Thank goodness for laptops

The house is lovely and warm.I went down and checked the firebox and it is full of beautiful red hot coals . The kitchen wood stove is chugging away and soup is on cooking. But it is 3am and I am not sleeping. So I am blogging and writing out Christmas cards. How wonderful I can communicate via laptop. We visited the Arva flour mill today ,but they did not have large bags of flour so we will have to go back another time.Their flour grinder person is due sometime this week. We did pick up some beautiful oats though.The rain has dampened our moods here a bit and even the chickens did not want to venture out today. Ken said when he went to put them to bed they were all in trying to dry off and our beautiful white rooster looked like he fell into a mud pile. Speaking of chickens , if you remember we bought a whack of chickens from our friends David and Sue in Guelph , well they have grown to be absolutely beautiful. Most of these are Mollies, so their colours are stunning. These chickens have the feathers that grace their legs. We ended up with a few roosters in the mix , but so far they only spar occasionally and it is funny to hear the newer guys trying out their crowing voices. They each sound different and we can generally tell who is crowing without looking.The young roosters will crow and their crowing voices will crack , so they try again and again until they are satisfied they have gotten it right...it is funny to hear.  We are looking forward to decorating for Christmas this weekend coming.Wanted to cut pine and cedar today but the rain kept us indoors. There are lakes in the fields around here ...if that had have been snowfall we would have gotten quite a pile. We will do a table top Victorian tree again this year, and most of the decorations will be baked this week. Please do drop in for a drink of good cheer if you are able . Well  I had better go and finish my cards before the ink dries in the ink well...see you soon
M

Thanks everyone

We will make the treck to Arva Mill tomorrow because it is so close . See what we can find .Thanks for the advise. We have ton's of Christmas baking to do and a long winter ahead...M

We are looking for flour mills

We are on the search for flour mills here in Southern Ontario. We are looking to buy large amounts to last the winter..so perhaps 100 lb bags. Does anyone have information on this they can share with us? Thank you in advance.
I have a ton of baking to do for the upcoming holiday season.
M

Mountain of wood

The outside cat's think Christmas has arrived early . We have a mountain of wood in the back driveway. Ken had it delivered yesterday and the cat's have discovered a new play area. This wood is lovely and will keep us warm and our kitchen stove pumping out heat hopefully all winter. Made pizza last night for supper and wow I wish you could taste the difference the wood stove makes .I am not a pizza fan, but home made in a wood stove will convert even the most picky.
See you soon
M

A Victorian Dinner

Greetings, we are continuing the experiment in Victorian living by holding a true Victorian dinner in January of 2012. We have set out the criteria below and welcome your responses. We decided not to do the Christmas Dinner because it is a very busy time of year for folks, especially those with small children. So a dinner in January it is.   Read on good gentles... 

 

We are looking for like minded people to share a dinner with us.Sometime in january of 2012.The year is 1865 and there is much to talk about. Join us for a truely authentic dinner. You must love history enough that you will be able to stay in 1st person period for the entire visit. Wear authentic clothing true to  the period. And participate according to the manners and customs of the year 1865. You might want to hone up on parlour games as well.You will apply to attend in a true period manner. So use your imagination. The mailing address will be given to those interested. Please only serious responses. Also this is not a steam punk event.

 

This is part of an experiment we have embarked on and are continuing to live for the next year. have a look at our blog and see what we are doing.

http://victorianyear1865.blogspot.com/

Winter wood & christmas

We have been dealing with winter wood for the past couple of weeks. Ensuring we will have enough to last all winter for both the wood furnace and the kitchen cook stove. Ken thinks he may have stumbled onto wood for $40 something a cord ,which is a fantastic price. He will find out today for sure. We have noticed that there are a lot more ads for wood. I am assuming the price of oil and gas is making wood is look like a good option again. It is a wonderfully warm heat. But not as clean. Our house is dusty and I need to clean more often to keep up with the dust. But I would not trade the warmth of wood for any other heat. When I first moved here to this house  I spent almost $6000 for oil . In one winter .While it was a bad winter, I was still commuting back to Guelph because I had my restaurant so I wasn't even here 3 days out of the week.  As soon as I could I had a new wood oil combo furnace installed. To date we have never used oil just wood . Probably could not afford to have the tank filled ,the prices are crazy .And the oil companies will not partially fill your tank. At least not around here . So we are happy with our wood heat and will continue on . Ken has some really large blocks which work well if we are going away for any length of time . We just build a good fire and bank the wood and throw a large block on top. pack other smaller pieces  around and the fire  lasts for sometimes 2 days. We have gathered lots of starter/kindling wood but will need more. By all accounts this is supposed to be a harsh winter. So we need /want to be well prepared. I have still not mastered the trick of starting the fire without paper. Luckily my seniors give me all of their old newspaper so I have a ready supply. One day I will hone my fire starting without paper skills. But not today.
Now onto Christmas.....
We have decided again to forgo the silliness that Christmas has become and just enjoy a lovely meal . We will have small gifts for the Grandchildren , but mostly practical things. For example Zoe will have a new bird feeder and some seed to put outside of her bedroom window. She loves creating so I will get her some art supplies too. Aidan and Jude are the same and love art supplies. I will send some money for Thor because he is in California. And sometime around Christmas Freya will arrive . A gift for all of us.
We think of Victorian Christmas which would include the year we are portraying 1865, with visions of flaming plum puddings,stockings,Christmas trees and beautifully dressed tables. Everywhere you look in ads for the Christmas season this lovley Victorian vision of the holidays is portrayed. But what was the reality of Christmas not so long ago...all over Victoria's world.
 Dickens "A Christmas Carol" is more to the reality of the Victorian Christmas. Especially  Victorian England in the cities which were over crowded and filled with underpaid and over worked mostly factory workers .Who crowded into the cities from the country sides looking for work. People were taken advantage of because of the over abundance of ready cheap labour. The industrial revolution had started and there was extreme wealth and dire poverty.
But I want to think about Christmas here , Upper Canada 1865. When I think about what Christmas and the on coming winter meant I think that the thought/focus of the season must have been survival. Just with our own little project here, despite our ability to travel into town if we need anything our thoughts are still on how to keep us and our animals warm, fed ,watered and to prepare for things such as maple syrup production in the early spring. It must have been a heavy burden to prepare for winter, to know your family and all of your livestock depended on you preparing properly and forgetting nothing in order to survive the winter months. You had no idea how long or how harsh that winter would be . I would also imagine that if you got together with family or neighbors it was your last visit often until the spring. Depending on the severity of the winter weather. Here where we live we are about 1/2 an hour from the outskirts of London. I can be in Lambeth in 1/2 hour from here .On the 401 doing at least 100 k's
I would imagine in 1865 it would have taken a good days drive to make the same trip. And another to drive back home .Which might have been slower depending on what you were carrying. So winter trips would not be made.
Just a few of the things that this project has made me think about. I am thinking more about what we take for granted, more about what we waste on a regular basis. How much free time we have that we waste. I am thinking about food and how and why some foods are prepared and when. What foods winter over and what foods need to be used up before winter. It is telling that since we have started this project how little spare time we have. We are constantly working. And have little spare time at all. Every day things are time consuming . But they also come with a satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. When you pop open a jar of home made whatever it is so much different than something you just payed for. You appreciate what that jar holds. And the work it took to fill it .

Ken here, I've spent the last two days cleaning out the basement and preparing it for the winter's wood. I'm also cleaning up outside so things are neat and tidy before the snow flies. It's not just the physical labour involved in cleaning things up, it's the forethought involved as well. It isn't enough to pick things up from one place and pile 'em up in another, I did that last year and that pile is still awaiting my attention on top of the other stuff for this year. That old saying " a place for everything and everything in it's place" means something different for me now. It isn't just neat tidy storage sheds, cut lawns, clean tidy houses and such. It also means, at least to me, that you have only the things you need and no more.

Tomorrow I'll be hunting up the maple syrup equipment and setting aside in our garden shed in preparation for sap in the spring. Why now, simply because I can find everything now without having to guess where it is or moving six feet of snow to get it. The list includes the sap buckets, spiles, sap storage bins, fire boxes, the bricks, stones and iron frame to make the boiler, assorted buckets, fire pokers and other miscellaneous equipment. It should take me about two hours to secure this equipment and save me about two days worth of searching in the spring when we need to set up for sap. This reminds me of another old saying " a time for everything". It would seem the Victorians were wiser than we thought.

That's it for me, I now return you to your regularly scheduled blogger, the lovely and talented Margaret. :-)

So as we all prepare for another winter and another Christmas season we seem to be thinking more about where and when and how. I for one am appreciating the efforts that simple tasks take . I am looking forward to winter and all of its challanges. And some free time so I can beat the pants off of my beautiful husband when we have time to play scrabble .
See you soon.