Let's gleefully flirt with death!

It happened again. Will people never learn?

I just received a comment on an older blog post about canning mushrooms.

I'm sure you can guess what it was about. To quote: "While looking up recipes to water bath can mushrooms, your above comment came up in the search. My Grandmother, my mother, my mother-in-law and myself, have only ever water bathed veggies. I'm surprised it's not the norm anymore."

It's "not the norm anymore" BECAUSE IT'S DANGEROUS. I'm honestly at a loss why someone would come onto this blog and condescendingly lecture me about their unsafe canning methods, but there you go. As my readers know by now, low-acid foods MUST be pressure canned to kill botulism spores.

The last time I posted about this frustration, a reader noted, "Maybe telling others what [botulism] actually is and how it can affect someone instead of just saying it is dangerous might help?" and helpfully supplied the following information (source unknown):

Botulism: a paralyzing nerve toxin, considered to be one of the most potent and lethal substances in the world. It's produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum and sometimes by strains of Clostridium butyricum and Clostridium baratii. The rod-shaped bacteria are commonly found in soil and sediments from lakes, rivers and oceans. The bacteria thrive in low-oxygen conditions, such as canned foods, deep wounds & the intestinal tract, but when threatened form protective spores with a hard coating that allows the bacteria to survive for years.

The danger is not from the spores themselves but what they produce while germinating. As the C. botulinum bacteria grow, they create eight types of neurotoxins that are so deadly, even microscopic amounts can kill.

Because botulism toxin paralyzes muscles, early and classic signs of the illness are drooping eyelids and blurred or double vision, dry mouth, slurred speech and difficulty swallowing. If left untreated, greater paralysis of muscles of the arms, legs and trunk of the body will occur, affecting the ability to breathe.

Babies infected w/botulism will be poor feeders & seem lethargic, w/weak cry & poor muscle tone, can also be constipated.

Botulism does not cause fever; those affected are usually alert and aware of their surroundings. Once botulism is confirmed, it can be treated with an antitoxin and, in some cases, antibiotics. If the antitoxin is given before paralysis is complete, helps shorten recovery, which requires regrowth of motor nerve endings. Patient can be hospitalized for supportive treatment/ventilator, for weeks or months until paralysis improves. In some cases, muscle weakness & shortness of breath can last years.

But I know I'm talking to a brick wall with some people. Whee, let's gleefully flirt with death! This person is going to water-bath can her mushrooms and other veggies, and someday will be shocked – shocked! – when a family member is hospitalized with this deadly toxin. You can lead a horse to water......

Got eggs?

Last week, I read an article that an egg-production facility in Cokato, Minnesota, went up in flames. The facility produces upwards of six million eggs a day. Tragically, tens of thousands of hens died.

This fire is yet another nail in the coffin of egg availability. Bird flu panic has caused millions upon millions of chickens to be culled, creating shortages and price increases like crazy.

Additionally, the state of Georgia has halted all poultry-related activities due to bird flu concerns. This means all "in-state poultry exhibitions, shows, swaps, meets, and sales are suspended until further notice," with a corresponding massive ripple effect over multiple industries.

Now the prognosis is that egg prices will stay elevated forever. Seems a little pessimistic, but there you go.

The shortages (and elevated prices) have hit locally as well. A couple weeks ago while in our local grocery store, I saw this:

The less expensive eggs were cleaned out, while the pricier ones remained.

We seldom buy eggs, since we keep them on hand mostly for baking. But for those who depend on eggs for an inexpensive source of protein, these prices and shortages must be hitting hard.

We're hoping to get a coop built and start a flock of chickens this summer. In the meantime, when we need eggs, I'm grateful we can buy them from the nice older couple down the road who usually charges $3.50 a dozen.

When will she pop?

I was out splitting firewood last week, and watching the cows in the adjacent field.

Our biggest concern over the last few weeks has been Filet, our pregnant Angus. We don't know exactly when she was bred, and therefore we don't know exactly when she's due. A cow's gestation is nine months and ten days (hence the old expression, "Nine months for cows and countesses"), which puts the birth of the calf smack in the middle of winter. Our best guess is it will be born within the next three to five weeks or so – but possibly earlier.

While (oddly) we don't have any snow on the ground at the moment (highly unusual for January), we've been having very cold temperatures at night. I've been watching Filet like a hawk, checking for early stages of delivery – notably her udder bagging up and strands of mucus dangling from her backside.

If she looks like she's in early labor, we'll probably shoo the cows into the pasture right below the house for the night, unless it's raining or heavily snowing, just so we can be present to make sure the baby doesn't freeze to the ground.

Why don't we just shut her into the barn, you may ask? It's because Filet is a former range cow, and does not like being in the barn. Shutting her in would probably stress her far more than just letting her have her calf outdoors. However if we're in the middle of the blizzard of the century or experiencing temperatures that might kill a calf, then tough patooties, we'll shut her into the barn.

Ug, winter calves.

A roller coaster of writing

Phew. It's been a bit of a roller-coaster day in terms of writing for Harlequin.

To recap, for some time I've been interested on writing more stories for Harlequin. I've established myself in the niche of Amish inspirational in the Love Inspired line, but I have more stories inside me and thought I'd try applying to the Heartwarming (sweet) line to supplement my writing schedule.

Accordingly, early last September I sent a proposal to my agent, who forwarded it to my Love Inspired editor (apparently one editor shepherds writers throughout the Harlequin empire). As of yesterday I still hadn't heard anything back from the Heartwarming line.

When I inquired about the status of the proposal, I learned it had been overlooked and not yet sent to Heartwarming at all. (Cue a wail of frustration.) When my editor, who is a total sweetheart, asked why I wanted to write for Heartwarming, I explained I was trying to maximize my writing potential and was interested in expanding.

After some back and forth between my editor and agent and myself, my Love Inspired editor invited me to pitch some non-Amish stories to her with an eye toward publishing more than four books a year. She encouraged me to create another mythical town in western Montana as a setting.

I – am – totally – stoked! I told her I would have six pitches on her desk by Monday.

Here's where things might get interesting. I'm asking you, my dear readers, to consider what kind of stories you'd like to see written. Ever wanted to try your hand at plotting out an inspirational romance? Now's your chance. I can't guarantee my editor will accept the idea, but wouldn't it be great if she did?

So ... pitch away!

The missing link

If there's one rule of thumb we have on our homestead, it's to acquire, whenever possible, manual versions of tools that require fuel or electricity to operate – if for no other reason than to have a backup in case of power outages or fuel shortages.

This is our log splitter. We purchased it back in 2003.

When we first moved to Idaho, we already had several years of experience using a woodstove and were confident about what it took to gather our wood supply. Granted Idaho has much colder winters than the ones we got in southwestern Oregon, but after all a maul is a maul and we were both pretty good at hand-splitting oak, maple, or madrone.

But this part of Idaho doesn't have hardwoods. We're surrounded by conifers. And soft woods, we learned, behave much much differently than do hard woods when it comes to applying a maul.

The first few attempts to split some red fir were actually pretty funny. Remember those old Looney Tunes cartoons with Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner? Poor Wile E. – every time he tried to set a trap for the Roadrunner, it backfired. In one such cartoon he tried to chop something with an axe, and the axe bounced back and sent Wiley vibrating all over the landscape.

Well that's what happened to us. Every time we tried to whack a piece of fir with a maul, the vibration from the blow reverberated up and sent us shaking like Wile E. The soft fir or tamarack absorbed the blow of the maul so much more than oak that it took many many more blows to split a piece of wood. Don and I looked at each other and knew we would never be able to split the many cords of wood we would need to keep warm over the winter.

So... enter the log splitter. It's been a superb machine, effortlessly splitting endless cords of firewood over the years to keep us warm.

But in the back of our minds was the constant concern about being dependent on a gas-powered machine. However we were unable to find any alternative for ease of splitting wood – especially as we get older – beyond our trusty collection of mauls.

Until recently.

Here in our new home, the log splitter is in back, toward the barn. We just had a load of firewood delivered, in front of the house.

Normally this wouldn't be an issue, especially since the wood is already split. However two problems have arisen: One, the split wood was split too large, so many of the pieces are so big they won't even fit in the woodstove. This means we have to re-split much of the delivery.

And two, the log splitter has a flat tire. This means we can't move it from the barn to the front of the house until it gets repaired.

So, faced with these issues, we fell back upon something we purchased last year and haven't had much opportunity to use yet: our manual hydraulic log splitter.

A manual hydraulic splitter is – literally – just a bottle jack in a horizontal position, with two levers for applying the hydraulics.

This is what I mean about massive pieces of wood. Pieces this size won't "catch" in a woodstove unless it's already roaring hot, if they even fit in the door of the stove at all. They need to be split in half.

So I loaded the manual splitter onto a hand truck (it weighs about 80 lbs.) and trundled it from the barn to the front of the house where the woodpile is.

A manual hydraulic splitter works much the same as a gas-powered splitter. The wood is placed in a cradle..

...then the handles are pumped to advance the ram and drive the wood into the wedge, splitting it. This is the ram.

The ram is released with a valve, which is then tightened when it's time to advance the ram again.

When resetting the ram, I've found it's helpful to place a small stick on the ground to let me know how far back to release it. This saves the ram going too far back or too far forward.

The levers are removable. The left lever advances the ram a bit faster, the right lever a bit slower. Like gears on a bicycle, the right lever is better for very stubborn pieces of wood. Most of the time we pump both levers at the same time (like the handles of a ski machine in a gym), which is easier.

For all but the knottiest pieces, the wood will split after three or four pumps, though sometimes it's best to continue advancing the ram farther so split the piece more completely.

It's not an overly fast technique for wood splitting, but it's effective. This much wood (which should last us about a week) took me an hour to split. Later I split some dryer wood, and it split more easily, taking me about 45 minutes for the same quantity.

Of course, this splitter has its limits. We have some exceptionally large rounds (18 to 24 inches across).

I tried splitting one of these using the manual splitter. No dice. This was as far as I got:

As Don put it, rounds this large will require a "sledge and wedge."

The particular model of splitter we have is called a SunJoe, and it cost about $250. However there are many varieties on the market.

Altogether I couldn't be more pleased with this unit. In fact, the more I use it, the more I like it. It's truly the missing link between splitting by hand and using a gas-powered log splitter we were looking for.

As we get older, we're always on the looking for ways to "work smarter, not harder," and this unit allows us to do that without depending on a gas-powered splitter in case gas becomes unavailable.

The gas-powered log splitter is still a better choice for large quantities of wood and/or huge rounds; but having a manual hydraulic splitter is a superb backup, especially for those of us who depend on wood heat.