Author: theinvolvedhusband

We are often reminded of how commercial Christmas has become.  Combine this with a longing for a simpler time and memories of childhood Christmases on the farm (and possibly an unhealthy addiction to craft fairs) and the conditions were prime for my wife to make that exciting decision: WE are going to MAKE Christmas presents and decorations this year!!  Now I will admit, my first thought was “YAY! CHEAP!”    Actually that was my only thought. Had I gotten past that initial response I may have realized her emphasis on the WE part of this plan.

The first step, of course, was to find suitable antique and vintage ideas that could be made out of materials readily available from our yard… that and any one of the 17 dollar stores in town. The ideas portion of this adventure in marriage involves a little site on the internet called “Pinterest”. If you don’t know what pinterest is, here is a brief summary: Your wife spends 237 hours on the computer and then you spend your entire summer making lawn ornaments out of stuff you previously would have taken to the dump. That’s all you need to know, trust me – its an evil site.

As the planning discussion continued on I found myself gazing out of the window at the forest, paying just enough attention to my wife’s voice to nod if the talking paused.  Somewhere between longing to be struck by lightning and wondering if I could make it out of the country before she noticed I was gone it came to me:  the easiest and cheapest commodity that we have access to is wood. Trees, to be exact.

In very short order we found ourselves scrolling through thousands of pictures of santas, snowmen, ornaments and wreaths that could be made at the expense of our friend, the tree. After pointing out to my wife that there would be stumpage fees, permits and possibly a federal environmental review required to harvest enough wood to finish this project list, WE were able to narrow the list down and avoid clearcutting our entire yard. You will note I keep using the term “WE”. This points out how much involvement I had in helping, by doing what I was told, when and how I was told to do it.  Using “WE” also implies that there was so much fun to be had that it must be shared by more than one person, but perhaps “WE” could be mistaken.

Armed with my trusty chainsaw and a complete outdoor survival kit (which means I had my dog and a couple of Snickers bars) I headed out harvesting from natures craft supply store.  (Sharp readers may notice the subtle change from “we” to “I” now that the hard work has begun, but I see no reason to elaborate on that).   For those safety conscious friends of mine, rest easy – we had a comprehensive safety plan in place including check in times, GPS tracking and route planning.  Apparently she wanted to know immediately should anything bad happen while I was out harvesting.  Whether this was genuine concern for my well-being or simply for insurance purposes has yet to be determined. I assured her that I am a complete chainsaw expert however, so I can only assume she was worried that I may run across one of the Werewolves or Chupacabras that have been known to frequent our property. It did not take me long at all to have stacks of logs all over the yard, branches in the garage and strips of bark in my closet.

We are now in a “rest period” of sorts where we get to admire the collection of potential projects without actually building any projects.   I cannot wait until the final days before Christmas when we can stay up all night frantically playing adult arts and crafts after a month of setting records in procrastination.  I am envisioning a hot glue gun massacre that may well go down in history.  As with most of these situations, the full details will be available in the court transcripts.  If it comes to this, let it be known that I have absolutely ZERO intention of strangling myself with ribbon, even if the investigators claim it looks accidental or self-inflicted.

So far, the number of hours spent on this fun “together” time project has been quite astounding. In fact, I worked out the math and it may have been simpler to put that amount of time into a minimum wage job and just buy everybody a car. Apparently that is not “the spirit” though, so I hope you enjoy your wooden snowman as much.

Well I tried some new shampoo. The label sucked me in. “from a land Down Under” it said. With kiwis and koalas pictured on it, who could resist? They gotta know hair, right? Plus at $1.79 for 2000 milliliters how could I go wrong? Well – I did go wrong. Horribly horribly wrong. Apparently the smiling koala in the picture was happy because he had just had a bowel movement into a green pump bottle to ship to Canada. The label says 95% biodegradable. It fails to mention that the other 5% is apparently used engine oil and toxic waste. In 5000 years archaeologists will find the contaminated soil and think there was a nuclear reactor on our property, I’m sure. Check the ingredients. #1 Aqua. Awesome. Wait, that’s just water. Hmmm. Then a list of unpronounceable chemicals. Great. That must be part of the “all natural”. Ah here is a word I recognize: “glycol” about fourth on the list. For those of you who are unaware, glycol is the primary base of the coolant inside the engine of your car. This is all starting to make sense now. I honestly think my hair would have come cleaner if I had actually gone to the garage and used antifreeze and engine oil but we shall carry on. Another list of chemicals and oh! There it is, right near the end! Kiwi seed extract! So just as this swill was about to be sealed up someone obviously threw a handful of rotten kiwi seeds into the pot to get the marketing rights sewn up. I can only hope that there was no animal testing done as I can’t imagine a room full of screaming koalas running around with the hair burnt off of their tender pink skin while some mad scientist yells “do it AGAIN – it says ‘repeat as necessary'”. (I envision that in a german accent, don’t ask me why). Fortunately I do not have a lot of investment capital tied up in this little experiment so I will not need to ask for disaster assistance funding. I think perhaps I will try it as an engine degreaser on the truck or to perhaps to remove belt dust from the clutches on a snowmobile. On second thought I better not, it might eat aluminum. Bah.

I love apples.  I really do.  So when it was decided that we should put a couple of fruit trees in our yard I immediately voted “apple!”.  Since my vote seems to carry a bit of weight sometimes, I further extended my influence to say “GOOD apples”.  I do not want any of those little balls of sour moose-turd flavoured “crab” apples littering up my lawn.  I want something delicious and worthy of the glorious apple name – like the ones that Saveon Foods grows in the warehouse.
Finally after much debate the votes were tallied and I was excited to learn that my apple vision had won out over lesser fruit hopefuls such as pears or plums: I was moving closer to my apple farming dream!  First step was obviously to buy an apple tree – no wait, we need two.  Apparently baby apples need a mommy and daddy tree.  Who knew?  Now I had to decide which two trees would be suitable, like some kind of strange organic matchmaker dating service.  I studied the pictures and descriptions on the tags and tried to envision their personalities but I have no idea what would make one apple tree attractive to another so it was mostly a guess.  Really all I had to go on was size and taste so it was hard to plan a deep relationship between the two – truth be told, a proverbial one night stand would suffice but I’m a romantic.
I proudly planted our new trees at what we figured was a proper distance – close enough to procreate but with enough space to hopefully not smother each other.  I wanted them to have a happy marriage.  Now I just had to wait – by next year I would be sitting on a giant pile of apples, like Scrooge McDuck with his money.
The following spring finally came and I waited for the leaves to bud and the apple blossoms to form… except they didn’t.   One of my two beautiful trees stayed grey and bare.  Apparently I had failed as a matchmaker and one of my trees decided death was preferable to creating juicy, delicious offspring with the partner I had selected for it.  Off to the grocery store I went to buy a bag of apples, while I contemplated this tragic turn of events.  The remaining tree was doing great although I couldn’t tell if it was actually joyous over the recent passing of its partner or if it was in deep despair and simply over compensating in an attempt to hide it’s depression.  Or perhaps I was over thinking the situation, but I doubt it.
Back I went to find a replacement tree, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t be too late for this growing season.  It was starting to seem like an awful long time since I had first dreamed of a mighty two tree orchard to keep my apple cravings satisfied and honestly some of the excitement had worn off.  There was a lot less time spent selecting a mate this time.  Their happiness mattered less and less to me by now so I picked a tree that looked cheap and easy.  I absolutely will never tell what I considered to be the parameters for this decision.
After a brief memorial ceremony that involved the fire pit and a match, the old tree was laid to rest and the new tree was in place, ready to do its thing.  It was a waiting game again.  The new tree had previously set blooms so I was told not to expect anything from this year.  Darn – another wasted season.  Luck was on my side however as one little bloom somehow managed to survive the move and hang on, slowly growing into a magnificent specimen of apple greatness.  The young tree was, of course, not ready to support this baby and the branch was pulled down in a horrifying bend reminiscent of the lone Christmas ornament on the Charlie Brown tree.  It seemed to grow slowly, likely because I checked on it several times a day, but my single lonely apple finally became ripe enough to pick and eat – and it was delicious!  I have to say that this was undoubtedly the most delightful apple I have ever tasted, and so it should be as I have totalled the costs of the original trees with the replacement tree and the trips to the store, fertilizer, dirt, stakes etc at a little over $300.  Since the average apple weighs about 150 grams this would put my apples value at approximately  $2100.00 per kilogram.  Or $140 per bite.   Take that, caviar!  I figure that has to be close to the most expensive apple in the world but I haven’t looked into it further. I am still waiting for Guinness to return my call.

As a side note,  it did not occur to me until later that the blossom was already present when I brought the replacement tree home which means my other tree was not even a part of producing this apple – but it seemed proud anyway.  Maybe it doesn’t know.

After watching and helping with this fun project called “canning” I have taken the liberty of making some notes that may help others get the most enjoyment possible out of this experience.  To start with, you need to go out in the bush and gather up your base stock for your jelly.   Anything you can think of will work apparently.  Berries are the most traditional but whatever you can grab and carry home will work, including trees, roots, flowers and blooms.  Keep in mind that the buds or berries that no other creature on this planet will eat are, by default, very readily available.  The list of items suitable for making jams and jellies is really endless so go ahead and clean out your fridge too; old fruit, leftovers, whatever. The next step is to process your treasures to pull the natural flavour out.  I actually thought that this would be the complicated part as it requires enough tooling to make Walter Whites lab look like a kindergarten classroom, but no: after you have set up your entire kitchen like an episode of Breaking Bad you take your precious fruit and POUR BOILING WATER OVER IT.  That’s it.  The excess is strained through something called “Cheese Cloth” which, I might add, looks nothing like cheese.  It is just cloth.  If you don’t have access to magic cheese cloth simply grab that old Tshirt with the BBQ sauce stain on it and you have the same thing.  I suspect you could also strain your mixture through a fuel filter from a 72 Dodge without any problems, but I never got any say during this process so I could not test that theory. Once you have strained all of the rocks, bugs, spiders, and dirt out of your forest waste you have to pause.  Stare at it.  You must say “OOOH” and “AHHH” repeatedly at the colour.  Call the kids.  Take photos.  Whatever you have to do to celebrate and cherish this moment.  This is especially important as this is the exact moment that the fun ends. While you continue to admire and gush over the exciting colours you have invented go ahead and bring your mixture to a boil.  Once its boiling you get to add the sugar.  Now what no one tells you is that you need A LOT of sugar.  In fact you need more sugar than you are going to have finished jam. I don’t know what kind of voodoo happens at this stage but you somehow manage to fit about fifty cups of sugar into each jar.  Seriously, back the truck up.  As an added bonus, this much sugar will also cover up the taste of whatever kind of wild poisons you have boiled out of your gatherings.  Now that it has boiled, your mixture is ready to put into your jars.  You know, the ones that you forgot to sterilize while you were “OOHING” and “AHHING” at the colour?  It’s time to frantically start trying to wash them while continuing to stir your boiling sugar soup that is beginning to solidify in your pot.  Timing here is critical so don’t pause to think how organized your grandma was because she had all this crap done ahead of time, I promise you. You are finally ready to fill and cap your jars.  This part is quite boring so go ahead and smash a jar or two on the floor.  Once you are dancing around in a pool of boiling molten sugar interlaced with jagged shards of glass you will get quite an adrenalin bump.  Get a few shards stuck in your foot and it now qualifies as an extreme sport.  Don’t tell Monster Energy, they will want to sponsor this too and nobody wants a giant M on the side of their jam jar. Once the jars are filled and sealed it is time to clean up and admire your work.  Cleanup is a little tough because your jams and jellies have now set up completely solid:  On the spoons, in the pots, in the bowls, where its spilled – all of it is now cement hard.  Except for the stuff actually IN the jars.  For some reason that didn’t set up at all.   Apparently you tweaked the recipe just enough for it not to work.  No problem, this was so much fun you can look forward to doing it again.  Or just change the name from Jelly to Syrup, light the kitchen on fire and call it a day.  Who knew that gramma was a master chemist?