January 2011

There's just not much to write about this time of year. It's the "doldrums" of winter. We go out for walks every day, stopping to throw a bale of hay to the buffalo as we go by. Sometimes we take the sled and ride down the hills! We've been using the ice fishing sled and riding in it together, which is fun! The road is packed down and icy now, so we have to slip the yax-trax cleat things over our boots in order to walk outside.

It's been a "yo-yo" winter, up near 40 for a few days, then below zero for a few days, then bouncing back up to be warm for a few days, then back down. Not a lot of in-between.

It's also been a very cloudy winter. We've only had a sunny day about once a week or less.

We picked up a pile of library books, and that's helped pass time.

The deer Steven and Tristan shot back in hunting season had been frozen solid ever since. Steven finally had to drag them to the shack and build a fire in the barrel stove and thaw them out so he could cut them up. I got all the meat canned last week, and we didn't lose any. Thank goodness. We have several jars of burgers, ground meat, and stew chunks.

Speaking of burgers, we saw this cake at a craft sale!

I've been passing time by going through crates of pictures and writing on the backs. I found this cartoon stuck in with the pictures! If you can't read it, click on the picture and it'll enlarge.
I've set a goal of labeling at least one packet of pictures a day. That'd be around 30 a month. Eventually I'll get them done. Mostly they're pictures from the years my kids were growing up, and it's been a lot of fun going back to the memories!


I've been making "minute" rice. I boiled rice on the woodstove (free) and spread it on drying racks. When it was dry I packed it into a jar. Now I can use it like minute rice. I do that with beans, too, like pinto, kidney, and black beans. In the winter it's free to cook them. I can dehydrate them on racks above the woodstove. Then in the summer, when we're cooking on propane, it only takes a few minutes to re-cook them.
Not only does it save a lot of propane, but it saves time during the busiest time of year.

We got rain on top of the snow, and it weighed a lot. We cleaned off the roofs of the sheds as well as the canoes.

We got butter on sale before Christmas, and I canned some of it.

When it first comes out of the water-bath canner it's separated. As it cools I have to swish the jars around to remix it. If I shake them they get frothy, so I swish and swirl and turn them upside-down.

This is the butter after it cooled. It won't separate now.
Behind it you can see some cheddar cheese I canned. Cheese doesn't separate, so no need to stir up the jars.

The screen in the window of the back door of the uhaul was torn and part of it was missing, so I replaced it.

We got this roll of screen at Lowes a couple of years ago on a REALLY good deal.

$30, 5' by 100'

...and here it is with the new screen in the frame.

Canned venison burgers. I brown the burgers, stack them in wide-mouth jars, and dry-can them. I used a jar lid as a sizer so they'd fit nicely through the top of the jar.

We needed a solid surface to clamp the meat grinder to, so Steven shoveled the snow off the picnic table and ground it there. That meat is cold, and it was hard on his hands!

But it was around 30 degrees, shirt-sleeve weather in Montana!

I fried up more burgers and dropped them in jars and canned them.

There's a little bit of everything here: burgers, ground meat crumbled and browned, and stew chunks. I dry-can the meat so it won't be soggy when we use it.

Left to right: burgers, ground meat, stew chunks

Food storage cheeseburgers!

I made homemade hamburger buns, opened a jar of venison burgers and a jar of cheese. I heated the burgers in a skillet, and I dipped the jar of cheese in hot water so I could slide it out of the jar. Then I sliced off some cheese.

I could have re-hydrated some of our dried onions and tomatoes and put those on the burgers as well. The only thing store-bought was the ketchup and mustard. I haven't made my own yet.

The wind made these cool swirls on the lake.

We put the sub-flooring in the uhaul the other day. The metal floor gets cold, even on cold summer nights, so we used some wafer board we had laying around, to cover the floor. I have a roll of linoleum that used to be in the kitchen of the cabin, and we're going to put it over the wafer board, and use throw-rugs on it. When we're camping it'll be easier to sweep the linoleum and shake out the rugs, than to put a rug or carpet in there.

The kitten and dog, of course, have to be in the middle of everything we do!

The water faucet in front of the church is froze up, so Tristan filled our jugs at the fire department.

I got the kitten a collar today, and it came with a toy mouse. She played with it for quite a while, batting it the length of the kitchen and back. Then she plopped down next to me like she was exhausted!