Fall at Redwoodshire

 Fall is an absolutely beautiful time of the year in Upstate New York.  Growing up in Southern California until the age of 16, I never knew the amazing colors of Fall.  Since moving to the East Coast, I have loved Fall more than any other season.  Though we don't have a ton of trees on the property showing off, we have a couple to be appreciated.   The photo below was taken from the road.  Despite all the trees blocking the view most of the year, in the Fall and Winter you can look down onto our little house and feel like flying above, gazing down upon the village- as if you were on the Peter Pan ride at Disney.

 We have a unique little spruce tree growing where the willow tree branches.  The field above is across the street from Redwoodshire.  Maybe someday we can purchase that field.  Below is the front of the barn.  The repairs have been made and we'll be ready to finish painting the rest of the barn in the Spring.  The Laird grew a few pumpkins and acorn squash this year.  The pumpkins didn't produce as much as he expected, so we'll have to try again next year.

  

The namesake of Redwoodshire, our Dawn Redwood is beginning to turn orange and loose it's needles for the winter.  It seems to have grown significantly since we moved in 2 years ago.  

The Laird and lady genevieve set up the bird feeder and filled it with food.  One of the joys of winter is watching the birds from our windows.  We enjoyed learning to identify all the various types of birds last winter.  

The Laird is cleaning up the dead branches at the bottom of our row of spruce trees- the left side is trimmed and the right side it what it originally looked like.  Definitely an easy way to spruce up this portion of the yard.

"One persons junk, is another persons treasure"- Refinishing Ladder Back Chairs

Craiglist deal- 3 chairs for $25

A couple months ago, I found these 3 ladder back rush seat chairs on craigslist for $25 (for all 3).  It was a great deal, and we needed a few more ladder back chairs to match the 3 we already had.  Telling from the price, they were in need of some TLC.  They had been spray painted cream, including the rush!!  Never spray paint the rush- it will assuredly look terrible if you do.

Original chairs

Left- Refinished, white chalk paint w/ brown wax
Center- Repainted, white chalk paint
Right- original chair

Chalk paint is pretty awesome.  It goes on very thick and dries in less than half an hour.  You can transform a piece of furniture in a matter of hours.

You may be asking: "The BEFORE & AFTER photos look the same, except for the new rush- Why repaint with chalk paint, when the chairs look almost exactly the same as when you started?   Wouldn't spray paint be faster?"

** Chalk paint is pretty awesome for a few different reasons.  It goes on very thick and dries in less than half an hour.  Therefore, you can transform a piece of furniture in a matter of hours.  Chalk paint also has a matte finish, and therefore has no shine/ light reflection.  It makes furniture look old/ antique.  Spray paint is often very shiny- though I know there are less shiny varieties.  Chalk paint also get sealed/ finished with special wax.  The wax gives the painted surface a very soft/ smooth feeling when touch.  Using the brown wax (over the creme wax) allows you to give the piece and antiqued appearance as well.  

STEP 1:  Remove & discard old rush from seats

STEP 2: Apply chalk paint with paint brush. Allow to dry for recommended time.  Sanding not necessary. Do a 2nd coat of paint if necessary.

STEP 3:  Apply creme wax over chalk paint using a clean rag.  Allow to dry for recommended time.

STEP 4:  Apply brown wax over creme wax using a clean rag.  Work small areas at a time, allowing it to dry for a couple minutes, but wiping most off before it dries completely.

The brown wax over white chalk paint, results in an antiqued finish

STEP 5:  Rush seats

Check out my previous post: How to Weave a Rush Chair for photos of my first rush chairs.  

Ed Hammond has an excellent YouTube video to learn how to rush 

Peerless Rattan has a great selection of tools and rush supplies for purchase

 We now have 6 ladder back rush chairs- 3 antiqued cream & 3 finished wood.  If you look closely, you will notice that the chair styles are slightly different as well.  Though it would be nice to have a full set of matching chairs, I don't mind mixing and matching, as it adds character to the room.

Eventually I will have to take photos of these chairs with the awesome antique pedestal table I found on craigslist!  We have quite a collection of dining room furniture- now we just need to continue plugging away at the dining room upgrades.

Redwoodshire Driveway Marker

Our house is located below the main road level, behind some tall evergreen trees and completely un-visible from the road.  Ever since we moved in, we've talked about having some sort of sign or marker to for people to look for, when they are coming to Redwoodshire for the first time.  During one of the Laird's explorations in the back woods beyond the marsh, he discovered a junk pile.  Even better, were the 2 old milk jugs he found and was able to carry back to the house. Though not very large, our hope is that the marker stands out enough for people to find our house.
These old milk jugs are very old and rusty, with a few holes.  The bottom of one is completely rusted out.  We spray painted one with some left over Rubbed Oil Bronze- which is a color I love for everything.  We're undecided about how much we like it on the milk jug.  Next we filled the bottom with some rocks for drainage.  Filled the rest of it with dirt and a post- dirt to grow flowers and a post to hang a sign and the address number.

Here is the photo progression:

We used the top of the old cedar tree that the Laird felled in early spring, as our sign post.  Filled the milk jug with medium sized rocks, and thentopped it with dirt.   We planted a few climbing vine seeds to grow up the post. We used a scrap piece of pine for the sign.  Tea stained the pine & applied a coat of polyurethane to preserve the wood from the elements.  The numbers we used are 5" in size, and purchased from Lowes.

This post has been waiting since Spring to be published!  It has served us well all summer for the fun gatherings of friends and family here at Redwoodshire.

"The Thinking Beekeeper"

Ever since I saw "The Secret Life of Bees" many years ago, before the laird and I were married, there has been a small fascination with beekeeping in the back of my mind.  I absolutely love honey, and though I can't remember anything about the actual movie, that was the point when beekeeping entered my thoughts.  Fast forward to today.  The Laird and I enjoy Redwoodshire and playing "farmer/ homesteader" with the 5.6 acres we have here.  Though we've just begun our journey, we have high hopes for the years to come.  The Laird has done a wonderful job with the garden, and we've enjoyed eating the fruit of our land and his labors.  The orchard (apple, pear, & cherry trees) are slowly but surely coming along, despite waging war against the deer who try to thwart our efforts.  Raspberries and blueberries are getting more productive with each year.  Chickens have been on the radar since we moved here.  However, the Laird recently learned that his boss is quite a homesteader and has bees!  Beekeeping just trumped chickens, and is at the top of our list of things we want to start next year.  He learned a ton from that conversation, which then launched me into research mode about beekeeping.  I checked out 6 books from our local libraries and started into some internet investigating as well.

The "Thinking Beekeeper" by Christy Hemenway and "The Backyard Beekeeper"by Kim Flottum are my favorites so far. 

Bees are fascinating and quite beneficial, and it's more than just the honey.  Bees benefit gardening & fruit trees as well.  Which is definitely a plus for us. The raw honey also has health benefits for allergies and even cuts/ scrapes.  I have been sold, and we are definitely going to venture into the world of beekeeping.  

There are 3 standard types of beehives: Langstroth (stacked boxes most are familiar with), the Top Bar Hive & the Warre Hive.  

After reading and researching, I have decided that we're going to go with the Top Bar Hive.  It is said that the Top Bar Hive is the most natural hive and also the least disruptive to the bees during hive inspection.  There is also an observation window on the side that allows you to watch the bees without opening it up.  The "Thinking Beekeeper" is a guide to natural beekeeping and top bar beehives- and was quite influential in my decision to go with the top bar hive.  

Bee Thinking looks like a great place to purchase bee hives, tools and accessories.  They appear have beautifully crafted beehives, with great reviews.  The initial investment into beekeeping is higher than I imagined, especially with the top bar beehive.  However, I am finding that many people build their own beehives and equipment.  Bee Thinking sells their hive plans.  Though there are many free plans online, we are new to Beekeeping and want to eliminate any unnecessary frustrations.  I also really love their design.  Therefore, we are going to purchase our top bars from Bee Thinking, and build our Top Bar Hive from their plans.  The great thing about getting the plans is that we can build more Top Bar Hives in the future if we grow our apiary.

Building the Top Bar Hive is one of the projects on our list for winter.  Another winter priority is renovating our dining room.  Until then...

A Barn Door Handle Towel Hanger

In searching for creatively unique options for hanging our hand towels in the bathroom and kitchen, I saw a cute idea using door handles.  Rather than using a hook or the typical towel rack/ rod, I opted for a barn door handle to hang our hand towels on- for both the bathroom and kitchen. 

I ordered 4 iron forged handles off of ebay.  We hung one to the right of the apron sink in the kitchen, and one near the sink in the bathroom.  Originally, I thought I may hang 2 near each sink, but once they were hung, I felt like 1 was enough.  So we still have 2 door handles left for anither project in the future.   Check them out! 







Another great idea from the internet!

 In the kitchen:

In the bathroom:

New Favorite Kitchen gadgets- the trusty little dehydrator & magnificent mandolin slicer

A few weeks ago, I bought a dehydrator off of craigslist with the goal of preserving our huge harvest of cherry tomatoes.  Little did I know how much I would love this trusty little dehydrator.  It a matter of a couple weeks, I have made:

1)  "Sun Dried" or dehydrated tomatoes
2)  Lots of Cinnamon Apple chips
3)  Apple & Raspberry Fruit Leather
4)  Apple Fruit Leather
5)  Zucchini Chips (drizzled with olive oil & seasoned with Adobo)

The unfortunate part of dehydrating is that I only have 6 round trays to fill!  And once the produce is fully dried it shrinks up to be a fraction of the mass that I started with.  But that "shrinking" is what makes each item so flavorful in the dehydrated state.  And a second unfortunate part of dehydrating is that I love each thing so much, that it only lasts a day in this house.

All of the above items that we've dehydrated are completely home grown and organic.  The apples were graciously given to us by a friend who has a tree that produces more apples than they know what to do with.  I should tip them off to the Joys of a dehydrator. Some of the apples came from our own trees as well.  The raspberries, tomatoes and zucchini were all grown at Redwoodshire.  So all these tasty treats have been free, minus the time and energy it took to prepare the food and run the dehydrator.





APPLE & ZUCCHINI CHIPS-
I have been hand cutting the apples and zucchini to dehydrate into chips.  I just ordered a mandoline slicer  to make the task quicker and the chip slices more uniform.  And boy it is magnificent!  There is a dial that allows you to decide how thick of slices you want to cut.  It took a fraction of the time it took me to cut the old fashion way.  It usually takes about 1 apple per tray.

 I drizzled the apples in lemon juice to prevent browning and then sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar.  For the zucchini slices I drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled them with Adobo seasoning.






FRUIT LEATHERS-
I found some easy directions on this Simply Recipes Blog, that I used as a guide to make my first batches of fruit leather.  My dehydrator came with 2 plastic sheets for making fruit leather.  First I pealed and cored the apples.  Then I cut the apples into smaller chunks, drizzled them with lemon juice and threw them into a sauce pan.  The process is exactly the same as making apple sauce.  I simply added a little bit of water to a sauce pan, and brought the apple mixture to a boil- cooking until the apples were soft.  For the Apple Raspberry leather, I added a handful of our raspberries to the pot when the apples were soft enough to be blended.  Then I pureed the mixture in my Ninja blender.  I poured mixture onto plastic sheets in dehydrator and let the dehydrator to it's thing.  Once they were finished, I cut into smaller pieces and stored in a Ziplock bag.

As previously mentioned, I LOVE dehydrating! And my new mandoline slicer makes the task so quick- in a matter of 10 minutes I can wash, peel, slice, sprinkle with cinnamon & load all 6 trays.  I am so proud of myself in preserving our abundant harvest and not letting it go to waste.  There are so many different ways to preserve produce, and by the end of the summer it's nice to find different ways to enjoy the harvest of the garden.  I can't dehydrate things fast enough.  Maybe someday I will get a larger unit.

Raspberries Galore!

Summer 2014

This is our 2nd season of raspberries here at Redwoodshire and it's the best we've ever had.  Our old house didn't have good sun, and therefore the plants didn't do well.  We planted our Raspberry row in the Fall of 2013.  Then we built the trellis in the summer of 2014.  This Spring (2015) many new canes grew and filled in the gaps between all the individual plants we had originally planted. As the photos demonstrate, the plants looked about the same in early Spring as they did last Summer.  By the first picking in June, the new canes had shot up and filled our Raspberry row right up.  It's difficult to tell where our original plants were. I highly recommend ever-bearing raspberry plants.  They produce a light crop at the end of June and early July.  Then in mid- September they produce a huge crop!  We picked 3 quarts of berries last week, and today another quart.  It's absolutely amazing!  Organic home grown, fresh picked raspberries- can't get any better than that.  We're hoping to spread some of our plants into a second row to make room for all the new canes that will come next Spring, and thus eventually increase our yield.  I am also eager to plant a Queen Anne Golden raspberry, as soon as I can find a place to purchase them.  We may have missed our chance for this year.

Spring 2015

We had no idea how quickly raspberry plants spread.  Honestly raspberries are somewhat as easy to grow as weeds!

Fall 2015

 As can be noted from the photos, our trellis needs a little help.  We need to counter balance the tension outside of the posts with some sort of contraption.  In researching growing grapes and different trellises, I suspect we will fix these when we are building grape trellises sometime in the future.  For now, it is what it is.