Falltime.

I can't come up with a title. My brain is zapped.

My work schedule is completely bananas right now so I don't even know why I'm doing this - if I'm near a computer I ought to be working but whatever. I have events coming up - big events - November 12,14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27 and December 5-7, 11, 12, and 13. I just finished events Sept 30 - Oct 4, Oct. 16, 17, 19, and 23. Can you believe that schedule? It's totally nuts but I'm not allowed to complain.

Things are super busy at home too. Fall is a nice time, but man is it a lot of work. Seriously it's the time of year when we should just hire a live-in helper to do manual labour around the house. We got a big load of firewood the other day that needs to be sorted, split, and stacked in the shed. We bought a car (a Vibe. I love it.), and need to sell the old one. I have a box full of bulbs that need to go into the ground this weekend. And on top of everything, we've been experimenting in the kitchen AND having wildlife issues - yet again.

My kitchen experimentation has taken on a whole new level. I have now, thanks in large part to the Kingsolver family's excellent book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle , and the totally fun New England Cheesemaking Supply , been experimenting with making my own cheese. Turns out it's not that tough. But that's not where the story begins.

We had a really great apple harvest this year. So great, that one day when a copy of ReadyMade magazine came in the mail and included a recipe for homemade apple cider, we had the brainwave "why don't we make cider!?" It wasn't really a question though. We filled the downstairs fridge with apples, we had pillowcases full of apples in the doorways, bowls of apples on the counter, rows of apples lined up on our deck railings and picnic table, and half-eaten apples scattered all over our lawn.

My little brother (not so little actually, but younger), who is very much mechanically inclined and gifted, decided to make me an apple cider press for my birthday, which is September 4. He made this heavy-duty press out of carbon steel and a bottle jack, and the design was pretty great. It had a box with a spout, and my mom made us some hemp press bags to go along with it. But I had to core and grind the apples first, which was hugely messy and took a long time and gave me fingers so sore I couldn't use my fingertips for a few days. When we got the ground apples into the press box, we found we couldn't squeeze them hard enough for all the juice to come out, that the juice actually ended up going over the top and soaking back in.

After many permutations, a few jacks, and a lot of swearing, we finally resorted to the following method: throw the apple chunks into the juicer. When the juicer has had enough, put the apple juice into the press bag and squeeze it through into the bucket. Then scrape out the leftover apple from the juicer, put it into a press bag, and press the shit out of it by hand. This method was both very effective and gave my husband nice biceps.

We got 12 litres of juice and stopped there, because that is the size of the carboy we bought, plus our hands were stained dark brown. And also because I had to cook a 19lb turkey for four people later that day. We'd gone to the winemaking supply place and gotten all kinds of little bottles of chemically powders and things, followed the winemaker's recipe (the readymade one proved too small-scale and unreliable), and now, two weeks later, we have a 12 litre carboy of beautiful cider bubbling away in our back room, which we check every 5 minutes and treat like a pet.

But what to do with the press? I had, in the meantime, been reading about the Kingsolvers' adventures in homemade food, and decided to check out the cheesemaking supply place after reading that they make their own mozzarella and it only takes 30 minutes. What a fun site. If I'd had fun with the cider chemicals, cheesemaking is a whole new kind of science, and we eat a lot of mozzarella - we are big into homemade pizzas. I ordered the kit and was like a kid at Christmas when it came in the mail. I watched the video twice. I will watch it again.

My first mozza was extremely tasty, but a bit soft. Hubby used it on a pizza while I was away for work for a week, and enjoyed it quite a bit. The next mozza was larger (a full recipe) and still a bit soft for my liking, needs more salt, and I didn't like the taste as much which I think is due to using a different brand of milk. The experiments continue, and now I'm about to start thinking about Farmhouse Cheddar, which I have to get on before Christmas. I get to make a whole new order from the cheesemaking supply, which is great since our dollar is currently so high. So the press will now transition from being a cider press to being a cheese press, and I have bought the accoutrements to make that happen in the near future.

We've also had squirrel troubles, which seem to have solved themselves. Er. Let's just say that nobody wants a black squirrel IN the house. It's bad enough to have squirrels in the attic and near your wires, but to come home and find your living room ransacked is another thing. Seriously - the little creep crushed my beloved banana plant! It's over four feet tall! Thankfully it's bouncing back, but I can't say the same for the antique teacups and old salvaged bottle collection, a few of which met their maker. He smashed plant pots, and left chewed up apple all over the place. He shat in my thanksgiving roasting pan, chewed the lip off of my flour pail, chewed the mesh of my flour seive, and tried to chew through the frame of the basement window.

My husband bought one of those Have-A-Heart critter traps, which trap the creature alive so you can release it back into the wild somewhere far away. We had intentions of doing this, and hubby was even concerned that perhaps he wouldn't have a chance to build an adequate nest and food stash before winter. We baited the trap with apples and peanut butter and went off to work. I then made the mistake of calling my mom and asking them to go and check the trap later in the day. At about 3 p.m. I received the following phone call:

"Hi there." (it's my mom, we need no introductions)
"Hi?"
"Dad caught a squirrel."
"Oh yeah?"
"a BLACK squirrel!"
"a BLACK SQUIRREL??? No shit!" (we are rural - black squirrels are kind of urban.)
"Yeah."
"What did he do?"
"He got rid of him."
"like how."
"Um, he shot him."
"He what?"
"He shot him. He took the cage outside and shot him."
"Point blank?"
"Yep."
"Holy shit. Where's the body?"
"He disposed of it."
"How?"
"I don't know. He disposed of it."

My parents are fantastic. My dad is kind of a redneck and my mom's pretty urbane, and together they are like a rollicking vaudeville routine. I love them so much. But that squirrel ran into the wrong family member. I'm so glad we spent the money on a HAVE-A-HEART trap. Just don't tell PETA. Also don't tell my neighbors or my garbage man because as it turns out 'disposing' of it, according to my dad, means driving it down the road and sticking it in someone else's garbage can. Disgusting, I know. Don't judge me.

So it's a madhouse, as usual. I don't honestly know how kids will ever fit into this mix.