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.

My cup runneth over...

The other day, (Herself's birthday) I took the kids to town to do a little mama b-day shopping.  I was trying to be sensitive to Isaiah, after hearing everyone keep talking about how cute Stu was.  I asked Isaiah if he wished he were as cute as Stu.  He adamantly shook his head and pronounced: "I don't want to be cute; I'm EIGHT!!" (he's seven, by the way, but it was lost on me at the time...)

I told him that was good, I was glad.  The reason I was glad, was because I don't want him to feel jealous or left out or envious of his little brother.  But the result was that Stu got a really cute but very worried look on his face and looked up and said "Daddy, is it BAD to be cute?"  

I just told him; no, and good thing for him.  Then I told him that cute just looks better on 5 year old's than eight year old's...  Of course, at that point, the girls just couldn't take it anymore and both started complaining about how offended they were that Isaiah is calling himself eight...

I have really enjoyed this weekend; it's been a good one for being a father.  I have had several good "teachable moments" that I have actually taken advantage of.  I am really enjoying this phase of life; having kids that I can talk to about serious things, like my faith, what to expect from the world, or how to behave in the face of adversity.  I enjoy that much more than wiping butts, looking for shoes, picking toddlers up out of mud.  My cup runneth over, and as I said in the B.O.B. meeting Sunday, I have had several occasions to remember that I that I have; all that I can do, or have done, I owe to god.  It has been the "Theme" of the weekend.  I feel that I was able to convey that thought effectively to my children; at least the older ones.  At least they realize that I take credit for nothing; I'm not really talking about material things, but for any kind of success that I have realized in life.  It would take me hours to write it out, but let me just say: "but for the grace of god..."

 It's been a great weekend; I got some things done around here, and it's been healing to my soul, worn thing by the constant chaffing of a 55-60 hour work week on an average of 4 hours of sleep per night, and dealing with the triple digit weather.  Come on Winter!  Or at least Fall...

Hog Roast

 I've been thinking; it sure is fun to be me!  It feels like I do all kinds of really cool stuff; but then I realized that most likely everybody thinks it cool to be "them" as well, because they do the stuff that they think is cool and fun.  As odd as it sounds, I'm sure there were lots of people that wouldn't want to butcher and cook a whole hog.  But on Saturday, I accomplished something that has been a lifelong dream of mine, and something that always thought would  be really cool to do.  I butchered and cooked a whole hog!

It was the biggest hog I had; I think the kids called him "Ham-ster." I sure he outweighed me; probably 170 pounds.  I will spare the gruesome pictures of blood and guts; I consider these pictures to be pretty G-rated.  After killing it and bringing it up to the shed, I hung it up and dumped it into the barrel of water next to it; heated up to around 160-180 degrees.  Once we dipped him and let him sit for a couple minutes, the hair came of really nicely! We just scraped him with my butcher knife and/or canning jar lids; it worked better than I had imagined.

Emma on the job!

 Washing the freshly scraped pig:

 After gutting it, we "butterflied" it, so that it would lay flat and cook more evenly.

 Prepping the Grill.  I made this grill about 5 years ago with this purpose in mind.  It took me several years of picking away at it to get it done.  One thing I am learning about life and about myself is that despite the fact that I want everything to happen all at once, it just takes time and patience.  And "stick-to-it-iveness."

 Moving the meat onto the grill.  It was a big challenge getting it into the grill.  I was pretty proud of us rookies; our time was from the pig walking around to meat on the grill in right at 3 hours!

 Done and ready to cook!

 This is ThePaulPage and I pulling it out after about 5 hours of cooking.  We are just going to flip it over and Endo it.  This time it was a little more nerve racking because it was very hot now...

Very unprofessional picture; can't figure out how to rotate this picture once I've uploaded it on to Blogger. Anyway, you get the idea; the meat is done.

Pulling the pig!  And eating a lot of it too!  Hard to not pick at it when your pulling...  It cooked for a total of 7 hours; should have had another hour on it, I think. It fell off the bone well enough, but could have been a little better.

It is too bad I don't have any pictures of people sitting around eating it; I think we just sort of forgot about the pictures.  I had requested a very low key event, in case it turned out bad or wasn't done soon enough.  I didn't want 50 hungry people sitting around mad because their food wasn't ready yet.  As it turned out, everything was OK and I have a little more confidence now about it...  

Afterwards, we vac-packed what we didn't give away and froze it in 1-2# packages.  Sunday, we had four out of four kids with racking coughs, so we didn't go to church, and I spent ALL morning and part of the afternoon cleaning up the shed even though I thought I had it pretty well cleaned up Saturday night. 

Survivor's Guilt

Yes, I've done it again; posted another completely un-funny, over-wordy, introspective blog that will be of benefit to no one but myself that few if any will have time to read. I know I seldom take time to read about other's torments. But I do feel better for it; I can't seem to flesh out my thoughts with out pen and paper (so to speak).


definition:

Survivor, survivor's, or survivors guilt or syndrome is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives themselves to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not.

As some of you will know, my family and I made a quick trip to colorado last week to attend the memorial of Wifey's 1st cousin, Paul (son of our very dear Aunt and Uncle) who tragically  died from a drug overdose last week at age 31. Paul, in so many ways, was the guy everybody would want to be, friendly and outgoing, a stranger to no one, and a joy to be around. While I haven't spent much time around him in the last several years, I understood that he had some issues with addictions that he just couldn't seem to shake, despite some serious efforts on his part.  Again, while I can't say that I knew him well and knew that he was saved, I feel that I know his parents well enough to be able to take their word for it that if they believed he was, then I do too; not that ultimately it makes one lick of difference what I believe, anyway.  It is especially striking to me as I always saw so many similarities between Paul and myself, besides the obvious similarities in doing drugs and being in rebellion towards God. 

We went, and mostly said nothing to our dear Aunt and Uncle, tried to stay out of their way and just show them that we loved them. It wasn't hard to say nothing; it felt like there was nothing to say, besides you don't much feel like chatting after just 3 hours of sleep and an eight hour drive.  It was so heart breaking to be there with them in their grief, though they bore it like heroes. Uncle even gave the eulogy, and the gospel was so well presented; I really felt that the service honored both God and Paul well.

I'm not sure how to go about explaining this, since it's so muddy in my own brain; but I do have some amount of guilt associated with Paul's death. I always just assumed that "he would get his act together," much as I did finally, well into adulthood, when I finally found God to be an irresistible force, and my own will broken. In retrospect, it seems so easy, so simple, I just made the decisions, then executed them from there. First "a", then "b", etc. I've often confessed to people that I have little compassion for people in similar situations. As I learned more and more of Paul's situation, I began feeling depressed; evil seems such a force, and so powerful.  I have been in a funk all weekend, so overwhelmed by all the emotions of others and my own, that I felt completely spent, and didn't want to go to the remembrance meeting this morning; yet so glad that I did. I struggled the whole meeting, wanting to say something, yet not really having anything to say, but the singing this morning was particularly sweet to me,  probably because I wasn't participating. I just sat back and listened to half a hundred or so saints washing the filth from my soul with pure voices lifting praises and thanksgiving to our lord. 

I write this sitting in the sun shine, on an ipad, from the seat of a four wheeler, watching my four perfectly healthy, beautiful children playing and screaming and splashing in my own pond, on my own place with just enough breeze to keep me from being too warm, lest I be uncomfortable.  I don't know about everybody else, but this seems as close to paradise on this side of heaven as it is likely to get. Here I sit, fulfilled and content with a belly full of home raised ham I ate for Sunday lunch, while Paul lies still in refrigeration because his estranged wife literally can't find her way out of Pennsylvania to Colorado in order to sign the paperwork to finish his cremation. Does this seem fair?  Does this seem like justice? Is this because of some merit of my own? Some great decision making process that Paul missed out on? I don't think so... But I'm reluctant to attribute it all to God; it makes him seem so capricious, so fickle, as if there is some great lottery that we are all a part of, whether we like it or not, when we know from his word that he desires all to be saved, and those of us that are to be holy.  It wasn't that one of us didn't have great parents; we both did. We were both taught the great truths from our cradles. Why is it that I don't now ever struggle with addictions to illegal drugs, even after I threw my whole being into them? Why do I seemingly suffer little if any adverse effects in my relationship with my wife despite living an impure life, not to mention one that was at that time of my life centered around pornography? Can you see why I am interested in this? Why this bothers me? Even if not for my own sake, but for the sake of me as a parent?

I find, however, that I am not alone in my affliction, which helps. I texted my good friend, who currently lives in the obscenely far off state of Texas two words : "survivor's guilt" and about a six word description of what happened to Paul, and that was the extent of the conversation; rather one sided.  Two days later I get a long email complete with verses that help tremendously. More than anything, I find it comforting and amusing that with just a short cryptic message that he was able to identify and relate to in some real way, my guilt for having lived through and even thrive where others haven't. I do believe that Paul's death was the most merciful of acts from the father. I just give him praise that he doesn't give justice to all such as me.

Here is one verse that was meaningful to me: 

1 Timothy 1:8-17

 12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service, 13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; 14 and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. 15 It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. 16 Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those [l]who would believe in Him for eternal life. 17 Now to the King [m]eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory [n]forever and ever. Amen.

And also, for those of you who literally have nothing better to do than follow my links around the internet, here is a new take on an old song that my friend and I are in agreement that is meaningful to both of us:
http://joshgarrels.bandcamp.com/track/farther-along
This link will take to the artist's website where you can listen for free, read the lyrics, and download the album for free if you desire.