compost and canning jars

Adam's friend's mom has a room in her house called the fruit room. It's basically where the food storage has been kept over the years. It was abandoned for some reason and they started storing their food somewhere else in the basement. Adam has been helping James clean out the house after his father's death a month ago. Adam mentioned the room to me. He told me there were 200-400 jars of home canned food that is no longer any good. Ann wants to get rid of it and did I want the jars? Who would turn down that offer? Not me! The catch was that we had to empty out the jars before I could use them. Luckily, Adam built me that much bigger than planned on compost bin. It will make fine compost! The oldest jar we've found so far was from 1964!!!

We went one evening after work to collect the first round of jars. We got 244 jars and that was only about 1/3 of the total jars in that room! Unfortunately, a lot of them are old condiment jars that she reused, even with the original (not canning) lids. I won't be canning in those so they are no good to me.

We carried just over half the bins over to the compost pile and started working. Adam unscrewed the lids and bands. I pried the canning lids off and emptied. We worked at it for about 4 hours.


Look at how old and vintage these lids are!


These 3 are my favorites. I have a couple of the sliver ones. I am hoping they come off in one piece because I have a DIY project in mind for those.


We had a wedding reception to go to so we quit before finishing. We had about 40 jars left to open and empty. But this is what food from 200 jars gets you. Much less than we were expecting... Well, we still have 400 more to add to that. Oddly, nothing stunk. Some came out like molasses, others had already turned to dirt inside the jar. Almost every jar still smelled exactly like what it was. I wouldn't have expected that since most of the jars were from the 60's to 1970.


We sorted the jars to keepable and those to be recycled. The recycle ones went in one large bin while the keepable ones got a quick rinse off from the hose. I think I got to keep about 40 of them.

Poor Adam got a giant blister on the palm of his hand from opening the stuck on lids and bands and he was wearing thick leather gloves! I tried taking over but I was much too weak to get those open.

The garden

Adam's friend, James, had seen that I had prepared part of the yard for a garden and that I wasn't able to plant anything because there was no good dirt there. His mom has a huge garden area that they haven't used in a few years because of declining health. He told his mom and she offered us the use of her yard. :o) That was Friday night, Saturday morning, we were at her house with seeds in hand. The part that we planted is maybe 1/3 of her total garden area.

We planted spaghetti sqaush, acorn squash, spinach, carrots, eggplant, tomatoes, canteloupe, watermelon, snap peas, green beans, kidney beans, bell peppers, butternut squash. We will be going back and planting a row of cucumbers as well...Adam was really sad that we didn't plant any. We used way more space than the little garden spot I had carved in my yard. I guess I'll have to expand my garden area for when I do get to plant...because it's just going to seem way too small now. We will be planting some lettuce at home in containers and we'll be planting different plants at her house for a fall crop after these plants have lived out their useful life.

Because the ground was so soft and fairly free of rocks, this hand cultivator worked really well to make furrows to plant in.


We set the seeds in the holes and poured a little fertilizer over the tops. That's Adam and James. James grew up gardening so he was really nice and helped us and gave us advice.


After you plant and pour on the fertilizer, you take the cultivator and run it right beside the furrow. It pushes the loose dirt back over the seeds. Super simple. I told Adam we needed one of these neat gadgets!


Here's what it looked like when we left. There are two seperate beds, technically. We ran out of room in the first one so we tilled more ground but left a space between them. It was so much fun and doing it with someone else (2 someone elses) was nice. It made being in the beating sun bearable.

Meeting Familyonbikes

I visit a website called www.crazyguyonabike.com. It's a website where you can post your bicycle tour journal for everyone else to read. It's a very active community. I happened upon an already completed journal of a family of four who had done a 9,300 mile tour over the course of one year (the twins 3rd grade year). I saw that they were from Boise and we already knew we were moving to Boise so I emailed her.

I found out through the emails that they were planning another trip. This time they would be biking from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska (the farthest point North) to Ushuia, Argentina (the Southern most point). Once they reached the end, their boys would be in the Guniess Book of World Records as the youngest people to bike the Pan American Highway. They would be leaving a few months before we were to move out there...but they were possibly going to come through Utah as they made their way to Mexico. We talked and she agreed that I could ride with them for a few days. I was super excited about it. But, my bike accident made sure that didn't happen.

Since I was living in Boise, I was thinking I would meet them when they finally got home. Well, we didn't stay long enough. They finally got home 2 months ago. It took them nearly three years to complete the journey. They boys are now 13.

The first 500 miles of the trip is on the Dalton Highway, an unpaved road that has one gas station. So they had to carry all their food for those 500 miles.

I followed along on their blog www.familyonbikes.org. It is a great read and makes me wish that I could take a similar trip!

Here they are at the end of the road...they finally made it!

Since coming home, they've been to several conferences and one of them was here in Atlanta. Tonight, they were at Stone Mountain for an impromptu presentation. I left straight from work because I HAD to meet them, but Nancy especially.

She and John are both very friendly and it was a lot of fun visiting with them after the presentation. It felt like I was visiting old friends...but then I have been reading about their daily lives for years so in a way, I was.

The woman taking the camera took a long time to snap the pic and I just started talkng to her so not a fan of the pic of me, but oh well.

Each of the 4 of them took turns talking about life on the road.

The boys introduced the 4 family members and discussed each person's roles.

This is Daryl.

This is Davy.

John talked about the challenges they faced. And Nancy wrapped things up by talking about the lessons those challenges taught them. She summed it up by saying that we should all find what we are passionate about and to live life the way that we think is right for us, even when it is against the norm.

I really enjoyed listening to them talk and seeing their pictures, even though I've seen them on their web. They are definitely an example of what can happen when you consistently take small steps toward a goal.

Finally, I got to meet them! Who knows, maybe someday we'll live in the same town again (at the same time) and I'll even get to take a ride with them after all.

power outage

Adam and I both tend to be doing something most of the time...we don't relax a lot. But yesterday, we both crashed about 6. We woke up just before 7 to a loud bang. A huge lightning storm was on top of us. The power was out. We pulled out a flash light and cooked dinner. After dinner, we pulled out the chess board and played a few games.

The chess set is from Mike and he bought them in the Phillipines while on his mission for us. It is hand carved and very unique. We really love it.

The power came back on at some point but we left the lights off and continued to play in the dim light. We had had enough though and I went and did the chores. I got to vacuum my carpet for the first time in 1 1/2 months! The vacuum's been broken. Adam welded that and my rug beater. I can't tell you how happy the clean carpet made me! I've been sweeping it, but sweeping it only does so much to combat all the dog fur!

It was a very enjoyable evening!

rope braid

This braid was hard earned! I had been trying to get it for about 3 weeks before I stumbled onto the correct way to do it. I was giving up for the morning and did something a little different. Well, that little change I made was the thing I was doing wrong and I was able to finally get all the pieces of the puzzle. It's so easy once you know what you're doing but figuring it out is not!

Here it is with a flip through at the top. I really like the look of this one, but it makes my hair look shorter.

I did it again a few days later to make sure I knew how to do it. This time, it was just done with a regular ponytail. Success, finally!

Samuel is born

Yesterday, my newest nephew, Samuel Emrys was born. We had Isaac fora little bit. Adam took him on a tow, then we got home around the same time. Played some Mario Kart for a little bit, then took him to eat at McDonald's (YUCK!) since that's what he really wanted. Then, we made the drive up to the hospital where we got to spend about 45 minutes with their new family.

Isaac was so cute! He kept commenting on how cute Samuel is and how soft. He even got to hold him. I asked him how long he thought it would be before Samuel could lay with him and he said, "Probably in 30 years, then he'll be 4 or something like that." lol He also kept telling both his parents how much he missed them and was giving them hugs. He's such a sweet boy and I'm sure he'll be a great big brother.

Aaron, Isaac and Samuel.

Here he is. He is so cute...looks exactly like Isaac did when he was born, though Katie and Aaron don't think so. Lanette agrees with me.

He was opening his eyes a lot toward the end of our visit...time to eat, he was thinking.

Long fingers!!

Samuel was 2 weeks early. They called us at 5 in the morning to tell us they were headed to the hospital. When the embroidery shop opened, Adam called and ordered these to things for Samuel...a hat and a bib. He'll have to grow some in order to fit into them.

Adam was pretty pleased with his gifts. lol Aaron and Katie thought they were cool too. Aaron was the one who designed the logo so it means something to him as well as to Adam. If you look at the first pic, Aaron is actually wearing his Road Ranger shirt as well.

Katie and her two boys. She's so happy to have him there healthy and alive. There were many disappointments while trying to have a second baby. I'm glad she was able to finally get her second...just 4 more to go. But for now, she's very happy.

It's always fun to have a new member of the family, especially a baby, since you get to see them develop into a person. I'm excited to get to know him and see him grow.

fun with macro

We lent the camera to Aaron last year for a few weeks so he could use it for a class he was taking. He wanted to take some macro pictures so he bought three filters that magnify things. I just screw them onto the end of the lens and it's like magic! When he returned the camera, I tried giving him his filters back but he told me to just leave it with the camera. I didn't use it for months but then I decided to see what it was like. I use it a lot now. Here's some pics I have taken using them.

This beauty is a small portion of a cross stitch piece done by my VERY talented sister, Sheri who has been so kind as to gift me several pieces over the years. Sheri, you can rest assured that they are definitely appreciated over here!

This one you have to view large so you can see ALL its eyes! CREEEEEEEPY!

I may be having a little too much fun with these!