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

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