University of the Fraser Valley. It was called 'Keeping your flock healthy'. A decent turnout, with 40 people or so, and I think most of us there had some sort of poultry already. Some parts of the course were 'dryer' than others, with a lot of emphasis on the health and biosecurity aspect of keeping chickens. We came home with half a tree's worth of paper, most of which will end up in the recycling bin. Not that what was on the paper wasn't interesting, it was just too small really, being miniature versions of the power point presentation. I did hang on to this full size picture of the innards of a hen, and it was really interesting learning the journey of the egg from the ovary to the nest box. When a hen is in full lay, an egg will be produced approx. every 25 hours. This fact sheet from Oklahoma State University (you'd think some one around here could have come up with one) was pretty interesting too. Based on what it said, we think it must be a raccoon that killed the last two hens. That ties in with our neighbours telling us about seeing a raccoon in their pond. Despite being in the country, we see raccoons very rarely. In the 23 years of living here, I have only seen them a handful of times. Anyway, we are diligently herding the hens in at dusk each night. According to the sheet, the raccoon visits every 5-7 days, so hopefully it will be disappointed on it's next pass through our place, and head for greener pastures. Had to chuckle at the inclusion of humans as predators on the list. If hens are missing with little evidence to go by, we are not to overlook that it could be humans:) You can click on the pictures to see them fullsize, and hopefully read them if you are interested.

Tuesday Ramblings

This was going to be a post about what we do in our morning routine, but it didn't work out. Some pictures I tried to take were blurry. I am borrowing my son's half decent Canon G10, and all I can really do with it right now is 'point and shoot'. I tried playing with some settings, and really had no clue what I was doing, so the pictures were blurry. I have started a photography course, and feel that I am so over my head at the moment. Hopefully things will improve, and the pictures along with it. Luna likes to help move the sheep from one field to another. She only has a bit of an idea what to do, so sometimes things don't go as planned, and we end up with a face-off, with neither sheep nor Luna going anywhere. After the animals are all dealt with, we take the dogs for a walk down the trails in our back bush. The border collies are always ready to head to the next thing, but we have to wait for Calli, who has her own agenda Here she comes, wandering through the scrub, nose to the ground

Jake finds a stick, hoping we'll throw it for him, but Luna steals it. Jake knows if he waits, she will probably abandon it and it will be his again. Check out Luna's ears, just look like little devil horns, and a devil she is sometimes:) (To see the picture full size, just click on it)

Then the collies run down in to the hayfield, where Jake finds a better toy, and Luna has a rousing game of soccer. It was lovely to see the sun come out for a few minutes.

On a good note, the hen grabbed by the coyote last week has improved a bit. Last night and this morning, she was able to push herself into an upright position to eat and drink. She is not moving around yet, but looks better. You can see that the feathers are rather sparse on her backside.

Unfortunately this evening something grabbed another hen in the south field. Same as last time, headless body laid in the field. It isn't a coyote, they grab the chickens and run with them. Must be a mink or something like that. Next to impossible to keep a mink out of the field.

Frustrating:(

We will have to be more diligent at pushing the hens in around dark. They tend to hang around outside the door, or at least some of them do, until it is really dark, even though there is a light on in the coop. It's not always convenient to be there at the right time though.

A family birthday was celebrated today. Happy Birthday Larry!

But to end on a sad note, Larry's aunt, the last surviving sibling of his almost 100 year old (only 42 more days to go) mother, passed away last night.

Rest in Peace, Margaret