Wheatfields and Windmills

We moved back to Pendleton during harvest time.  Everyone seems to think of wool when they hear the word Pendleton, but there are hardly any sheep raised out here.  The biggest crop around here by far is wheat.

These are the "amber waves of grain" you've heard tell about.

Jim, my dad-in-law, took me and the boys out to the wheatfields where he has been working harvest for the last few weeks.  Being a certified old guy, he was given the relatively cushy job of driving the trucks that take the grain from the fields to the grain elevators to be stored.  He got to sit in an air-conditioned truck all day, which is pretty fine digs for working harvest!

Solomon sitting in a wheat truck.  If only his legs were a little longer we could send him to work in the fields too.

Jim also brought us out to get a close-up look at one of Eastern Oregon's newer crops: wind farms.  Acres and acres of land have been set up with huge wind turbines that generate electricity.  You can see a lot of them as you drive on Interstate 84 through the eastern half of the Columbia Gorge.  The ones we got to see are not visible from the river, but live up in the breezy hills outside of Pendleton, planted right alongside acres of golden wheat.

These things are impressively tall once you get up close to them.  These particular ones, however, are short in comparison to the newer models they have in the Columbia Gorge.

The boys enjoyed getting a close-up look at the wind turbines, and they even got to take home a souvenir bundle of wheat stalks.

Grandpa Jim cutting some wheat for the boys.

 

 

Yay for wheat!  You can see the base of the windmill there behind Solomon.

Can It!

As part of my continuing efforts to live a frugal lifestyle and to be an all-around homemaking stud, I am learning how to can food.  My teacher in this endeavor is my mother-in-law, Peg.  She has been canning since about 1966, so I figure she is qualified to be my instructor.

Me and Peg in the kitchen, where my first canning lesson took place.

My first lesson in canning was green beans.  The beans came from my father-in-law Jim's garden, which you need to know is a veritable cornucopia of vegetable goodness.  Jim can grow just about any edible plant in his garden, and he does it with style.

The bean patch in Jim's garden.

It was my job to pick and snap the beans.  I had help picking from my kids and from my cat Ginger, who did a good job polishing my ankles as I was bent over the bean bushes.  I also had some help snapping the beans from Jim and from Peter, who apparently had not snapped beans since he was about seven years old and couldn't remember how to do it at first.

After the beans were all harvested and snapped, the first step was to gather jars.  Jim and Peg can every year, so finding jars at their house was no problem.

Next, Peg filled the empty jars with beans and I added a little salt to each one.  We then poured boiling water into each jar, leaving some room at the top.  I stuck a knife down around the edges of each jar to get the air bubbles out, and then I screwed lids on to all the jars.  Pretty simple, really.

I'm pouring boiling water from a tea kettle.  We're very proper around here.

While we were filling the jars, we had some water heating up inside Peg's pressure canner.  This particular canner dates from the early 70's and will never break.  We did have an issue with the pressure gauge, but Peg bought a replacement one and now the canner is good for another 30 years or so.

So once all our jars had lids on them, we placed them into the canner.  We could fit 16 pint jars into the canner at once.  Then we clamped the lid onto the canner and waited for the pressure to build up inside.  When that happens, a little button pops up on the top of the canner.  Then you wait for about seven or eight minutes to let air escape through a hole in the lid before putting the pressure regulator on it.  Then you watch the pressure gauge.

The new pressure gauge, reading at 10 lbs. of pressure.

The level of pressure you want to reach in the canner depends on what you're canning.  For vegetables it was 10 lbs. of pressure, so we waited as the pressure slowly climbed up to 10.  Once it reached 10, we had to reduce the temperature on the stove in order to keep it right at 10 for twenty minutes.

After twenty minutes was up, we removed the canner from the stove and waited for the pressure to dissipate.  When that happens, the little button on the top falls back down, and you know it's safe to open the lid.  We used a jar grabber tool to pick up the hot jars of beans, now cooked and sterilized.  We set them on the counter to cool, and as they cooled down you could hear the lids snapping, which meant that they had sealed properly.

That's the jar grabber tool.  I don't know what it's real name is.

And there you have it!  Canning is a much simpler process than I had thought it would be.  Our plan is to can peaches next, and possibly applesauce in the fall.  Needless to say, I am totally excited about canning and I plan to make it a regular part of my life.

We canned 41 pints of green beans!

Week One: Adventures Around Town and Emigrant Park

Ever since we've moved to Pendleton, just about every day has been a fun-filled adventure for us and especially for our kids.  We have been taking them around to all these wonderful places and they have been getting a great introduction to life in a rural community.

Peter started working last week at his new job at Pendleton Family Medicine.  That whole week, I took the kids for a long walk every morning so they could explore the neighborhood and play in the nearby parks.  We visited the Children's Museum on Tuesday (free admission on Tuesdays!) and I took Solomon to the Aquatic Center on Wednesday while Micah was taking a nap (it's SO GREAT to have grandparents around to watch my kids!).  It only cost $7.50 for both me and Solomon to get in, and Micah would have gotten in for free.  I am amazed at how many cheap things there are to do with kids around here!

Friday was our 11th wedding anniversary, so Peter and I went out to the Hamley Steakhouse for a special dinner.  It was, by far, the best meal I have had in years.  I can't even put into words how great it was.  Steak.  Potatoes.  Green beans that tasted alternately of butter and bacon.  Oh. My. Goodness.

Here I am, all gussied up for our anniversary date.

On Saturday, we decided to take the kids "to the mountains."  We had told them that we now lived close to several mountains, and they were very excited to go there.  So we headed up to Emigrant Springs Park on Cabbage Hill in the Blue Mountains.  And oh my, did we have fun!

It was such a great feeling to set my boys loose in a wild area (okay, the area is pretty tame by Eastern Oregon standards, but these are very small children we're talking about here).  They played in the dirt, threw rocks and pinecones, ate wild huckleberries, looked for animal tracks and wildflowers, and just generally did all the things you'd want a boy to do outdoors.

Those are my kids, frolicking in the woods.  This picture makes my heart happy.

We encountered a lady riding horseback on the trails up there.  Having lived in Salem for the last ten years, I was expecting her to just kind of smile at us and go on her way.  I had forgotten that when you're in a sparsely populated area, encountering another human being is kind of a special occurrence.  She called hello to us, stopped, and asked if we would like to meet her horse.  Did we ever!  The horse, whose name was Keno, was very gentle and well-behaved, and the lady, whose name was Bev, invited the boys to sit up in the saddle with her.

Here are Solomon, Bev, and Micah.  Unfortunately, I cut Keno's head off in this picture.  You'll just have to take my word that she was a very nice-looking horse.

Now, if we had been in Salem and a complete stranger had ridden up on a horse and asked me if I wanted to put my kids up there with her, I would have declined, thank you very much.  But somehow, I had no fears about this lady's intentions.  We chatted with her for a few minutes, and it turned out that we kind of knew each other (we at least recognized each other's names, which is common in a small town).

After we had explored the trails for a while, we stopped in a meadow and ate a picnic lunch.  We found a bunch of huckleberries that were ripe enough to eat, and we dined hugely upon them (Micah especially).

Here are the guys, foraging like bears.

Micah displays a choice huckleberry.

Micah, puttin' em down like a MAN.

Our picnic lunch consisted of turkey sandwiches, chips, grapes, yogurt, and mint Oreos.

We added huckleberries to our very appropriately named "Northwest Berry Patch" yogurt.

After our picnic, as we were headed back to the car, Micah spontaneously said to me, "Thank you Mommy for taking me to the mountains!"  That made my heart just about explode with happiness.

The Story of Our Big Moving Day

Well, I'd like to apologize to my readers (all five of you) for not having written any new posts in the last week or so.  In my defense, I have been a bit busy.  But now that we are all moved to Pendleton, I can finally fill you in on all the details of Moving Day.

All ready to go!  I kinda wish now that Jim had taken this picture so that you could see Peter here instead sitting with his family, but I just didn't think of it at the time.  Rats.

The overwhelming characteristic of our Moving Day experience was that it all went so incredibly smoothly.  There was no last-minute scramble to throw things in boxes or just pitch loose items in the back of the moving truck.  We had time to go out to breakfast, visit with friends who stopped by to help load the truck, and in the evenings after the kids went to bed the grownups played pinochle (a Willis family tradition).

I would like to take this opportunity to take full credit for the complete success of our move.  Thank you, thank you.

Here I am packing up the last of the kitchen items.  I really wish I had sucked in my gut for this picture, but it's too late now and I don't have time to photoshop it, so there you go.

So on Monday, Peter and his dad went and picked up the enormous U-Haul truck that we rented.  We had reserved a 20-foot truck, thinking that was all the space we'd need, but the rental place was out of that size and so they upgraded us to a 26-foot truck for free.  That meant we had ample space to pack a lot of furniture items that we had planned on leaving in our house in Salem and coming back for later.

This is Peter backing up the truck in front of our house, with Jim directing him.  The boys thought it was pretty awesome that our truck had a picture of a pirate ship on fire on the side of it.

We started loading things at about 8 am I think, and thanks to the help of some good friends and family, we had just about everything loaded up by mid-morning.  We all took a break and went out for breakfast at the Original Pancake House in South Salem.  Everyone ate massive quantities of pancakes, eggs, potatoes, bacon and coffee, and then we went back to the house to finish loading.

We even put the kids to work!  That's Peter's brother Dan on the left.  He came down from Portland to help us load up and to help us eat pancakes and eggs.

The truck was loaded by the early afternoon.  Then it was cleaning time.  Our renters, Morty and Gigi, were moving in the day we were moving out, so I felt compelled to clean things up for them.  I had plenty of time to clean the whole house, and after a few hands of pinochle we went to bed for the last time in our house.


The next morning we got up bright and early, loaded the last of our things on the truck, and headed out.  Peter drove the U-Haul (with our cat, Ginger, loose in the cab with him, which made for many a hilarious moment), I drove our car with the boys, and Jim drove his pickup.

This is Micah holding the box that we had prepared as a sort of cage for Ginger.  I shoved her in there and it took her about seven seconds to tear her way out of it.  So she got to ride loose in the truck.

Our first stop was at the gas station to fill up all the vehicles (ca-ching!) and then we hit the road.  There really isn't a lot to tell about our drive across the state.  We stopped once at a state park just east of Troutdale, and again at Arlington.  The boys did very well in the car, Jim didn't fall asleep once while driving, and Peter only got scratched up one time by our very nervous cat.


We pulled in to town about about 3:30, and there was a whole raft of people waiting at Jim & Peg's house to help us unload.  Peg had arranged for some youngsters to be there to carry things into the house and upstairs to where our rooms are.  They very quickly unloaded everything that was going into the house, and then loaded up some boxes that we had been storing at Jim & Peg's.  Then we took a break while I phoned around town to find a storage unit.  I finally found one that had some room, so we drove the truck up to the storage place, signed some paperwork, and commenced to fill two small storage units as full as we could with almost all of our worldly possessions.

This is most of the crowd who helped unload.  I didn't even know most of these kids!

Needless to say, we were pretty exhausted by the end of the day.  But we were in such good spirits!  Never once did we get cranky with each other during the entire move.  Not once did I lose my cool and snap at somebody (which, I admit, is prone to happen when I'm stressed out).  We were actually having fun as we packed all our stuff into those storage units.  A friend who was helping us unload even commented that he was impressed at how stress-free our move was.  

Again, I'd like to take full credit for that.

Moving Day Has Arrived!

This is it!  Today we get our moving truck and load it up with all our worldly possessions.  We'll spend one more night in our house, then tomorrow morning we head out for Pendleton.

I woke up at 6:30 this morning and hopped out of bed, ready to get to work.  Now let me just tell you, this never happens.  I do not wake up at 6:30 unless a child is crying or the bed is on fire.  Nor do I ever hop out of bed.  I drag myself out of bed, and it takes me a good twenty minutes before I'm ready to do anything productive.

So this morning has started well.  Peter is out right now with his dad, Jim, picking up the U-Haul.  They will stop by our storage unit here in Salem and load up all the stuff we have in there before heading back to the house.

Our moving sale on Saturday was a success in that we got rid of a bunch of stuff.  We didn't sell our couch, recliner, or entertainment center though, so we will just keep those for now.  The guy at the U-Haul office upgraded us to the next size up truck for free, so I think we'll have room for the extra furniture.

Several friends have promised to stop by today and help carry boxes and say goodbye to us.  We have four kinds of popsicles ready in our freezer to offer our guests.  I'm really hoping to get to see some more of the friends we have made in the last ten years here in the Willamette Valley.

I think that today will be a good day.  And at the end, our house will be empty, our truck will be full, our kids will be hyperactive, and we will be exhausted.

Things are Looking Up: Improvements on the Homefront

Peter and I were talking about my blog the other day.  He said he wasn't sure he wanted me to write about all the details of our hard situation in life right now.  I can understand why he feels like that.  I don't really want all my friends to know that we don't have any money or that we're moving in with our parents.  I want people to think that we're successful and that we can take care of ourselves.

But in a way, I'm really glad I have this blog as a record of the things I worry about.  Because later, after God has worked everything out in the best way possible (which may or may not look anything like the way I wanted to do it), I can see that my family and I are very, very well taken care of.

Take, for instance, my post about our challenges in selling our house.  Here is a picture I included of the first thing people see when they drive up to our house:

Garbage cans and crumbling cement.  Real classy.

But now, thanks to my studly husband Peter and his equally studly friend Micah, that area now looks like this:

What garbage cans?  I don't see any garbage cans, do you?

That's an example of a situation we improved ourselves, with help from a friend.  But here's an example of a situation that improved and we had absolutely no control over it:

Remember this eyesore?

Yep, the neighbor's yard.  The house that sits in front of our flag lot, the house that people have to drive past to even get a glimpse of our house.  The appearance of their yard was a huge problem for us.  Potential buyers who were interested in looking at our house were taking one look at their yard and driving right on down the road.  But one day, our neighbors came outside and did a ton of work, and now it looks like this:

Wowza!

Check it out!  Real grass!  Way to go, previously-lazy neighbors!

And now for the best thing of all:

Gone, baby, gone!

We sold our car!  And when it came right down to it, I wasn't sad to see it go at all.  Now we don't have a car loan payment to worry about, and we have plenty of money to cover our moving expenses.

Looking back, I can remember how worried I was about each of these situations.  And now I can see that I really had nothing to worry about at all.  God took care of it all, and He will always take care of us.

Even if I get nothing else out of this whole experience, I will at least remember that one thing for the rest of my life.

Things are Looking Up: the Housing Situation

I am happy to report that things have improved since my last post. 

No, we haven't sold our house, but we have found someone to live in it for us.  Some good friends of ours will be renting from us until the house sells.  I won't use their real names here, but shall refer to them as "Morty" and "Gigi."  I do this for several reasons: first of all, to protect their privacy; secondly, because I haven't asked them if I can tell everyone about their living situation; and thirdly, because I find those names hilarious.

This is not really Morty and Gigi.  I'm using a fake picture for them as well as fake names.

So we will be moving out in about ten days, and Morty and Gigi will be moving in.  This is a win-win situation for all parties.  It's great for me and Peter because we won't have to leave our house vacant-but-partially-furnished-so-it-doesn't-look-empty.  We will have someone to mow and water the lawn and take care of the house's appearance.  They will show the house to prospective buyers as the need arises.  And we'll get a little bit of income from their rent. 

This is a good deal for Morty and Gigi (snicker, snicker - those names just crack me up!) because they are expecting a baby in a few months, and our four-bedroom house will be some pretty nice digs for them and their tot, when he/she arrives.  And when we get an offer on the house, it will take a month or two to close the deal.  So Morty and Gigi will have plenty of time to find another place to live.

This is my kitchen.  Gigi will enjoy cooking meals in it, I'm sure.

And before any of you ask: yes, we trust them.  No, they won't mind keeping the house clean and showing it to prospective buyers.  No, they are not going to trash the place.  And yes, they're cool with not having a definite end date for this situation.

Having this arrangement in place has made me feel 4000% better about moving (and yes, I know that's not a real mathematical figure).

While we still own our house in Salem, we won't qualify for a loan to buy a house in Pendleton.  So we're going to rent.  But before we can rent, we need to have a little cash saved up (for deposits, first and last month's rent, and whatnot).  But we don't have any cash (see my previous post).  So for the first couple of months, we're moving in with Peter's parents, Jim and Peg.

That's right, you heard it.  We're moving in with our parents.

This is what evenings at home with Jim and Peg are like.  No joke.

Boy, are we going to shake up their world!  Lucky for them, it's only for a month or two.  And I think they're planning on taking lots of vacations while we're living there.  And probably buying earplugs.