Happy Halloween

from Scooby Doo


and the dragon

Patience

Okay, so I should learn to shoot videos only with the camera in the landscape orientation, but if you could just cock your head to the right for a couple of minutes, you can see how incredibly clever and patient Caedmon is. If you choose to listen to the audio, you will also be treated to Owen's rest time show - Sesame street as well as bits and pieces of a question and answer session about slinkies and how they are supposed to work.

Beer

On Sunday, we gathered at the Ring farm to make beer. It was a lovely day to attend the Church of the Blue Dome. Billy had all the ingredients for Billy Nevada Pale Ale (a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone) measured out when we arrived.
Did I mention it was a perfect day to be outside under the blue sky?
Billy boiled the wort over a turkey frying burner.

And stirred. And stirred.



And stirred.

Steve and Lauren showed up with their kids to lend a hand.And stirred. And stirred. And stirred.
Ma supervised.
During the boil, Billy added Rakau, Perle, and Cascade hops at specific intervals.

Adding hops near the beginning (Rakau and Perle) adds bitterness to the beer while adding hops toward the end (Cascade once 15 minutes before the end and once after the boil - called dry hopping) gives you more hoppy flavor with less bitterness. Here is the first of two additions of Cascade hops. It also has Irish Moss which aids in clarification.

After the boil, the wort was cooled to 80F by water running through a copper coil into a cooler of salted ice water

then through a copper coil in the wort
and out.

After the completion of the boil, the wort needs to be treated aseptically to prevent contamination.
Billy tried to keep farm dust from the big pot - very scientific process here:

A certain daughter-in-law failed to realized the pan full of things in the sink were sanitized tools and accidentally put a dirty spatula in with them. Fortunately, Billy realized this before proceeding, and Sharon quickly re-sanitized it all. Whew!

Owen had a grand time watching shows, playing outside, and looking at books. He's such a big boy these days.
Caedmon resisted a nap but finally got a short one.
Billy and Sharon transferred the cooled beer from the big pot
to two 5-gallon buckets through a seive to remove the hops. Billy was really careful to get the two buckets VERY even.
He added his hydrated yeast to the wort and mixed each bucket for 2 minutes with a paint mixer (used only for this purpose :o)).
They transferred the wort
to two, sanitized glass carboys
which he capped with airlocks. He likes to fill his airlocks with vodka.
And they were left to ferment.

Family Photos

Last week, the Gilliland children converged near The-Center-of-the-Universe, AL for a visit - the second in a couple of months. We will get to see a lot more of each other now that we all live in contiguous states. Anne and Granddaddy will get to see a lot more of the babies

and the big kids. As true pyros, we cooked hot dogs over a fire in the back yard.

Some of us got into it

way more than others. Some of us were really hungry and ate them right off the sticks.
Before heading out Sunday, we got some shots of all the (current) clan. Notice a new addition will be arriving very soon. I think we went for every possible combination of folks we could think of.
Kids and their families:

with Mom:

and with Dad:
You might be a redneck if . . .
. . . you take a picture of your grandchildren on your vehicle.

Oops! Forgot one. Now they're all there. You might be a redneck if you load them in the back of a truck for a family photo too.

And if the grandparents hop in, you are for sure a redneck or at the minimum a hillbilly, but that's okay rednecks and hillbillys are by and large good people. It doesn't get any easier to take a photo of your kids as they get older. We're all looking a little goofy here. No the other shots weren't any better.


TTFN!

Hooooooooooooo!

A while back I pulled an idea out of last year's Better Homes and Gardens October issue - starched cheesecloth ghosts.

Being the cheap - I mean frugal - mama that I am I was sure we could do this thing with items we had on hand. I rounded up liquid starch, balloons and other roundish stuff, cups to hold said roundish stuff, lined cookie trays to hold the drying project, a bowl for the starch, fishing line, black felt scraps, glue, and gauze -



- sterile gauze with little strips that show up on x-ray film if they get left inside you during surgery and they have to track them down.
Funny enough, I think you could probably do this whole project with stuff you found at a hospital - if you were bored at a hospital, ya know. In fact, the gauze, cups and tray liners were courtesy of Anne's hospital surplus collection.
After pulling the little -x-ray visible strings off the gauze, we dipped four layers of gauze into the starch, squeezed most of it out, and draped them artfully over the roundish things. (I of course could not get a shot of the starching.)
I did, however, get a picture of what Owen did with some of the other materials.
This boy definitely marches to the beat of a different drummer :o).
It took them about a day to dry.


Then we added black felt eyes and some almost invisible fishing line hangers so these little guys could spook our house for the month of October.
Fast forward a few weeks, and Granddaddy came up yesterday to bring us some furniture. He also brought his pole saw and limbed-up some of our trees for us. Thanks, Dad!

And he got some Owen and Caedmon time.
After we worked him plenty, Grandaddy, the boys, and I went over to Bell Buckle for the arts and crafts fair. It was a great day to be out - just the perfect temperature - no jacket required but no sweat either.
This morning he headed out early, and we sent a few little spooks home with Granddaddy to haunt him and Anne.