It's been a while.

Things have been quiet at the ranch over winter. It's been pretty chilly, so outdoor tasks have been things like dragging in firewood, and splitting wood to season. We suffered a major loss in December with the death of my oldest son. As the days slowly begin to lengthen towards spring, I begin to emerge from under the shadow that has been over me since then. I've been tending to a sick kitty for the past week who is finally out of the woods and on the mend, and yesterday I had my very first opportunity to milk a goat. I am looking forward to repeating the experience and getting to know more about those amazing and fascinating critters. Several batches of goat milk soap will be forthcoming in my Etsy shop as a result of my efforts. I look forward to sharing more goat adventures with you in the future. A woman in the neighborhood has goats and was looking for assistance in milking them, and I volunteered. I just want to try new things and start figuring out what makes sense for our property in the future. 

I also had a photo shoot with a client yesterday down in Denver, and stumbled upon some photos from around Thanksgiving that I hadn't pulled off of the camera until today. I thought I would share those with you. We love the deer that come around to say hello. They are so beautiful and I could sit and watch them for hours. They bed down on the hillsides all around the house and are always fascinated by the dogs. So here are a couple of the deer. 

William loved the deer and many of the animals here made themselves known to him. He often took time to hang out by the little spring and ponds, watching the animals and enjoying the stillness of the forest. I was looking forward to having him join us in building the house and starting his life up there, but he was taken too soon. I dedicate this post and so many of my adventures to both he and my other son, Arden. They are the biggest adventure that I have embarked on in my life, and my most rewarding one. I love my boys. I will miss my gentle giant.

                                                        

Soil Testing!

Soil testing came back and our build site is a go! HOORAY! Now we just have to get with Arched Cabins and get our drawings done, get permit paperwork squared away, and then go pull permits for our build site! Finally beginning to move forward. I just want to have everything in place so we can get those holes drilled and foundation done and get this show on the road!

So what happens now? With the soil test we have to drill all of our holes for our foundation (post and pier foundation is what we are using for the house) and then we will likely use a block skirting around that. Once the holes are drilled, we have to have someone come out to inspect the open holes before we pour concrete, and then I believe the pillars have to be inspected, but don't quote me on that yet. The soil report was around $950, they pulled 2 core samples to send off to the lab, and we got a full workup and recommendations on the foundation design based on the post and pier foundation.

Always read your report carefully, and find out exactly what kind of testing they do. We pretty much wasted $650 on the first test at the site where the house currently sits. The guy didn't take any core samples, and he just eyeballed the hole. We could probably get away with using it to put down something else up there, but I don't think we'd get the permits pulled in time for a second house. We do plan to put a cabin somewhere eventually for Mike's mom to come and stay in whenever her heart desires...
 When we got this report, they did it for the wrong foundation type, so it took a couple of extra weeks to get that all sorted out. I'm just waiting for Mike to do a quick mockup of a floor plan to send off to Arched Cabins. It will be another $800 for the engineered floor plans and full foundation plans that the county requires.  Eventually I will have a breakdown of costs. I just need to sort out a few things with my excel skills. AKA I have no excel skills and I need to sit down and watch some tutorials and such.

Giant Batch of Spicy Tomato Sauce - Recipe

Hey guys! Today I'm making a gigantic batch of tomato sauce. It didn't start out that way, but I always cook too much food, so I will likely can a whole bunch of this.  I started with a basic recipe I found and as usual added my own flair. I like stuff spicy, so it has some heat (totally optional) and I roasted the peppers right on the stove burner for that amazing roasted taste. If you've never roasted your peppers before, I highly encourage you to try it. It adds so much flavor to your peppers.

Basically you can fire up the grill or just turn on the burner on your stove if you have a gas stovetop (our stove is fueled via the giant tank of propane outside). 

Just roast the peppers over the flame until the skin is BLACK. Stuff the peppers into a bag and seal for about 10 minutes, put on a pair of gloves to save the "AAAAAH I TOUCHED MY EYE AND IT BURNS" issues down the road if you're cooking your more spicy peppers. I use Anaheim because they add a wonderful flavor to dishes without ridiculous amounts of heat. 

I think this batch had 3 1/2-4 lbs of tomatoes, but I went with it. Anyhoo, onto the recipe. 

3 lbs (roughly) tomatoes

2 medium red peppers

1 Anaheim chile pepper (larger than jalapeños and lighter green)

2 sweet yellow onions

optional veggies - carrots. I forgot to buy some

2, 12 oz cans of tomato paste

2 tablespoons of butter or ghee (which is a clarified butter that you just brown a bit more)

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tsp celery salt (optional a stalk of celery, but I didn't have any)

1 tablespoon Italian seasoning (to taste really)

1 tablespoon chili powder (to taste)

4 bay leaves

splash of creole seasoning (optional)

1 tsp Pink Himalayan Salt

1 cup of red wine (optional)

1 beef bouillon cube (I actually use something that's called better than bouillon or those creamer size packets of concentrated beef stock as they have a much richer flavor) this is also clearly optional for those of you who are vegetarian or vegan. 

In a large stock pot, boil several quarts of water.  Have close by a large bowl filled with ice water. You will drop a few tomatoes into the boiling water for approximately 1 minute. Boil the tomatoes until the skin starts to peel, then remove with a slotted spoon and dunk into the ice bath until cool enough to handle. Peel the skins (awesome for the compost bin) and squeeze out the seeds, at this point I also cut off the bit that was attached to them stem and set aside. Save 8 tomatoes (also peeled and seeds removed) to cube later.  With the rest of the tomatoes, run through a food processor or blender and pour into crock pot or large soup pot and set aside. 

Slice the onions and peppers into the size of your liking. In a large frying pan, melt the butter or ghee, you may also add some olive oil to the mix. Melt the butter in the pan, and stir in your onion and pepper mix as well as your diced garlic and carrots if you opted to toss those into your mix.  Cook until onions are translucent and beginning to brown. 

Add tomatoes, vegetables, spices, and wine into your crock pot or large pot on the stove, and cook for 4 hours. After 2 hours, stir in the 2 cans of tomato paste. 

Stir occasionally and spice to your taste as you are cooking.

 When you are done, remove the bay leaves, and then you may either add a combination of Italian sausage and ground beef (I use 4 lbs each for a nice, thick meat sauce) or in my case, I'm going to can most of the tomato sauce as is and then 1/4 of it will be combined with Italian sausage and ground beef to make a meat sauce for my lasagna and the tomato sauce will be canned as is alone for future use in recipes because not everything I cook will require a meat sauce.

It has a nice heat in the back of your throat, I'd say this is a medium heat with both the Anaheim and creole seasoning, but I also used a really big, fat Anaheim pepper. So if you'd like it more mild, I would either eliminate the Anaheim pepper or creole seasoning, or go with a smaller Anaheim pepper. 

I'm a pasty, old, white lady and can't handle the heat as much as I used to, but this to me is still pretty mild. I also used to spice things until my eyeballs were sweating, so to me this is "mild" but to many , again, it would be "medium"

Enjoy! Also, I love your feedback, if you've tried this with some additions, I'd love to hear about them!

*edited* totally forgot to tell you to take the bay leaves out before serving. 

Elk Chili Recipe

I made a tasty elk chili the other night using some elk steaks that Mike received after helping some good friends process meat last year. He had vacuum sealed the elk into pouches and kept it in the chest freezer. It was ridiculously tender and delicious. Without further ado, here is the recipe. 

I used a crock pot, but you could also simmer in a nice soup pot on the stove. It did have a tendency to stick to the bottom of my crock pot though, so I would stir regularly if you are home to do so.  I gave measurements for spices, but I almost never actually measure, just "guessimate" and taste periodically. You can always add more, but you can never remove any. So start slow and build it up until you love the taste. <3

1.5 lbs of elk meat cubed (or you can use ground elk if preferred)

12 oz can tomato paste

15.5 oz can of white chili beans

15.5 oz can of black chili beans

1 yellow onion

I tbsp chili powder (I just do it to taste, honestly)

I tsp pink Himalayan sea salt (to taste)

1 tsp onion powder (to taste)

1 tsp garlic powder (to taste)

1 tsp creole seasoning (optional to taste)

1 can diced green chilis or 1 roasted anaheim pepper (optional)

I didn't have the anaheim pepper at the time, so I just used the cajun spice I had. 

Basically just toss it all into the crock pot, give it a good stir, and cook on high for 4 hours, low for 8. I think low would probably be better so as not to burn it to the pot, but I cooked it on high because I started it mid day. 

I shredded some cheese and tossed a dollop of BBQ sauce into my bowl for extra flavor. It was simple, flavorful, and that elk was ridiculously tender melt in your mouth. 

Enjoy!

Reflection

I would never have imagined 6 years ago that I would be living in a magical little forest with my favorite Sasquatch, and here I am. So much has changed for us both, and yet this vision always stayed the same. The house changed, multiple times, and then came back around to the one we bought. The land was everything that I ever wanted, and I do believe it's the same for Mike. He was looking in the plains because the mountain stuff always seemed unattainable. 

So close! We just have to put the rest of the pieces together. 

I love you, Miláček!

Star Trails

Step 2. Jumping through hoops for permits. Soil testing and drawings.

Depending on what county you live in, you may be required to do various testing before you can proceed with your projects. 

Ours requires soil testing for pretty much every project. Septic, well, buildings, driveways, etc. 

You have to get permits for EVERYTHING. We do have permits on file for 1 septic system and both wells have a permit through the state because wells are state level and not county.  We will have to file for a new permit for the driveway, and all the crap that's in place because the previous owner again, did not. 

Soil testing. This was all over the place. The first guy came out, drilled one hole and looked into it. Charged us $600 and that was it. I was told we couldn't build on the site we picked. I searched for another soil engineer. $600 to look at a drilled hole and no samples didn't help. I called and got a bid for $1800, that person comes and drills two holes and takes samples to send to a lab, except we had to pay the drilling team on top of his fees of $1800. Another larger firm in Colorado Springs quoted us $950 or so for two holes, two samples, and the report. Same as the $1800 guy, but there was no difference in what was provided. So when you need to get testing done, ask the county exactly what is required for the test to be accepted by the county and make sure that everyone provides the same services. We're basically out $600 because the guy didn't really do enough and when I asked questions about the report he gave me information which actually wasn't correct.  

Same with plans. Know exactly what the county requires on your plans and make sure that every detail is on there and make sure that your house follows exactly those plans or they will reject you outright. 

I thought I had everything squared away, but the reality is that I have no idea what the hell I'm doing and I had virtually nothing to work with, so months spent on paperwork and planning was wasted.  It might even be worth the money to hire a person to do all of this crap for you because I'm just as confused as I was when we started, and am still flailing around trying to figure out what to do next. This time though, I have a ton of notes from the planning office and an idea of what we need, but I'm sure it's going to be one of those 6th time is the charm things. 

I recommend if you are doing the project with a partner, have your partner also attend these sessions with planning department or include them on e mails with service people because they may understand information that you do not. We've been attempting to have me deal with the phone calls and administrative tasks, but then I don't understand something that he does and we lose money on the project as a result because my decision was based on knowledge that I didn't quite understand. So communication is key. 

Research what is required of you. Understand the reasons behind the testing, plans, drawings, etc and make sure that everyone understands what it is exactly that you need from engineers, architects, inspectors, etc. Know that they will not remotely bend the rules. even if something is off by 1", you will have to redo everything. Be precise in your communication and execution of plans.  I've wasted so much time, energy, and money by not making sure I understood the process.