Relaxing Rural Road Trip

The weather was fairly nice yesterday, and we needed to pick up a wine shipment. Since we're expecting rain today, it seemed that yesterday was the better day for a drive into the country. And does it seem like we just picked up wine shipments a few weeks ago? Well, it does to me too. They just tells us when to come and we just goes and gets 'em. We don't ask questions, except for "When do you open?"

Before we left, however, I sat and finished stitching the latest of the Wine Country stitcheries. This is Block 3 of 12. It seemed fitting.

With this one finished, I'll get back to Mumm's the Word and do two more weeks of hand-quilting on that before moving onto the next one. Here's where I left off from last time:

There's still a lot to do, and I won't finish it in two weeks. I'll just keep plugging along with it and eventually I'll get there...you just wait and see.

So after that, I had a little bit of time left before we needed to leave, and so I tried this latest offering from Marisa McClellan of Food in Jars for Quart Jar Cabbage and Carrot Kraut. There's no way for me to over-emphasize how carrots have taken over my life in the past several weeks. I'm putting them in everything just trying to keep them from burying me in the kitchen. If ever I stop writing, you'll know it's because I lost the battle with the carrots and died a suffocating death buried in carrots.

But, hey, mayhem aside, I had a little bit of cabbage left from a soup I made, and so this seemed like just the ticket. Carrots, cabbage, and a tablespoon of salt...that's all you need, and you too can have a jar like this one sitting on your kitchen counter fermenting. 

Does this jar look like a shepherd awaiting its turn for entry into the Nativity story? Maybe I'm the only one who can see it. I'm supposed to check it every couple of days, mash it down, and "when its tangy" it'll be ready to eat. (And if it doesn't turn out...no harm done. At least I've slayed two more carrots.)

Speaking of CSA veggies, our farmers posted a picture of all of the veggies from this year's share. They said there were 788 pounds of veggies per share (in other words, our one share contained 788 pounds of veggies this year) at a cost of approximately $1.49 per pound.

These two farmers personally sowed, grew, harvested, and distributed nearly 90,000 pounds of vegetables with their four hands. Amazing.

As we were walking out the door, we noticed Sadie was out on the Catio enjoying the nice weather. She was the top-shelf cat yesterday morning. Smitty was nowhere to be found.

We are fortunate to live in the rural countryside, which makes these drives...nothing more than errands...all the more lovely. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon. Here are just a few things we saw.

I've been smitten with lone oak trees in fields for a long time.

Closer into wine country, there are always vineyards and tasting rooms to visit.

We were headed to Witness Tree in Salem, and when we arrived, this little burro was there to greet us. I tried to strike up a conversation, but apparently the burro had nothing to say. He's looking very fashionable and warm in his coat, however.

As we walked up the steps to the tasting room, I saw this and had to snap a picture.

And that gave me an idea for the day's photo-a-day prompt, which was "Picture of a picture." This was my contribution on Instagram.

I hope you never get tired of seeing the witness tree because I never get tired of taking its picture.

On the way back home, we passed through Dayton, Oregon, and decided to stop at this relatively new restaurant for lunch.

It's the former First Baptist Church of Dayton, turned into a restaurant. 

And you know I absolutely love this kind of stuff. It was built in 1886, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979

I tried finding more information about it, and could only find this article from a local newspaper. There's more history there and some pictures of the original building.

I was hoping to find some more information about it inside, but found only this card on our table.

The tables and bar are from the original old growth fir, cut 128 years ago, remilled, and reused. Cool.

The food and service were great too. Mike had a barbecue burger,

And I had an Italian sandwich served on focaccia bread. Yum. Both meals came with homemade potato chips still warm from the fryer.

When we got home, I still had a little time left to start quilting the Happy Village. It's going fairly quickly, but I haven't started on the little windows yet. Probably by the end of today...

When I have it all finished, I'll add some details to some of the larger roofs and walls. 

For now, I'm just adding some details to the domed roofs.

And now I'm ready to get back to it. I'm hoping to get well along today.