New beginnings

It feels like a dull day here at the farm. The chickens are happy to be running around in the yard picking away at who knows what...but they seem happy doing it. The are chattering away at everyone including the cats, it is a funny thing to watch  as a chicken runs up to a cat chatters away then runs away....it is no wonder that Miss Potter was inspired by her farm animals..they are most entertaining.
The end of the year 2011 is nearing and there is lot's to do before the day and year is over . I am tired today,  we have been sick all week. Started Christmas weekend , Aidan our Grandson was sick and I guess I caught it from him. Monday I could barely function but still managed to prepare meals for my seniors. Being self employed has many advantages with the exception of paid sick days...if you have them I hope you truly appreciate them...just saying.
I have been up since abound 6, got the fires going again . I made bread and the loaves are now sitting for their final proof while the wood cook stove is getting  hot and up to temperature. I brought in some more wood and did some outside wood sorting. We have literally a mountain of wood out there .Unfortunately alot of it is wet.
I have also been cleaning all day. Being the good Victorian that I am it is traditional to have a perfectly clean home to bring in the new year. So that is what I am busy doing today, hopefully I will get it all done. Including sweeping the only carpet in the house ,which is in the dining room,A lovely Asian rug. It has been swept clean and hopefully will stay that way until I can pull it out for spring cleaning and give it a good wash outside. I have polished all of the silver and it is happily in the cabinet awaiting our next dinner party. I think a good goal would be to have a dinner party before I need to re polish the silver...Don't you think?
Just  so you all know I am writing this throughout the day. So if it reads like I have just gotten a new thought , you are correct. I am trying to remember all of the things I wanted to tell you before the day and ultimately the year is out...
The bread was wonderful...
We have accomplished much this year. Especially with this project. While we do have some things we cannot unhook from the hydro grid ,they are few. Especially the blower for the furnace, we have no idea how that could be eliminated . We still have 1 electric light bulb in the basement . Which we use when we go down to fill the furnace. The stairs are original and steep,quite dangerous in fact so 2 hands are needed to go down. So it is one area I will not take a chance on. And it is only 1 small bulb. I figure if I fell down those stairs especially if Ken is away no one would find me for days. So I think it is better to be safe.
All of our rooms have excellent light with our candles and candle wall sconces. We are kept fed and warm with our wonderful kitchen wood stove and our wood furnace . We have jars and jars of preserves to help us through the winter. We have plenty of books and projects to keep us busy when we have time to relax with a book or sewing. We have scrabble to keep us challenged .We  have each other , walking in the same direction. Excitedly discussing our upcoming plans . We have our friends who are lovingly following us on this journey,giving us advise, asking us questions, and challenging us to try different idea. To this we feel blessed , and we Thank you ...
Happy New Years everyone !!!!!!

Stove Pipes

Greetings everyone. I have just spent the last 5 hours removing, cleaning and replacing the stove pipes for the cook stove and the furnace. A filthy dirty job if there ever was one. I look like a chimney sweep which, in essence I am. The furnace pipes came down first, I then took them outside to clean. Since we are living as close to 1865 as possible, cleaning the pipes means NO CHEMICALS!!!! This meant I had to come up with a period method of cleaning. I built a small fire and set the pipes on it one at a time. The creosote built up inside the pipes gradually heated up and then (as I secretly hoped) burst into flame! This melted the creosote and burnt it off as well, leaving an easily removed ash.

Took about an hour to do this and the pipes are remarkably clean. So much so that I noticed one of the elbows will need replacing beause it is full of small holes. The furnace pipes have been re-assembled and the furnace lit and it is drawing quite nicely thank you.

I must also mention I cleaned a good deal of ash from the furnace fire box. We want to make soap early in 1866 (2012) so this ash will become lye water, one of the ingredients of soap the other being animal fat.

The cook stove also got a good cleaning, pipes and all. I took the top off the stove, remove the pipes for cleaning and set about removing creosote and accumulated ash. The pipes were not as caked up with creosote as the furnace pipes so I simply wacked them on the outside with a stick, shook out the loose creosote and soot and re-assembled them to the stove. Inside the stove there was quite an accumulation of ash and soot, all of which had to be removed mechanically with a brush and scrapper. That being done, the top of the stove was cleaned up and re-assembled. I have yet to build a fire in the stove but it should draw much better now.

Margaret has a book which contains excerpts and quotations from letters written durintg the Victorian Age in Upper Canada. There is mention of cleaning stove pipes which apparently was a job which made folks testy to say the least and was dirty to boot! It would seem that my foray into pipe cleaning was a simple little re-enactment of a dirty Victorian task in Upper Canada.

It may seem an obvious thing but good dry wood is a must if you want to keep the build up of creosote and soot to a minimum. I have been guilty of leaving our wood out and partially uncovered. In a normal winter this would not be such a problem. However, this year has proven to be a wet one to say the least and it has continued to be so right up to the present time. So bad me, we have some wet wood to deal with and I'll be cleaning pipes again in a month or so most likely.  My penance I guess. (Insert dramatic sigh!) :-)

That's all for now, talk to you soon.

Ken

Just taking time out this morning to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas ...we are visiting Guelph and Grandchildren.
Thank you to all of you that have taken this journey with us by reading our blog and being so very supportive.
M

The house is warm and quiet.

The week is almost over , will be nice to have a couple of days off. The house is especially quiet tonight. My lovely boy is away at work and will not be home until tomorrow.Good thing the house is nice and warm. I spent the day baking and preparing Christmas cookie and sweet trays for my seniors. Putting the parlour back together and washing clothes. I have literally hundreds of cookies.
I made sugar candy also,which the kid's will love I am sure.
The chicken's are loving this weather , and are happy to be out roaming around . Fantastic for this date of the year.But the yard is a mud hole near the coop . I have never seen it so muddy. I believe we have a rat in the chicken coop. Seems to have chewed a hole conveniently right near the feeder.. I put something heavy over the hole until Ken gets home...hopefully the little bugger bangs his head . He seems to be just after the grain because the eggs are all still in tact. Our newest chickens are starting to lay and we have lovely peewee eggs arriving daily,in a beautiful green colour. We call these Zoe eggs as they are just small enough to grace a little girls breakfast table.
I was thinking today that we have been doing this project now for over 6 months, these have been the easier months , the harder ones might be coming, although I think we are coping well. Wish we could do this full time . I have had  many people refer to a TV show called Victorian Farm. We watched a  few episodes and it was a very cool project and a very successful TV program. Which I am sure was the whole idea.
My Grandson Aidan loves the program. But also points out they have lots of help and a good financial backer in order to do what they are doing...smart boy.
We will head back to Guelph Christmas eve,in order to watch little ones open their packages on Christmas morning . So I would like to take the time to wish all of you a Very Happy Christmas!!
I will let you know how our Christmas Crackers did ...Jude was very pleased to have made them with me .
M

Mrs Beeton's book of Household management

Ken has purchaced an origional copy of Mrs Beeton's book of household management...it is fantastic.
We also while in Guelph today scouted out bookstores and found some wonderfully helpful books on farming ,one on broom making .I found one on Victorian life in Upper Canada compiled from diaries and journals ...very excited to read these..found them at Macondo books here in Guelph
M

Christmas is coming ,the goose is getting fat.....

Well it is officially 1 week before Christmas. Lots and lots of baking done.
Today my Grandson Jude and I spent the evening making Christmas crackers. These are always part of our Christmas table . And to not have them would cause a stir with the children. Jude had fun making them for the first time. I think he ate as many pieces of candy as was put in the tubes. But considering he is turning 6 Christmas day he is allowed.
The parlour looks fantastic by the way.We had a lovely contractor and his wife put up the paper for us . Albert and Candace Boost from London did a wonderful job and in no time flat. Albert is a true expert and we were very grateful that he was able to help us with this with such short notice. He will be back to do other things for us in the new year. In the mean time if you or anyone you know needs work done ,at a very fair price and done extremely well give Albert a call @ 519-204-7576...fantastic work indeed.
I can hardly wait to show off the parlour ,it is beautiful.Well I had better go for now .I will talk to you later on this week...have fun preparing for the holidays.

Home

Good morning. It is wonderful to be home. We travelled to Guelph on Monday afternoon and arrived home last night.
Believe it or not we had banked the wood furnace enough that there were still hot coals and we just needed to add a bit of wood and paper and away the fire went . It is a very good furnace and keeps the home fires burning well.
While it is lovely visiting our family I miss the gentle quiet of home. Part of the reason we travelled to Guelph was to purchase wall paper for the front parlour. We found what we were looking for fairly quickly and it matches the original somewhat. Apparently wallpaper went out of fashion and is now just starting to come back..I did not know that
Today will be spent Christmas baking. With only 10 days until Christmas day I want to finish up as much as possible. I already have hundreds of cookies sitting in the parlour aging to perfection.And they will be the gifts this year for everyone except the children. The light is just coming up outside my window and it appears that today will be another windy wet day . We have wood to bring in today so it will be cold again. The house is lovely and warm though . I was planning on doing some sewing  but the light will not be high enough today to do it . I will have to wait for another day.Well the wood stove is gaining temperature and there is water to heat and breakfast to cook...Talk to you soon
M

The lights of the city

I am in Guelph until tomorrow morning then I will head back home. I thought I would share some thoughts with you on lights.
We have gotten so used to the gentle glow of candle lighting that anything else seems rather harsh. Took a trip into a store today in order to get wallpaper and the lights nearly blinded me . Wow no wonder the hydro bills are so high in these places..
Speaking of hydro bills, we got one the other day and it was $40 but the sad thing about the bill is they added $50 on top of that for delivery. If we could somehow eliminate our hydro entirely that would be wonderful indeed.
We cannot at least not for the time being. The furnace heats with wood but has an electric blower, I am not sure if it would wreck the furnace if that blower was unhooked . I am not about to take such a chance so I will have to keep paying for some hydro , but it irks me to no end to have to pay more for the delivery than what the actual product used costs. Oh well..
But back to lighting . We light our home exclusively with candles, and with the help of the occasional oil lamp. Our dining room has no fewer than 25 candles burning in the evening during suppers. It is gentle and warm and peaceful. People ask if we can see properly ..the answer is absolutely. Often after a meal we clear the table,pour tea and sit and read. Ken took the electric guts out of our chandelier in the dining room and turned it into a candle chandelier. There is plenty of light to do this.Our library is the same , we have 10-12 candles going at one time which gives us a fair amount of light , Certainly enough to see average print.
We dip our candles from a pot of wax that sits on our wood cook stove in the kitchen at all times. we add the stubs to this and any other wax we get our hands on . The pot is quite large and the colour changes according to what we add to the pot this week. But the colour mostly remains a reddish tinge.I think because most of the candles one finds at second hand shops were bought for the Christmas season. So when we buy candles they are generally red...most of them anyway.
Ken made some fantasting wooden squares in which we attach our lengths of wick. We then start dipping until we get the width of the candles measuring an inch to an inch and a half wide. We do at least a dozen at a time using this method. Then just hang the whole contraption to dry with the candles still attached
We have a couple of oil lamps and I use these for evening work that needs more light . When I am writing letters I need more light behind me so I light the oil lamp on the wall beside my desk. That and a few candles and I can actually see where I am dipping my pen and not dripping ink all over the paper.
 I am finding daylight is so very important,especially now when it is leaving so early in the evening ,It makes getting finer things done harder in the evenings or on cloudy days .So I don't waste it like I used to .
I have been asked by many people about how we are lighting our home and if we can see properly with just candle light...the answer is absolutely yes.
See you soon
M

Cleaning cleaning cleaning!!!

Seems to me that from the beginning of this journey my time cleaning has ever increased. The house seems increasingly dirty and dusty.I am blaming most of this on the increased use of the wood cook stove and now the wood furnace. But wow oh wow I never seem to get caught up. I would imagine that this was a constant problem during the time period we are emulating. It explains the need for help for sure. Now in all fairness I work full time and travel to Guelph most often 2 days a week where I stay over, because  I am launching my consulting business. I also have a Rotary  meeting on wednesday evenings so I am not home all of the time. But clearly there does not seem to be enough daylight hours in the day. Which is another interesting part of this . Most of the work needs to be done during daylight hours as candle light is not enough to really get at the fine work.With the winter coming and daylight decreasing I am finding my days are cut shorter. Which cuts my good working time down a bit. I am also finding that I am tired earlier and we head for bed alot earlier than we used to . I knew there would be differences between the summer and the winter but the differences are indeed quite noticable.
Am I complaining...not really. Just have noticed that my work seems to have increased or the dirt has. I guess I am getting a better understanding of what life was truely like in 1865. Without help ....
Would I trade the lovley heat of the wood furnace or the taste of our food cooked on the wood stove ...no way.
Nor would I trade the quietness of our home or the time we spend just enjoying each other
M

Ken here, stripped the parlour walls of wall paper. It was the easiest removal of wallpaper I've experienced. All down in 30 minutes, clean-up and patching took about 1 & 1/2 hours. A little sanding tomorrow and the walls will be ready to paper again. We're looking for a Victorian style paper if we can get it. Should spruce up the parlour quite nicely I should think.

Margaret mentioned there seems to be more cleaning and less light and time to do it all. The same can be said of the furnace and the wood stove. I seem to be spending a great deals of time moving wood about. Either it's going into the furnace or the stove, I'm pilin it up outside or I'm throwing it down the outside stairs and then piling it in the furnace room. It keeps me warm several times over and also makes my muscles sore as well. There's always something to be done, if'n you don't to it today, it'll cheerfully wait for you to do tomorrow. It keeps me off the streets and out of mischief I guess.

That's all from me, take care and have a good week.

K

Victorian Summer fair

Greetings everyone .
We have decided to do a Victorian Summer Fair this year here at our farm in Dutton. So if you know anyone who is a sutler and would perhaps like to attend please pass on our information...We thank you
Also our dinner event in January is fast approaching ...keep those authentic letters of inquiry coming..We have had inquiries but will be looking for those with wonderful imaginations..This will be a evening long 1st person authentic dinner.
Until later
M

It is officially the Christmas season!!

Well december has arrived and I suppose that means it is officially the christmas season.
We have lots to do around here and thankfully the snow hasn't arrived in full force yet. But it is definately colder and we are well into "packing the furnace" to last the night so we do not turn into popsicles in our sleep. This starts our time of staying close to home  in order to keep the house warm and the pipes from freezing. We are going to try something new with the chicken coop this winter.We are putting straw bales around the coop to hopefully keep the warmth in the coop. We will report back to you on how that is working. Other years we have used a heat lamp in order to keep the birds warm . We may have to do that as winter comes on stronger. Now you may ask how that fits into our no hydro usage . Well it kind of doesn't but we cannot lose our entire flock of chikens if the straw insulation does not keep the heat in the chicken coop.
If this was truely 1865 we would have our chickens in a coop most likely above where the larger animals are in the barn. So perhaps above the cattle . The larger animals would provide the heat. Or so I am told. We will see what happens and report back to you..Well I am going to head upstairs ,,,I am really tired and need my bed.Talk to you soon.
M