grape stomping and vintage chicken feeders

I LOVE it when the husband comes home and say's "Honey I got you the hook up!"

A co worker of his has a home which was built by his wife's grandfather and has been in the family since 1901. There were 3 rows of grape vines planted there and are now 100 yrs old- they have it dated according to a picture showing the one vine at 3 feet tall dated around 1910.

He had to remove 2 of the rows and left 1 which is 25 feet long. I was welcome to come "play farmer" and tend his grapes in exchange for all the grapes I want. They are just happy someone can use them instead of going to waste while preserving the family vines. In just 1 1/2 hours of picking I got about 40 or so pounds in concord grapes. That was maybe a 1/4 of what is there.

I will be making juice for the kids and a few more grape wines but the rest are being utilized for my upcoming market in Randolph. There is a festival going on and their farmers market is having an all day event which I will be selling at. Found a great recipe for Grape pie so 6 pies will be whipped up. My neighbor and good friend Jeannie will be making grape jelly and pumpkin woopie pies to sell with me at the stand.(I am so excited how I have influenced her with the gardening and canning. How awesome it is to see the pride she had when showing her full pantry of jars filled from her garden bounty.) I will be adding Ciabetta bread and beer yeast rolls to the goods I normally sell along with 5 or so of my Farm Chic aprons.

After that I was invited to sell my breads at a home on the Ohio Solar home tour here in town the following weekend then after that the Township Harvest Festival. So my weekends are booked until mid October. YAY!

We had our first house showing which I scoured the house for 2 days in preparation, following the kids around with a dust buster and baby wipes...Not fun! All that work and then I disover something one of the kids "left" before I shipped them off to the neighbors while the people viewd our house. Of course I do not discover it until AFTER the viewing which means the people were given the same view as I did when I flipped the bathroom light on. The toilet lid was open with a big Deuce floating.....ARGH! I could not help but stare and think Oh my God,all that work and they still manage to leave a mess where I never thought to look AFTER they leave for a few hours.

I found some vintage chicken feeders which the woman bought from an auction 20 yrs ago at the old Seiberling Farm not far from here. I got 18 since the price was awesome. Why 18? I want 5 for our animals. I like having a few in the house so I can fill up the feeder either with their grains or food scraps to take out and replace the empty ones- no need to go out retrieve the the empty ones then come back inside to fill them. Also gives me extra for back up. The others I am cleaning up to resell at the markets I do with my aprons and such. These are the first feeders my animals have not been able to tip over, spilling their grain out. I LOVE them. They also make for a cute bird feeder hanging from the tree. I have decided to start attending Farm auctions and picking more vintage farm stuff up to sell at a few festival/craft markets. We will see how that goes.

The turkeys are doing great. I still love hearing their peeps and they love going into the garden which is mid process of being put to sleep for the winter. I let the poultry free range during the day and already they know the property lines and stay in them. As the sun goes down, they make their way back to their pen, waiting for me to close up the gate with their night time scratch.

I also love the fact I can call out "Turkey turkey turkey....come on babies...come on" and they come running to me and eat from our hands.

I still have lots of apples to work on into cider and more applesauce (which I add other fruits like blueberries, peaches or strawberries* see my recipe at this link** which I now omit the sugar). Plus some blemished pears I picked from Stotlers orchard on the cheap for more spiced Pear butter. So I best be off before those nasty fruit flies take over my kitchen.

Sweet Dreams,

Tammie