and here is our little house under a ginormous oak tree (as seen from the driveway):
Lots of cool stuff has happened since the last blog post. For example, I finished welding up the woodstove and installed it. Have a look:
Looks like an ugly robot right? This is kind of what it began as:
Except, it did have a top on it. I cut it off because the metal was warped, rusting through and the collar that connects with the flue pipe was the wrong size. The new and improved stove features new swivel air intakes, glass windows in the door (so we can actually see the fire!), an air wash system that keeps the window glass clean, secondary air tubes inside the stove (that make the stove re-burn escaping smoke for better efficiency / less pollution), and the inside is lined with firebrick. I added gaskets around the door to make an air-tight seal, two handles & latches to close and lock the door, a little tray that catches embers that sometimes fall out when the door is opened for loading (and it keeps the door from opening too much), and heat-shields on the back and bottom for extra safety + convection circulation. I did a bunch of other stuff too, but its not really important. What matters is, now we have a source of heat that makes plenty of warmth for the bus, a nice fire glow at night and .... lots of crackling sounds!
We've also been taking a lot of walks together; we're trying to walk together once a day. On these walks, we started hunting for mushrooms and identifying the easier ones to learn. Chanterelles are pretty simple to ID and not really dangerous if you mess up - so we started there. Here is Katarina with some of our catch:
We cut them up:
And with this recipe (http://www.earthy.com/Cream_of_Chanterelle_Mushroom_Soup_W185.cfm) we made delicious Cream of Chanterelle Soup:
It actually tasted much better than it looks in that picture. Since then, we've found a lot of interesting mushrooms and some of them quite edible. In fact, in the little strip of forest directly adjacent to my parking spot at the college, I found a huge cache of Matsutake mushrooms (http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/sep2000.html). They smell weird and don't taste like much....but are worth a lot of money in Japan!
This is our fake-dog Dave:
He's a real dog, he's just not our dog. We wish that he was. Anyways, my last piece of exciting news is that we officially joined a CSA for the winter season. Winter Season? What's this? Yes... amazingly there are enough things growing in Oregon during winter that there are actually winter CSA's. Here is a taste of our first pickup:
Those green fractals are actually a type of broccoli. It's really edible too. They also gave us this great squash that can double as a phone in a pinch:
Anyways. Happy holidays to everyone. I'm off to make presents and celebrate being done with Fall term at the YMCA (they're close and have a hot tub...)
