Pioneers Crossing the Plane...or is that Plain

Anyone who knows the woodworker, knows how he loves to play with words. Back in West Virginia, we found these old planes. As he is always looking for old woodworking tools he had to stop and look a while. Then he became enamored of the idea of using an old wood plane, made of vintage wood, of course, to carve a picture of pioneers crossing the plains, but turned it into a play on words with pioneers crossing the plane.




From there he went on to other subjects. To make a picture on a plane requires a scene of specific proportions. Panoramic views seem to work the best, due to their wide, short format.
This scene is based on the Teton Mountains.



One Saturday we decided we'd take a trip to Promontory, Utah, where they do a re-enactment of the 'Meeting of the Rails' during the summer. So, now we have trains crossing the plain...I mean plane.




A year or so ago we visited the Steamship Arabia exhibit in Kansas City. That was the inspiration for this steamship.

The Woodworker and his work

Here is our intrepid woodworker plying his trade. Since his is a woodshop from the 1880s, he is dressed for the part and working away with his hand tools.



This is Hairy, the woolly mammoth, created from black walnut.


The next three pictures are different views of the same bowl. It was created from an old piece of western cedar that had been through a forest fire about 200 years ago. A ring count indicated the piece of wood was probably about 1000 years old when the fire happened. You can still see the charring of the wood in a couple of the pictures, as well as the weathering of the wood which add to the unique character of the bowl.






Next is a box showing the inlay work on the top. It looks a lot like a quilt, doesn't it?



The picture of the woodworker shows him scraping a bowl much like this one, which is made from black walnut. Scraping makes it much smoother than sanding. A dough bowl, traditionally, is used for mixing and kneading bread. This bowl is about 2 feet long! It is unusual to get a solid piece of black walnut that large to work with.



The carving on the handles of the bowl are of wheat, since that kind of goes with the bread making idea.

Not For the Faint of Heart!

Some years ago, I noticed that many of my shoes really didn't feel good anymore. After returning from West Virginia, I decided to have the doctor check out the strange, hard, enlarged area on top of my big toe joint. It wasn't long until he decided to fix it. His preferred method of treatment included scraping off extra bone pieces and then inserting 4 pins attached to a special expanding rail to spread the joint apart a bit in hopes it would heal that way.



The doctor made sure he got the correct foot by writing on it with his special purple marker. It kind of went with the color scheme of the bruising, don't you think?



Sadly, when all was healed, the extra space all disappeared and I was back to square one. By then it was time for summer! I told the doctor I'd see him in the fall. Summer was too busy visiting family, gardening, harvesting, canning, and doing school groups at 'the farm'. After school groups ended in late October, the doctor tried again. This time, the plan was to remove some of the bone to make the needed space. It only required 1 pin in it. (You can see the end of it there at the tip of my toe.) Hopefully this time it will heal in a more usable way!

Pflaumenkuchen

At the farm, there is a lovely old plum tree that magically seems loaded with plums every year in spite of little care taken for it. During school groups in the Fall, one of the themes is 'Harvest'. In one of the stations the children visit, we talk about canning and preserving. As part of that we make a batch of plum jam on the old wood stove in the summer kitchen which the children get to sample. The plums are not the round ones, but the oblong, blue ones which are sometimes called Italian plums.

After we have enough for the jam making, the rest often seem to go to waste, so this year I brought home enough to make an old German treat called Pflaumenkuchen. Here is the recipe I used:

Pflaumenkuchen
preheat oven to 375F
grease a jelly roll pan

1/4 lb. butter
3/4 c. sugar
2 eggs
1/4 c. milk
1 t. vanilla
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking powder
2 1/2 - 3 lb. small Italian plums
1 c. chopped nuts
sugar and cinnamon to taste

Cream butter, sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla together. Add flour, salt, and baking powder and mix well. Spread this dough on the jelly roll pan. Wash, halve and pit the plums. Place plums on dough with cut side up and touching one another. Sprinkle plums with sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle nuts over the plums. Bake for 30 minutes.

The picture below doesn't really do it justice, but it really is most delicious!

Garden 2009

Last year when we were in West Virginia, we heard wonderful stories of the huge amounts of strawberries and peaches our garden was producing. We got home in November, and ever since I've looked forward to having a garden again after two years without. Spring started in a promising way with lovely rhubarb and lots of blossoms on the fruit trees. I was happy to plant the various seeds, tomato plants, cucumbers, etc. The seeds were just starting to come up when the first of three horrendous hail storms came in a period of a week or so. The picture below was taken a full 12 hours after the first hail storm. Even after that much time, a pile of hail was still stacked on the lawn! Needless to say, we were worried about hail damage.



Our once healthy rhubarb looked more like green lace. It was all shredded by the hail. The strawberry flowers all got knocked off, so no strawberries this year.



One of the tomato plants died as did one of the cucumbers. The rest were badly damaged and took quite a while to recover. Most of the fruit forming on the trees was knocked off. In addition, one of the apple trees looked really sick. At first we thought it was hail damage, but as time went on, the leaves fell off and it eventually died. We found out it had fire blight. From all appearances, the other apple tree and the pear tree probably also have fire blight, so may die next year. Thankfully the peach trees are not prone to that. Then the rain started. It rained the whole month of June. Maybe we should have planted rice in the garden since it looked more like a rice paddy. Looking at the aftermath, I could see the likelihood of very little produce coming out of that garden as the seeds and seedlings were washed away. Eventually the rain stopped. To my amazement, most of the beans survived as well as a few of the carrots and beets. Eventually we replanted carrots and beets, but they didn't have time to get very big. As you see below, the carrots that didn't get washed away, outdid themselves! (That is a regular table knife on the middle carrot.)



The beans that started out fairly scanty apparently felt the need to make up for their slow start. I probably picked 25-30 gallons of beans eventually. The tomatoes also tried to make up for lost time. From our 8 tomato plants we ended up with about 4 bushels of tomatoes. We did end up with half a bushel of peaches, though they were damaged by the hail.

It does feel good to have our freezer and storeroom full again. Hopefully next year the gardening will be better.

Scary Basement

Ever since we moved, mysterious sidewalk jerky keeps appearing in our basement...only sometimes it is not jerky yet and squiggles most nastily in odd places I hope not to step with my bare feet.



We think they get in under this door, so we sealed under it in an attempt to keep them out. Then we noticed one day that the carpet was wet and smelled of cats! Yes, the previous owners had a cat, but more importantly, where was the water coming from? The carpet started to show signs of mold along the edges. Yuck!



Also, the person who designed the plumbing for this house, did a not so fine job by somehow fixing the washer upstairs, so it sometimess regurgitates into the little sink in the basement which also has overflowed a time or two, leading to more wet carpet.



When we checked the drain outside the door, we discovered two problems. First, it is a french drain and thus, in heavy rainfall, does not drain particularly rapidly, causing the water to back up. Second, the threshold of the door was only a quarter of an inch above the level of the drain. Now you can see that we have poured a higher concrete threshold so the water can be deeper than a quarter of an inch before it comes pouring into the house, bringing all manner of worms with it!



Next we installed some new vinyl in the areas most likely to get wet in the future so they are easier to clean. Happily, mold was NOT growing under the old carpet.

Woodwork with the grandkids

Well, over the years, our garage has been used for many things. Notably, in Alaska, it was the official home of the ward roadkill committee. It was not unusual to come home and find a quartered moose hanging up just over where I parked the car.

Since moving to Utah, things are looking up! Now our garage is the home of various woodworking activities, enjoyed at first by Roger, but now moving on to various other family members.





Garrett making a spurtle (oatmeal stirring stick) on the lathe.








Robert sanding wood for his box.






Rachel with the bowl she made on the lathe.