291 replies to this topic

[Annarchy]

It very pretty, but looks like it has a flat roof... Won't a steep roof will be necessary because of snow?
Since the train went through snow in April getting there, I assume it will be around for at least 5 months.

When we lived in the foothills, we always had snow at Thanksgiving through March or April. You folks are a tad higher.

Excellent point Leah, I'm going to have to research that concept and see if I can figure out an alternative.



Hmmmm.....

[Mother]

Isn't it interesting how well we learn from this whole thread? I know that I'm finding that I could have packed things that I wished I now had.

Annarchy, I love that drawing. I can see where it might be usable for winter conditions as well with the back area closed off to the north and the open courtyard to the south it would gather heat during the day. I also instantly saw the courtyard as a place to shelter the animals closer to the buildings in the winter, especially during a bllizzard. One issue we will have is getting to the animals and back when the snow is blowing so strong we can't see. Ropes are a good way to get there and back but having them in that courtyard would be much safer.

Just thinking

Edited by Mother, 21 January 2010 - 01:12 PM.

[Amishway Homesteaders]

Thanks for the kind words - both here and in PM's

~Lori and Michael~
The Amishway Homesteaders
(both IRL and here in the Valley)

[Mt_Rider]

I LOVE writing about our caves and grasslands and eventually finding the wild fruits, etc. But..... AACK....I am having trouble finding the TIME right now. So for now, just pretend we're being remote and secluded but be assured that I will give a synopsis whenever I CAN write again. I have a bit more saved on a file...somewhere. Did that danged goat eat my file? LOL I am trying to keep up reading all your wonderful story posts tho...at least every other day. Such good ideas and perseverance!

And I'm writing down the tips....like epsom salt for danged blossom-end rot. You can bet I'm going to be adding that to the fish emulsion that I already use. Have a terrible time with that here and the plants look sooooo good and nothing produces for all my LABOR! This may just be what I need. <--for Q



BTW, the reason I don't have the TIME is the opposite from the other times I've gone OFF-line. This time it's cuz I'm actually doing BETTER. That durned Fall Fatigue [lasting longer into winter ] is finally releasing me. So I take a look around at ALL that has been in chaos and .....whooooooeeeeeee, folks. It is TIME for me IRL to get some things done, and sorted, and cleared, and finished and.... well, you get the picture.


Once I get a handle on things 'round here, there will still be plenty of winter left for writing...when you all are already planting gardens IRL...I'll be watching the snow fly in our Spring Blizzards.


Hope to be back soon
MtRider [Dr.MtR, MM & Jack, Roan & Midnight, 4 PG goats, ducks, geese, CAT, and BIG DOG.....oh, rabbits. I forgot we got rabbits at the last minute. Now I have to house rabbits in our corner of the valley too..... ]

[quiltys41]

Oh man....while surfing the net today, most of the day (it's all Cat's fault!! LOL) I came across this really neat site that has a huge page full of links to stories and on line books wrote by people who did the real wagon trains back in the 1800's. There are a bunch of them that continue on like we are with Wagons Ho and tell about their lives as they settled in to their new homesteads. My eyes are about crossed from reading these very interesting stories!

Here is the dangerous link lol http://www.over-land.com/diaries.html Just make sure you have at least half an hour to bookmark links if you don't have time to actually read these hehehe....

Q

[Mother]

My favorite site, Qulitys. We used it last year for DGS's Covered wagon curriculum. Some I read copies of years ago through inter-library loan and they just get better with each reading as I find something new each time. This site has a whole lot more than what I could get then though... Thanks for posting the link.

Edited by Mother, 22 January 2010 - 07:18 PM.

[Annarchy]

Here's a picture of what our kiln sorta looks like, ours isn't painted, lol:

[Mother]

This is similar to a brick oven like the one I'd like in my own back yard. Is this one heated by building a fire inside to heat the adobe and then the ashes, etc raked out before baking? Or is this one that you just build a fire inside and cook over the coals? Or can you do both with it.

We saw an oven built into a fireplace in Nauvoo Illinois they called a bustle oven. I've seen them built in back yards as well. You can bake different things in succession in them, first things that require a hot quick oven like biscuits, then breads, then cakes or delicate things or for putting a pot of beans in to cook slowly the rest of the night. If they are built with enough heat storing capacity the can be used after the temperature cools for dehydrating foods.

Have you found these sites yet? They are a couple of my favorites.

http://www.traditionaloven.com/

http://heatkit.com/html/bakeoven.htm

[Leah]

Mother, you mentioned in the packing thread about your cheese-making mishap regarding the bleu cheese.

In the old recipe books I have, they mention having more than one cheese room for that reason.
There were also separate rooms for bread and beer. All to keep the yeast strains pure.

Would that be something to keep in mind in the valley?

Edited by Leah, 26 January 2010 - 02:07 PM.

[Mother]

Yes, it really would be advantageous but if our situation were real it's doubtful that we'd be able to build that many rooms for each. I suppose in the situation of the Hobbit Hole where there are more than one 'room' it might be possible (as I have no idea how MANY rooms are there, not having been IN them ....) but even then, the spores would travel on the air currents unless the rooms were well sealed. And if they were well sealed, they would have to have ventilation to the outside in some way so the exchange of air would at least keep the outside of the cheese from molding. That does bring up the possibility of one home making all one product though and then trading for another.

Most pioneer developed their own 'strain' of organisms and were famous for the taste of their cheese...or not,,,, depending on how it turned out. It was the same way with sour dough and I assume yogurt because there are so many strains of bacteria that are used in it. (Yogurt was not a staple of pioneer diet. It was brought here in the late 1700's by the Turkish but was not popular until the 1940's) Sanitation, at that time, was practiced unknowingly though because they knew that it was easy for the cheese or sour dough to "go off" (we know now that it was 'wild' yeasts and bacteria that can cause that). The housewife scrubbed their cheese making pots meticulously, sometimes because it was used for a number of jobs from laundry to cooking stews and some were known to pour boiling water into them before making their cheese. To 'culture' the cheese they either added a 'starter' kept back from the last batch made or they allowed milk, often buttermilk, to set in the room where they made the cheese and sour naturally. Of course it was picking up the 'culture' from the surrounding air at that point.

Bread and beer are essentially the same thing. Bread (bakers) yeast and beer (brewers) yeast are two separate but similar organisms. I have recipes that call for using bakers yeast as the starter for fermentation however. What an interesting product the pioneer must have come up with.

Our son is interested in making beer and wine IRL and has encouraged me to bring it into this thread. It was really his idea to have caves so he'd have a place for his wine. LOL. Of course, that meant the first thing he thought of bringing along wasyeast, hops and hop seeds to grow more. He was all for loading the wagon with barrels galore but I drew the line at that and told him he'd have to build his barrels.... but he still got a few in and called them "water barrels".... . Having grown up around most of what we are 'portraying' it's almost second nature to them so they tend to think beyond the survival aspect of it. Darn kids anyway.....

[Mother]

Just to let our wiriters and readers know that a few of our Wagoneers have run into REAL LIFE at the present moment. Don't fear, they will be back as soon as they are able. In the mean time hopefully the rest of us will be able to continue to hold your interest.

Please, don't hesitate to post your comments or suggestions here. We treasure your help in keeping us on our toes and making us second or even first guess ourselves. We learn as much from your posts as we do from our own.

I would like to hear what sort of homestead YOU would build in this situation. Logs? more caves? Sod? Or something totally different but still within the criteria?

What about our bloopers? Have you caught any obvious ones? I know I had some I had to go back and edit out. Did you catch them?

I know our posts are a bit sparce so why not help us out here in the comments section? We can use reinforcements. And speaking of that...anyone want to join us in the valley. Let me know and we'll figure out a way for you to do it....

Edited by Mother, 27 January 2010 - 07:15 PM.

[Annarchy]

Inventory, taxes and reports are done! I can hopefully pay more attention to our Un-reality story. I am so relieved.

[Amishway Homesteaders]

Since Annarchy stopped by our Homestead with meat and a visit to see the cabin I thought you might like to see what we built. The roof is just a sod roof for now as we need help to get the peaks up but a few of the "B" group had stopped out to help get the higher walls up in the main room. Michael has been cutting shingles when he has some down time, which as you all know is not very often. LOL

Here is the 'blue print' that Michael made before we started :

[quiltys41]

Well sorry everyone that I have missed a few days. Our best friend passed away Sunday night late and it's been a really rough week so far. Hubby and he had been friends over 40 years, so it really hurt him bad. I had known him for 10 years. It was like loosing a very close brother for us both. I have spent my time between comforting him, helping arrange things, and getting ready for this winter storm. So now that I am back, I may get gone again lol. There is a REALLY good possibility that our power will be off by tomorrow night, so that means I will be off line. And it wont warm up here until some time next week, so it will be that long before they start working on the power lines!

But for all our readers, I do apologize for being gone so long. I did manage to post one part I had been working on all week and will try to get another post or two in before tomorrow night. After that, who knows besides God lol.

Hugs to all...

Q

[Annarchy]

Our best friend passed away Sunday night
Q

(((((Quiltys41)))))

So sorry for your loss.

[Leah]

Quiltys41, I'm so sorry... I know it's difficult to lose someone you're so close to.
------------
I read your posts before reading here, I have a link to a very nice site with pictures on cheesemaking.
http://www.cheesemak...ipedetails.html
18 cheeses, plus yoghurt. No cottage cheese, though.
Here's the direct link to Ricki's 30 Minute Mozzarella Magic... http://www.cheesemak...Mozz/Index.html

[Mother]

Here's another good cheese page.

http://biology.clc.u...ese/Cheese.html

[quiltys41]

Thanks Ann and Leah.

Q

[Leah]

Is this a good place to put this link?
I came across this page about sourdough. I always thought of sourdough as only bread. This page has different breads plus pancakes, biscuits, English muffins, corn bread, date loaf, cake, and cookies.
http://www.netwoods..../sourdough.html

In a scenario like Wagons Ho with little resupply options, I'd be trying to conserve everything I could.

[Mt_Rider]

ATTENTION ALL READERS......

This is another invitation to come and join us in Big Valley. I have no idea how long we will keep this thing going. When winter is over IRL and we all begin our gardening and other projects....this may fade away. But dunno about y'all but I've still got quite a bit of winter left yet. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A LONG-TERM Mrs S MEMBER TO JOIN US IN Big Valley. We're not exclusive. And you don't have to be a writer. Just journal a diary if you like. But you should probably try to read at least all of this last WagonsHo thread. The Journey IIII. [speaking of bloopers, Mother. Shouldn't that be " The Journey IV " ?????? Or....Big Valley I ????? ]

So if you want to join the fun, C'mon! If you've been reading, you know how we're living. And you know it doesn't matter if we have a blooper or two...or five. Part of the fun. We just to ask folks to keep away from any false information ....cuz this is a learning tool. Make sure we aren't passing on something that would get someone in trouble if tried IRL ["In Real Life"...if someone doesn't know this abbreviation] Example would be that Quilty was careful to put cautions on a few of her canning instructions like the pectin. Old time methods not strictly approved by today's health standards. That's the proper way to write that sort of thing.

The another rule is no one dies. But we've sent a few to the hospital.

A slightly tricky part of this thing we've called "Corporate Writing" is to not place a real person [Me, Mother, Annarchy, Q, AH's, Mo3B] or their families into a situation that will mess up their posts that they might be working on. It does happen. But we've gotten rather good at a quick rewrite when we've posted at the same time as someone else. [Haven't we, Mother? ] Anyway, ...for instance, don't announce a birthing of their cow or something like that. but we've done visiting and such. Just stay a bit vague about real folks so you leave them wiggle room. If you need a person outside your own clan, the B-group, [aka: Benefactors group...see previous threads for who they are] people can be created and molded to whatever your storyline requires. Need some strong muscles to make your plowing more realistic? Watch my storyline. I'm about to give some poor B-group child a bad fever....just to get some help with plowing fields!!! {NEED help...Dr.MtR and I are too OLD for acres and acres of plowing! }

We're all trying to keep it SOMEWHAT realistic. We all slip on that sometimes cuz....well, it IS UNreality. I'm adding in family members that realistically, I should not be expecting to make it. But....I just couldn't help myself. It got tooooo lonely in big Valley without our clan around us. Right Q? Even an attempt to adopt some fictional family didn't keep me from wanting MY REAL-LIFE kids/Grkids/parents out here safe with us toooooooo!

And that is a real issue....if the real hooey ever hits the fan [IRL]. A big issue for MrMtR and I with our kids across the ocean.


So, if you want to arrive in big Valley with Wagon Train #2, post something about your wagon(s) and your clan (if any) and about waiting at the Rockin' J ranch....gateway to two weeks of wilderness travel thru mountain passes and ravines [watch those flash floods and wild life]. Regular BV writers, in a bit we can start posting here and there about our family members coming thru the route we took....if you want to. I'm not going to be able to spend a lot of time on that. But if you want to flash to a family member you intend to be on this train...go for it if you'd like.

MtRider [busy planting even more food and ....exploring the rest of those caves next where we plunked our stuff down...gotta get organized before our personal hordes of kids arrive! ]

Edited by Mt_Rider, 06 February 2010 - 03:47 PM.