Log House Progress

 

Our log home is making progress! Over the last few months we've had family and friends generously give of their time to help us get the house more winterized and finished. Hopefully you will notice lots of changes from the last pictures I posted back in the summer!

 

One of the biggest outside changes are the attic ends being sided in and the windows put it.

Aren't they cute!!?

 

The upstairs outside chinking between the logs has all been completed as well. Big step forward!

 

The chinking is dark in the pictures because it's still drying, when dry it is light grey like in the first floor.

 

Front view. It's a messy construction zone, but we are moving forward! :)

 

Three views of the inside of the 2nd story. One big room right now, eventually it will be divided into three rooms: The west side will be the master bedroom, the east side will be divided into two

 

 

 

 

Insulation is stuffed between the layers of chinking and wire. As of now we are getting very close to getting all the inside chinking finished as well! More pictures soon! So excited to get moved upstairs and start fixing it up. :)

 

Canning Tomato Sauce

This summer I did some canning. Nothing too impressive, but at the time it was a bit daunting as I hadn't canned anything in a couple of years, and I had never done any serious canning entirely on my own. Mom had always been there if I had questions, or more often we were doing it together. (note to single girls: now is a really good time to master somewhat tricky tasks like canning, don't wait!!)

Also, I was a bit nervous about canning in a kitchen without real running water, and keeping my little woodstove hot enough. But, read on and you will see that everything turned out, there was no need to worry!

 

I was able to buy two bushels of organic tomatoes from the local Mennonite community (much thanks to my mother-in-law for arranging it) So spent a good deal of one week this summer putting up tomato sauce. I just did plain sauce, as I always season the sauce as I am cooking the dish (chili powder for Mexican dishes, basil, garlic, olive oil, etc for Italian)

 

 

Jordan had obtained boxes and boxes of glass canning jars from a job last year that he and I cleaned and saved for our upcoming household. The first step was to get these out of storage. Of course they were dirty and spider-webby again. But, plenty of boiling water and scrubbing soon fixed that. All clean and sparkling!

 

 

Next I brought in the tomatoes from where they were laid out on newspaper on the porch, one pot-full at a time, to wash, remove the stem end, and chop into large pieces for the blender.

 

 

The tomatoes go into my wonderful Blendtec. By doing the 'whole juice' setting, I was able to skip peeling and de-seeding the tomatoes, as they were all pureed quite fine enough. I was a little afraid there would still be tiny bits of tough cooked peel at the end, but it was not a problem at all, quite smooth.

 

 

Juice goes on the stove, and cooks down until thick.

 

 

 

When thick enough, the sauce was ladled into my jars with a teaspoon of salt, and a pinch of vitamin C powder. (I read the C would up the acidity of the mix, and ensure no spoilage, so I thought it wouldn't hurt...)

 

I didn't get pictures of my canner, but they had to be processed 11 minutes at a certain pressure. Getting them up to pressure sometimes too a little longer than I would have liked, but once it was hot enough it was very hard to keep it from getting much too hot. Each time I had to set it to the back of the stove. But, over all canning on a woodstove was quite do-able, and only takes a bit more watching than normal.

 

 

At the end of the week, I ended up with 40 pints of sauce. Not a huge amount I admit, but quite a nice stock for a two-person household! :) I was very pleased with the texture and taste at the end, and hope to do more just the same way next summer!