Apartment project finished!

So here are a few pictures of my apartment project in reverse order; from finished to start.   (that's just the way they load...)  The "start" photos are more for me, to be able to remember where things are, etc. but feel free to check out the finished project.  

Many of you have offered to help; I really appreciate that, I'm just not good at asking for it or accepting it, and besides I mostly worked on it in "snatches", an hour before supper, and an hour or two after putting the kids to bed, etc.  It makes it  more difficult to ask for help that way... Anyway, it 99% done now, I got a little bigger fridge than whats in the photo and an oven now that I haven't installed yet, and I don't really have any shelves in the closets, but that will have to wait because they are full right now...

My girls painting all the trim!! Big help!

loft apartment

For those of you who know me and maybe have been wondering why I have been so reclusive, let me share with you  my latest consuming project; it has been the loft apartment that we are trying to build.  I shouldn't say "trying to build"; we ARE building it.  It just feels like its going really slowly when I am used to having as many crews as I need around me whenever I want something done.  Alas, since we are busy at work, and nobody is paying me to do this; its just me and whatever volunteer help I have at the moment.  

I have spent nearly every waking moment of daylight on this loft for the last month or two.  (With the exception for Apple Day and Salami Day) Now with the help of lights, I can spend waking moments of dark, as well.   It is really nice to have a project that is not only at my house so my kids can be around, but is actually working on my shed that has all my tools in it, instead of having to run back home after something, etc.  But now it is "crunch time."  Wifey's youngest sister, and her new husband Jonathon from China are supposed to be here in 3 or 4 weeks, and will be in our basement until we get done.  I don't pretend to think I can have it completely finished by the time they get here, but I may have a good start on it, by at least having it be a livable space, even if the bathroom and kitchen is incomplete. 

These pictures uploaded weird, so if you want to see them sequentially, start at the bottom and scroll up... 

My little helper and most faithful of followers!

Herself "hanging" out with me, even though I didn't need help.  She brings her magazines because she knows I get super bored without anybody around to harass.

Back when I did this stuff for a living; Moisture Resistant Sheetrock (for the bathroom) was Green; for some unknown reason, it is now Perry-winkle.

View of bedroom.

Ceiling insulated.

View from lower floor.

Stairs to loft

And then, just for fun, here is picture of my youngest with a good reason to wear shoes around...  He must have stomped his foot on them to get them stuck as bad as they were.  Poor little shaver...

The day of the Salami cometh!

I love October!  I actually feel like getting outside and doing stuff!   It was another big day at the Foster Farmlet this weekend; Saturday I framed exterior walls on my loft apartment in the morning and then the kids and I spent most of the afternoon stuffing sausage.  It was really big fun, at least for us kids!

13#'s of Pure Foster Ground Beef (alas, Not Daniel Foster beef)

My Sausage crew and equipment!  (the eldest wasn't feeling well)

Thirteen lovely All-Beef Salamis (Raw).

Salamis, cooked and smoked, hanging to cool.

Since I had the ol' smoker going anyway, I threw a brisket on; it turned out pretty nice.  A full 1/4 inch smoke ring...

In unrelated news, I took my three little pigs to the butcher today.  It was really quite the adventure; my truck does not have working gas gauge and so I usually can tell when I need gas by watching the tripometer, but somehow messed it up; I ran out of gas right on Highway 54!  I NEVER run out of gas... NEVER! It seems a really horrible waste of my precious time, way worse than filling up.  And on top of that, I had the WHOLE family with me, stuck in the pickup, waiting for Grampa to bring us some fuel.  He finally rescued us, but not before we played at least 10 rounds of "20 questions".  But we are really looking forward to having some readily available pork again.

I told Herself this evening that someday they will have the technology to be able to identify a specific gene in people like myself that causes a fixation on preparing massive amounts of  homemade food for one's family, even in completely unnecessary conditions.  Someday there will be a cure; they will be able to inject me with some "Fix-all" medicine, and then from then on, all I will want to do is sit around and watch sit-coms and watch/talk about sports.  I'm pretty sure Herself is praying for that cure...  

The Day of the Apple Cometh!

Yesterday was the harvest of the fruit of my recent labors: APPLE DAY!!  Even though Herself went off to Garage Sales as usual, I started early, waking the kids up, wanting their help.  I got them slicing and peeling apples while I made the crust for an apple pie.  They were sure they were dreaming but it was fun to see daddy doing something they had never seen him do before.  We had a LOT of fun and there was a LOT of silliness involved!  Someone decided that it was good luck to put an apple under your hat on Apple Day, so we all had stocking caps with apples underneath.  After the pie was in the oven I went out to the butcher shop and ran about 6 apples through the meat grinder and made applesauce for breakfast!  Then we ate a bunch of cinnamon buttery rolls made out of extra pie crust (like my mom gave me when I was a kid; I liked them best raw...) with our breakfast applesauce.

But the main event was to make APPLE CIDER!  I had spent nearly every waking moment for the last two weeks making a cider press in preparation for this day.  Finally it is done and we couldn't wait to get started.

Here we soak the apples before we cut the bad spots and worms out.  Seeds and stems go in the grinder as well.  My cider-mentor Dan Kauffman told me 2 tart apples for every sweet one, and the more variety the better.

Apple cutting crew!  Don't come over to MY house to see what's going on unless you're willing to be put to work!

Here is a shot of my little set up in the butcher shop.  Starts right and moves left.  We started with about 6 bushel boxes of apples. It goes from box to tub, to cutting table, to grinder to pulp bucket, to press bucket to cider bucket.

Meat grinder making apple pulp.  Notice the cheese cloth that makes it so we can transfer pulp to oak press bucket.  The pulp stays in the cheese cloth and works like a big coffee filter.

The cider press in action!  Yay! Turn the crank and the juice comes out and runs out the end of the copper pan.  I just cranked it till I couldn't anymore and came back to it a minute later and it was easy to turn again. It compacts it to about half the size of the unpressed pulp after squeezing the juice out.

 Close up of the cider press screw.

Yum! Foamy fresh cider!  Nothing better!

Siphoning off into bottles.

After a while we started using this great antique sausage stuffer/cider press.  Next year I will use them both.  I couldn't really keep up with the electric grinder. This old press worked really pretty well, but you couldn't do as much at a time with it.  If that's all I had, I would have got way behind. 

This the "remains" of 6 bushel boxes of apples!  Who knew there was so much air in apples?  I figured that we got about 10 gallons of cider from those 6 bushels.  Hard to tell exactly; I can't tell how much we drank during the process

She said we ate so many apples they were coming out of her nose and ears!!!

This was one of my favorite parts!  Watching my hogs (that weren't even hungry) utterly destroy about 100# of pulp!  Happy hogs make great ham! They made absolute pigs out of themselves...

It was a great project; not counting set up time (and building the press, of course) it took about 4 hours to press 6 bushels and clean up.  At 16.00 per bushel, it makes pretty expensive cider, but you can't buy this stuff at Walmart (nor anywhere else; it's like store bought tomatoes vs HomeGrown), and I'm always looking for fun stuff that I can do with my family that doesn't involve TV or leaving my farm.  I think this was a great experience and can't wait to do again next year.  If you have any apple trees or know of anybody that does and doesn't do anything with them; let me know! We will come and pick!!  I have planted 4 of my own trees, but have yet to get any fruit from them.