Blackberries!

We were invited by some sweet friends to partake of their abundant blackberry patch today. Wow! It's a very very good year for blackberries - the perfect weather for blooms and no late frost to hurt the buds. I couldn't believe the amount of berries on the vines, in all stages of maturity.

The girls and I headed out into the thicket with our buckets, but they soon found other diversions once they realized how thorny blackberry vines can be. I continued to wade through the vines, which managed to grab my arse more than a drunken construction worker (note to self: wear heavy-duty jeans when picking blackberries).

In the end we came home with roughly four pounds of fresh, organic local blackberries. Wonderfully huge and sweet, blackberries are no doubt my most favorite berry (strawberries are a close second). And they way the vines are drooping with unripe fruit we'll probably be able to do at least one more round of picking (thank you, friends).

The absolutely crazy schedule this week doesn't allow for any canning, so this time we'll eat the fresh fruit as-is which, after many months of very limited fresh fruit intake, is an easy sacrifice to make. The blackberries should get us through to the early apple season, which we're all quite excited about.

What fruit would you most look forward to eating after a long hiatus?

--Rational Mama

The (Produce) Seasons Are A Changin'

As if the new influx of hot and sultry weather wasn't enough of a reminder that summer is moving along, the changing inventory of our weekly CSA bag also serves as a harbinger of summer's prime.

Initially, our CSA bags were mostly salad greens (and you know how I feel about salad greens), radishes, green onions and the like. Typical early summer fare.

Today's CSA bag consisted of carrots, zucchini, potatoes, snow peas and a decent (and an increasingly rare) head of lettuce.
Ahhh...summer IS progressing. Soon our bags will be filled with more zucchini, peppers, eggplants and, and, AND tomatoes! Oh, how we are looking forward to those first fresh tomatoes! It has literally been around 9 months since we had decent tomatoes in the house.

I have a feeling we'll be eating most of this produce raw, since cooking seems to be falling to the wayside now that both outdoor and indoor temperatures are creeping up. As I write this at 8:35pm the current temperature outside is 86 degrees (after a high temperature of over 90 degrees) and the humidity is at 70%. Unfortunately, the situation isn't much different in the house.

TMOTH has been plugging away on the whole house fan project. The fan is completely framed and installed and the wiring is planned out. We need to make alterations to some of the windows in the attic to increase ventilation (whole house fans need lots of attic ventilation to work properly). I know TMOTH really wanted the completed window changes to be sufficient, but numerous calculation checks tell us we need more.

Poor TMOTH - he's been working in the considerably hot attic for days and did not take this news well. He needs to go refresh in a cool shower so that the world is a better place.

And maybe have a nice cool beer. That usually makes the world a better place, too.

What's your favorite way to cool off?

--Rational Mama

Can't Be Beet

Local beets are just now becoming available at the farmer's market and a few days ago I pickled a few jars of beets.
I love working with beets - there is something about their intense color that suggests jewels or gems, hidden treasures waiting to be discovered. And the way they stain your fingers keeps them on the mind long after they've entered your tummy.

--Rational Mama

Progress! I think...

I had the opportunity to come home for lunch today. The girls greeted me at the door and then said, "You should go look at the roof!"

"The roof?!?" I asked in panic. Oh dear, what has TMOTH done? "Do you mean the ceiling upstairs?"

"Umm...yeah...the ceiling." (shifty eyes)

Up the stairs I went and was surprised to see this:
It's a little unsettling to look up at your hallway ceiling and see your roof.

While I was at work TMOTH had a chance to talk with our neighbor about the wiring and then proceeded to saw out the plaster ceiling. Plaster is difficult to cut nice and pretty, so there will be some patching when the installation is complete.

TMOTH then did a test fit with the temporary framing and the fan.
Did I mention this thing is huge?

After the initial shock of looking at the roof from the second floor I have to say I'm pretty happy that he's making progress. Making the first cut is an act of faith. I'm hoping that framing and wiring go pretty easily and quickly, too.

After all...the high temperatures this weekend are projected to be in the mid-90s.

--Rational Mama

This (Damn) Old House

Yesterday, at one point, it was 82 degrees outside with a humidity level of 83%.

My personal opinion is that the numerical value of the humidity level shouldn't exceed the numerical value of the temperature. It was sticky, sticky, sticky. Oh, how air conditioning would have magically sucked that moisture out of the household! But alas, it is not an option this year.

Definitely a good incentive to get that whole house fan installed soon! A major air movement would have helped for sure.

TMOTH spent the better part of the day yesterday up in the attic to start on said whole house fan project. Seems our 100 year old house doesn't exactly have joists at modern/standard intervals.

This is going to get interesting.

Oh! And while we were checking out the dormer windows (they'll need to be replaced with vents) TMOTH pulled out some insulation-type material that was wedged between the window and the beam. It appears to be a section of some type of insulated clothing from ancient (early 1900s) times - like welder's pants. One of the early inhabitants of our house was a blacksmith, so I wonder if one winter he shoved some old work pants in the crevices of the attic to decrease drafts.

We'll keep you posted on the fan installation - it's going to require some outside-the-box thinking.

And sweating.

--Rational Mama

Something in the Air

Oh, boy.

In our attempt to stay true to our rationing experiment, we're trying to go all summer without turning on our air conditioners (both in the house and in our cars). In the 1940s some businesses, but few residences and no cars, had air conditioning. That is our historical precedent. Additionally, the extra electricity required to run the air conditioner isn't exactly kosher if we're trying to save energy for the war effort, sooo...

This could really suck. We live in the central plains and it is not unusual to have a couple of weeks of 100+ degree (Fahrenheit) highs. Otherwise, most of the summer's daytime temps hover around the mid-90's. Oh, and did I mention the 40-60% humidity?

Since our house was built when air conditioning was but a dream (our house turns 100 years old this year!) it is equipped with lots of windows which are great for air circulation - cross currents are not a problem. Add in three ceiling fans and four floor fans and so far we've been fairly comfortable on most days. Part of the reason is because the nighttime/low temperatures have still been very reasonable and once we shut down the windows (around 10:00am) to trap the cool air in and keep the mid-day heat out, the house remains pleasant (if not a little stuffy). The other day I came home from work and while it was 92 degrees outside (heat index of 96) it was only 79 degrees in the house. Victory!

On those days when the inside temperature has crept into the mid-80s we've been taking cool-down baths/showers and drying off in front of the fans to cool our core body temperatures down. Done right before bed, this serves as a good way to get comfortable and fall asleep while waiting for the pleasing evening air to find its way into the house.

But...we're reaching the part of the summer when nighttime temperatures will be in the mid 70's/low 80's. This is not nearly as satisfying (and cooling) as the 60's/low 70's so we're bringing in the artillery...or, at least, this:


This is a whole house fan, commonly (and incorrectly) referred to as an attic fan. It is huge. Whole house fans are typically installed in the attic floor/top level ceiling and work by pulling cooler morning/evening air into the house through the windows and blowing the hotter air out through the attic venting. I had never seen or heard of one of these until I was in college and was amazed at how effective they can be at cooling down a house. We've been pondering installing one of these in our house for years, and with this year's rationing program we are finally getting off of our tookuses and doing it!

"But, wait!" you say. "Isn't the Rational Living household restricted on buying new appliances during the rationing year?" Yes, faithful reader, you are correct. While we were ready to bend that rule to survive the summer we didn't need to thanks to the clever tinkering of a relative, S.P.

S.P. is quite the handy type and a few years ago was helping renovate a house that had fire and smoke damage. He noticed that the attic fan was slated for replacement, even thought it only had some limited smoke damage. After asking permission, S.P. took the attic fan home to his workshop and there it sat - until I mentioned to S.P. this spring that we were gearing up to install a whole house fan (I didn't know he had one in the wings). He dug the reclaimed fan out, hooked it up to electricity and let it run for over an hour - it worked perfectly fine! So, we are able to install a used fan and thus not violate any appliance-buying restrictions. Thanks, S.P.!

In the next couple of weeks we'll finish cleaning the soot and dust off the fan and begin the installation work. TMOTH will be in charge of this project and luckily our extremely knowledgeable neighbor will be helping him with the wiring (we have the best neighbors, evuh).

Wish us luck - I always get a bit nervous when we start knocking down parts of the plaster ceilings and walls in the house.

In the meantime, we'll be brainstorming other ways to stay cool this summer. This weekend the highs are in the mid-90's with 50% humidity, so it's a good test of things to come. I see a lot of sprinklers, swimming pools, popsicles, watermelon and outside grilling in our future.

Hmm...that sounds suspiciously like a good summer.

One last thought: when we did run the air conditioner during the summer we kept the thermostat at 78 or 79 degrees. What is your summertime thermostat set at?

--Rational Mama

Sugar Coated Forgetfulness

We haven't been doing much baking for the past few months (outside of making our own sandwich bread every week). As a result, I had gotten very laissez-faire when it came to our sugar rations. We're allowed a total of two pounds of sugar per week and I think an entire month went by without me buying any. Clearly, I don't keep the cookie jar full like a typical 1940's housewife. We didn't need the sugar, and I didn't want to be a hoarder.

I mentioned something about this to TMOTH a few weeks back and he replied, "What about all the sugar we'll need for canning this summer?"

D'oh!

During WWII sugar rationing a household could apply for a one-time 15 pound supply of sugar to be specifically used for canning. I haven't yet come across any newspaper articles from 1943 that explain exactly what percentage of those applications were approved - I'll have to dig a little deeper. But the point was, and is, that you better buy your sugar now if you're going to be canning later.

So, I have amended my shopping ways and will now purchase our two pounds of sugar every week. What we don't use in canning we can use in the fresh fruit pies and sweets we plan to make and freeze while locally available fruit is available this season.

Now, I wonder if there is any other rationed item that I'm not buying that will be in a pinch for later...

Sigh, it will probably be ketchup.

--Rational Mama